Bandon Dunes Sheep Ranch Golf Course

This being the newest course of the bunch at Bandon Dunes Sheep Ranch feels like it has something to prove. Opened in June 2020, it comes out of the cuts trying to set itself apart and feel different. And that it does. Although it’s set at a higher elevation the overall angle of the golf course creates a very different feel from the other courses on the complex- as though you can just reach out and touch the water- from everywhere on the course. This golf course is Gonzo from the word “go”! Unlike the rest of the courses that start you out in a sheltered area and take a couple/few holes to unveil the massive drama that lies ahead, Sheep Ranch spares no punches. There is no foreplay, no foreshadowing.. It’s just “blam”, you are thrown into the middle of the plot. Even Old Macdonald starts with some sheltered holes. At Sheep Ranch if there is wind on the day you play it (and there will be wind) SR kind of kicks you out into the elements in the middle of the first fairway and your approach shot will give you an idea of what you are going to be dealing with… all the while your jaw hanging at the beauty of this course laid out in front of you.  The only plot twist is that there are no sheep on Sheep Ranch.

Golf has been played on the ground that is now Bandon Dunes Sheep Ranch Golf Course. Bandon initially had it set up as an “inside baseball” thing you could do if you had the right connections.  But that was a very different golf course than exists today. To call the previous incarnation a golf course is generous as it was an amorphous amoeba of golf(ish) space in which you and your friends would grab caddies, head down the road and literally start a “choose your own adventure” of golf. Sheep Ranch used to be the Mad Libs of golf. Tee it up here, go for that green, tee it up there go for a different green. I hear there was a scorecard, but it’s unclear to me how you would actually keep score. Maybe the person who could drink the most beers would win?

Back to the modern day. There was not a ton of space for a regulation 18 hole golf course, so the designers Coore & Crenshaw had to be very crafty. In fact the entire golf course is only 600 yards wide. Sheep Ranch offers some of the most dramatic vistas that you can have in golf on the Oregon coast. The designers have kept many gnarled dead trees that look like driftwood in the ground and the whole thing feels like a Robinson Crusoe adventure. There are points where it literally looks like a different planet. There are features like the literally palatial double (16 and 3) green you come up on with the first par 3 number— 3 straight out to the ocean. If you overshoot your pin you will have the longest putt of your life back to the correct pin, and we are not exaggerating. The greens are running slow, as the course is new, you’ll prolly 5 putt. You have never seen anything like this. And because the golf course is set on the furthest peninsula from the resort they had to create a new feature to cope with the harsh elements. The sandless bunker. See the sand would just blow out of bunkers if they put it there, so they have created some gnarly grass bunkers that will make you long for a 10 foot deep bunkers on Pacific Dunes filled with milkshake consistency sand… 

At one point on the front 9 you will literally  get exhausted from looking at spectacular vistas, and yet you will worry that some boring stretch is just ahead. While you head inland a little, after hole 9, well, they made those holes dramatic as well. You are never that far from looking over across the course to the vast expanse of the ocean. It’s truly a delight of a golf course. You will find yourself missing this golf course even though you have not finished playing it yet. And that boring stretch? It does not come until literally the 18th tee box when the caddies describe the finishing hole as the space between 17 green and the parking lot. They say this because they are all “sticks”, for sure, and this short par 5 must bore them. But for the rest of us mere mortals number 18 actually represents an exciting short par 5 on which you actually have to think about going for it in 2  (depending on the wind). 

The greens are slow and the tee boxes are so hard you can’t get your tee into them. But our guess is that this will be a top 10 public course inside of 6 months of the open. And the fact it is easier to play than some of the monsters at Bandon Dunes Resort means it will be adored by resort goers for years to come. In fact, the only thing that makes us sad about Sheep Ranch is that this is likely the last golf course to be built at the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort—there does not seem to be anymore land. That fact, if true, makes us feel like we have opened our last Christmas present from Santa and our older sibling just told us Santa Clause does not exist…. 

Best Buddies Golf Trip Rankings:

• Bucket list rank (from 1 to 5 buckets): 5 buckets 
• Caddies: 9
• Location: 10
• Spectacle/ visual: 10
• History: 8- it’s interesting how it used to be a hit and giggle inside baseball thing
• New/ancient: modern
• Playability : 8
• Memorability : 9
• Buddy-a-bility : 10
• Service/etc: 10
• Value: 7 (This is really not the point though)
• Shopping: 10
• Warm up facilities/Range: 10- Sheep Ranch even has its own driving range
• Food & Drink: 7