Editor’s note: This is the third in a Global Golf Post series chronicling the creation of GrayBull, a Dormie Network club with a course designed by David McLay Kidd. The previous stories can be read here and here.
MAXWELL, NEBRASKA | For the past couple of years, I have spent hours talking to David McLay Kidd about the GrayBull track he has been building in the Nebraska Sandhills. During that stretch, I have also discussed the project at length with some of his associates and even spent a couple of days in the summer of 2023 touring the course site while it was under construction. So, I was understandably amped when the time finally arrived this past Labor Day weekend to play the latest addition to Kidd’s impressive oeuvre – and do so with the nearly 60-year-old Scot only a couple weeks after its formal opening.
Part of that enthusiasm came from the chance to see and assess the latest creation of an architect who by his own admission has never been more at peace with his work. And the fact that I had been closely following the development of GrayBull ever since Kidd broke ground on the property in June 2022 only added to the anticipation.
Then, there was my deep affection for this region, which is a 20,000-square-mile island that literally floats on top of a massive aquifer. For one thing, the Nebraska Sandhills possess some of the best golf terrain on the planet, with hundreds of feet of sandy soil sitting below a layer of very fertile organic matter. I am also enthralled by the aura that emanates from the expanses of rumpled, grassy hills populated in the places with herds of wild horses and Black Angus cows and an almost haunting quiet that is broken only occasionally by the clangs of an Aermotor windmill pumping water from the ground.
I arrived in this town of 312 residents on a Friday afternoon, turning off Interstate 80 and then driving 12 miles north to the GrayBull entrance on a two-lane blacktop where the shoulders are dusted with sand. And by the time I departed Monday morning, having played a couple of rounds with Kidd on what is the seventh course in the Dormie Network portfolio – and the first built from the ground up – I had determined that GrayBull was one of the best layouts he has ever fashioned. I even went so far as to tell friends I called on my way back to the Omaha airport that it might be Kidd’s finest work ever.
To be sure, the par-72 inland links, which is located on roughly 1,800 acres and sits at an elevation of 3,000 feet, is not endowed with the knee-weakening water views of Bandon Dunes, the course that launched the architect’s career when it opened on the south Oregon coast more than a quarter century ago.
The course features four sets of tees and can play as long as 7,200 yards or as short as 5,000. It also offers a wide range of holes that unfurl in different directions and asks golfers to draw and fade the ball and use most every club in their bags.
But GrayBull has all the other elements. Well-contoured ground full of hillocks and hollows. Winds that blow often and from different directions day-to-day. Deft bunkering, whether in or along the fescue fairways or around the greens, which employ an older strain of grass called Bent 007. And run-off areas that test golfers’ short-game skills while also providing a good chance of salvaging bogey, or even making par, if they miss the putting surfaces with their approaches.
The course features four sets of tees and can play as long as 7,200 yards or as short as 5,000. It also offers a wide range of holes that unfurl in different directions and asks golfers to draw and fade the ball and use most every club in their bags. Kidd included a pair of short 4-pars on each of the nines, with two of those, Nos. 5 and 16, being drivable for big hitters. And I enjoyed how the architect made sure to include a short par-3 on each side that rarely require more than a wedge, in the case of the seventh and 17th.
Nos. 5 and 16 are short par-4s that are drivable by big hitters.
I also appreciated the restraint Kidd showed in creating a golf course from a very restrained piece of property. He worked with what the ground gave him, walking the property time and time again to discern the best routing, and did his best not to impose his will.
Consider, for example, No. 18, a 430-yarder from the members’ tees most days that in a somewhat contrarian way plays downhill to an ample green tucked into a hollow below the GrayBull clubhouse – and not uphill as is so often the case with a finisher.
He also endeavored to make his course good fun, with the 18th being one of several holes (along with Nos. 6 and 9) where Kidd positioned greens alongside slopes, giving them a Punchbowl-like feel in the process and providing golfers with another way to get to their jollies as they tried to get their approaches close to the flags.
Nos. 6 (left) and 7 at GrayBull
On more than one occasion, members of my foursome started hooting and hollering as the shots we hit onto those hills started rolling down onto the greens.
“All in all, I think GrayBull produces a really exciting golf adventure,” Kidd said.
It also provides a very satisfying one. The property has only 60 beds in 15 well-appointed cottages that stand on either side of the corrugated-tin-roofed clubhouse and look across the golf course and the sandhills beyond. That limited number of golfers at any given time – and the 15-minute intervals between tee times – ensures that the course feels as empty and uncluttered as the land across which it is routed. A practice facility that features a driving range (with leather bags full of Titleist balls hanging from pseudo-fence posts) as well as a putting green and short-game area give golfers a proper place to warm up. Caddies, some of whom loop at other Dormie Network clubs, are available, and so are golf carts (though there are no cart paths on the property). And while the Dormie Network principals, Nebraska rancher and publishing magnate Tom Peed and his son Zach, do not plan to build a short course or construct other 18-holers at GrayBull, the uncrowded nature of the place should ensure that visitors will never be wanting when it comes to playing another round – or two – of golf.
Based on my experiences last Labor Day, those folks are just as unlikely to lack for food or drink during a stay. With its expansive porch and sweeping views, the clubhouse is a swell place to savor craft cocktails and fine wines as well as an interesting and always appetizing selections of dishes, from local pheasant sausages and elk carpaccio to a splendid and very authentic pimento cheese dip as starters to veal chops with a sauce made with wild mushrooms and slabs of pork belly served with coleslaw and blueberries for the mains. The kitchen puts out a good burger as well. And the Wagyu beef strip steaks that we enjoyed the next night in a structure aptly named the Party Barn and located next door to the clubhouse were superb, especially as they were accompanied by a bottle or two of Silver Oak. Rather surprisingly, diners also raved about an appetizer that is popular in cow country like this, Rocky Mountain oysters.
“Tom and Zach are taking everything they have learned in running and revamping their first six Dormie Network properties and applying it to GrayBull,” said Kidd, adding that the elder Peed is also drawing on his experiences as a member at Sand Hills Golf Club (located in Mullen, Nebraska, about 80 miles to the northwest) and Nanea Golf Club in Hawaii, which the architect built in 2003 for billionaire financiers Charles Schwab and George Roberts. “They wanted something that combines the very best attributes of private clubs like Nanea and Sand Hills and also a destination like Bandon Dunes.”
The Peeds no doubt wanted a great golf course as well, which is exactly what David McLay Kidd has given them with GrayBull.