Landmand

Fall of 2023 and updated July of 2024

Why choose this course for my first post? I just played it a few weeks ago and it exceeded my expectations. Most of you know this course just opened in August of 2022 and most of us have not had a chance to play it.  Tee times were about 90% booked for the year on December 31, the day they opened it up. And they only allowed 3 tee times per hour.

Landmand has gained a lot of national publicity as one of the best new courses of the year.  You can look that up via Google and all the golf rags to get the professional reviews.  They do have a stated objective to be public, so unlike other great new Nebraska courses, Cap Rock and Lost Rail, it is somewhat easier to get on. One of the downsides, when you made your tee time on December 31, you had to pay the full cost ($150 a player) of your group up front. I have never paid for my golf in full 6 months in advance, so that didn’t sit well.

Almost everything about this course is a little different than any course you have played. It starts when  you are driving there, you think you are going up some farmer’s private driveway the last few hundred yards. You pull into the parking lot and are greeted by friendly high school age attendants who have a cart and range balls for you.  Then you drive further up the hill via the cart to the clubhouse and range.  You are first struck with the view and the vastness of the course. You are high in the bluffs and if you look to the east you can see the Missouri river valley and miles into Iowa.

The club house is nothing more than a pro-shop and restrooms with a bar behind the counter. If you want to sit down for an after-round drink, you do it outside. Depending on the weather, this might not always be the best option, but the only option.  If you want any food, there is a food truck  every day over by the range

The driving range is fairly small, no more than about 10 places to hit. and you are hitting balls into knee high grass.  No wonder they only gave us 15 warm up balls. The entire course covers more acres than any course I have been on, but they limited the space for the range.

With the tee times every 20 minutes you wait until the group in front of you is off the green before you tee off on the opening par 5. They call you to the tee with your chosen song and the starter was very helpful, giving us an introduction and a little guidance. We first had the discussion of what tees to play, realizing we could stretch it a little because it is a par 73. Then looking at the course rating and handicaps holes, it was dependent on the wind direction. We had a south wind of about 5 mph, so chose that handicap system for our side game.

The first hole like many into the wide fairways has multiple options for your line of flight. Take it over the bunker with the longest carry and maybe you can get home in 2. The vast size of the greens was hard to explain, but made it a lot of fun. On the first hole my third shot on my Garmin said 145 to the middle of the green, then I pulled out my range finders and saw it was 175 to the pin, which means the green, was about 70 yards back to front. The greens get progressively bigger on the back 9.  Hole 17 is only 300 yards, but the green is probably the biggest I have ever experienced, probably more square feet than 17 fairway.

We played a little slower than a typical round as we took plenty of time to analyze where we should hit.  You could hit straight at a pin and either hit a mound and role 20 yards left or right of target, or find a false front and come back quite a ways. I also hit some bad shots into the greens that took some crazy rolls and ended up close to the pins.  Knowing the course would really help you score here.

Overall, it was a great time and every hole was unique and imaginative. For being less than a year old the course was in great shape.  I never had a bad lie in the fairway and greens were very reasonable. In 2023 the bunkers seemed like a combination of regular sand and waste bunkers.  They weren’t marked and some were washed out. This was very disappointing.  Returning in 2024 the bunkers were all filled with many tons of clean white sand. This had to be a monumental job.

There is one tree on the course and it sets up on the bluffs above the Missouri valley so can be prone to high winds.  However, both of my visits in July, we saw wind less than 10 mph. It was a great day, and would love to play this course a couple times a year or at least once.

If you played Landmand, what do you think of it?