Destination Golf

What is Destination Golf? Recently it has come to be defined as golf where one has to travel significant distances in order to play a given course. Of the modern courses, one of the more obvious choices is Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. In order to get here a person must either take a small aircraft into a small airport in North Bend, OR or fly into Portland, OR and drive about 4 hours to get to the resort. This is obviously a significant outlay of time and money. Courses in the Nebraska and Colorado Sandhills, Ballyneal, Dismal River, Sand Hills, must be similiar in terms of distance traveled.
It is generally assumed that these courses and clubs requiring significant travel to play are a modern thing. I, however, disagree with this. Consider how long it must have taken golfers in the early 20th Century to get to courses like Pebble Beach and Cypress Point in California or Shinnecock Hills and National Golf Links of America in New York. The same can also be said for resorts such as The Greenbrier in West Virginia and The Homestead in Virginia. The time needed to reach these places when traveling in cars that had top speeds of 20 to 25 miles per hour must have been great, after all, it takes close to three hours to reach Pebble Beach from San Francisco even today.
No, Destination Golf requiring long distance travel has always been around. What seems new about it is the fact that most people who play golf today would have grown up with all of the previously mentioned resorts being only 2-3 hours away from major cities and, in most cases, with a large network of "things" to do around the sites. Bandon Dunes does not yet have that network in place around the Resort. Perhaps in 30 years I will go to Bandon with my son and speak in reverent tones about how the place used to be so small and quiet as opposed to the new, bustling town that might be there. No, these destinations will grow, just as the ones before them did. And eventually Bandon Dunes might not be as much of a "Destination," stuck out somewhere in isolated bliss. But it will be more of a cornerstone of some resort type town such as what one sees in Monterey.

No, Destination Golf is not new. It has always existed. Shinnecock Hills was always several hours travel from New York City. Cypress Point was always several hours from San Francisco. And Augusta National was always several hours from Atlanta. These were the Destination Golf courses of the early 20th Century. Places like Sand Hills, Bandon Dunes and Cabot Links are our Destination Golf courses of the early 21st Century.