Hey everyone a bunch of us from the refuge in Southern California are going to do an outing at Sandpiper golf course. You will remember this course from Tourist Sauce (California): Episode 4, Sandpiper GC with Micah Pueschel.
We will be playing on Aug 14th at 1PM, if you want to come hang sign up here:
Hit me up if you have any questions!
sounds great, I am in.
We only have 2 spots left and then we are sold out!
Thanks to everyone
Well this sucks we are going to have to cancel the outing at Sandpiper as the course is in bad shape and they didn’t want us getting disappointed.
Stay tuned for a reschedule in potentially Oct/Nov
Ugh. What a bummer for you guys.
Just posted review in LA roll call as heads up. October/November of next year maybe. The course is absolutely shattered. Look at some pics online people are posting on the reservation sites. They need to nuke it from orbit and start over.
Over at GCA, Doak says he’s onboard to renovate Sandpiper.
Sandpiper has always been a course people think “should have been better”. They have 3/4 mile of Pacific coastline – the same as at Pacific Dunes – and half the rating on the Doak Scale. Everyone assumes that a few simple routing changes could make it better.
The place has been under new ownership for 10 years now, and the new owner asked for proposals from every designer out there. [Not everyone took him up on offering their ideas for free, of course, but a lot did.] The project was tabled for several years, but during the pandemic, they called me and said they’d like to sign me up, because my plan looked the most likely to get through the permit battles with the local authorities and the California Coastal Commission. I’ve submitted my plans now and they are just starting the process.
When people ask me how great a golf course I can build on their site the first day I’m out there, I may say that it has the right pieces to be something cool, but you never really know how great it can be until you solve the puzzle of the routing. I’m convinced that there are some properties where there is no ideal solution, and Sandpiper might be an example of that. There are certain things that are locked into place, and we will take it for granted that you’re not going to be allowed to make a cut along the cliff edge so you can see the water better from inland, so the present 6th and 14th are never going to have the views you think they should.
I have done a new routing and we’ll see if it gets passed – probably 2-3 years down the road. If not, we will just rebuild the bunkers and greens and make them more interesting.