Our first trip, in late winter, we played three courses plus the practice course in three days. It b

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Former La Canada Flintridge filmmaker John Harrison at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in November -- with a margarita. The background is all one putting green on the Reserve course. (Photo home based travel agents by Larry Wilson)
I'm a golfer, with a regular game with old friends on a public course in these parts. And I have played home based travel agents golf elsewhere. Just not on purpose. I mean, I have played golf in Texas, and in Arizona, and in Hawaii, I suppose. But just because I happened to be in those places home based travel agents and someone suggested a game, or I headed out as a single. I have not been what you would call a golf tourist.
Until, that is, I was seduced by Bandon Dunes. Now, twice in the recent past, I have made the arduous and complicated home based travel agents trek to a bizarrely isolated stretch of the Oregon coast, just above the California border, for no other purpose than to play golf. There is in fact nothing else to do at the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. No swimming pool. No tennis. No allowances for the kiddies or the non-playing spouse.
It's Oregon, so it's pretty. home based travel agents But by no means is it the prettiest home based travel agents part of the state, at least until you get within the confines. It is simply four -- with the addition of an eccentric home based travel agents 13-hole par-3 course, four and a half -- of the greatest home based travel agents golf courses ever created. Plus another small par-3 practice layout that's free. And while you are there, you play them, from first light till it's too dark to see the ball.
You, the Bandon golfer, live on the courses, in little cabins or the hotel-like lodge. You eat there. Oh -- I did forget that part. The food and drink at the several restaurants spread around the grounds home based travel agents are excellent. So there is that, beyond the golf. The comestibles. But that's just part of the fact that it's a given that you ought never leave the compound. It's like you're in the mysterious village inhabited by Patrick McGoohan home based travel agents as No. 6 in "The Prisoner." It's a pleasant enough home based travel agents spot. Just don't imagine you'll be leaving.
I was first enticed to Bandon a year ago in March by John Harrison, the La Cañada Flintridge filmmaker home based travel agents now moved to Portland. Old Macdonald Course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon. (null) He told me tales of this Scottish linksland mysteriously carved out on these cliffs above the Pacific. I started reading up on it, and all of a sudden, after three decades of playing golf and never traveling to do so, I had to get there. Fast.
Fortunately for the golfer on a budget, if you go to Bandon during home based travel agents months when the weather is pretty much guaranteed to be awfully cold and wet -- November, say, and March, when I went -- the prices plummet. Greens fees go from highs of $230 in the May to October period down to as low as $75. Lodging is 30 percent or more cheaper than in the high season.
You could fly directly from San Francisco. You could drive from Eugene. I recommend the way I go: Fly all the way to Portland, then turn around south on a puddle jumper to the North Bend airport. I heard too many sad stories home based travel agents of fogged-in flights from the Bay Area, and hard car drives through the rain. We sat in the Jacuzzi one night with two guys from Austin home based travel agents who couldn't get in from San Francisco and grabbed a car there and drove and missed a whole day of golf.
Our first trip, in late winter, we played three courses plus the practice home based travel agents course home based travel agents in three days. It blew like nobody's business -- gale-force Fairway of the 16th hole at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon. (null) winds -- the first day. The second, it poured rain every step of every hole. The third day, it was a combo: rain, wind, rain. I loved every second of it. I played pretty well. And in my rain suit -- a Nike Storm-Fit -- I stayed entirely dry.
The extremes of Bandon are one reason it generates such over-the-top accolades. The first three courses -- Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes along the coast, classic true links courses, meaning created out of sandy seaside land such as previously were essentially only seen in Scotland -- and the inland, forested Bandon Trails, designed by golfing great Ben Crenshaw -- were instantly loved by golfers as soon as they opened in 1999. When the wild and wooly moonscape-plus-gorse that is Old Macdonald was opened in 2010, golfers went ape.
If this is hyperbole, home based travel agents I'm in no position to ratchet down the rhetoric. Bandon inspires such praise home based travel agents because home based travel agents you fall in love and don't want to fall out. It recovers home based travel agents golf from its bad plaid pants and tight lies on crowded suburban dog tracks and makes it what it was at its Scottish origins: A profoundly outdoors game, chess on a large scale in a hurricane. Huge greens, the size of an aircraft carrier's top deck. Lots of putting from off those greens, too, because the hard greens don't hold a high wedge, and you don't want to bounce one into the ocean. Lots of low rolling chips with a 6 iron. Not too long, which suits my game. Lots of blind shots over hills. Creativity is the word, not brute force. There are no motorized carts allowed at Bandon. You must walk. Though you would be best advised to hire a caddy.
"I'm crazy," said the young man who had been assigned to me in that role that first day at Old Macdonald. Well, he did seem a little "¦ eccentric. But nuts? "No, no -- that's my name. Crazy. I'll be on your bag today."
home based travel agents After many rounds together, and though there are lots of fine caddies there, I'd never ask for anyone else. Crazy brought out the best in my game. Like the time he handed me the three wood though I was just 110 yards out. Of course, I was hitting straight into a howling wind off the Pacific. We were just barely able to stand up. "Uh, OK. Full swing?" I shouted. home based travel agents "You bet," he yelled. Ball landed softly on the middle of the green.
We didn't actually complete that round. But we were the last guys on the course. John took a movie of me holding a flagstick the flag of which whipped around so hard it left a welt on my face. After 10 holes, we took the caddies home based travel agents out for Irish whiskey and Irish beer. They'd earned it.
Cousin Tom from Texas joined us there in November for three days. We got to play all of Old Mac this time, plus the beauty that is Bandon Dunes and the new Preserve home based travel agents 3-par. Not as much rain, though there was a major lightning scare that took us off the course. Not quite as much fun, though that was self-inflicted for me: I was gobbling Advil, thinking it would ease the sore arms I'd had in March from playing too much. Not good for your stomach. But I didn't miss a round.
One of the fabulous amenities for when it's dark: The Bunker Bar. Way underground. Huge ventilation system so you can actually smoke cigars indoors. Nice pool tables. We found at the bar a couple from John's club in Portland. She was one of the few women we saw at Bandon, and was smoking a stogie, home based travel agents drinking a Scotch, neat, and rolling dice with her husband when we walked in. Said she played to a 12 handicap and loves the place. "But if this is Venus and this is Mars," she said, "I'm about here on that scale," indicating a place very close to the Red Planet.
Knowing it's there is making it harder for me to plan that long-imagined trip to Scotland to play. This out-Scotlands Scotland. When moviemakers scouted places to make the film "Golf in the Kingdom," from Michael Murphy's classic novel set in Scotland, they chose Bandon instead of St. Andrews. It's no Disneyland version -- it just recreates the birthplace of golf perfectly, 6,000 miles away. I would go there tomorrow if you called me today. Drop everything. Crazy, are you free? Return to Top