Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (Sheep Ranch)

Overview: Sheep Ranch is the fifth full-length course at Bandon Dunes, set on a dramatic stretch of Oregon coast where the Pacific is visible from much of the routing. Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw kept the design deliberately spare: wide fairways, natural grassy hollows and large coastal landforms do the work normally assigned to a dense pattern of bunkers. Nine greens sit directly along the cliffs, so wind, ground movement and the changing relationship with the ocean are constant parts of the round. The 6,636-yard, par-72 course rewards imagination and control, with several different routes to a useful position rather than one prescribed line.

History: The Sheep Ranch landscape was known for years as a mysterious piece of cliff-top ground just north of the original resort courses. It had also been used by a utility company for a wind farm in the 1970s. Resort founders Mike Keiser and Phil Friedmann eventually commissioned Coore and Crenshaw to turn the site into a full 18-hole course, which opened on June 1, 2020. The project extended Bandon Dunes’ coastal golf story while retaining the exposed, unfinished quality that had made the land memorable long before the current routing existed.

Did You Know? Sheep Ranch has no conventional sand bunkers. Its hazards are formed mainly by the cliffs, wind, hollows and native ground, making it one of the most stripped-back designs in the Bandon Dunes collection.