In 1935, Perry Maxwell met with the Carey family, owners of a local salt company, about building a course on the outskirts of Hutchinson, Kansas. Depending on which historical account you believe, either Maxwell discovered or the Careys led him to a stunning tract of Ice Age-forged duneland east of town. Beneath the wild grasses, yucca, sandhill plum, and cottonwood trees, Maxwell must have recognized the undulations, large and small, that would make for compelling golf. The next year, he set about building the first nine holes of what the Careys hoped would eventually be a 36-hole complex. The construction methods were rudimentary, relying on beasts of burden and non-mechanized equipment like scrapers and wheelbarrows. The result was a links-like course that meshed humbly yet artfully with the landscape.
Twenty years later, after both the Great Depression and World War II had passed, Maxwell’s son Press built nine more holes at Prairie Dunes—three on the west side of the property and six on a large paddock to the northeast. Press’s work matches his father’s well enough that many visitors are surprised to learn that the course was not built all at once. In recent years, the club has employed Dave Axland, former associate for Coore & Crenshaw and the co-architect of three-Egg Wild Horse, to lead various historical renovation projects. Axland’s efforts toward re-naturalizing the course’s bunkers have been particularly notable and successful.
This Club TFE course profile will look a little different from the others. Since we’ve already published a great deal of content on Prairie Dunes, we have adapted portions of that past material into this post. Also, this profile will not contain a conventional “Overall Thoughts” section but instead a hole-by-hole tour. Enjoy!
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Take Note…
Depression-era minimalism. Dean Woods, a civil engineer and Perry Maxwell’s brother-in-law, supervised the construction of the first nine at Prairie Dunes. Like Maxwell, Woods was opposed to the use of steam shovels and other modern contraptions. As Mal Elliott writes in his book Perry Maxwell’s Prairie Dunes, “The construction of the course was done with teams of horses and mules, 18 in all, and slips and Fresno scrapers and wheelbarrows. There was not one piece of mechanized equipment except for the Model T and Model A Fords and trucks which took the workers to the site. The greens and fairways were cleared and scraped by teams dragging plows and scoops. The roots of native grass and weeds were all removed by hand, one wheelbarrowful at a time.” This approach set Maxwell and Woods apart from many other golf architects of the period, like Langford & Moreau, who used steam shovels liberally.
What did Press know? Possibly in 1936 and certainly before he died in 1952, Perry Maxwell completed a plan for an 18-hole course at Prairie Dunes. It seems likely that Press Maxwell had a copy of this plan: according to club history, he brought it to a green committee meeting in 1954. While no one alive has seen the plan or knows where it might be, there is a strong feeling among knowledgeable club members that Press mostly followed his father’s instructions in building the new holes (Nos. 3-5 and 11-16)—with one major exception that I’ll address in the hole-by-hole tour.
Tee it forward. In order to achieve a championship yardage near 7,000 yards, Prairie Dunes has created many new back tee boxes over the past few decades. The green-to-tee walks are a lot more pleasant, however, if you play from the middle, or in some cases forward, teeing grounds. The designs of the holes tend to make more sense from those spots, too.
Influencer. When we discuss the most influential American golf courses, Prairie Dunes doesn’t usually get mentioned, but it should. There is a clear line of influence starting at Prairie Dunes and leading to Sand Hills and Bandon Dunes and… pretty much everything that has happened in golf course architecture and development in the past quarter century. Architect Ian Andrew laid out a version of this argument in a brief essay in the Golf Club Atlas discussion group back in 2009.
