Prairie Dunes

Looking back up the opening hole, with the 3rd green in the distance

The brilliant par three second is a standout thanks to the tiny and steep green, demanding precision distance control

The unique hybrid links/heath/park character of Prairie Dunes is evident in this picture of the 6th

The 8th green is an imposing target with the wind howling and a long iron in your hand

Perhaps the toughest drive of the day is saved for last - and the approach shot to a deceptively narrow putting surface isn't much easier

Course name: Prairie Dunes
Location: Hutchinson, Kansas

When you spend 21.5 consecutive hours on three plane flights to get somewhere, you expect to be rewarded for your effort.

The best Wichita offered was a kindly innkeeper who answered the age-old question of what Newt Gingrich would look like were he morbidly obese and an amusing 13-year-old Eminem clone who was intent on fighting me to impress his girlfriend (though the Old Town area is beautiful and the microbrewery does a great IPA).

But an hour north, Prairie Dunes really is something special.

Not many golf courses are genuinely unique, but Prairie Dunes unquestionably is. The dunes are heaving and the land wonderfully rippled, but it's certainly not a links.

The gunch is unlike anything else I have seen, a native and unkempt combination of thick grasses and heathland-esque small plants as well as Yucca (which I soon discovered I am allergic to).

As a result, the course echoes many genres, but defies being pigeonholed.

Perry Maxwell used the best land to build the 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 17th and 18th, but his son Press, who much later added the other holes to make an 18-hole course, is also responsible for some of the course's absolute highlights. I'd defy someone not clued in beforehand to tell the difference between the design and character of the two sets.

The greens are maybe the best set I have encountered - bold internal contours that tie in perfectly to the strategy of the holes, and as draped on the ground as you could wish for.

A tiny knob in the front of the 11th green may not dominate the eye, but controls much of the strategy of the hole, while false fronts and flanks play a strong role in wonderful greens at the 6th and 18th.

Above all, it possesses a lengthy list of outstanding and varied holes, a wonderful routing that makes expert use of the landforms and ever-present wind and a handful of the best greensites I have seen - the benched 2nd and 18th and dunetop 8th and 17th standouts among them.

The gunch gets a lot of talk and more than its fair share of criticism, but the corridors are generally very wide to accommodate the wind and a golfer who knows his limitations and plays within them shouldn't lose too many balls.

The journey to get to Prairie Dunes might be a lengthy one, even from within the US, but the course rewards you handsomely for making the effort.