DISMAL RIVER GOLF CLUB
🇺🇸 Mullen, NE, USA
Designed by Jack Nicklaus
Dismal River Golf Club's White Course, designed by Jack Nicklaus and opened in 2004, occupies a remote stretch of the Nebraska Sandhills roughly twenty miles north of Mullen. The property sits within one of North America's largest grass-stabilized dune regions, where rolling sand formations create natural movement across a landscape that feels more Scottish links than American heartland. Nicklaus routed the course through this terrain with minimal earthmoving, allowing the existing contours and native grasses to define play. The result is a walking-only layout that moves across ridges and through valleys, with fairways that tumble over sandhills and greens positioned among the dunes.
The White Course was the first of two eighteen-hole courses at Dismal River, preceding Tom Doak's Red Course by a decade. While the Doak design receives more attention in architectural circles, the Nicklaus course established the club's identity as a destination for golfers seeking isolation and minimalist golf in an unusual American setting. The property operates as a private club with limited outside play, drawing members and guests willing to travel to the Sandhills for multi-day visits centered on golf, lodging, and the surrounding ranch landscape.
The course plays firm and fast across sand-based turf, with wind a constant factor and few trees to interrupt sightlines. Bunkers are integrated into the dune formations rather than manufactured, and the routing returns repeatedly to elevated tee boxes that reveal the expanse of grassland beyond the course boundaries.
Reviews
On my first trip to Dismal River after joining the club, I played the White Course once and the Red Course twice. I left having enjoyed both courses but with a definite preference for the Red. On my next trip, there was maintenance on the front nine of the Red so I played the White four times over the course of the weekend which gave me a whole new appreciation for it. There’s no hiding from the fact that the White is the harder golf course. It is much longer and while the fairways could not be described as tight, the penalty for missing in the sand dunes is high. There are a number of blind shots and when playing the course for the first time, the strategy can be hard to decipher. But the more I played the course, the more I understood the idiosyncrasies, the more comfortable I became with target lines and club selection, the more I enjoyed myself and ultimately came to love it. The opening hole is a great par 4 which rewards an aggressive drive over a ridge of dunes in the fairway with a wedge into a green that feeds in from the left. The fourth, with the signature windmill to be navigated in front of the green, and the twelfth are excellent par 5s. The eleventh, thirteenth, fourteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth are a wonderfully varied collection of par 4s on the back nine and the par 3 tenth with a bunker in the middle of the green and a bowl in the back is tremendous fun. Finally, I can’t let it pass without mentioning that greens on the White were as good as I played on in 2025. If I was asked to split 10 rounds between the Red and the White, it would be much closer than I originally thought. The Red would still prevail but I think I’d call it 6-4.
This was an awesome experience despite what I’m about to say. Some really cool and creative holes and they have the better piece of land compared to the red course. It’s too bad the overall layout is so discombobulated. Really awesome par 3s and some really memorable shots. Just a lot of cart driving (and getting lost) which made for a slow round.
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FAQ
Ratings, design, and course details pulled from Course Vaults.
White at Dismal River Golf Club has a Course Vaults score of 7.8 out of 10 based on 17 explicit golfer ratings.
White was designed by Jack Nicklaus.
White at Dismal River Golf Club is listed as private on Course Vaults; guest access is typically restricted.
Par at White is 72.
White plays 7,353 yards from the back tees on Course Vaults.
The slope rating at White is 143.
