Sand Hills is consistently ranked as one of the top courses in the U.S. and the World
This links-style course is hilly, yet not too difficult to walk. There are plenty of natural and man-made bunkers, but no water hazards, trees or out-of-bounds stakes in play. The greens are undulating and fast, and vary from small to large in size. The signature hole is the 18th, a 467-yard par 4 that requires a tee shot up a slight dogleg left. A bunker extends all the way up the left side to the elevated green.
Golf Magazine also rated Sand Hills the greatest golf course of the last 50 years.
From Sports Illustrated Writer-Reporter Rick Lipsey: The mecca of American golf isn't Augusta or Pebble Beach, at least not in the eyes of aficionados like Ben Crenshaw and Jack Nicklaus. Ask them where the country's greatest golfing terrain sits, and they'll likely mention a sprawling, scrubby and desolate 19,600 square-mile tract in north central Nebraska called the Sand Hills, the biggest expanse of sand dunes in America. The terrain is perfect for golf because of the undulating topography and the beautiful flora and fauna (over 700 species of plants and 300 animal species). Opened in 1995, Sand Hills brought global acclaim for golf to the region. The private club was designed by the golf architect team of Crenshaw and Bill Corre, who turned an 8,000-acre ranch in tiny Mullen (pop. 491) into a golfing Eden. Corre and Crenshaw studied the land for two years and sketched 136 different holes before choosing the final 18, for which they moved only 3,000 cubic yards of earth during construction. Sand Hills was such a hit that star architects, including Nicklaus, are now building their own layouts in the region.
