Nick Dunlap just couldn’t get the golf balls to stop rolling. Try as he might, putting a little extra zip on his practice pitch shots, the balls wouldn’t grab the green as they normally do.
That’s the whole point of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. More linksy than just about anything in the U.S., the famed Oregon golf resort was designed from the start to play bouncy and firm.
Dunlap was strolling the back nine of Bandon Trails, one of five highly rated full-18 courses at the resort, in April as part of a media day for the upcoming U.S. Junior Amateur Championship conducted by the U.S. Golf Association. The event will be played July 25-30 on the resort’s Bandon Trails and Bandon Dunes courses.
The winner of last year’s U.S. Junior at the Country Club of North Carolina who will join the college ranks this fall for the University of Alabama, Dunlap had the chance to try his hand at true links golf for the first time during his three-day stay at the resort as he prepared to defend his title. A sore wrist prevented him from completing the full 18 at Bandon Trails a day after playing Bandon Dunes and the Preserve – the resort’s par-3 course set upon stunning cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean – but Dunlap kept walking Trails to practice his short game, trying to come to grips with links conditions.
He was doing his best to figure out how to make a ball stop on the 14th green at Bandon Trails, a short par 4 with a raised putting surface that sees plenty of amateur golfers play Ping-Pong back and forth. Dunlap, as one of the top junior players in the world, is accustomed to enforcing his will on a golf ball, making it stop on command. But it just wasn’t working, and his practice shots kept rolling well past the hole. He wasn’t skulling them or anything like that, but the combination of firm turf and bouncy greens that is a highlight of links golf was new to the Alabama native.
“I’m not really used to putting from 20 yards off the green and using 7-irons (to chip) and stuff like that, so it will be something new, and I’m looking forward to it,” Dunlap said with a laugh during his turn at the mic during the media day. “Being from Alabama, I don’t think you can really prepare for anything like this. I’ve obviously played in some wind and rain, but nothing like this – linksy, gorse, I’ve never seen it before. So I think coming out here this week, it’s going to help me a lot, just kind of what I need to do to prepare for a…
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