American Dunes Folds Golf, Patriotism Into Veterans Tribute
Jack Nicklaus has designed more than 425 courses around the world, including layouts that have played host to multiple PGA Championships, Ryder Cups and PGA Tour events. Not one of them has resonated so loudly and proudly with the people who play it as American Dunes.
“With the reverence this course holds, it’s the most memorable round of golf I’ve ever played,” said Tom Simo, of Westland, Mich., who was a Gunner’s Mate in the Navy from 1986-1995 and who played the course for the first time in early September. “I had so many emotions, I was exhausted. I shot an 88, but I didn’t even care. I was so happy and fulfilled.”
Clearly, American Dunes is no ordinary golf course. Its creators made certain of that.
Located in the west-central Michigan city of Grand Haven, 30 miles west of Grand Rapids, American Dunes opened to the public in May. It is the inspired creation of Lt. Col. Dan Rooney, founder of the Folds of Honor Foundation and the only man who is both a United States Air Force jet fighter pilot and a Class A PGA professional. Commissioned as an officer in 2000, Rooney became a decorated F-16 pilot, who completed three tours of duty in Iraq. Yet, he was also a star collegiate golfer in the mid-1990s at the University of Kansas and later turned professional.
In 2007, merging his passions for golf and country, Rooney established the nonprofit Folds of Honor. The idea came to him on a flight from Chicago to Grand Rapids. Upon landing, the pilot announced that the plane was carrying the remains of a fallen soldier. Rooney observed the scene on the tarmac that included the deceased Corporal’s young son awaiting the flag-draped casket. In an instant, he conceived of the Folds of Honor.
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Its singular mission, now as it was then, is to provide educational scholarships to the children and spouses of military members who were killed or disabled while in the service of their country. That same year, he initiated Patriot Golf Day, where golfers could pay an additional $1 in green fees at participating courses, with proceeds benefitting the Folds of Honor scholarship program.
Since its inception, Folds of Honor has awarded more than 35,000 scholarships totaling in excess of $160 million to recipients in all 50 states. Of those receiving scholarship funds, 41 percent are minorities. Thirty chapters across the country assist in the cause. In 2021, Patriot Golf Day moved from Labor Day to Memorial Day weekend and is co-hosted by PGA HOPE, the flagship military program of the PGA of America. Over the years, Patriot Golf Day fundraising efforts have expanded to donation boxes, special events and tournaments, and golf marathons.
Almost astonishingly, Rooney was just getting started. In 2010, Rooney developed The Patriot Golf Club in Tulsa, Okla., a private club at his current home base, which also serves as Folds of Honor headquarters. The Robert Trent Jones II creation featured a superb design amid dense forest, lowland marshes and limestone canyons. The club also paid respects to its military roots. Its motto, “Great Golf for the Greater Good,” is affirmed daily at 1300 hours, when bells toll 13 times in honor of the 13 folds that bring the American Flag to its triangle shape.
All aspects of American Dunes honors those who have served, including the CAVU Fighter Squadron Bar, which features military memorabilia.
Stiil, Rooney wasn’t done. He had one more vision — a public golf mecca that would pay tribute to those who sacrificed everything for their country. The vision would be realized through the reimagination of the Grand Haven Golf Club, which Rooney’s family had owned for more than 20 years. Once transformed, his dream course would be known as American Dunes.
To bring his dream to fruition, Rooney enlisted the aid of his boyhood idol, Nicklaus, who waived his normal $3 million design fee in order to participate in the mission. For Nicklaus, the gesture was a no-brainer: “I love the game of golf, but I love my country even more,” he said. That proclamation now adorns an 8-foot memorial wall — in 72-point type — at the club’s entrance.
Grand Haven GC, a 1965 design from Bruce and Jerry Matthews, had featured tree-bracketed fairways and a prime location, several hundred yards from the Lake Michigan shore. The course always garnered respect, but it was what lay hidden underneath the hole corridors that offered world-class potential: sand, sand and more sand. Nicklaus and his design team, led by Chris Cochran, yanked out hundreds of trees and let the native sand be the star. The new par-72 layout measures 7,213 yards and sports 30 formal bunkers, vast areas of exposed sand and hole after hole framed by dunes.
Even with Rooney’s experience at the highest level of playing and teaching golf, he left the design work to the Golden Bear. “We all had our lanes, right?” Rooney said. “But Jack instinctively knew we had to build and design a golf course that is as good as the cause of Folds.”
While American Dunes is unquestionably handsome, playable and loaded with strategic options, the course features are only maybe fourth or even fifth in significance as it relates to the overall experience.
Cheryl Meyer, an Air Force veteran who served nine years, stepping away after achieving the rank of Captain, played American Dunes this summer. She praised the layout for its natural, desert-like beauty, but she didn’t come to evaluate the architecture.
The Folds of Honor mantra, "Honor their sacrifice; Educate their legacy," welcomes visitors to the Memorial Wall.
“I wanted to go for the experience,” she said. “I’d heard a lot about it and I was impressed from the very start. You walk into a kind of hallway between two cement walls and you see Jack Nicklaus’ quote. Then you see the motto of Folds of Honor, ‘Honor their sacrifice. Educate their legacy.’ It’s just so touching to hear the whole story and to walk through and see the photos and the boot prints of the 13 people honored and whose children are receiving or have received scholarships.
“I felt honored, humbled, very grateful to be there. At the end of the walkway is an info board, and it’s all in military time: "Taps" at 1300, retreat at 1730 (with the "National Anthem" played). Kind of surprising for a golf course, but very familiar for a vet. That was fun.”
Meeting up with three fellow female vets, Meyer splurged on souvenirs in the pro shop, then explored the one-of-a-kind bar.
“It’s called the CAVU Fighter Squadron Bar,” she said. “It’s a military term that stands for Ceiling and Visibility Unlimited. I used to work with fighter pilots, so this brought back a lot of memories. The bar has an ejection seat, and an A9 missile on the wall, where you get your draught beer. We had to have a draught out of the missile. It just made us laugh and we just enjoyed it all the more. It was so cool.
“There’s also this model of ‘Pardo’s Push’ and it’s a couple of airplanes hanging there from Vietnam when (Bob Pardo) saved one of his wingmen by using a tailhook that came down and he pushed it with the windshield. My dad was an Air Force pilot and I kept thinking of him the whole time I was walking through there. All this, and we hadn’t even played golf yet.”
At 1 p.m. each day, play halts so that staff and players can face the American flag, stand at attention and listen to 'Taps.'
Both Meyer and Tom Simo were able to experience the 1300 hour, when play halts and the staff comes out and stands at attention, facing a huge American flag. "Taps" is played — “a beautiful song, but a song I hate to hear,” said Simo. Finally, a bell chimes, 13 times.
“I was so humbled,” Meyer said. “I felt so proud to have served in the military. It was an amazing experience. You felt so full.”
At each hole, one commemorative plaque describes a military hero, another tells a tale about one of Nicklaus’ major championship victories. In the golf carts, videos play with course tips and Folds of Honor family tributes. There’s GPS, a ball-washer, speakers, complimentary iced water bottles — all the bells and whistles of any upscale public course, with a fistful of unprecedented extras.
It isn’t inexpensive to tee it up at American Dunes — $150 for non-military guests and $100 for veterans and active service members, with reduced rates in the fall. To Simo, it’s worth every penny.
“Obviously you have to pay your staff and keep up the course, but everything above that goes straight to Folds of Honor. To me, that’s huge. It’s a cool and amazing thing that this can help so many kids and families.”
For Kelli Campbell-Goodnow, the Memorial Wall at American Dunes was powerfully poignant. Her late husband, Marine Corps Major Shawn Campbell, was remembered with a photo. Major Campbell received his gold wings in 2003 and was assigned to a base in Hawaii as a CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter pilot. In 2016, he perished during a training mission, leaving behind his wife and four children.
Relocating to Kansas City to be close to her parents, Campbell-Goodnow was introduced to Folds of Honor. “It was like a lighthouse in a storm,” she said. Her kids received full scholarships to attend private school. “It means so much when you’re suddenly at the mercy of your situation, riding the waves of grief and trauma and survival, to be handed something that allowed me to make a choice for my kids and my family. That was huge.”
American Dunes' Memorial Wall honors 13 Veterans.
Now remarried and working with the Folds of Honor Kansas City chapter, she attended the Grand Opening of American Dunes and was similarly moved by the recognition.
“We had a special ceremony and walked through the memorial. My husband’s photo is there. It was so honoring. There were so many faces we could put on that wall. To have his there is really special for me, because of how special Folds of Honor has been to our family.
“Just knowing that other people will see that and say his name ... I can’t think of any other golf course like that with the patriotism and the remembrances forming such a unique link. I don’t think anybody could come and go from that place and not be changed by what they experience as they walk past those plaques. That’s really neat.”
Will the effect be as overwhelming for golfers who don’t possess a military background? “This place is for everybody,” Rooney said. “Some of the greatest patriots I have ever met have never put on a uniform. At the end of the day, when you walk out of here, my dream would be that you would be inspired to serve others in some capacity. Because that’s what this place represents, and the reverence that is there is about putting service before yourself.”
All the rah-rah flag-waving might indicate a certain political point of view, but Rooney dismisses that notion. “It’s not red or blue, it’s red, white and blue,” he said. “It’s a place where we can get together and still agree, finding common ground. We all want what’s best for our families, especially those families that have sacrificed so much for their country. The bright lights that are Folds of Honor and the game of golf bring people together in a positive spirit.”
It’s that cause, and that spirit, that brought Simo to American Dunes. It’s the experience that will bring him back.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Simo said, “before I die, I want to play St. Andrews. But I know I’m going to come back and play American Dunes every year until I’m unable to play golf any longer. You can book that.”