Sutton Bay

Sutton Bay is a remote, private links perched on the windswept bluffs above Lake Oahe, the vast reservoir formed when the Oahe Dam closed the Missouri River in 1958 and flooded thousands of acres of the old Sutton Ranch. South Dakota native Mark Amundson envisioned a sporting retreat of golf, hunting, and fishing on this dramatic prairie-breaks terrain, and hired Australian architect Graham Marsh, whose firm-turfed, treeless design opened for limited play in 2003 amid as much as 200 feet of elevation change. The original routing hugged the water so closely that erosion eventually undermined it, and portions of the ground began sliding toward the river. Rather than abandon the site, the club brought Marsh back to build an entirely new course on higher, more stable ground nearby, preserving the wild character that makes Sutton Bay one of the plains' most striking golf experiences.