Architect and crew will mobilize at start of March; five holes to grass.
DAKOTA CITY, Nebraska– 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, the owners of the nearby, and highly acclaimed, Landmand course.
The Andersens have owned Old Dane for almost twenty years, and rebuilt the course once already, in 2010. That project – led by Will Andersen himself – left Old Dane as a nine hole course on a pancake flat prairie site – the course had only five feet of elevation change.
After the family opened Landmand in 2022, and the course became a stunning success, Will 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 remarkable 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 – architect Dormer convinced his client to let him build golf on the old practice range.
The 2025 construction season saw the course entirely shaped, including a spectacular volcano green at the eleventh hole: the formerly flat property now features thirty 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,” says Dormer. “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 owner Will Andersen says 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 smiles. “ The opening hole is one of my favourites – a drivable par four with a pretty subtle green, and out of bounds all the way down the left. I hope we will have some preview play towards the end of the 2026 season, followed by a grand opening in 2027.”