American Dunes Text: R.J. Weick
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ucked behind the windswept, towering sand dunes on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan in Ottawa County, Michigan, where pines have become as characteristic as the maple, beech, and hemlock before them, a golf club is undergoing a shift in direction of its own. Initially carved and shaped into the sandy soil by Bruce Matthews Sr. and Jerry Matthews, the Grand Haven Golf Club has welcomed generations of players to tackle the pinedense course for more than 50 years. It quickly established itself as a top public course in the nation and re-emerged as a golf destination when Rooney Golf Group LLC acquired the golf club in 1998. Less than a decade later, it became known as the birthplace of the Folds of Honor Foundation after the Grand Haven Golf Club hosted the nonprofit organization’s first fundraising event in 2006 benefiting families of fallen heroes in Michigan. Yet, time, as it is often want to do, proved hard on the course as trees began to tighten the fairways and the economic hardship of the 2008 recession lingered on the greens. With an unfavorable prospect of the club as it was headed for bankruptcy, Lt. Colonel Dan Rooney, PGA professional, chief executive officer and founder of Fold of Honor Foundation, and co-owner of the former Grand Haven Golf Club, decided to pursue a vision of reinventing the golf course as a destination that not only honored veterans, but also served as a vehicle to provide support to spouses and children of America’s fallen and disabled service-members. “[Lt. Colonel Rooney] didn’t want to see 60
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it go under and not be a golf course, because it was the first location that an event was held to raise money for a young man whose father was killed overseas in our military service. It raised a little over $8,700 and it eventually turned into the Folds of Honor Foundation that has give more than 20,000 scholarships to date to spouses and children of our military members,” said Doug Bell, PGA professional, general manager of the American Dunes Golf Club in Grand Haven. “He had this vision of doing something great. He spoke to a few very strong supporters of Folds of Honor and friends of his around the country and they said: ‘Let’s do it. Let’s invest and make this thing a special place,’” Bell added. Grand Haven Golf Club’s role as inaugural host is a significant one, as the event would go on to inspire the Folds of Honor Foundation and Patriot Golf Day that has awarded nearly $22 million in educational support since 2007. In the course of 13 years, approximately 24,500 scholarships have been awarded, with about 4,500 granted in 2019 alone. Bearing this in mind, Lt. Colonel Rooney turned to long-time supporter of the foundation, Jack Nicklaus, who was named Honorary Chairman of Patriot Golf Day in 2017, to have a dialogue about the idea of reimaging the Grand Haven Golf Club as American Dunes Golf Club. Though Nicklaus noted at the time he had largely left the golf course design business to focus on charity work with his wife, Barbara Nicklaus, and turned over the design work to his sons and staff, Nicklaus
agreed to take a look at the course, according to Bell. “He flew up with Barbara, took a look at the golf course, thought about it, called [Lt. Colonel Rooney], and asked, ‘the goal of this project is the money will go to charity?’ The answer was ‘yes,’ so [Nicklaus] said, ‘I’m all in; I’ll design you a golf course,’” Bell said. Nicklaus and Nicklaus Companies LLC team returned the following spring to begin initial planning and design work for an 18-hole Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course, with construction and tree removal breaking ground in late March and April of 2019. With an initial vision of transforming the Grand Haven Golf Club course into a user-friendly, high-quality golf experience, Nicklaus and Nicklaus Design began reshaping the land into a layout that players would return to over and again. “As the project developed and [Nicklaus] made multiple visits, the design shifted a little bit and became a bigger golf course, a longer golf course, while still keeping in mind the average person who enjoys the game from a relaxation standpoint,” Bell said. The design team, which not only comprised Nicklaus and Chris Cochran, senior designer at Nicklaus Design, but also Superior Golf Concepts and Jon Scott Agronomic Consulting, among others, also pay homage to the landscape, where windblown sandy soil is an inherent and unique characteristic to the region. Overgrown and tree-dense, the course has been opened up and left to breathe with wild dunes— or waste bunkers—traveling up along the