Reviving a Lost Travis Design: The Great Dunes Golf Club Reopens

Brian Ross, a golf architect, didn’t hesitate when he and his partner, Jeffrey Stein, were offered the chance to revive a long-forgotten Walter Travis layout on the dunes of coastal Georgia.

“That was one of the main motivations for taking this job,” Ross said during the recent grand re-opening of the Great Dunes Golf Club,wich carries the same name it debuted in 1928. The design was the last by Travis, a three-time U.S.Amateur champion, completed just after his death.

“Travis didn’t do many courses, and he certainly didn’t do many courses for the public,” Ross said. “He worked mostly for wealthy private clubs – Garden City Golf Club being the most famous – so bringing back one of his few public designs felt like both an honor and a heavy duty. We think we did him proud.”

The original Great Dunes stretched through rugged seaside terrain, with sweeping views of the Atlantic. but like many courses of its era, it didn’t endure. Storms in 1942 and 1954, combined with constant beach erosion, reduced it to nine holes. After decades of further wear, even that remnant was eventually folded into another local layout and later acquired by the state of Georgia.

the restoration – a six-million-plus-dollar job that began in 2024 – leaned heavily on archival photographs to recapture the original Travis look: the bold dunes and scruffy sandscapes, the rolling contours and ocean vistas. The team also resurfaced the course in paspalum grass from tee to green, a choice well suited to the island climate.