Old Dane rebuild begins in Nebraska

Golf course architect Trevor Dormer has started construction work on the rebuild of the 9-hole Old Dane course near Sioux City, Nebraska. His project will see the course entirely rerouted and converted from nine to 12 holes, with a routing that allows golfers to play loops of six, nine or 12.

Work started earlier this month and the first item on the Old Dane menu is the excavation of a two-acre lake to store irrigation water and provide around 40,000 cubic yards of fill material for Dormer to reshape the extremely flat golf course. Work is moving fast: the lake is already almost half dug. Dormer is leading the construction team himself, using staff from the farming operation controlled by the Andersen family, which owns Old Dane and the nearby Landmand course, where Dormer worked briefly for designers Tad King and Rob Collins.

Old Dane was original opened in 2001 and was known as Iron Horse. It was acquired by the Andersen family in 2007.

Dormer expects to fully dig out the lake, and rough in at least four holes before the winter weather forces a half to construction work in November or December. The team will then remobilize on site next spring to finish construction. The course will be grassed later in 2025 in time for an expected reopening in 2026.

“Old Dane is a great community asset, but it didn’t really have anything special about it as a golf course,” Dormer said. “With the fill material we are generating from the lake excavation and the reshaping work we can do elsewhere on the site, I am hopeful that we can do something really quite good out here. Obviously on a flat property like this it is never going to be as spectacular as Landmand, given the nature of the site on which that course sits, but I think it can be an excellent sister course that visiting golfers will want to play as well. Its relationship to Landmand will be akin to the second course used for stroke play at a U.S. Amateur, I hope.”

This is Dormer’s first project as a lead architect, and he is hoping to make a stir with his design ideas. The 11th green will be a volcano, sitting around 15 feet higher than its surroundings, and the third and eighth holes will share a fairway. The architect is aiming for a general increase in fairway width, and to make the most of the 93-acre property — including removing the driving range to accommodate the three extra holes. “That might seem a strange decision — driving ranges generally are seen as money-makers for public courses, but it is my view that golfers want to play golf, not to stand on a range and beat balls into a field, so the more golf we can give them, the better,” Dormer said. The Andersen family owns a site across the road from Old Dane, so a new driving range could be built if required.

“I’m really excited to see Trevor start work on reimagining Old Dane,” owner Will Andersen said. “The course means a lot to me and my family. It was our first foray into the golf business, so it could be seen as the progenitor of Landmand in a way. And, obviously, we have a lot of golfers travelling a long way to play Landmand, so if we can provide them with more interesting golf to play while they are in the area, it will encourage people to stay longer and put more money into the local economy, which is important to us. When we bought the course, I redesigned it myself. I did the best job I could, but I’m just a golfer who has seen a bunch of good courses — in no sense a professional golf architect. So it is great that the course is being reimagined by someone with Trevor’s vision and ability to realize it.”