FRENCH LICK, Ind. – Architect Pete Dye was notorious for the aesthetic features of many of his golf holes, with designs that not only play tough but often look terrifying for golfers standing on a tee or fairway. 

Island greens. Deep traps. Water. Blind shots. Steep pot bunkers. Trees directly in the line of play. The visuals knock your socks off, from TPC Sawgrass to Kiawah Island to Whistling Straits and beyond. If there wasn’t enough challenge in the land, Dye wasn’t shy about moving tons of earth to fit his imagination and his desire to challenge top players with every shot.

It’s no different at his namesake course at French Lick Resort. Only here, in a beautifully bucolic stretch of southern Indiana, Dye didn’t have to move earth to make golf harder. He had to flatten part of a mountain just to make golf possible at all on one of the highest points in the Hoosier State. 

The end result: One of the most visually stunning inland course in the United States. And at 8,100 yards from the tips, it’s also one of the longest, not that any resort golfer has any business on those back tees – the layout has hosted plenty of elite amateur and professional events, but we mortals must be willing to move up.

Funny thing is, at first Dye didn’t even want to try to build a course atop Mount Airie. The site was just too steep, the engineering too daunting. He initially turned down a request to build made by Steve Ferguson, chairman of the Cook Group, which owns the resort. 

“I remember telling Mr. Ferguson I didn’t think I could build a golf course up here, but it was a great site here of course, one of the highest points in Indiana,” Dye, who died in 2020 at the age of 94, said in a video shot for the resort recalling the origins of the course. “It had a lot of roll, up and down, and I was trying to figure out how you could make it so someone could walk this golf course.”

Dye changed his mind several days later though, and he laid out an initial routing on a napkin still displayed at the course. After three years of construction and more than 150 site visits by Dye – who lived for years in Indianapolis, hometown of his wife, Alice – the course officially opened in 2009. It has since become the No. 1 layout in the state on Golfweek’s Best ranking of public-access courses, and it ties for No. 140 among all modern courses built in the U.S. since 1960. It also ranks No. 3 among all courses operated by or in conjunction with casinos in the U.S.

Incredible views and steep demands

French Lick The Pete Dye Course at French Lick Resort (Courtesy of French Lick Resort)

In the video, Dye credits the incredible ambience – no houses, 40-mile views, a sense of seclusion – as well as discussing the incredible amount of work that went into making the site playable with more than 2.5 million cubic yards of dirt moved. The edges of the property were lifted, in essence, to make enough room for golf before the sides of the hills dropped away. 

“We had to do a lot of pushin’ and shovin’ to make it walkable,” Dye said. “… The ravines around the sides of the golf course are dramatic. Some of them drop 100 feet, which is quite a bit, so you don’t want to get too far off base or you’re down the hill for a long ways. …

“In all due respect to other golf courses, usually it’s a swamp or a landfill or something. This site here, without a doubt, is an unbelievable site compared to anything I’ve ever worked on, anyplace. Anything in the United States, I’ve never had anything remotely like this.”

With more than 200 feet of elevation changes, it’s the ravines that are most visually staggering within the confines of the course. Small ribbons of fairways run atop ridges as the land falls dramatically to one side or another. On many holes, a missed shot will catch a slope and just keep tumbling. 

A perfect example is the par-5 third hole, which tips out at 641 yards. Bunkers guard the right side of the fairway in the landing area for a tee shot, and the left side falls more than 50 feet down a steep ravine, with the hole curving steeply left around the drop-off before reaching the green. A tee shot or second-shot layup that rolls down the hill leaves a player a blind recovery shot with only the clouds as aiming points, with a march down then back up the slopes that would leave a cross-country runner winded. 

French Lick The Pete Dye Course at French Lick Resort (Courtesy of French Lick Resort)

There are plenty of examples of such slopes on the Dye, including on the finishing hole. Another par 5 that hooks around a ravine, the 18th forces golfers to play cautiously far to the right of a hillside that tumbles toward the range, lest they end their round playing from the bottom of a slope that would make a beautiful toboggan run in winter.

Combined with the long views of the Indiana hills rising in the distance and surrounding Hoosier National Forest, the internal ravines and Dye’s masterful shaping force a golfer to ask an important question: Should I reach for the driver first, or the camera? At almost every turn, a player gains a new vantage point of an unexpectedly beautiful panorama. Forecaddies are required on the Dye Course, and it’s a good thing. Otherwise some resort golfers might slow to a crawl as they wander about, taking in the views. 

A stunning hotel

French Lick The West Baden Springs Hotel at French Lick Resort in Indiana (Courtesy of French Lick Resort)

French Lick Resort operates a casino, but it seems almost a shame to spend any daylight hours in the gambling house because there’s just so much else to see at the property that dates to 1845, when French Lick Springs Hotel was constructed to take advantage of the area’s “miracle waters” bubbling up from sulfur springs. 

The sprawling resort operates three accommodation options: French Lick Springs Hotel, the newer Valley Tower above the casino, and West Baden Springs Hotel – where this author holed up for three nights – which began in 1855 as the Mile Lick Inn. After a fire destroyed that structure in 1901, a new building was constructed that rivaled the grandeur of almost any hotel on the planet. 

Developer Lee W. Sinclair built a hotel that didn’t look outward so much as inward, with a stunning 200-foot dome above a central courtyard inside the structure. The best rooms featured views of this gigantic open expanse and the elegant appointments. But the Great Depression and following decades were not kind to the structure, which began a slide into disrepair at the hands of various tenants until it was abandoned in the 1980s. In 1991, a section of the building crumbled. 

French Lick The atrium and domed ceiling at West Baden Springs Hotel at French Lick Resort in Indiana (Courtesy of French Lick Resort)

Enter philanthropists Bill and Gayle Cook, who worked with nonprofit preservation group Indiana Landmarks to restore the hotel and the resort as a whole. Their Cook Group took over the property in 2006 and later reopened the hotel after a stunning renovation as part of a $600-million effort that reversed the fate of the resort. 

Today, a stay at the West Baden Springs Hotel feels like a step back to an era when a guest might spend all afternoon under that dome, perhaps sipping a pre-Prohibition cocktail – it’s the type of place that makes you double-check that your nubby golf shoes aren’t tracking in any dirt. Once again full of elegant appointments amid restaurants and shops, with ample space to stretch out beneath the dome, the hotel features 243 luxury rooms and suites on multiple levels rising above the internal courtyard. It’s a hotel that makes it difficult to leave for the resort’s golf courses, no matter how good they might be. And the Dye course isn’t alone among the resort’s stellar golf experiences. 

The Donald Ross Course

French Lick The Donald Ross Course at French Lick Resort in Indiana (Courtesy of French Lick Resort)

Four miles from the West Baden Springs Hotel, with the resort’s other accommodations and casino at about the halfway point between them, sits the Donald Ross Course. Ranked the No. 2 public-access course in the state behind only the Dye Course, and also tied for No. 193 among all classic courses in the U.S., the layout by the famed Golden Era architect for which it was named opened in 1917. It ties for No. 10 among casino courses in the U.S.

On less extreme ground than the Dye Course but still hilly, the Ross Course doesn’t rely on the theatrics of its sister layout. What it does have is plenty of challenging shots over and around deep, flat-bottomed bunkers to sometimes severely undulating greens. This layout also features some of the longest par 3s anyone would ever want to play, with three of the four stretching beyond 230 yards from the tips. 

The Ross Course lacks some of the polish of the Dye, in the best of ways. Even after various renovations over the years, it wears its age as comfortably as an old tweed jacket with well-worn elbow patches. Up, down, round and round – the Ross Course was the Dye Course of its era. Its moments of flamboyance now seem somewhat quaint after a day on the Dye, and it makes a perfect counterpart at the resort. 

French Lick The French Lick Springs Hotel was established in 1845. (Courtesy of French Lick Resort)

Nearer the casino, the resort also offers the nine-hole Valley Links Course, comprised of the remnants of a former 18-hole layout by Tom Bendelow. Other outdoor activities at the property include everything from horseback riding to sporting clays and footgolf. All nice enough in their own rights, but it’s the 18-hole courses by the famed designers that provide the most incentive to leave that beautiful West Baden Springs Hotel. 

And yes, of course, no story about this stretch of Indiana would be complete with mentioning that former Celtics star Larry Bird is from French Lick. It’s a bit of cliché to mention it, even as the town features the 33 Brick Street restaurant that honors Bird’s playing number. The casual and comfortable eatery isn’t owned by Bird but features plenty of memorabilia that he donated, and the black-n-bleu burger was perfect after a 45-hole day. 

There, story complete. But keep in mind that while The Hick from French Lick was famous for putting a ball through a hole in the air, for the golf-inflicted it’s even better to roll a ball into a hole in the ground around French Lick.