When GrayBull Club opens this fall to member play, it likely will add to several legacies. Among them, David McLay-Kidd as one of top golf course architects working today; the Nebraska sandhills as a canvas for high-end, private golf clubs; and Dormie Network, which continues to set a standard for destination clubs.
Spread over 600 acres of western Nebraska prairie, GrayBull Club is the first “ground up’’ course in the Dormie Network portfolio, which include the Coore-Crenshw-designed Dormie Club in North End, N.C; Ballyhack (Lester George) in Roanoke VA., and Briggs Ranch (Tom Fazio) in San Antonio.
GrayBull, tecnnically in the town of Maxwell about 22 miles from the North Platte Regional Airport, will be Dormie Network’s seventh property – and probably its most talked-about.
The fifth and sixth holes at GrayBull
Here’s how McLay-Kidd, who has designed such acclaimed courses as Bandon Dunes, Mammoth Dunes and Machrihanish Dunes talked to me about GrayBull:
“It turned out just spectacular. Probably the easiest course I’ve ever built – easier than Bandon Dunes and Machrihanish Dunes It’s the most simple construction and the most simple design. “It’s such amazing terrain. A blind man could build a great golf course through that stuff.
“The absolute minimization of the landscape… There’s not a tree on the horizon for 100 miles in any direction. I don’t think there is anywhere on earth thas as much sand dunes covered by prairie grass.’’
Welcome to western Nebraska.
Photos Courtesy of Dormie Network