Golf courses from midtown Omaha to the Panhandle offer more than scenic walks or sunset cart rides. Each course tells the story of its land and people.

 

Laughs All Around

Wild Horse Golf Club, Gothenburg

Men from every corner of Gothenburg life – farmers, factory workers, shop keepers and retirees – built Wild Horse after they grew frustrated with sloppy conditions on the clay ground where they played on Monday nights.

One of the men offered land with sandy soil that would drain well. Two farmers with a John Deere and tillage disk, a backhoe and Smithco rollers volunteered their time and equipment to sculpt the sand. Community sweat kept costs low while creating an experience that draws national golf journalists from magazines like Golf Digest, which ranked the course one of the top 100 nationwide.

It also draws Nebraska celebrity comedian and voice of Cars cartoon character, “Mater,” Larry the Cable Guy. When he’s on the course, he’s always, “on” – cracking self-deprecating jokes about his putting ability.

Putting the super-fast greens at Wild Horse will shake the confidence of skilled and hack golfers alike – maybe poking a little fun at oneself, as Larry does, is the way to soothe the sting.

 

Cattle Fences and Oiled Sand

Dannebrog Golf Club, Dannebrog

The cows haven’t shown up at Dannebrog for a few years now. That’s good news for Dannebrog Golf Club groundskeeper John Janulewicz. Mowing the fairways and the rough doesn’t chop up and fling manure on him anymore.

Fences still surround the square greens, a reminder that cattle once trampled the greens’ oil-soaked sands. The one circular green at Dannebrog is guarded by a 48-foot-diameter, 3-and-a-half-foot-high grain bin metal base. Dannebrog is one of several so-called “sand” courses in Nebraska. “Green” courses, by contrast, reserve sand for hazards.

Nick Schweitzer, president of the course since 2016, said he’s played the nine-hole course “hundreds, maybe thousands” of times since his early 20s. He recalls shooing the cows off the course. Sometimes he just had to wait until they were ready to moo-ve on.

Built in the late 1920s, the course is famous for the Bullpen Open on the second week in August. Schweitzer says 120 people once used to show up to play in the Open – so many that players would still be on the course at nightfall. Car headlights illuminated the course so they could finish their rounds. Lately, 65 to 70 players participate, finishing in daylight.

Schweitzer said that putting on a sand green requires a firmer stroke, “a good poke.” Before putting, the player rakes the sand between the ball and the hole. Dannebrog once oiled the sand with motor oil, which left residue on the balls, and blackened players’ hands and shoes. Course management later switched to vegetable oil recycled from regional restaurants.

 

Playing Through Traffic

Field Club of Omaha, Omaha

Field Club of Omaha, the oldest course on its original land west of the Mississippi River, crosses Woolworth Avenue in midtown Omaha four times. Ten-foot-high fences safeguard motorists, motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians from an approaching golfer’s shot. Except when they don’t.

Course professional Kevin Drew said golfers’ shots shatter passing motorists’ windshields, front or back, six or seven times a year. One time a ball landed inside an open convertible. That didn’t count as a hole in one. Balls stuck along the roadway between the fences can be carried forward with the next shot played from the other side.

There are other challenges, too – blind shots, sand traps and southern wind. Desire for accuracy is heightened. (And drivers passing the golf course hope for golfer accuracy, too.)

The Omaha World Herald keeps a database of the course’s hole-in-ones –  it averages 10-12 a year out of 24,000 rounds played.

 

Lindbergh’s Historic Arrival

Auburn Country Club, Auburn

In June of 1922, acrobatic pilot Lt. Errold Grover Bahl of Humboldt landed on Auburn Country Club’s sixth hole fairway just as his engine quit. Aboard the plane was his ambitious passenger, 20-year-old pilot-in-training Charles Lindbergh. Auburn had no airport at the time.

Lindbergh had enrolled in the Lincoln Aircraft Corporation flying school earlier in 1922, because he wanted to be licensed to perform stunts. He quit the school when he couldn’t come up with the cash for a security deposit on the school’s one training plane.

Bahl and Lindbergh made the trip seeking an opportunity to offer admission-only airplane rides at the Nemaha County Fair. The mayor of Auburn was playing the course when the plane landed. Bahl left the plane on the fairway overnight and the two pilots received a night’s shelter at a local church.

A hundred years later, there’s no available record or memory of what happened next in Nemaha County, no record that Lindbergh ever played the 9-hole course in the broad hills of southeastern Nebraska – he preferred air over land or sea.

Bahl lived to see news of Lindbergh’s flight over the Atlantic in 1927 but died in a 1930 car crash. Lindbergh lived to be 72.

The trees that have matured around the Auburn course, on its perimeter and between holes, would make a plane landing today even riskier than a century ago. A plaque dedicating Auburn’s sixth hole to Lindbergh is a reminder that his safe arrival here was beautifully played.

 

Cowboy Shootout

Pelican Beach Golf Course, Hyannis

For a quarter-century, cowboys and golfers have formed three-man teams for a day of clay-pigeon shooting, steer- and calf-roping and two rounds of the nine-hole, rancher-built Pelican Beach Golf Course in Hyannis.

If not for an iron archway spelling out the course’s name just off Nebraska Highway 2, above a dirt road, a golf course several hundred yards beyond wouldn’t even be recognizable. There’s nothing more than a few outbuildings and rolling hills of prairie grass, and no sign of a beach or sunbathers. It seems like an ironic name, because no one comes here to swim or sightsee.

Both cowboys and golfers come here on a day in September at 7 a.m., their team’s members each taking shots at 25 clay pigeons apiece. Afterward, the cowboys go roping while the linksmen play a round of nine. In the afternoon, the cowboys and golfers reunite for a round of nine together. Champions receive cash and a rodeo-worthy belt buckle.

Local rancher Audrey Powles began golfing Pelican Beach in 2010 and plays the course several times a month. Powles’ hard-earned advice for casual golfers: bring plenty of balls, because when one lands in the deep prairie grass that isn’t mowed, “good luck finding it.”

 

Where the Bison Watch

Tatanka Golf Club, Niobrara

Bison grazing the rolling hills in Niobara sometimes look like they would rather run among the cart-driving golfers at Ohiya Casino Resort’s Tatanka Golf Club. The Lakota word for bison is T’at’aŋka Mani. Ohiya adapted it to a more anglicized word, Tatanka.

International golf course designer Paul Albanese designed Tatanka, his first Nebraska project, to put golfers and bison within 20 feet of each other. The course opened in 2015.

Pat Svec is a science teacher at Verdigre High School. As a club member, he plays 18 holes four times a week in summer. He’s seen bison within 20 feet of the cart path. And some of them are pretty big and have rather large horns.

“I call them bruisers,” Svec said.

On the bison’s closest approach, next to the 11th green, the fence separating golfers and the animals doesn’t look like it would hold up if the bison decided to charge through it. “You don’t want to provoke them,” Svec said. He’s not heard of anyone doing so.

Svec said the course never offers a shot that isn’t on a slope. That’s why you always stand behind a player when it’s their turn, Svec said, because they might not make the proper adjustments in their swing and the ball they hit might fly 90 degrees to the right or left. That’s nothing, though, compared to the thought of a bison encounter. “They run faster than a golf cart,” Svec said.

 

Horsing Around

The Prairie Club, Valentine

The arid, drought-prone Sandhills of Nebraska pose a challenge to farmers, but the windswept dunes look golden to golf course developers. The Prairie Club, south of Valentine on Nebraska State Road 97, is built on an 1840s homestead whose settler quit the land.

The Lodge serves blackened Nebraska ribeye in its upscale Canyon Room, with large windows overlooking the Snake River Canyon. Guests can choose a fine cigar from the Lodge’s humidor and relax by the outdoor fire pit. A halfway house intersecting the Pines Course after hole 5 and hole 15 offers sandwiches, snacks and alcoholic and nonalcoholic refreshments. Stop on the way out or back – or both.

The Club’s H.O.R.S.E. Course is a playground – a golf adaptation of the game played on the basketball court. One golfer picks one of 10 holes, their average length 95 yards, and challenges those who follow to make or beat his score. The one who wins the hole picks the next shot to play.

Golf Digest in 2013 rated H.O.R.S.E. Course the 10th most fun to play in America. Frederick Peak, a municipal course 20 miles northwest of Prairie Club on State Highway 97, offers an equally entertaining bargain.

 

Relief from the Heat

Oregon Trail Golf Course, Sutherland

Retired crop consultant Milan Moore considers Oregon Trail Golf Course in his hometown of Sutherland to be the state’s only air-conditioned course. The 9-hole layout hugs the north shore of Sutherland Reservoir. A breeze from the south and southeast brings relief to summer golfers. Moore plays Oregon Trail in comfort every chance he gets, from one to four rounds in a day.

The course opened in 1953, spread across land now owned by Nebraska Public Power District and leased under a 99-year agreement, which locals in the 1950s hoped would lure housing and shops. It didn’t.

Moore began playing the course at age 10 and continued for nearly 70 years. The greens were prairie sand until replaced by grass in 1993.

Of the nine holes, Moore said the most difficult is the par 5 fourth hole, running 574 yards alongside the reservoir. Cottonwoods, shrubs and rocky material at the shore’s edge penalize anyone who hits their ball in the hazards’ direction, on the left. Moore avoids trouble by using a club, such as a 3 iron, that allows him to better control the ball and avoid the hazards. Still, he typically shoots a double bogey.

The course is named for its proximity to the Oregon Trail, whose ruts can be seen a mile away at eastbound I-80 mile marker 159. The ruts follow the route up O’Fallon’s Bluff that pioneers took to avoid getting stuck in a bog.

 

Westward Ho

Monument Shadows Golf Course, Gering

Those who traveled westward in the 19th century along the major trails – the Oregon, the California, the Mormon Pioneer – well documented the Nebraska bluff rising nearly 800 feet above them. They wrote about it in their diaries, sketched it in their sketchbooks and told of it to their kin.

Later named Scotts Bluff, for Hiram Scott, an ill trapper abandoned by his Rocky Mountain Fur Company companions, the bluff is memorable for modern-day golfers, too. It casts a shadow in autumn over the front nine holes of a golf course named for its proximity to what is now Scotts Bluff National Monument.

No other course on this list presents a physical feature that shapes a golf outing as much as Scott Bluff’s shadows and slope.

Monument Shadows golf pro Robert Thomason, who’s held the job for nearly three decades, says that in autumn, the shadows make it difficult for golfers to see their ball on certain holes. They choose to play the sunnier holes. No matter the season, proximity to the bluff affects how a ball rolls on the putting surface. The ball rolls away from the bluff and toward either the North Platte River to the north or Five Rocks Road to the east.

The Oregon and California trails ran about a mile south of the course and the Mormon Pioneer north of the North Platte. There is no physical evidence, but migrants likely camped on what are now the grounds of Monument Shadows.

 

Into the Woods

Four Winds Golf Course, Kimball

Travelers on Interstate 80 through Kimball County in the Nebraska panhandle, near the Colorado and Wyoming state lines, can’t help but see the 5,000 trees planted just north of the roadway. The trees stand out because there is nothing but grassland around them.

Petroleum engineer Bruce Gilliland hired Kimball high school students to plant the trees where there were none, engineering and building nine holes around them, opening Four Winds in 1969. Another nine holes were added in 1995. His wife Wilma loved golf, having played since 1944. While living in Kimball, Wilma became a leader in women’s golf, chairing the United States Golf Association Women’s Committee. The Nebraska Golf Hall of Fame added her to its ranks in 1993.

The Four Winds course professional for the past 15 years, Chad Wise, said the 5,000 trees redirect the winds blowing from Wyoming in all directions across the course, challenging golfers on the fairways and the greens – thus the name Four Winds Golf Course.

Wise grew up in Lincoln and would have played on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln golf team if not for a 34-car crash in 1991 that severely injured his left knee and back. UNL withdrew its offer, so he went to the New Mexico State University PGA Golf Management program. Later, while raising his young family in Denver, he visited Four Winds and saw the quality of its greens. He immediately moved everyone out to Kimball to become the Four Winds pro. It’s such a quality course, he knows it will blow anyone away.

Tee-rrific Nebraska Golf Courses

Wild Horse Golf Club
40950 Rd. 768, Gothenburg.
(308) 537-7700.
Public,18 holes, $51-71.

Dannebrog Country Club
1158 NE-58, Dannebrog.
Public, 9 holes, $8 all day.

Field Club of Omaha
3615 Woolworth Ave., Omaha.
(402) 345-6343.
Private, 18 holes.

The Auburn Country Club
Golf Course
72722 U.S.-75, Auburn.
(402) 274-4500.
Semi-private, 9 holes.

Tatanka Golf Club
53138 NE-12, Niobrara.
(402) 857-3504.
Semi-private, 18 holes.

Oregon Trail Golf Course
31200 W. Tower Rd., Sutherland.
(308) 386-4653.
Public, 9 holes, $12-$25.

The Prairie Club
88897 NE-97, Valentine.
(888) 402-1101.
Semiprivate, 18 holes, $164-200.

Monument Shadows Golf Course
2550 Clubhouse Drive, Gering.
(308) 635-2277.
Public, 18 holes, $20-$30.

Pelican Beach Golf Course
Three miles east of Hyannis
on NE-2.
Public, 9 holes, $12-15.

Four Winds Golf Course
4530 Gilliland Drive, Kimball.
(308) 235-4241.
Public, 18 holes, $23-33.