The Last Frontier: 4 - The Stops Along the Way

Erik Anders Lang started playing golf a little later than the rest of us. The first time he ever properly went for a round was when he was 30, accompanied by his brother. He was living in Los Angeles, married to a celebrity, and finding his way into a circle of respected documentarians when all of a sudden golf hijacked his life for the better. His conversations with those at the public munis around LA would go on for hours, trying to soak up every last bit of the new world he found himself encapsulated with. Today he is a well known youtuber and host of “Adventures in Golf”, and recalls one story while in Dornoch shooting an episode of a youtube series, “The Unofficial Official Guide to Scotland”. He remembers being in a coffee shop and noticing someone with a Titleist hat on. Being an extrovert and new golf convert, he asked the man where he liked to play. “My wife and I have a place up in Dornoch, Scotland. The course there, Royal Dornoch, is the best course in the world. It’s heaven”. And ever since then, Erik had had his sights set on one place in the world, to play where the man in the coffee shop said was heaven. He finally got there and played it, but something was missing. A vibe if you will, something that he yearned for deep down just wasn’t present while he played his first bucket list course. And in an amazing piece of self-realization bordering on spiritual revelation, walking down a path close to the Dornoch Firth, he talks about what he really feels is special about the game. “It doesn’t feel as much like a found object which is one of the things that I look for in golf. I sort of want to discover it. The chopper taking off from the first tee wasn’t really my vibe. You want to feel a bit personal with the course. What I’m looking for is an experience outside of what I already know. I’d almost rather play golf there”, pointing to a spit of craggy reef on the edge of the firth.

Everyone knows about the places that try hard to make themselves known. The resorts and the courses with high rankings (whether or not those rankings are important is beside the point) are flocked to every year. And it's not a bad feeling when the valet takes your car, the bellman whisks your bags away, the doorman opens the door for you in perfect synchronicity with your step, and the smell of freshly cleaned carpet invades your senses. But there’s one reason why we weren’t necessarily looking for that experience all of the time in Nebraska: there’s no adventure in it. That’s what we were looking for. That’s what we were longing for. Bucket lists can wait, give us the promise of the unknown.

The town of Ogallala is the gateway to Lake McConaughy, the largest reservoir in the state of Nebraska. Its 30,000 surface acres and crystal white sands shimmered as Kevin drove across the dam that acts as Lake McConaughy’s eastern border, its specific type being one of the largest in the world. And as the RV creaked and scuttled around the northern edge, we passed the spot we had previously camped at two days before our pilgrimage to Ballyneal. 

Accommodations are lenient when one fully embraces the RV lifestyle. If we needed a plug-in to electricity and sewage, then there were multiple options probably within a 15 or 20 minute drive. But say we needed to get to our next spot on the itinerary that night, had enough electricity and space in the septic tank, or just felt lazy, then there were no second thoughts about just pulling over on the side of the highway or finding one of what seemed like an infinite amount of Walmarts to crash in. We played a round at Bayside Golf Club, a place where people vacationing at the lake can “get away from the family for just one goddamn second” as one fellow patron said to us, taking his sweet time smoking a pack of Marlboro reds while finishing his second Coors Light; at 8:30 in the morning. We weren’t interested in escaping so much as we were wanting a pure golf experience. I first started to look into Bayside from Googling “Best public golf in Nebraska”, and was interested enough to move forward and tell Jack to put another pin down on the map of Nebraska he had hung up on his wall. But I knew I really wanted to check it out when Derek Duncan, Golf Digest’s Architecture Editor and one of my golf writing idols, wrote a piece titled “Finding the ancestral spirit of the game in the ongoing search for sand”. Out of all the places mentioned in the article, including some big names like the Maidstone Club, Chambers Bay, the newly renovated American Dunes Golf Club, and even Ballyneal, the most stunning picture was of the par-3 13th hole at Bayside. It was of a green nestled comfortably between two dunes, with sharp drop offs to the front and back, accompanied by a backdrop of pure Sandhills behind. Bayside is located on the southern shore of Lake McConaughy, just up the way from Bayside Beach where the course derives its name. And although it is not a course one would ever want to walk, this fact being cemented by the lady in the pro shop claiming “Ummm, people don’t walk this course”, it was a fun layout. Did I drive off the 18th green and want to go around again? Not like the previous courses we experienced. There were some holes that really stuck out to us as being remarkable, like the par-3 8th and the previously stated par-3 13th. But more than anything, it was a good rest from the ever present eyes of membership and a refreshing break from tucked in collared shirts and being self-conscious of our 30 foot rig taking up five parking spots.

We had one day to spare between our round at Bayside and when we were supposed to show up to Ballyneal, and there was only one thing on our minds: beach day. Nothing hits quite like an off day on a long golf trip. It’s a funny concept, having a day to rest from a “luxury” or “country club” sport. But it makes sense when you add up walking 18 to 32 holes a day, with the Nebraska heat and humidity on your shoulders, all on top of the constant traveling. Just enough time for the legs to recuperate and the swing demons to be exorcized always seems to do the body and the next round well. And as we picked out the perfect spot on the beach to roll our RV up to, we were all chomping at the bit to sprint across the bleach white sands of Lake McConaughy and dive head first into the surprisingly blue waters, almost envisioning how the settlers and homesteaders of the 19th century would've been ecstatic at the site of a freshwater lake like this. Then I heard the tires of the Hurricane spin in the sand under us. “Just give it some gas, Caleb”, thinking that I was in some way helping. 

“What do you think I’m doing?”, Caleb said with a look of worry. Kevin, Jack and I jumped out and got on our hands and knees to see what kind of hole we (that’s a “royal we” by the way) got us in. Three tires were submerged in the sand about a half of a foot, with the front passenger side tire being stuck about one and a half feet down. Yep, we were stuck, and no amount of blaming Caleb was going to magically get us out. We were so close to freedom and our much needed off day, yet so agonizingly far away. Were we going to be able to make it to a campsite tonight? How about Ballyneal in a couple days? Is this the end of the trip? All delirious questions one asks when roadblocks obscure the view of the known. Jack started to dig the tires out with his hands, with Kevin and I eventually joining in. As we started to walk around the RV scratching our heads about how to tackle this problem, I heard Kevin yell something from his fully prone position underneath the front right tire. 

“There’s got to be a better way of doing this. Can someone get my 60 degree out of my bag?”

“Kevin, you’re a genius”, Jack shouted in astonishment. He darted up the beer stained pull out steps leading into the RV and came out with an eager grin and my brand new Vokey SM8s.

“Really, Jack?”, I asked with hands planted on top of my head. He ignored me for a couple of seconds, then gave me a look that screamed, “Do you want beach day to happen or not?” There was no time for pleasantries. Desperate times call for desperate measures. The sight of four shirtless dudes trying to dig a multi-ton RV out of the sand with golf clubs is one that will stay with me for a long time. With about half an hour of digging gone by, Caleb pulled out his phone to look up how much a tow truck would cost. But Jack and Kevin were adamant about their strategy. Terrible ideas were being slung back and forth like cannon fire until we reached a unanimous decision to try and coordinate Caleb flooring the RV in reverse with the rest of us rocking it in the front; and with the help of someone we nicknamed “the Nebraskan Samaritan”, his lifted Chevy four by four, and his tow line, we were free from two hours worth of self made bondage.

Highway 61 cuts right through the central section of the Sandhills covering most of the western half of the state. Headed northbound, we saw the land change; the open, sandy escarpments getting bigger and the hills getting steeper. The contrasting properties of Wild Horse and Sand Hills started to make sense. The farther north you get, generally speaking, the choppier and grander the Sandhills get. The further away from Omaha one gets, the better land for golf there is. Ironic. 

I have never seen so much untouched potential for amazing golf on such a consistent basis than while driving through the Sandhills. Places like the coast of Scotland and Ireland are all either already developed, or protected by the local and national environmental agencies. Mike Keiser, the founder of Bandon Dunes, started planning a project in Dornoch, Scotland. It took about a decade for it to be delayed, halted, and eventually thrown out, all due to environmental agencies. Gil Hanse had to wade through crowds of environmental protestors to get to work when making the Olympic Course in Rio de Janeiro, even though a major part of the construction process was bringing back lost, natural habitat for local flora, fauna, and wildlife, being partly the reason why Hanse got the commission in the first place. But the inner developer in both Jack and I couldn’t help but look out the window and dream about what kind of golf could be made on the land we were gawking over. There seemed like unlimited opportunity in this part of the state. Just pull over anywhere that has a “For Sale” sign out in front and there was an all-world piece of property. The days of making new courses in Scotland and Ireland might be behind us, but there is a fantastic alternative in Nebraska.

Our 1999 Four Winds Hurricane pulled into where Siri had told us to, but all that was there was a small, one story house with a rickety, old Ford F-150 parked in front of it. “Classic Nebraska”, Kevin said with a smile on his face. 

“I swear that this is where it is.” Jack gawked, showing visible confusion at this point. We had to track down an Instagram post from 2020 in order to pin down a position. We were close, the course we were looking for just being on the other side of town, just three minutes away. My eyes were hooked on the RV’s reflection, just barely visible on the edge of the lake we drove by. Then they caught something that I didn’t believe at first. On the shores of this lake, known as Beem Lake, one of the larger bodies of water and fertile fishing spots in town, there was a group of pelicans waddling aimlessly across the shore. My mind couldn’t compute fast enough for words to actually formulate. A dirt road (shocker, I know) took us up to the industrial looking clubhouse, and we nearly fell out of the RV and onto the hard pan dirt due to the lack of blood circulation we had gotten over the preceding four hours. The sign above the entrance was a hand built, cast-iron awning that read “Welcome to Pelican Beach Golf Club”. Pelicans in the middle of Nebraska? This Californian couldn’t believe it.

The plan was to make the trek from Holyoke, Colorado to Valentine, Nebraska in a day, depending on whether or not the wind was going to cooperate with us. Seemed like a lot for some kids who had just walked 91 holes in the last five days, but what else were we going to do? There was a rumor of a nine hole course in the small town of Hyannis, population 168 and home to the Hyannis Longhorns, “Home to the best high school football team in Grant County”. Someone we crossed paths with at one of our previous locations, where and who I don’t recall, actually said that Dan Proctor designed the first three holes and laid out the next six, one of the lead shapers for Sand Hills Golf Club and co-designer of Wild Horse Golf Club with Dave Axland. Why would someone with such a pedigree as his choose to accept a project in a location where twice as many white-tailed deer, herded cows, and, apparently pelicans cross the street in downtown then actual people, let alone people who golfed? We felt obligated to go and find out. 

They didn’t have a professional construction crew, a large scale budget, or a fancy name to slap on their front gate and edited pictures to put on a website. They had 200 volunteers and about 75 acres of untouched hills with undulating sand, yucca plants, and wild grass. But I think what I liked so much about our visit to some course outside of a town with the population of a Biology 101 class was that they didn’t need much to be satisfied with what they had. There was good golf to be built, so they bellied up to the bar and built it for no one else but them. And even though the par-3 8th could’ve fit into any course we played, the citizens of Hyannis weren’t trying to make a statement to the golfing world. I mean, the only people who play there are people who actually live there, and half of them probably helped build it!

On July 2nd, 1851, 57 men in the Red Lion Inn had an idea to start a golf club on their local spit of linksland just two blocks westward. After 9 years, they needed to figure out who the best of them was. They hosted a 54 hole event, the winner being awarded a Moroccan leather belt. That club is Prestwick Golf Club, one of the most celebrated layouts in the world. That tournament was the first ever Open Championship, still regarded as one of the four annual majors and whose trophy changed to the more well known Claret Jug after Young Tom Morris won the event three consecutive times. It reminds me of a passage in the Old Testament book of Zechariah, which says “Do not despise the days of small beginnings”. The beginnings at Bayside and Pelican Beach were small. I can only imagine at which bar the course’s genesis took place at, what the first tournaments looked like, and what the prizes were. All I know is that people drive right by them, either going through the town of Ogallala or connecting to the 2 from the 61, the inner golf addict turning their necks and trying to peek at some of the holes close to the road and say, “Boy, that looks like fun”. These places do not despise the days of small beginnings. They relish them.