The private Dunes Club is the brainchild and the first 'leap of faith' by Chicagoan Mike Keiser, whose success with this course led him to develop the now-famous Bandon Dunes seaside resort in southwest Oregon. You can read more about it in Stephen Goodwin's 2006 book "Dream Golf: The Making of Bandon Dunes."

The fact that this is a 9-hole course didn't stop Golf Magazine from ranking the Dunes Club #77 on their Top 100 in the U.S. in 2003. Similarly, Golf Digest's Ron Whitten (tough to please) waxed poetic about the Dunes Club by calling it "a throwback to an earlier era" in a very complimentary fashion.