Netjets US Autumn 2022

BEN VIGIL
CONTRASTING COUNTRY
From left: The seventh
and eighth holes of
Landmand, amid the
sparse Nebraska
landscape.
terms of golf, so they hired King-Collins and gave
it the run of 580 acres that have laid fallow for
two decades. The result is the Landmand (Danish
for farmer) course, a 7,200-yard, par-73 stunner,
which opened for play on September 3—one of
the highest-profile openings in the world this year.
If Sweetens Cove shocked with its small
stature, the opposite is the case at Landmand,
where everything is much larger than life. The
course site is about four times the average for
18 holes, with a whopping 84 acres of turf
between tees and the gigantic green complexes.
That would suggest ample landing areas, and,
to a degree, that is true, but players will have
to navigate a maelstrom of bunkers, totaling
almost four sand-strewn acres in all. The greens
are among the largest most golfers will have ever
seen, amounting to nearly six and a half acres
unto themselves. The largest is the signature
17th, a tribute to MacKenzie’s infamous,
legendary, and now vanished Sitwell Park green,
an enormous and extravagantly contoured green
he built at an otherwise pedestrian course in
England, with a drop so steep it is often described
as a waterfall. The long extinct green has become
a mantra of sorts in the currently hot retro-golf
architecture circles, led by the likes of Tom Doak,
Gil Hanse, and Kyle Franz, among others. Collins’
Sitwell take here in Nebraska farm country covers
more than 30,000 square feet for just one pin. In
comparison, the famed enormous double green
at St. Andrews Old Course, for the fifth and 13th
holes, is over 37,000 square feet. There are four
greens at Landmand in excess of 25,000 square
feet—more than four times the size of the average
putting surface on the major professional tours
(around 6,000). Collins is clearly influenced by
the early architecture of the British Isles, with
fairways meant to play firm and fast in the hot,
dry Nebraska summers and additional homages
to the classic punchbowl and redan greens.
So Landmand requires length off the tee
and gives room to play, but both fairway and
greenside bunker shots will be a vital part of any
visitor’s round, and two-putts may be rare, while
four- and five-putts won’t surprise. What will
surprise is the beauty and magnificence of the
land itself, which was cleared of trees decades
ago for farming, yet is hardly the flat cornfields
Nebraska is famous for, but rather a series of
valleys bisected by prominent ridges, offering
constantly impressive 360-degree panoramic
views but also creating a natural optical illusion
that makes it hard to judge distance. Collins was
dead-set on a walkable course, and designed it
initially by walking, channeling the old-school
Old Tom Morris method employed at Scotland’s
legendary Prestwick 170 years ago when Morris
would wander about the dunes selecting the
best green sites, then find a way to connect
and play to them. As a wonderful result of this
methodology and the very generous parcel, with
no constraints for homesites or such, there are
par threes, fours, and fives of every conceivable
length, and the holes play in every possible
direction. In addition, there are some dramatic
elevation changes, as Collins let the natural flow
of the landscape and its towering ridges dictate
the routing, which, for example, led to a drivable
par-four (seven) in a short valley between ridges
followed by a climb to a short par-three up on
top of the next hill.
As Collins has written, “Prior to the Sweetens
opening, we knew we had something special
on our hands. Right now, I multiply the feeling I
had early on in my gut about Sweetens by about
1,000 and that’s how I feel about Landmand.
We cannot wait for everyone to get out there and
experience it firsthand. The pictures don’t do it
justice. You just have to go and see it for your
own self.” landmandgc.com
SIOUX GATEWAY AIRPORT: 18 miles
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