Seven down, five to go

Golf course architect Trevor Dormer and his crew will return to eastern Nebraska at the beginning of March to finish the reconstruction of the Old Dane golf course for the Andersen family, who also own the nearby Landmand course.

The Andersens have owned Old Dane for almost 20 years and have rebuilt the course once already, in 2010. That project — led by Will Andersen himself — left Old Dane as a 9-hole course on a pancake flat prairie site; the course had only five feet of elevation change.

After the family opened Landmand in 2022, Andersen started to think about improving Old Dane, to offer travelling golfers two courses in the area. He hired Dormer, now a partner with Rob Collins and Tad King, who built Landmand, to head the project. Dormer shaped the course’s signature fourth green, in the process impressing Andersen enough for the owner to give him his first job as a lead architect. He and his team started construction in late 2024. The new course will comprise 12 holes, with some holes built on the old practice range.

The 2025 construction season saw the course entirely shaped, including a spectacular volcano green at the eleventh hole (pictured below). The formerly flat property now features 30 feet of elevation change. The majority of the holes were also grassed in 2025, but five remain without turf. That work will be carried out this spring.

“I hope we will be entirely grassed by mid-June, though it obviously depends on the weather,” Dormer said. “I’m really pleased with how the course has turned out. There are some greens still to finish, but all the shaping has been done and everything is irrigated. Only one hole doesn’t have greens mix installed. I may need to get back on the bulldozer a little if some of the sand has blown around. We have a really great finish crew that is coming here from the Bounty Club job in Nashville. We have a really big putting course next to the clubhouse, and we’re going to have croquet and a bocce ball court.”

The terrain at Old Dane might not allow for a course as dramatic as Landmand, but Andersen said that visiting golfers are still likely to sit up and take notice.

“There are things out there that people will ask what we thought we were doing,” he said. “The opening hole is one of my favorites — a drivable par 4 with a pretty subtle green and out of bounds all the way down the left.”

Andersen plans for “some preview play” on Old Dane near the end of this season, with a grand opening planned for 2027.

The volcano green at Old Dane. / Will Andersen