We have returned from Bandon Dunes Golf Resort and it was a resounding success... so much so that Lorne Rubenstein wrote this about the trip in the Globe and Mail on Staurday October 28:

Rubenstein: Oregon courses offer golf as it was intended
LORNE RUBENSTEIN

Globe and Mail Update

BANDON, ORE. — PGA Tour players are calculating precise distances while playing by yardages in the Chrysler Championship near Tampa, but golfers here are immersed in traditional golf. The three beguiling, walking-only courses at the much acclaimed Bandon Dunes Golf Resort invite golf that tells the player to throw away the yardage book.

"I don't know how far it is, but this is the club," a Bandon caddie is likely to say. Golfers can consult inconspicuous markers on the fairway, but most learn not to bother. The ground game matters, because the firm, fast fescue fairways welcome a bouncing ball. The golf's about more than the aerial game, into the fescue greens and the fairways.

So it was that a group of golfers from Vancouver, and one from back east, have been taking to Bandon Dunes, which opened in 1999, Pacific Dunes (2001) and Bandon Trails (2005). A fourth course will open in 2010. First-time Bandonistas realize quickly why the place has become the golf resort of choice for anybody who loves the game the way it should be played. Creatively, that is.

That's why Mark Burke and Tom Monaghan, who recently left their positions as assistant pros at Vancouver's Stanley Thompson-designed Capilano course, chose Bandon to introduce their clever new venture. They're calling it The Next Golf Adventure (www.thenextgolfadventure.com).

Each trip involves plenty of golf, some on-course instruction, and an extracurricular activity. This week's off-course recreation is today's fishing expedition on the Coquille River, which will take place Saturday following golf at Pacific Dunes.

Golf, of course, is the main thing, and the golf here is extraordinarily interesting. To cite one example of a typical Bandon situation, Jerome Rak found himself in an awkward but fascinating position. Rak works in the financial world in Vancouver and is used to figuring things out with mathematical precision, or at least trying to.

But now J.R., as his buddies call him, couldn't figure out what to do with the shot he faced. He was only 15 yards from the front of the green on the driveable, short, par-four 16th hole where the right side of the green is on the edge of the cliff above the ocean.

Easy shot, right? Flop the ball near the hole with a lob wedge. However, a small, deep pot bunker was directly between J.R.'s ball and the hole, which was cut on a portion of the green that ran away from him. His lie was tight. He was confused, so he consulted his caddy, and Grant Rogers, Bandon's director of instruction. Rogers was in the foursome.

"What would you do here?" J.R. asked Rogers.

"I'd putt it around the bunker," advised Rogers, a wise man experienced in Bandon Dunes.

J.R. accepted Rogers's advice, circumvented the bunker and putted up 30 feet from the hole. His partner, Capilano member Ross Henderson, soon holed a 40-foot birdie putt. No doubt J.R. had eased his mind by putting his second on the green rather than dumping it in the bunker or blading it over the green.

This was the perfect setting for Burke and Monaghan to introduce their venture. Just about every publication on the planet has voted Bandon Dunes the best resort in the United States. Many of its windswept holes traverse enormous dunes, while many of its gigantic greens are on plateaus overlooking the churning Pacific surf. It's dream golf. Stephen Goodwin called his engaging book about the making of Bandon by that very name: Dream Golf.

The courses demonstrate why ground-hugging, seaside golf is so invigorating. Golfers have been flocking to Bandon because something about this remote world where they're allowed to use a pull cart, or carry their own clubs, appeals deeply to them. Walking while pulling a cart or carrying one's clubs is near-heresy in American resort golf. But it's pure golf. A golfer can ride a cart here only if he or she has a medical certificate.

"People think about score here for a while, and then they forget about it. The beauty and the peace overwhelm them," said Rogers, an Oregon native. He was carrying his own bag. He was lost in the game.

That's what can happen at Bandon, where the idea is to abandon the yardage book. In this way, the golfer comes to his golfing senses, and senses the game fully.