The Last Frontier: 1 - Omaha Country Club

We had finally gotten there. The trip had been planned. The money had been spent. The blood and tears had been shed. 8 courses, hundreds of miles in an RV around the entirety of Nebraska, all in 10 days. This is the golf adventurer's dream trip. This is the last frontier.

Let’s make this perfectly clear right off the bat: we did not plan a trip to Nebraska to play parkland style golf. We came to see if the hype was real; if Nebraska did actually have some of the most underrated links style golf in America. But we needed to satisfy the urge to play, especially after one of the most brutal travel days in my life; which, long story made very short, included two missed flights, three delayed flights, one plane who’s right engine wouldn’t turn on, all of which produced an arrival time which was 12 hours later than our original estimate. And there is no better place to play in Douglas County, Nebraska than Omaha Country Club. Host of last year’s U.S. Senior Open, it’s a track that is recognized by the USGA for being able to hold legitimate championships. Getting on was relatively easy, just a quick call from “Nico, the Assistant Pro at Diablo Country Club” and the pearly, “Members Only” gates flew wide open. Even though we were planning on playing some of the higher end courses in the Midwest, our accommodation was anything but high end. And as we were pulling into the Omaha Country Club parking lot in our newly rented 30 foot, 1999 Four Winds Hurricane RV, we felt purely invincible. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”, Caleb said, almost like he was in the backseat of an F-14 going head to head with Viper in a “Top Gun” training exersice. Kevin Wilcox, a beloved member of our foursome came up with the idea, and we couldn’t stop thinking about it until I got a text from Caleb one day that read, “Just rented the jankiest looking RV for the trip”, and that was that. It was out of the question for us to think that they would let us spend the night there, so we found the closest Walmart, which has a nationwide policy of free overnight parking. But we were willing to take a chance and park it in the members lot when we were specifically told to park it in the maintenance lot. I guess they said that some of the members thought it was an “eyesore”. We decided to shove those pretentious thoughts to the back of our consciousness the best we could. We didn’t care about how other people viewed us. That was the whole point of the trip: to be able to play some of the greatest golf in America and not actually break the bank wide open.

We had been wanting to find the perfect place to see whether or not that hypothesis would work. There aren’t a lot of spots in America that are highly concentrated with accessible, affordable, and architecturally intriguing golf. There are natural hotspots for golf in the U.S., like Long Island, the greater Philadelphia area, San Francisco, and Los Angeles whose golf repertoires are astounding. But none of these places actually value public golf in a way that we were yearning for. We wanted natural hospitality. A brimming smile, a genuine “How’s your day going”, and an invite to the 19th hole didn’t seem like it was in the cards for us at those previously stated places; not to mention the fact that it’s easier to walk into the Pentagon with a concealed weapon than it is to walk onto any of those courses. So we kept looking.

Back in the fall of 2020, I was in contact with Rob Collins, head designer for King-Collins Golf Course Design and Construction about joining his team as an intern in Nebraska. They were in the process of building an original design in Homer called Landmand Golf Club, which is about a 15 minute drive south of Sioux City, Iowa and scheduled to open this fall. When I got the green light to head on out, I invited my dad to join me in a semi cross country trip to north eastern Nebraska. After about a thousand miles on Interstate 80, we finally reached the “Welcome to Nebraska” sign on the side of the highway. The anticipation started to rise and my eyes started to look for potential golfing Meccas. But cornfields are all we ran into. “Wait a minute…”, I thought. “Isn’t there supposed to be hilly, undulating, glacial dunescape all over Nebraska? Where are the Sand Hills? I was told there was going to be sand.” I was a little frustrated with the agonizingly monotonous site of flat, uninteresting land. And then we turned north off of I-80. Que my jaw dropping to the floor of the car.

Nebraska was the perfect place for this kind of trip. The minute we vocalized it was the minute we went full steam ahead and never turned back. Through a couple weeks of research and planning, there appeared to be a circle of pins put on the cutout map of Nebraska my brother Jack had put on his wall. How were we going to get from Omaha, head out west to Lake Mcconaughy, up to Valentine, and back down? There was the obviously easy option of renting a car and staying in hotels and Airbnbs, but quickly felt like that would add up too quickly to dish out. There is lodging associated with most of the courses we would be playing, but we weren’t going on this trip with our grandfathers, and could therefore take a little more liberty and laissez faire with how we traveled. “How about an RV?”, Kevin said. And as we started to think about it, the more it made sense. RV it is then, Kevin.

Omaha isn’t the flattest place in the world, not as flat as one might expect for Nebraska at least. But my eyes didn’t believe what was in store for us. A cascading view across the property greeted us as we walked up to the bag drop and through the main clubhouse. After a major renovation in 2016, many trees had been taken out to display the course for that very reason: the sitelines were stunning. As we were making our way down to take advantage of the guest lockers, we ran into a member who struck up a conversation about the course. We were having a fairly normal member to guest conversation when it suddenly took a turn. “Just one last word of advice. When you guys go around this place, just think of Augusta”, proclaimed the member with a wink wink, nudge nudge style grin, referring to one of the most famous golf clubs in the world and home of the Masters, Augusta National Golf Club. I bit my tongue, so did Jack. No one says stuff like that and really means it. “I can tell you for certain that he’s never played Augusta”, Jack whispered as we resumed by far the best lunch we had in the entirety of Nebraska, flashing a half-hearted, salutation smile to the member. I understand having pride for your home club. It's a good thing to be supportive of where you decide to invest time and money into. But let’s not be delusional when doing so. That statement is like me saying, “When you play the back nine at Pacific Grove just think of the duneland holes at Cypress Point. They’re super similar.” I saw the property. I could see some of the holes. And I already had hypothesized what the course would feel and play like: lots of rough, tiny fairways, and deep, manicured bunkers. Isn’t that why the USGA hosts tournaments here? But when we got out and actually started playing, I realized what that member said wasn’t completely and utterly blasphemous.

The elevation change at Omaha Country Club is downright staggering. And when people say that the TV tames the hills and undulations way down at Augusta, I can see someone saying the same thing about this course. The hole that comes to mind is the dogleg right, par 5 6th. The outcome of a semi-blind drive faces either a good chance at going for it in two, or being forced to lay up either before, or if you're lucky, after the creek that runs perpendicularly across the fairway. Depending on whether or not one tries to flirt with the bunker on the right side of the fairway and well within reach, the hill can either help direct your ball into position A, or divert your ball into the rough on the left side. Unfortunately, that’s about the most strategic Omaha Country Club got. Drive it straight; and if you can't, then gouge it out of the rough and try to put it somewhere close up there next to the pin.

All of us gave the club credit where credit was due though. The hospitality from the staff was amazing, and the membership was very welcoming. The food and drink program was spectacular. The maintenance was top tier, a blade of grass not being out of place. But it never evoked any emotion other than the sporadic stunner of a vista across the property, or the occasional risk reward short par 4, the best one being the 13th. And if the USGA wants to test those over the age of 50 on how straight they can hit a drive and how good their flop shot game is under pressure, then Omaha Country Club is the place for that. It felt too established for our nomadic taste, too concrete in a world in which we understood the game turning in a direction more suited to those who wanted to leave an imprint in that concrete.

What we were truly searching for was down the road a bit, where the RV had some room to stretch its legs and take to the hills. We were destined to find something truly special, we knew it. We just needed to head west.