The Links Of North Dakota

Ray's Landing may get the postcard shots, but few courses in the American interior make as honest a case for links-style golf as this one. Williston sits in the far northwestern corner of North Dakota, where the land opens into the wide Missouri Plateau — treeless, windswept, and unforgiving in the way that actual links coastland is unforgiving. A course billing itself as "links" in this part of the country isn't posturing; the terrain genuinely earns the description.

Williston is oil country, a city that has boomed and contracted with the Bakken formation beneath it. The golf scene here is unpretentious and community-rooted, and a round at this layout reflects that — straightforward, exposed, reliant on course management rather than scenery to hold your attention. Wind is not a variable; it is the course's co-designer on any given day.

Expect firm, fast conditions typical of the high plains, where rainfall is scarce and turf plays firmer than golfers accustomed to lush parkland courses might expect. Ground game thinking applies here.