The Great Dunes course at Jekyll Island opened in November of 2025, to great acclaim. The task of Brian Ross and Jeff Stein was to combine a Dick Wilson, mid-twentieth century nine with an original Walter Travis nine, and create an 18-hole course with a blend of Travis and Travis-inspired holes.
The Anticipation
(from the Stein Golf Design website)
"We are especially excited for the opportunity to share Travis’ brilliant architectural style with an audience of public golfers. The newly restored Great Dunes will be one of a rare few municipal golf courses, on the east coast, which will offer ocean views, affordable prices to locals, and engaging architecture for all skill levels. Our routing restores a genuine test of golden age golf, utilizing 9 original Travis holes while also recreating Travis’ unsurpassed ingenuity on the greens throughout the 18. The reimagining of the Great Dunes meanders through maritime oak forest, coastal sand dunes, and salt marsh and will be playable year round thanks to major investments in the playing surfaces, irrigation and drainage infrastructure. We really can’t wait to get started at the end of this year and reveal the extraordinary potential of this property."
(from the Ross Golf Architects website)
"In June 2023, Ross Golf Design was selected by the Jekyll Island Authority to lead a full-course restoration of Walter Travis's historic Great Dunes Course at Jekyll Island Golf Club in coastal Georgia. In addition to the restoration of the Great Dunes nine, the project also included the creation of nine new Travis-inspired holes on a portion of the former Oleander Course to complete the new 18-hole Great Dunes Course. RGD worked in collaboration with fellow architect Jeff Stein of Brooklyn, NY-based Stein Golf Design and their incredible team of shapers while MacCurrach Golf Construction from Jacksonville, Florida served as the Golf Course Contractor for the project."
(from the Jekyll Island website)
"History of Great Dunes
Famed course designer Walter “Old Man” Travis put his stamp on Jekyll Island when he constructed Great Dunes in 1927. Summoned to the Island by some of the nation’s most elite families during the Club Era, Travis created the best course money could buy.
Jekyll Island became a testing ground for the future of golf. In 1924, the USGA tested new steel clubs in favor of original hickory shafts and ball size & density tests were conducted, all of which changed the game of golf forever.
Future of Great Dunes
Honoring the legacy of famed golf course designer Walter Travis, the new Great Dunes Golf Course is undergoing a multi-million-dollar restoration, reinvigorating this iconic courses’ gilded-age character with modern golf course design. Opening as a unified 18-hole course, the new design incorporates land from the former 9-hole Walter Travis-designed course with land from the former Dick Wilson-designed Oleander Course.
The new Great Dunes Golf Course is being designed by Brian Ross of Ross Golf Design and Jeffrey Stein of Stein Golf Design, taking golfers on a one-of-a-kind journey through the dunes, out to the ocean and back, in a wide-open, natural environment surrounded by a conservation-sensitive maritime forest."
The Reality
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