English golf writer Peter Dobereiner died long before golf worth the pilgrimage to the heretofore sleepy and mostly inaccessible southern Oregon coast became a reality back in 1999. But his comments about the fabulous Irish links land of Royal County Down are equally appropriate at Bandon Dunes. He once said, "The essence of golf is to say that it enhances the feeling that it is good to be alive. That's the first priority and absolute justification. The links of Royal County Down are exhilarating even without a club in your hand. This strip of dune land was 90 percent along on the road to being a golf course long before the game was invented."

The analogy is admittedly imperfect. The rugged Oregon terrain wasn't 90 percent a golf course a decade ago. Perhaps it was just 19 percent, maybe just nine percent. But the bulldozers, graders and backhoes tamed the landscape, the machetes won the war with the gorse (more on that in a moment) and incredible, indelible golf emerged. But the "feeling good to be alive" part? The "exhilaration without a club in hand" comment? Those couldn't be more appropriate.

In certain ways, Bandon Dunes, the 1,200 acre resort complex comprised of a trio of courses called Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and the brand-new Bandon Trails, is like a classic private club in the northeast -- a Pine Valley or Winged Foot. It's of extremely high quality, but nothing showy or ostentatious. Bandon Dunes is a classic. It's enduring and highly desirable, a destination for the sophisticated.

The handsome sign on the Pacific Coast Highway south of Coos Bay and north of the town of Bandon says "Bandon Dunes Resort," but it's not a resort in the typical sense. Lodgings are mostly simple, though the recent addition of the upscale Grove Cottages has upped the ante in terms of accommodations. The food is great, but with relatively few options. There's no swimming pool, tennis courts or bike rentals. It's all about the golf; walking only, caddies preferred, wind, cool weather, precipitation all potentially part of the daily equation.

The high bluffs overlooking the Pacific where the first and second courses are located is a landscape that bristles with gorse, the Scottish import originally brought to the Oregon coast as natural fencing for sheep. They won't eat it, and it's too prickly to wander through. The unruly vegetation practically mutated, it spread so quickly in the seaside climate. The gorse is as unpleasant for golfers as it is for the sheep, and with the shore pines, Scotch broom, strawberry and huckleberry bushes and hardy sea grasses, there are numerous, even endless, opportunities to lose golf balls.

Pacific Dunes has seven holes that overlook Whiskey Run Beach.

Bandon Dunes is the original course from 1999, and was designed by a 28-year-old Kidd, specifically, a young Scotsman named David McLay Kidd. Owner and visionary Mike Keiser gave him the job despite the fact that his only previous 18-hole design was in Katmandu, of all places, and the fact that a native Scot hadn't designed a golf course on American soil since the demise of Donald Ross. But Kidd, who produced an elegant figure eight routing which proceeds from the clubhouse to the sea and back on each nine, had two things going for him. His dad was the head groundskeeper at famed Gleneagles in Scotland, and the young architect had learned the game at storied Macrihanish, one of the most elemental of Scotland's links. He envisioned and produced broad fairways, deep sod-walled bunkers and sizeable greens.

Iconoclastic architect Tom Doak came on the scene soon after. Pacific Dunes, which debuted in 2001, is even more dramatic than the original. Located north of the first course, Pacific Dunes has seven holes perched precariously 100 feet above Whiskey Run Beach, where a lucky golfer might see migrating whales beyond the surf line if he or she looks to sea at the proper moment. Pacific Dunes is quirkier, riskier golf than the original, with less dirt moved, and more humps and hummocks in the fairways. Tee shots and approaches are more exacting here than on Bandon Dunes, and the routing is decidedly nontraditional, with four par 3s and three par 5s coming on the inward nine.

The newcomer to the resort is Bandon Trails, designed by the most sought-after duo since Simon and Garfunkle parted ways a generation ago, Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore. It's a wholly different experience than the seaside twosome that preceded it, but this new addition is no third wheel by any means. Their inland effort begins and ends on high ground, with distant views of the sea. The course routing descends, traverses and then climbs again through different ecosystems, including dunes, forests and meadows. The bunkers have the ragged, eroded-edge quality that the architects have used successfully before at highly regarded tracks of their creation like Cuscowilla and Chechessee Creek, in Georgia, and South Carolina, respectively. But there's far more inherent drama in the landscape of the northwest, and the Crenshaw/Coore team took full advantage. Even though the ocean is a distant memory after the first few holes, Bandon Trails continues to engage the senses while offering a daunting challenge with holes routed up and over, down and through, left and right, long and strong, short and deadly.

The first and second courses were hard acts to follow, and the architects of Bandon Trails were hampered without the innate drama of close proximity to the sea. But they succeeded regardless, and the newest course is a worthy addition to the Bandon pantheon. With apologies to the now-superseded Monterey Peninsula, Oregon's southern coast has truly become the west coast's single "must play" destination for serious golfers.

Bandon Dunes Resort doesn't have the antiquity or the monarchy's seal of approval like the aforementioned County Down. Nor Dornoch, Portrush, Troon, St. George's, Liverpool, or any of the other classic courses of Ireland, Scotland and England. But as far as native American links land goes, these three gems on the Oregon coast are absolutely royal soil themselves.