Roscommon Golf Trip Review

Get the even/odd rule right before you book, because it decides half the trip. The Loop plays clockwise -- the Black routing -- on even calendar dates, and counter-clockwise, the Red routing, on odd ones. Same 18 greens and fairways both ways, and it's not a marketing trick: approach angles flip, the background behind every green changes, and a hole that played receptive one direction turns into a genuine puzzle the other way. Tom Doak spent something like thirty years wanting to build this before Forest Dunes gave him the land to actually do it.

Forest Dunes itself, the original course, is Tom Weiskopf's design, not Doak's -- easy mix-up since they sit on the same property, but it's a different guy and a different personality entirely. The front nine is parkland, pine corridors, almost Augusta-adjacent in feel. Then the back nine turns into exposed native sand and scruffy waste areas that people keep comparing to Pine Valley, and the comparison isn't just marketing either. Play it first. It's the honest test that sets up everything else, and it doesn't ask you to survive anything, just to think.

The Loop is walking-only with caddies available, and you'll want one the first time through -- not because it's brutal, but because reading a green you can't fully trust from one routing to the next is an entirely different skill than reading a normal course. Somebody in every group insists they've got the Black figured out after playing it once, then gets quietly humbled by the Red the next morning on the exact same piece of ground.

Bootlegger closes the day, and it's a different sport entirely rather than a lesser course. Ten holes, 50 to 150 yards, built by Keith Rhebb and Riley Johns specifically so grandkids and scratch golfers can play it together without either one being bored. Flip flops are basically the uniform. The Bootlegger Bar sits right on the property overlooking the bye hole, and that's where the day's actual stories get told -- more of them than anywhere else on property, including the 19th hole at Forest Dunes.

Dinner rotates between two easy calls. The Dining Room handles the trip's one real sit-down night -- vaulted ceiling, fieldstone fireplace, no need to book it weeks out. Keeper's Pub is the default the other nights: five TVs, a straightforward menu, the kind of place you end up at without ever discussing it because nobody wants to leave golf mode.

36 holes a day is close to mandatory here, and the obvious pairing is Forest Dunes in the morning, Loop in the afternoon. You can't get both Loop routings in the same day the way you might assume -- the direction is locked to the calendar date, not chosen at the first tee, so seeing Red and Black both means planning the trip across at least one even date and one odd date. The one exception is "The Dual," a 36-hole event the resort runs on the last day of any 31-day month, where groups play one direction in the morning and the other that afternoon. Outside of that, don't front-load a 36-hole day on arrival -- play something fresh first and save the double until you know the land a little.

Nobody's leaving the property much, and that's by design more than limitation. There's no beach, no spa scene, nothing pulling attention away from the golf, which is exactly the pitch for the group this trip is actually built for. Roscommon town is ten minutes away if anyone needs a break from the routine, but most groups never bother making the drive.

Summer is the window that matters -- long light, firm fescue on the Loop, the kind of conditions the reversible routing was built to show off. Fall brings color and a real chill in the mornings, worth it if the group packs layers and accepts an earlier sunset cutting into the back nine.