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COURSE OF THE WEEK · MOUNT ENTERPRISE, TEXAS
Tom Doak has been designing golf courses since the late 1980s, and in that time he has built a body of work — Pacific Dunes, Barnbougle Dunes, Cape Kidnappers, Old Macdonald, Sheep Ranch — that is more consistently outstanding than almost any architect alive or dead. He does not build to spec. He builds what the land tells him to build, which means that the best Doak courses feel discovered rather than constructed. Wild Spring Dunes, his new collaboration with Mike Keiser’s family on a 2,400-acre parcel in East Texas, is being spoken about in those terms already. That is not a small thing.
The Land
Mount Enterprise sits in the Rusk County of East Texas, a stretch of the state that most people drive through rather than to. The town itself is small and unhurried in that particular East Texas way — a few thousand people, piney woods in every direction, the kind of place where the pace of life operates on its own logic. It is not a place you would expect to find a world-class golf course. That is almost certainly why the Keiser family chose it.
The 2,400 acres that comprise Wild Spring Dunes contain four distinct ecosystems: pine forests, hardwood groves, open meadows, and the dramatic ravines carved by spring-fed creeks that give the course its name. Doak has used all four. The routing moves between these ecosystems with a fluency that suggests years of walking the land rather than months — the transitions between the forest holes and the open meadow stretches feel architectural in the best sense, as if the course understands that contrast is one of its greatest assets.
“I’ve been designing courses for thirty-five years and this land offered more natural variety than almost anything I’ve worked with. The spring-fed ravines alone would be enough to build a memorable course around. Everything else was a gift.” — Tom Doak on Wild Spring Dunes
The Design
Doak’s design philosophy has always privileged ground game over aerial game — he builds courses where the run of the ball matters, where the ground is part of the equation, where players are rewarded for thinking about how the ball bounces and rolls as much as where it lands. Wild Spring Dunes takes this approach and scales it to a topography that gives it dramatic physical expression. The elevation changes across the property are significant — the spring-fed ravines create natural amphitheatres of sound and sight that make certain holes feel almost theatrical.
The course plays to around 7,100 yards at its longest, but the number is largely irrelevant. Distance never was the point at a Doak course. The point is to ask players questions — about shot shape, about club selection, about the acceptable risk in a given situation — and to ensure that those questions have genuinely interesting answers. Wild Spring Dunes, by early accounts, asks particularly good questions. The greens, designed with Doak’s characteristic interest in approach angles and run-off areas, are reportedly among the most complexly interesting he has built in a decade.
The Keiser Philosophy
Mike Keiser built Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast in 1999 with a simple, arguably radical premise: that walking, caddies, and spectacular natural settings were what golf’s most passionate devotees actually wanted, regardless of what the market research suggested about amenities and cart paths. He was right. Bandon Dunes became the gold standard for destination golf in America, and the Keiser philosophy — accessible pricing by luxury resort standards, walking-only, architecture first — has shaped the conversation about what public golf can aspire to in a way that no other developer has matched.
Wild Spring Dunes follows that model. The Keiser family has built walking-only courses at spectacular natural sites — from Cabot Links in Nova Scotia to Rodeo Dunes in Colorado, also opening in 2026. Wild Spring Dunes adds East Texas to that constellation, and it may be the most dramatic natural setting of any of them. Early reports from guests who have walked preview rounds describe a course experience that is both demanding and quietly beautiful — the sound of wind through the pines, the sight of the spring-fed creeks from the elevated tees, the sensation of playing golf in a place that feels genuinely remote while being entirely well-run.
Should You Go?
If you are the kind of golfer who books trips to Bandon Dunes, who has Cabot Links on the list, who reads architecture reviews with genuine curiosity — yes. Wild Spring Dunes belongs on any serious American golf bucket list at this point. Doak doesn’t produce mediocre work, and when he has land this varied and interesting to work with, the results tend to be the kind of course that people travel extraordinary distances to play.
It is also, perhaps, the most interesting argument that East Texas has ever made for itself as a travel destination. The piney woods have always been beautiful in a particular, low-key way. Now they have a golf course worthy of the land.