It may be a year before players sink a putt on the green, but shovels will be in the ground much sooner than that at East Texas’ newest golf resort.
Popular developer Dream Golf plans to break ground later this fall on Wild Spring Dunes, a 2,400-acre public golf resort just north of Nacogdoches and less than a three-hour drive from Dallas and Houston. If all goes according to plan, golfers will be able to try out the fairways and flags in September 2025, with residential and lodging development to begin shortly thereafter.
Michael Kaiser, one of the developers of the project, said building a golf course in East Texas isn’t just about tapping into a local market that lacks high-end courses not restricted by private club memberships: He said the landscape here is perfect for the kind of no-frills, old-fashioned Scottish links-style golf course he wants to offer consumers.
“We weren’t setting out to enter the Texas market,” Kaiser said. “This project just happened to come to us, and it was in a great location, so we knew we had to act.”
Kaiser said Dream Golf chose the sites primarily for their natural beauty and the presence of sand, two factors that allow them to create unique-looking courses on well-drained, malleable terrain. The sites are covered with ravines, streams and old-growth pine forests beneath a sandy subsurface, giving the designers complete freedom to work with them.
One of those architects is Tom Doak, the legendary designer who has worked with the Kaiser family since 1994. He claims to have eight courses ranked in the top 100 in the world. Golf DigestTwo of them are located on Dream Golf property in Oregon and Wisconsin.
“It has a different feel to it than any course I’ve done in the past,” Doak said, “and that’s what appealed to me. It’s completely different from the 10 courses I’ve done.”
Doak was originally hired by Dallas-based businessman Brett Messeral to build on the property, who soon ran into Kaiser and his brother, Chris, and convinced them to visit the property. Kaiser fell in love with the property, took over the project, and retained Doak as one of the lead architects.
Doakes’ 18-hole course will be the first on the site, but Dream Golf is in discussions with designers Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore about potentially building a second course on the site if Doakes is successful.
Coore and Crenshaw manager Scotty Sayers said in an email that he had visited the property and was encouraged by its potential, but would “continue to evaluate the situation” and “consider whether Wild Spring Dunes fits into our future timeline.”
To fund the venture, Dream Golf is relying on a founders program in which select individuals invest in the development of the facility, with future perks like tee-time reservations and preferred real estate choices. Kaiser hopes to enlist 200 founders (paying $65,000 to $75,000 each) to get the course completed on time. Doak says there’s plenty of appetite for investment.
“It’s just a wonderful coincidence that this great location is so close to so many people who want even more great golf,” Kaiser said. “It didn’t influence our decision. The reason we’re building this place is the quality of the location. Even if it was 10, 15 hours from Dallas, we would still build it because this place is so great.”
