The fourth course at The Prairie Club would be located near the Snake River Canyon, including this tentative site for a par 3 across the canyon.
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EmailThe golf resort industry has yet to be formally introduced to Paul Schock, but this much already is clear: The man doesn’t think small.
Schock tells Golfweek he has hired architect Gil Hanse to begin work on a third 18-hole layout at The Prairie Club, the semi-private club he is preparing to open May 31 in the Sandhills of Valentine, Neb. The new layout, much of which will be routed along the Snake River Canyon, will complement the existing Dunes and Pines courses, along with the 10-hole Horse Course.
The Prairie Club is not scheduled to open until May 31, but Schock, a venture capitalist from Sioux Falls, S.D., already has filled 170 of the 200 founding memberships. He adds that bookings at the 31-room Prairie Club Lodge are approaching 600 room/nights, and two weekends in June already are sold out.
“The concrete evidence that we’re going to be busy has given us the confidence to start construction on the third course,” Schock says.
Hanse and design partners Geoff Shackelford and Jim Wagner will finalize the routing this year. The same team designed the Horse Course, which will be a golf variation of the basketball game. Schock says construction of the new course could begin this fall, but more likely will start in the fall of 2011.
For Hanse, the new assignment is the culmination of what he calls “a long romance.” He first visited the site in August 2001 and says, “We’ve always loved the property, loved its potential.”
He acknowledges that north-central Nebraska might seem an unlikely place for such a big resort project, but says the Sandhills and the Snake River Canyon provide a dramatic panorama on which to work.
“If you had ever told me one of the most beautiful places I would see in my life would be in this part of Nebraska, I would have looked at you like you were crazy,” Hanse says. “But it truly is one of the most amazing landscapes I’ve ever seen.”
