Bandon Dunes Superintendent Eric Johnson and Bandon Trails Superintendent Ken Nice stand on the sixth green at Bandon Trails on Tuesday. World Photo by John Gunther.

BANDON — When the 264 golfers playing in the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort this week tee it up for their practice and competition rounds, they will find a pair of golf courses in immaculate condition.

That’s not the assessment of the workers responsible for preparing the Bandon Dunes and Bandon Trails courses. Rather, it’s the finding of Larry Gilhuly, the Northwest Director of Green Section for the United States Golf Association and the USGA official responsible for making sure the courses for the competition are ready.

Gilhuly described conditions at the resort as fabulous. When he checked the speed of the greens with a stimpmeter, he was amazed at the consistency he found on the greens for the two courses, given their relatively different environments.

“The greens at Bandon Trails are the most consistent greens I’ve ever checked in 23 years,” Gilhuly said, adding that only two or three greens at Bandon Dunes had to be “tweaked a little” to make them all consistent with each other and Bandon Trails.

That consistency stretched to the resort’s practice facility as well, he said.

“The putting course is perfect. It’s wonderful.”

Gilhuly arrived at the resort Monday and was instantly impressed.

“This is the third (USGA event) I’ve done this year, and this is the first one that was perfect,” he said, quickly deflecting praise to Bandon Dunes Superintendent Eric Johnson and Bandon Trails Superintendent Ken Nice.

Johnson and Nice have been working to prepare the golf courses for several months, along with Thomas Jefferson, the superintendent for the practice facility, and Pacific Dunes Superintendent Jeff Sutherland.

“Everyone on the club and grounds staff, we’re working together with one common goal,” Nice said.

All the courses at the resort have received praise for years for their aesthetics and condition. An event like the Mid-Am requires extra preparation to reach the standards expected by USGA, standards that make the courses more challenging than normal.

“They had some targets we had to shoot for,” Johnson said, referring to the speed of the greens, the height of fairway grass and the length of the rough.

The biggest change at the resort is in the way the greens have been prepared.

“We’ve been using a fraction of the water we would usually use,” Nice said, adding that technique will speed up and firm up the greens.

Instead of a sprinkler system normally used around the greens, the crews at the two courses instead have been using hoses.

“We’re not interested in green,” Gilhuly said. “We want lean with a sheen.”

For different championships that means different things. The U.S. Mid-Am is set up similar to the U.S. Amateur, more difficult than the U.S. Junior Amateur, but not so much as the U.S. Open.

“Our championships are set up for the best conditions for their level,” Gilhuly said of the golfers.

The goal is for well-struck golf balls to hold the greens, but for all other shots to potentially find trouble.

“If you have an ill-hit shot, you will be penalized,” Nice said.

Nice and Johnson are excited to see how the golfers handle the conditions during the tournament.

“It’s cool to see (the courses) in this state,” Nice said. “It has kind of a championship look to it.”

“I want to see how it plays,” Johnson said. “I want to see how they handle it.”

From what he’s seen, Gilhuly expects the players to be challenged.

“It’s going to take good shot-making to score well,” Gilhuly said.

Among the others impressed with the conditions this week is Bill Coore, who designed Bandon Trails with partner Ben Crenshaw and is delighted by how the facility looks just two years after it opened.

“Bandon Trails is in as good a playing shape as any course I’ve ever seen,” said Coore, who has teamed with Crenshaw to design several other highly-ranked courses. “What Ken and the guys have done is amazing.”

Coore has a soft spot for Bandon Trails, since he helped design it, but also can appreciate the work done on the course because it includes three different environments — a stretch of holes on the sand dunes, another stretch in a meadow and a third section in the forest.

“They’re all in their own micro-environments,” he said. “To get them to play so consistently is just a work of art.”