7 Iron Whiff Golf Trip 2022 – Fall Edition – Bandon Dunes

While sitting around during the pandemic in 2020, I discovered the guys from No Laying Up and their web series, Tourist Sauce. That year the NLU guys went out to Bandon Dunes, and for the first time I really got to see what all the hype was about. I had been aware of Bandon Dunes before this, but didn’t really know much about it. My only real research was when I contacted them about booking a trip there in 2017, only to find out nothing was available.

So, after bingeing on the Bandon Dunes Tourist Sauce episode, along with all other things NLU related, I decided it was time to commit to a trip to this golfing Mecca. We initially booked our trip in January of 2021 for November of 2022. We had eight people committed to going. A few weeks later, once word got out among our friends, we expanded to twelve golfers, making this the largest 7 Iron Whiff Golf Trip to date.

Our group consisted of folks from Missouri, Indiana, Texas, Florida, Oregon, and Washington. I won’t go into a review of the different courses, there are plenty of other places on the internet with reviews by people more qualified than me. I will add a few things about the trip. We stopped at Langdon Farms Golf Club in Portland on our arrival day and were very happy with this choice. Fun layout that wasn’t too difficult if you don’t have a case of the pull hooks like I did. We had our first hole-in-one on the 7IWGT by Dr. Bechtold at the Bandon Preserve. We stayed in the Chrome Lake Lofts, which were great. The common space was big enough to get all 12 of us in to watch some SportsCenter at the end of the day. For food, we ate at McKee’s Pub twice and The Forge one night. For breakfast I had the buffet twice and we ate at the Trails End the morning we played at Bandon Trails. We slipped away one evening and went into the town of Bandon and had some good beer and snacks at Bandon Brewing Company. My personal ranking of the 18 hole courses are as follows: Bandon Trails, Sheep Ranch, Old Mac, Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes.