Buffalo Dunes Golf Course

About Buffalo Dunes Golf Course

Buffalo Dunes is Garden City's municipal course, laid out by Frank Hummel in 1976 on broadly sloping duneland between the chop hills and the farmland. Over the years it filled in with pines and ponds and started to play like a parkland course. The city site says there are only a few trees left, and nothing stops the wind, which is the point now: it's par 72 and 6,806 yards from the tips (72.5 rating, 124 slope), and the breeze decides how long that plays.

The recent story is the renovation. Superintendent Clay Payne sold the city on a low-cost, multi-year plan in 2019, and with architects Zach Varty and Todd Clark his crew rebuilt three holes a year from 2021 to 2025: they filled the artificial ponds (one is left, by the 5th tee, mostly out of play), took out most of the non-native pines, and rebuilt every bunker and green for under $700,000. The Fried Egg, writing in August 2026, compares it to Prairie Dunes and called it the best course in the U.S. anyone can play for under $50, and it's not particularly close.

Expect firm turf and greens ringed with short grass, mounds and swales, so the running approach is often the right play. The Fried Egg singles out the new short par-4 9th along a ridge and the 11 through 13 stretch, where the 12th is now a long downhill par 3 and the 13th a short uphill par 4. The city frames the work as a 50th-anniversary project finishing in 2026. The Epson Tour comes through every late August for the Dream First Bank Charity Classic.

It's one of 2 courses in Garden City on Yoink, and Southwind Golf & Dining is practically next door — handy when your first choice is booked solid.

Booking a tee time at Buffalo Dunes Golf Course

Call the golf shop at 620-276-1210 or book through the course's tee-time link. Tee times run from 9:30 a.m. until two hours before sunset, and walk-ins are fitted in at the first opening; singles, twosomes and threesomes should expect to be paired. The posted green fees (no year on the page, read September 2026) are $37 for 18 on weekdays and $42 on weekends, $27 and $32 for nine, and $10 for students 21 and under. Pace of play is 2:09 for the front and 2:06 for the back.

How to get a tee time at Buffalo Dunes Golf Course