{"id":21737,"date":"2025-07-25T00:04:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-25T00:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/21737\/"},"modified":"2025-07-25T00:04:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-25T00:04:07","slug":"the-best-holes-at-bandon-dunes-golf-resort-2-experts-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/21737\/","title":{"rendered":"The best holes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort? 2 experts debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

With five 18-hole courses, two short courses and a putting course, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort<\/a> is a golfing smorgasbord on the southern Oregon coast. And there\u2019s a long line at the buffet.<\/p>\n

Reservations book up quickly.<\/p>\n

But once you\u2019re in, you\u2019re in for all the golf that you can eat. Out at sunrise, wrapping up a dusk. Bandon tradition calls for all-day feasts.<\/p>\n

Come nightfall, though, there\u2019s time to digest as you argue with your buddies over which parts of the property are best.<\/p>\n

Ranking the courses. That\u2019s another fine tradition. Everyone has an opinion, and no one\u2019s wrong (though if you go by GOLF magazine\u2019s rating system, the order goes like this: Pacific Dunes<\/a>, Bandon Dunes, Bandon Trails, Old MacDonald, Sheep Ranch).<\/p>\n

And if you\u2019re really feeling feisty, you can get more granular by ranking the holes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened during a recent episode of the Destination Golf podcast<\/a>, which was devoted entirely to Bandon Dunes and included a back-and-forth on the holes at Bandon that are closet to my and Simon\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n

My list leaned heavily on short par 4s. I\u2019m partial to the 6th at Pacific Dunes, with its narrow, angled green, draped over a dune and guarded by yawning bunker, as well as the 16th at Bandon Dunes, a seaside beauty that rightly ranks among the game\u2019s most photographed holes. My list also included the par-5 3rd at Bandon Trails, which starts at the edge of the dunes and spills into what feels like an enchanted forest, its fairway pocked by strategically placed bunkers. If you think of golf as a journey through a landscape, this hole fits the picture perfectly.<\/p>\n

I ticked off others, as did Simon, whose first choice came from The Preserve, the older of Bandon\u2019s two par-3 courses. Simon is particularly fond of the 9th hole, 130 yards to a green backed in the distance by the Pacific and shadowed on the left by the shoulder of a dune.<\/p>\n

You can listen to the entire Bandon podcast episode here<\/a> and come back with commentary if you\u2019d like.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s your favorite hole? Maybe your answer is the same as that of Grant Rogers, Bandon\u2019s longtime director of instruction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His response, when he\u2019s been posed the question, has never varied: \u201cWhatever hole I\u2019m on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With five 18-hole courses, two short courses and a putting course, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is a golfing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[443],"tags":[49,48,622,82],"class_list":["post-21737","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}