Links of North Dakota - North Dakota, U.S.A.

The Links of North Dakota is located on a prairie in northwest North Dakota, about half an hour from Williston, population 15,000, and 164 miles northwest of Bismarck. The course was named the Red Mike Resort when it opened in 1995. While the "resort" consists of little more than an RV park, there is a world-class golf course on the bluffs overlooking Lake Sakakawea. Red Mike, as it is popularly known, was designed by New York-based golf course architect Stephen Kay, working on a shoestring budget. Kay hardly moved any dirt, but laid out wide-open fairways through the undulating bluffs and created 82 bunkers. The main challenge comes from the wind and the high, cocoa-colored native prairie grass that frames every hole. Lake Sakakawea, which is a dammed portion of the Missouri River, is known for its excellent fishing, with Chinook salmon, walleye, northern pike, bass, and perch. Lewis and Clark camped near the upper bays of the lake on April 17, 1805, during their transcontinental expedition.

Hawktree Golf Club - North Dakota, U.S.A.

Hawktree Golf Club is a big, hummocky course that unfolds through the high plains prairie bluffs of Bismarck, North Dakota. Hawktree was designed by Jim Engh, a native of Dickinson, North Dakota, who is now based in Castle Rock, Colorado. Engh has developed a reputation for designing intensely attractive courses in beautifully forbidding landscapes in the American West, including the Golf Club at Redlands Mesa in Grand Junction, Colorado, and the Sanctuary in Sedalia, Colorado. Hawktree is designed around Burnt Creek, a tributary of the Missouri River that comes into play on eight holes, with the course edging the wetlands, and lakes featuring on another three holes. The fairways are framed with high, tan prairie grasses and the bunkers are ebony, filled with black coal slag instead of sand.