In the seemingly endless rolling sandhills of western Nebraska, David McLay Kidd – the architect behind the original golf course at Bandon Dunes — has created what might be his most unique layout to date.

McLay Kidd says GrayBull, the newest addition to the Dormie Network’s national portfolio of destination private clubs, was “by far the easiest” he and his team have ever built, and yet the routing was one of his greatest challenges. The course was among a relatively small number of 18-hole courses to debut across the U.S. in 2024, most of them high-end destination properties.

“You’re not moving dirt, you’re not putting drainage in, the irrigation system is the bulk of the construction effort,” McLay Kidd said of the course, which opened for limited play in late 2024. “Routing the golf course, however, (was a) completely different story.

“You could go in any direction you want, and you’re going to find a great golf hole. The challenge is figuring out the best sequence of golf holes and the best exploration of that landscape as a golfer — how you move through it in a way that makes sense for golf, because you could build 18 holes in any direction, and I promise you they’d be pretty good. But they wouldn’t sequence well together. So, you’re trying to find that perfect balance of variety, par, distance, wind direction, all of those things, and get all of that to happen in a in a path that leaves the clubhouse and eventually returns 18 holes later.”

What McLay Kidd has created at GrayBull is an incredible inland links-style layout on a massive canvas, with angles and avenues that encourage golfers to think their way though like a chess match.

Rather than powering wedges and high-lofted irons into greens on their approach shots, McLay Kidd is giving members and their guests the opportunity to embrace a style of play that’s more commonplace at courses in the U.K.

Shifting winds are a frequent challenge in this stretch of the Nebraska sandhills, giving individual holes a completely different look and feel from one day to the next depending on the wind direction and severity.

“When golfers are able to experience the ground game and start to understand the options that it opens up, it’s like you took the blinkers off. It’s a whole new world,” McLay Kidd said while standing along the railing of the back deck at GrayBull, the morning sun creeping up over the silent sandhills beyond him. “That’s true with GrayBull and all the courses that are in the Sandhills, but I’m hoping Graybull, even more than most, really speaks to that.

“There are lots of holes out there where throwing a dart at the pin is the option that will almost certainly not work a lot of the time. So, you’re forced, even for a good player, to figure out, ‘Where do I land that ball in order to get the ball to release and get me closer to the pin?’ I think what will happen is the members will come with their guests. They’ll play the first time and they’ll start to get a sense of what it is they need to do. By the second, third, fourth round, they’re like, ‘Okay, I’m clued in now. I realize what I need to be doing in order to get there.’ Instead of pitching wedges, it could be little bump and run seven irons a lot of the time. There’s a lot of nuance.”

DORMIE NETWORK’S 7TH CLUB

GrayBull becomes the seventh club in the Dormie Network, the second in Nebraska, and is the first to be developed from the ground up.

It is the latest new private golf addition in the burgeoning Nebraska Sandhills region that includes the Dismal River Club (with courses by Jack Nicklaus and Tom Doak), CapRock Ranch (Gil Hanse), and the seminal Sand Hills Golf Club, the heralded minimalist layout from Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw that ushered in a new era of remote destination golf. It was Sand Hills, which opened in 1995, that inspired Mike Keiser to take a similar approach on the public resort side of the game and create Bandon Dunes on an empty stretch of Oregon coast.

“I realized when I got to build Bandon Dunes 30 years ago that golf is such a diverse sport that can go into different geographical regions and create golf of different genres,” said McLay Kidd. “And for me, I’ve been searching that out my whole career — whether it’s against an ocean, a river up in the mountains, through a forest — and the Sandhills of Nebraska are this unbelievably unique, almost otherworldly thing. It’s hundreds or maybe even thousands of square miles of these treeless, rolling sandhills that are the remnants of sand blown out of the Rocky Mountains. It’s 300 feet deep, and there’s nothing else to see to the horizon in every direction.”

In addition to the golf course, GrayBull’s stay-and-play experience includes luxury on-site accommodations.

There are 13 executive cottages and two owners’ cottages, each of which have four master suites along with common spaces for entertainment. That includes a sprawling man cave complete with an indoor golf simulator, pool table, Golden Tee video game, stocked bar and more. Several of the cottages opened in 2024, with the rest to be finished early in 2025 for Dormie Network members traveling to Nebraska.

When it comes to new golf development, there are a few pockets of concentration, as 2024 demonstrated in several southern states. There was Kinsale, Soleta and Apogee’s West Course in Florida, Broomsedge and Crossroads 9 at Palmetto Bluff in South Carolina, The Fall Line and Richland at Reynolds Lake Oconee in Georgia, and Childress Hall and Darmor in Texas.

There were also additions at established, well-trafficked golf resorts: Shorty’s at Bandon Dunes, Pinehurst No. 10 in North Carolina, and Sedge Valley at Sand Valley in Wisconsin.

But when it comes to far-flung debuts, it might not get more removed than the Nebraska Sandhills. And McLay Kidd was “desperately keen” to join his peers in the region, ultimately creating what might be his most unique offering yet and strengthening the Dormie Network’s increasingly deep lineup of member clubs.

“The best-of-the-best have worked here, and I want to be in that group,” McLay Kidd said. “Adding GrayBull to the great list of courses that are in the Sandhills is a huge honor, and I’m hoping that it can rub shoulder to shoulder with the other courses out here that are all phenomenal.”