BrandonWebb

Big sky country. Eight miles from the Canadian border. It takes real commitment to venture out this far to play golf.

The four-hour trek from Couer d’Alene, Idaho to Eureka, Montana is so remote that the radio dial just spins and spins searching for a station. A two-lane canyon road that hugs the steep banks of beautiful Lake Koocanusa finally spits you out at The Wilderness Club.

Interesting golf holes with British-style bunkering, combined with the backdrop of Mount Wam makes this design worth the pilgrimage.

The Palouse is a distinct geographical region only found in parts of north central Idaho and southeastern Washington. It is a major agricultural area, primarily producing wheat. It also produces one of the starkest contrasts on a golf course I’ve ever seen. The lush green fairways, bordered by amber waves, melting into a big, blue Pacific Northwest sky is majestic.

This place is so much more than the 14th hole. It’s a shame that’s pretty much all anyone knows about it.

The back-to-back par 3s midway through the outward nine are as picturesque as you will find, with the lake framing the backdrop

I love Pacific Northwest golf because everything is so lush. The fairways, putting surfaces and rough are all so green. Tall evergreens line most of the holes - and one even guards the center line of one fairway.

Those trees encroach several of the shorter fours, requiring thoughtful golf shots.

The bent greens lay down beautifully in this cool climate, and putt flawlessly in spite of a bit of poa intertwined.

And then there is that 14th hole, the only floating green in America. Cables can alter the yardage everyday. My forecaddie, however, said the day’s yardage is not determined offhandedly. Instead, the lake’s depth is the deciding factor. What is most impressive in my mind is that it is not a short hole. Today, it measured 170 yards when I took my turn. A stiff wind into, and quartering from left to right, made the hole play closer to 190 yards.

Don’t be fooled by the sub-6,000 yardage on the card. Ross laid out this lush Golden Age course on the side of a mountain, making it play longer than imagined.

All of the par 5s play under 500 yards, but if you don’t hit the fairway off the tee you will be scrambling for a score. I thought the short par 4s were standouts, particularly the sixth and 13th (best green on the property).

Seemingly every hole provides views of the Blue Ridge mountains or the historic inn.

I talk often about sense of place. Wild Horse fills that boot. It is quintessential Nebraska. Modest infrastructure. One interesting hole after another, linked like the Union Pacific railroad cars that clatter through here non-stop. Fairways and greens as firm as an Omaha handshake, lending to crispy conditions.

This is a community-spearheaded golf course that has garnered national accolades. The previous course in Gothenburg resided in a flood plain. It if rained, residents had to wait four days to play golf. So they decided to set out on higher ground and build another course. They hired an architect. Then something happened that would change Wild Horse’s path forever. The man behind Sand Hills came down to visit the site. Upon seeing it he convinced the principals involved that they needed to hire Axland & Proctor.

The result is a course that asks players to solve a puzzle. There isn’t anything tricked up. A faction of critics will point to the repetitive center-line bunkering as a negative. While it’s true that roughly a third of the 68 bunkers on the course are center line, or pots in the fairway, they serve more as guides to where to play. You must know where the pin is located at the outset of every hole. The fairways are so wide here that higher handicaps can keep balls in play easily, but better players find out quickly that playing left or right of these bunkers unlock preferred angles.

Axland and Proctor also did a skillful job of mitigating the challenges the wind provides here. A steady 20-25 mph breeze blows on most days. Therefore, all four par 3s play in different directions, and three of the four par 5s do as well.

The hard-packed sand greens get very firm in that wind. Combine that with A& P’s obvious affinity for Maxwell’s internal rolls, and that can wreak havoc on approaches, where wind and firmness cause balls to roll out. The billiard-like putting conditions are among the best I’ve ever played. Simply stated, the greens are the star of the show.

At a place like The Prairie Club, where there are two courses, the tendency can be to laud one over the other. The Dunes course gets much of the spotlight, but the Pines course is a terrific complement. Both rank in the Top 100 American public course lists.

In fact, the triangle that makes up the 8th, 9th and 13th holes is among my favorite cluster anywhere. The dunes can hide a pin on No. 8, as I witnessed today. No. 9 is a tempting short par 4 that promises trouble if you get greedy with a back hole location. A maze of sand awaits everywhere around the green. No. 13 looks like it was transplanted from Ireland. A gorgeous, massive bunker that sits behind the green is not really in play. But it frames the green site perfectly and provides a handsome backdrop.

The best way that I can sum up the Pines course is that Marsh is trying to elicit aggressive shotmaking. Pull it off and birdies abound.

The drive from Homer, NE to Valentine gets interesting about 20 miles east of town. The dunes start to emerge from the landscape. I must’ve imagined 300 golf holes on my way into town.

With my attention on the horizon, the sign for The Prairie Club’s unpaved entrance is easy to miss. That dusty driveway, however, leads to a welcomed reprieve.

Who knew Lehman was such a deft golf course architect? It would be hard to whiff in the Nebraska Sandhills, but his work at the Dunes course is beyond impressive. His gifts are the hole reveals, particularly at Nos. 5, 8 and 11. What you see from the fairway on approach is nothing like you imagined once reaching the green.

The fifth and eighth (among the best holes I’ve seen anywhere) are Dell holes. My tee shot at the driveable 11th will forever be etched upon my memory.

Lehman forces you to think your way around the Dunes, which is peppered with bunkers. Every one of them play as waste areas, so you won’t find a rake. That means you can find some nasty lies in these unkempt pits. However, he offers an extremely scoreable layout. Hit your target and you will be rewarded.

There are tonier addresses in the high rent district of the Sandhills. The Prairie Club, however, does not have to worry about any letters from the HOA.

All elite courses have one thing in common: sense of place.

Landmand fits the Nebraska landscape. It is expansive, extreme and bold. One corn-fed hole after another, building to a finishing stretch that has to be experienced to believe.

A player in my group provided a classic rock soundtrack for our round. Somewhere on the inward nine we began trying to surmise what band Landmand would be. I had no difficulty making up my mind and wasted no time in declaring that it would be Zeppelin. The closing stretch, starting with the Redan 14th, shreds. Prepare for Page to melt your face with the brute that is the par-5 15th with a green that is Biarritz-adjacent. The pin today on that hole… goodness gracious. The 17th is a driveable par 4 that houses a green that measures three-quarters of an acre. And the closer is a shortish par 5 with a hellacious bunker guarding the front left of the green. No quarter indeed.

King-Collins built their reputation on the Cinderella story that is Sweetens Cove. Truthfully, Sweetens is a terrible site, yet the duo had some incredible ideas of how to get the most out of it. Landmand is set to become legendary alongside Nebraska’s greatest Sandhills hits. This is a dream site that allowed them to demonstrate even more of their ideology. A host of other architects would have built excellent golf courses in the Loess Hills. But K-C came up with what they term “a love letter to golf of a bygone era.”

They have rendered some of the most unique greens complexes I’ve ever encountered. So much so that small misses can lead to big problems. The 25+ mph winds dictate wide fairways and accommodating lines of charm. But it is a second shot golf course, and the greens are riddled with backstops, false fronts, knobs and clefts that will steer balls maddeningly away from pins.

The sheer vastness of the scale allows the course to play tricks with your depth perception. A yardage guide is with the $25 Up Top.

L&M’s original design has been hampered by a canal widening and a street widening, which brought another architect in to help in mending the routing. I learned from several members that the result is controversial - to the point they are interviewing new architects to try and restore the non-L&M features. I found the Marsh holes to not necessarily stick out like sore thumbs, though his greens were noticeably more severe.

Instead, what looked foreign to me compared to their work at Lawsonia and Culver are the water features on the inward nine. It was just a stark contrast from the hulking brows that prop up green complexes and the muscular bunkering that are their signatures.

The 11th hole was a standout for me. Tee shots set out for a landing area that transforms into a fairway canted right-to-left feeding into a green that is akin to entering the trioval at Daytona. It was an exhilarating second shot watching the ball carom and roll, and roll and roll.

Classic bones are enhanced by superb conditioning. The course took on an inch and a half of rain an hour and a half before we were to tee off, but the remnants were hardly noticeable. Lush greens and rough played equally tough, as well as fair.

I could not have been more impressed with the membership, who warmly welcomed me. I can see why the Champions Tour’s Sanford Invitational is so popular here.

Casino golf! Didn’t step foot inside. Not much of a gambler.

The work of Breuer and Begay is only 13 years old, yet it sits atop the best public tracks that Kansas has to offer.

Found Firekeeper to house a very different layout going out than coming in. The outward nine is prairie golf - wide open and chock full of some interesting bunkering, both of the coffin variety and something I’ve never seen in all my travels: a grass bunker with a ring of high fescue around it. Still not sure how I feel about it.

The inward nine takes on a different disguise, winding through hardwoods and playing imminently more claustrophobic than the opening nine.

Came up snake eyes on holes like the first, eighth and 18th, but walked off the green wanting to lay my money down and play them again.