Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Bandon, Oregon
It's difficult to find an ugly part on any of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort's three golf courses, unless of course you find your ball smack dab in the center of a giant cluster of gorse.
In less than a decade of operation, Bandon Dunes has built a worldwide reputation as North America's top pure links experience. The resort's flagship golf course, Bandon Dunes, debuted in 1999. Since then, Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails have built upon the storied legacy.
Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes both play along the Pacific coastline. On bluffs above the beach, the ocean is in view around just about every corner, when not shielded from towering sand dunes or pine trees. This is pure links land, full of towering gorse and firm, fescue fairways.
The newest of the three courses, Bandon Trails, couples the fescue grasses and massive fairways and greens with a remote, parkland setting. Like its neighbors, little land was moved to create an all-natural, pure golf experience.
None of the courses allow golf carts, though, at Bandon Trails, a shuttle van escorts players up to the elevated 14th tee, the highest tee on the property. (True purists: This can be turned down, of course.)
A fourth course, Old MacDonald, will come into the mix in 2010 set beside Pacific Dunes.