Tag: Bandon Dunes Anniversary

Bandon Dunes anniversary: 25 years that changed the game

Developer Mike Keiser’s Oregon resort led to a shift in course development around the world.


(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, changed the games of golf and golf development in the United States and much of the world. It’s that simple. 

Since the original eponymous layout opened in May of 1999, many other public-access developers have tried to mimic the success that Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser has realized with five 18-hole courses on the largely empty, frequently sandy southwest coast of Oregon. 

Sandy sites have become key targets in far-flung locales, regardless of proximity to the ocean. A frequent focus has returned to classic golf architecture instead of home sales. At almost every large-scale development since the turn of the century, the voices behind the projects loudly proclaim the golf comes first. 

“I’m as amazed as anyone,” said Keiser, who made his fortune in greeting cards before turning his attention to golf. 

Bandon Dunes wasn’t the first resort to focus on some variation of location, or architecture, or customer satisfaction. Those were key drivers for many classic resorts, with Pinehurst in North Carolina or Pebble Beach in California serving as great examples as they have evolved over decades. 

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Developer Mike Keiser (third from left) dealt with rain on opening day of Bandon Dunes in 1999, but the future was bright. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

But Keiser showed what was possible for many 21st-century golf developers. Bandon Dunes was a far cry from the residential courses being built in the 1980s and ’90s in much of the U.S., where golf existed largely as a sales tool for homebuilders. 

Other relatively new destinations that predated Bandon Dunes also featured aspirational golf and have proved extremely successful, often with one main course by a top designer and several other solid layouts to make a trip of it. But they are different than Bandon Dunes, where each of the five 18-hole courses has climbed high into the rankings of top modern layouts. 

Bandon’s hyper concentration on the golf also was unique. Most top-tier modern American golf resorts offer a level of luxury with high-end spas, off-course activities and plenty of amenities to attract non-golfers. This was not the approach along the Oregon Coast. 

Bandon Dunes was built to be relatively spartan. The original guest rooms and cabins were comfortable but not palatial. Keiser has said he wanted good food but not necessarily gourmet menus – that has evolved with the recent addition of the over-the-top Ghost Tree Grill, but for most of the resort’s 25 years the favored gathering spots have been a firepit and McKee’s Pub. The plan was golf, golf, perhaps even more golf, go find somewhere to scarf down a bundle of calories and maybe a cocktail, then crash into bed before more golf. 

That kind of extreme focus proved to be a phenomenon, with course after course at Bandon Dunes shooting into the golfing public’s consciousness despite the travel difficulties in reaching the resort. The sheer volume of great golf holes on one property is staggering.

And none of it started with grandiose business plans or a branding agency. It started as a simple proof of concept. 

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Bandon Dunes, the original and eponymous course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)

Keiser loved true links golf in the British Isles, making return trips to such layouts as Royal Dornoch in Scotland or Ballybunion in Ireland. He soaked up classic architecture in the U.S., eventually joining the ultra-exclusive and top-ranked Pine Valley Golf Club in New Jersey. 

The Chicago-based businessman wanted to prove that classic architecture wasn’t dead and that Americans would embrace links golf – true links golf, with rugged and bouncy conditions on exposed oceanside courses that favor a ground game. It was a serious contrast to what was often marketed then in the U.S. as links golf, with artificially green grass, soft conditions and an emphasis on the aerial drop-and-stop game. 

Before Bandon, Keiser had limited experience as a golf developer. He had built The Dunes Club in Michigan, not far from the shores of Lake Michigan on a piece of land near a home he owned. It was nine holes, private and modeled after Pine Valley on a massive sand dune. It was a success, but it didn’t entirely scratch the itch. 

Keiser wanted to build a public-access course on true linksland, which is generally defined in the British Isles as the sandy, scrubby land between the ocean and other parcels that were more productive for farming. Dunes are a key ingredient, as is exposure to weather. Keiser scoured the country looking for potential sites, finding none available on the east coast or in California. He was directed to Oregon by a friend, and Keiser went so far as to buy two inland properties that turned out to not be suitable for linksy golf. 

Eventually he was introduced to a large parcel north of the town of Bandon, a windy and weathered tract largely covered in invasive gorse – the flowering plant is native to Scotland and is familiar to well-traveled golfers. 

Sitting on a bench high on a hill overlooking the property’s dunes and coastline, Keiser decided this was the spot. As he has mentioned numerous times, it might not have been the best land for golf on the coast, but it was more than good enough and it was for sale. Availability and a dream perfectly coincided, so Keiser started writing checks. 

He didn’t know if Bandon Dunes would be a hit, or even financially sustainable. Keiser merely hoped to break even on the project. He has pointed out several times that if his concept didn’t work on the Oregon shore, he could at least farm sheep on the land.

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A caddie walks at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, where carts aren’t allowed for most players. (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)

It took several years to get Bandon Dunes off the ground. The first course, designed by unknown Scotsman David McLay Kidd, opened in May of 1999, soon expanding from a curiosity on the coast to a must-play for serious golfers. A second course, Pacific Dunes, opened in 2001, to be followed by Bandon Trails, Old Macdonald and the Sheep Ranch. 

The five courses have introduced many American golfers to a minimalist design ethos. Instead of heavy earthmoving, as was so prominent from the 1960s though the early 2000s, each architect at Bandon Dunes laid their courses more gently on the ground. They incorporated interesting natural features instead of trying to create often overwhelming elements with a bulldozer. The focus was on fun instead of manufactured difficulty.

This wasn’t anything new – classic courses were built with minimalist qualities because heavy equipment wasn’t available during their construction a century or more ago. Bandon Dunes was more of a revival than an entirely new idea, and it proved extremely popular among a golfing public that typically doesn’t have access to American private clubs and their top-ranked classic courses. 

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Bandon Dunes, the original and eponymous course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

At Bandon Dunes it was golf first, then everything else, and that included development of the resort. Amenities have expanded to match increased demand. It’s now possible to enjoy a world-class steak or a sports-specific massage at Bandon Dunes, but Keiser knew that nobody was going to fly cross-country then drive three hours from Eugene to reach the resort for a plate of beef or a stretch. The golf courses and their architects were in the driver’s seat, given the best land along the water’s edge, with the clubhouses and amenities tucked inland. 

Keiser’s concept has been proved. Each of the five 18-hole courses resides inside the top 20 in Golfweek’s Best ranking of modern U.S. courses. Prime tee times sell out well in advance. Golfers from around the world travel to experience firm and bouncy golf on the cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. The resort has continued to expand. 

Plenty of other developers have attempted to follow the Bandon model, some with more success than others in the public-access realm. Just in Oregon, Silvies Valley Ranch on the eastern side of the state has built a fun reversible course as a stated effort to follow Bandon Dunes in proving that tourism is possible in such a hard-to-reach area. Across the U.S., developers have built courses on sandy sites: Streamsong in Florida, Gamble Sands in Washington, Sand Valley in Wisconsin (built by Keiser’s sons, Chris and Michael). Cabot built two courses in Nova Scotia with investment by Keiser, who also helped get Barnbougle off the ground in far-off Tasmania in Australia. All the way to New Zealand, developers have followed the Bandon model of golf first. Plenty of examples are available coast to coast and around the world, and many of them will openly reference Keiser as an inspiration.

Bandon Dunes also is part of a collective called Dream Golf, a partnership with Sand Valley and the in-development Rodeo Dunes in Colorado, where multiple courses are planned. The resort’s story is far from finished. 

Millions of words have been written about Bandon Dunes over the past 25 years. There’s no need to rewrite them here in celebration of the resort’s anniversary – if you want to know more, a great place to start would be Keiser’s most recent book, “The Nature of the Game: Links Golf at Bandon Dunes and Far Beyond.”

And instead of this author opting to try to put all things Bandon Dunes into even more words, we’ll let you hear directly from the people who have lived it. Linked to this story are many observations and recollections from 10 people with vast Bandon experience, all based on fresh interviews (each has been edited for length and clarity). From Keiser to Kidd, from greeter to golf pro, we hope you enjoy their thoughts as Bandon Dunes’ 25th anniversary approaches. 

Courses at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort

Bandon Dunes
Bandon Dunes, the original and eponymous course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

Bandon Dunes
Opened: 1999
Designer: David McLay Kidd
Golfweek’s Best ranking: No. 10 modern course and No. 7 resort course in the U.S.

Bandon Dunes
Pacific Dunes at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

Pacific Dunes
Opened: 2001
Designer: Tom Doak
Golfweek’s Best ranking: No. 2 modern course and No. 2 resort course in the U.S.

Bandon Dunes
Bandon Trails at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

Bandon Trails
Opened: 2005
Designers: Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw
Golfweek’s Best ranking: Tied for No. 11 modern course and No. 6 resort course in the U.S.

Bandon Dunes
Old Macdonald at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

Old Macdonald
Opened: 2010
Designers: Tom Doak and Jim Urbina
Golfweek’s Best ranking: No. 7 modern course and tied for No. 4 resort course in the U.S.

Bandon Dunes
The Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

Sheep Ranch
Opened: 2020
Designers: Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw
Golfweek’s Best ranking: Tied for No. 19 modern course and tied for No. 11 resort course in the U.S.

Other amenities at Bandon Dunes

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Bandon Preserve at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)

Bandon Preserve: This 13-hole par-3 course was designed by Coore and Crenshaw and opened in 2012. The Preserve kicked off a trend of premium par-3 courses at resorts around the world. 

Shorty’s: The newest par-3 course at the resort, this 19-hole layout was designed by Rod Whitman, Dave Axland and Keith Cutten. It opens in May.

Charlotte’s: Formerly known as Shorty’s, this nine-hole par-3 layout is part of the practice facility. It has been renamed for the wife of Shorty Dow, the former caretaker of the property.

Punchbowl: An homage to the Himalayas Putting Course at St. Andrews, this 100,000-square-foot putting course near the Pacific Dunes clubhouse was opened in 2014 with a design by Tom Doak and Jim Urbina.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: A chat with founder Mike Keiser

The secret sauce at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort? “If you have sand dunes on the ocean, you probably have a winner.”


(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – Mike Keiser wanted to prove a point: Links golf is better than what many of the courses in the United States offered near the turn of the century, and enough American players would travel to play great golf. 

The greeting-card-magnate-turned-golf-developer nailed it on both points with Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which in May celebrates its 25th anniversary.

Keep in mind, in the 1980s and ’90s most American golf courses were being built to accommodate shots that flied high through clear skies, rewarding players who possessed enough power to make a ball spin and stop on often-elevated greens. Difficulty was frequently considered the hallmark of great courses, many of which were built with tour players in mind instead of the folks Keiser came to describe as retail golfers. 

The Chicago resident flipped that script by building courses that favored the ground game in strong winds, much as he experienced on frequent trips to the British Isles. But it certainly wasn’t a sure thing when he pulled the trigger on Bandon Dunes, which opened in 1999. Would American golfers pay hundreds of dollars to play a course that required travel to the remote Oregon coast? He already had built the highly acclaimed, nine-hole Dunes Club in Michigan, but how big a risk was he willing to take out west?

Let’s let Keiser – known as an adept listener and studier of his customers – do the talking. 

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The coastal Oregon site of Bandon Dunes before it was developed into a golf resort (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What made you think it was possible to build a true modern links course in the U.S.?

It started as just sort of theoretical statement. If we could find a site that was, let’s say, as good as Royal Dornoch (in northern Scotland), it might work as sort of the business case for building a links course.

And serendipitously, (Oregon-based Realtor) Annie Hunter called from out of the blue to let me know this site was available. And she said, “I don’t know anything about golf courses, but this is right on the ocean, 1,200 acres on the ocean with big sand dunes covered in gorse – I don’t know if it’s any good or not.” And that sounded pretty magical to me.

So I rushed out there and said, from the vantage point you can still see out there (on a hillside at Bandon Trails overlooking the coast), this looks like an awfully good site. And I was able to buy it for half the asking price. Talk about more serendipity. The previous owners were so eager to unload it because it had been for sale for over four years. 

What was your thought process in looking at that piece of land to do something that nobody in the States had pulled off up to that point, building such a remote public course focused on links golf? 

I thought I could break even. That was my positive thing. If I built something like Dornoch, it might break even. And I basically said, “Oh what the heck, you only go around once, let’s try it.”

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Mike Keiser at Bandon Dunes in the early days (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

Are you surprised today at how it all turned out after taking such a risk on the first course? 

Because I was able to sell the greeting card company (Recycled Paper Greetings, which he had founded in 1971 with college roommate Phil Friedmann) for quite a bit of money, I had the money to lose on one golf course. And I knew the odds were that I’d be lucky to break even, so to take X amount of dollars and build a golf course in Bandon, Oregon, was a dicey thing. But I could afford to lose, which is why I went ahead for the fun of it, to build it. 

And we were astonished, like everyone else, that it did not just break even with 10,000 rounds the first year, but that we had 24,000 rounds that year. That was amazing. And that gave me a green light to build Pacific Dunes, the second course. I say that one plus one equals three, and that really changed things. 

What had you learned in building the Dunes Club with architect Dick Nugent? Before Bandon, you built that in Michigan on a site where you and your sons used to play wilderness golf and turned it into something really special in its own right.

If you visit there, you will see one huge sand dune. … I was playing a lot at Pine Valley at that time of my life, and the Dunes’ site reminded me of Pine Valley, which is why I said, “Let’s build something, an homage to Pine Valley, here near Chicago” so we don’t have to go all the way to Philadelphia every time we want to play this magnificent sand dune golf course which is Pine Valley. 

It was that love for sand dunes that led you to Bandon?

I’d say the one thing I learned is that if you have sand dunes on the ocean, you probably have a winner. Hello, Shinnecock Hills. Hello, National Golf Links. Hello, Pebble Beach. Hello, Cypress Point. (All are top-rated classic courses, either in New York or California.)

Had you looked for sand dunes all around the country before going to Oregon?

I looked on the East Coast and couldn’t find anything. I mean zero, and I was going to give up. A friend of mine, Howard McKee (an architect and land planner), said, “Why don’t you look in Oregon? It’s got a gorgeous coast.” I knew nothing about Oregon, so reluctantly I gave in and said okay.

I had went out and looked at Northern California, where there was nothing. I should have looked further north, but I hadn’t gotten there yet when Annie Hunter called and saved me the time.

Sand has become a secret sauce for you in all of your developments, whether it be with your boys at Sand Valley or wherever. Even all the way to Barnbougle in Tasmania. 

You know, Barnbougle is more remote than Bandon. But Tom Doak and I were able to convince Richard Sattler (the land’s owner and a farmer) that rather than farming sheep and cattle, he should farm golfers. 

I remember standing in one of Richard’s pastures, and he spent most of the day, every day, rounding up his herds and moving them from pasture to pasture. And I said, “Richard, you don’t know anything about golf, but golf is like you and I standing here in a pasture, and every 10 minutes, four people will come up to you and ask to pay $200 each to play golf in your pasture.” He said that sounds pretty good. (Barnbougle opened in 2004 with investment from Keiser and has expanded to two full-18 courses and a short course. Both its courses rank among the top 30 international courses outside the U.S.)

How did you structure Bandon Dunes commercially to allow it to grow and flourish this way? 

We priced it at half of Pebble Beach. That’s our pricing mantra: Whatever Pebble Beach is, we will be half, so it’s fair pricing. 

You could do it right now if you had money. You could go to Oregon and find two or three coastal sites. But they would probably be owned by federal or state government, so you couldn’t develop it. But at least you could say, wow, look at that.

One day an Oregon governor will say, “There’s the Alabama golf trail (the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail). Why don’t we have the Oregon Trail?” Wouldn’t that be something for the state to run or to do with some kind of lease option to where a developer could come in and build on a hundred acres in a partnership? It won’t happen with such an anti-development ethos in Oregon. … The Oregon Trail would be hugely successful for golf and financially, but I don’t think it’ll happen in my lifetime.

How often are you asked for advice from other developers, and what do you tell them?

I’m not asked that often, because they’re usually the competition. But if they were to ask, I’d say sand dunes and ocean are what you’re looking for. The Bandon formula of sand plus ocean equals winner.

But sand without the ocean can be OK, it turns out. Look at Sand Valley (in Wisconsin, a popular resort that soon will have four full-size courses and that has been developed by Keiser’s sons, Michael and Chris). It’s a luxury to have the ocean. But it’s not essential; that’s what we learned. 

One day someone’s going to go to Africa, which has great sites for golf, and build. Maybe on the Skeleton Coast of Namibia – it’s just gorgeous for golf and there are beautiful dunes.

Twenty percent of the world is sand. Isn’t that interesting? I once thought that sand was rare, but 20 percent of the earth’s land surface is sand. It’s everywhere. 

What’s it like for you now to see versions of Bandon Dunes working in other places, be it Canada or New Zealand or Australia?  

I love it. I can’t keep up with them all. 

You know, I’m public and proud of it. That’s always been my thing. Even though Ballybunion and Dornoch have memberships, they’re basically open to the public. So I’ve always thought if you build something pretty special, you want the public to play it. 

A lot of new private courses have been built in recent years on sand.

I don’t hate them for it. They’re just not as meaningful as a public course would have been.

I was a retail golfer well before I became a Pine Valley member. So before I was a member, I felt that most of the best courses in America, in particular, were private. And that’s still pretty much true. So I was a big public golf guy, and I couldn’t play them. And it turns out this was noticed by the retail golfers of the world, and certainly of the United States, because they felt this desire to play great courses.

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Bandon Dunes developer Mike Keiser (second from right) with Josh Lesnik (left), the first general manager when the resort opened in 1999, and Bandon Dunes Golf Resort

course architects Tom Doak, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw and David McLay Kidd (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What made you decide to take such a risk with using David McLay Kidd as your first architect? 

His father, Jimmy. If it had been just David, I would have said no, I can’t give it to you, you’re too inexperienced for me to take a flier given my location. I would have chosen Tom Doak.

But Jimmy Kidd had been in golf his entire life. He was the superintendent at Gleneagles and played golf at Machrihanish. So I felt it was in their blood and that Jimmy had taught David well. And if I found out that David wasn’t very good, I’d fire him. David would tell you the same thing.

It was great fun watching David and Jimmy work together. Jimmy was dead set that David was going to have a success there, so it was sort of a one plus one equals three again. With Jimmy and David together, I had the benefit of both points of view. And as the project went on, David took more and more ownership of it.

Then you followed up behind David with Tom Doak, then hired Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. All of those guys have become famous as designers, but 25 years ago they didn’t have their own fan clubs. What’s it been like to watch the architects develop over the years?

Well, I’ve always been a minimalist, as they have on their own. So we’ve all been minimalist, feeling that golf had become too difficult and too manufactured. We just wanted to build links courses in a minimalist way, and lo and behold, that’s what they did. And it turns out that American golfers love minimalist golf design. 

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Mike Keiser, right, with Jim Urbina and Tom Doak during construction of the Punchbowl (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

How would you describe minimalism? What drives the concept for you, the appeal of it?

We’re looking for designs that evolve from nature. Tom Doak is probably the most articulate on that topic and would probably give you paragraph after paragraph after paragraph.

Natural golf courses are visually more interesting than manufactured courses. For those of us who would go play links in Scotland and Ireland, our favorite courses were all, you know, very minimalist. Look at the Old Course (at St. Andrews). Talk about minimalist – you know they just they just played on the land they had. They didn’t make it with bulldozers. I’d say the same about Ballybunion and Dornoch and any other of the links courses over there, made not by bulldozers but by men with shovels. 

There is still shaping and routing that goes into minimalist designs. How much would you say the artistry of your architects has been a driving force at Bandon Dunes? 

I give them huge thanks. The first thing is, their routings are fabulous. And I won’t single any of them out, because each of them are fabulous. And their green sites are fabulous. Those are two things that I look for.

At Bandon Dunes, the non-golf amenities are set well back from the coast. How did you come to your decision to allow your architects to use the best land along the coast for their routings, instead of trying to put hotels or clubhouses along the shoreline? 

Because I was not a typical developer. Having done The Dunes Club, which is golf only, I said that I want to build another golf course. I didn’t say I want to build a golf resort. So I wanted to use the best land for the golf course. I never thought we’d get to building a whole resort.

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Mike Keiser at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What’s it like for you as a father to watch your boys follow you into the business and have such success at Sand Valley and now expanding beyond Wisconsin?

They’ve been to Scotland and Ireland, and they have played the great links courses. Therefore they almost naturally understand links or minimalist golf. That’s what I’m proudest of, that they don’t stray from that model. They’ll say, look at Dornoch or Ballybunion, these are the types of courses we want to build and play on.

Most developers, they say location, location, location. And they mean close to population centers, because that’s who’s going to use it. And I’ve sort of taken the opposite point of view that if it’s remote and wild and natural, it’s better. 

Is there anything else you’d like to tell readers about your thoughts on looking back at 25 years at Bandon Dunes?

My biggest one is to thank everyone for appreciating links golf in America. It was remarkable how well received Bandon Dunes was. Given the lack of experience of true links golf in America for the retail golfer, it’s an amazing story.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Our Eamon Lynch shares his love story (with a bit of hate)

Columnist Eamon Lynch dreams of Bandon Dunes, but there’s one hole that gives him nightmares.


(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

The quality of sleep enjoyed by a tortured golfer is inversely proportional to the number of swing thoughts agitating the mind. Thus, on most nights my attempts at finding rest involve not counting sheep but playing golf in my mind’s eye. Almost always, those rounds are at Bandon Dunes.

It’s been over 20 years since I first visited Mike Keiser’s refuge on the Oregon coast, and the more than 100 rounds I’ve played there are among my fondest memories. Like the Solstice in 2012, four rounds in one day. The first ball was airborne (barely) at 5:35 a.m., the last putt dropped at 8:10 p.m., the first cocktail moments later. Or the time I watched with unsporting glee as a friend needed 51 putts on Old Macdonald (he was a perfect 33 through 11 until he unexpectedly two-putted the 12th). Or when I played a three-club tournament on the same course and chose my weapons badly: putter, hybrid, 7-iron. On the seventh hole, I tried the putter backward and left-handed to use the flange for a steep bunker shot. It worked, then I three-jacked on the green when using it conventionally.

But Bandon Dunes is also where apathy over swing dysfunction became apparent. Maybe a decade back, I was there with Brandel Chamblee, so already the trip was suboptimal. We were playing Bandon Trails, the Bill Coore-Ben Crenshaw design that features many holes I love and one I loathe. We reached the 14th, a 325-yarder where caddies will tell you they count many more 6s than 4s. 

I’ve railed against the hole since it opened in 2005. Once, I was headed to Trails with a course architecture writer when he handed me his phone, mid-call. “Eamon, this is Bill Coore,” came a gentle drawl. “I just want to remind you, again, that No. 14 was Ben’s idea.”

On the tee with Chamblee, I sniped one left into the woods, a trend established over the previous 13 holes. Dejected, I handed the driver back to my longtime, long-suffering caddie, Shanks. “That’s my last swing,” I said.

“No, it isn’t!” Chamblee said, laughing.

“Watch me,” I replied. 

I spent the remainder of the trip beating balls on the range and saw more of the milkshake lady at the Dairy Queen downtown than I did of Chamblee (so it wasn’t all bad).

It was an ominous sign of my eventual descent to total range rat, happy to hit balls all day as long as I didn’t have to go find them. Which explains why I haven’t been back to Bandon Dunes in eight years.

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No. 16 at Bandon Dunes, which Eamon Lynch considers among his favorite holes on the planet (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

Yet still I lie a couple thousand miles east with photographic recall of holes that gave me fits (the aforementioned 14th at Trails, the fifth at Bandon Dunes) and those I rank among my favorites on the planet (the fourth at Pacific Dunes, the fifth at Trails, the 16th at Bandon Dunes). I don’t dream of the Sheep Ranch though. I only saw that property when one group a day would be dropped off to devise their own layout from 13 green complexes scattered on a bluff north of the resort, years before it became the latest acclaimed course in the portfolio.

Each fitful night of near-sleep brings a reminder of what I’ve lost by not playing much golf anymore, hence a recent desire to get back into the swing, as it were. Every few months for almost eight years, I’ve gotten a text from my buddy Michael Chupka, who works at Bandon. “Ready to come back yet?” he asks, like a patient counselor.

One of these days I’m going to answer in the affirmative. If only to see if Bill and Ben have done anything yet to redeem that damned hole.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Architect David McLay Kidd talks hard truths and dirty laundry

A young Scottish designer got the break of a lifetime at Bandon Dunes 25 years ago. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t clean.



(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – David McLay Kidd got the break of a lifetime. 

A mid-20s Scotsman in the 1990s, he had been around golf all his life, learning early from his golf superintendent father, Jimmy. He also worked as an in-house architect for a small English golf firm before moving to a larger group where he learned about the development process. 

But he had never designed an entire golf course as a solo effort. 

It wasn’t until Kidd somehow caught the eye of then-novice developer Mike Keiser in the mid-1990s, and after years of site visits and discussions and small-town hamburgers, that he landed the job to design the first course at a new destination, Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, on the remote shores of southwestern Oregon. 

Named Bandon Dunes along with the resort, the first course kicked off a career in which Kidd has designed more than 20 courses around the world, several of them earning high praise from various course rankings including Golfweek’s Best.

One of the game’s best storytellers, Kidd takes a look back at how it all came together as Bandon Dunes’ 25th anniversary approaches.

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David McLay Kidd and Bandon Dunes developer Mike Keiser during construction of the first course at the Oregon resort (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What is your memory from the first time you saw Bandon Dunes?

It was July 1994, and I was with my father (Jimmy), who was a longtime golf course superintendent in Scotland. We were invited by Mike Keiser to go look at the land and come up with a concept for 36 holes. My dad and I spent a week there, and then at the end of the week, Mike flew in with Steve Lesnik, the founder of KemperSports, and (land planner and architect) Howard McKee and a few others. 

And my dad and I, but probably mostly me, presented our ideas for 36 holes at what at that time didn’t even have a name, just the land north of Bandon the town. 

I had gone around with (caretaker) Shorty Dow, who lived on the land. I can remember it like it was yesterday. Initially, Mike was thinking of building down below what is No. 16 on Bandon Dunes, below 17. That was where Mike was really thinking of, because that reminded him the most of, you know, an Irish links. And I remember wandering through that land (along the beach beneath the cliff), and it’s filled with driftwood. And of course that rang giant alarm bells with me. When there’s a storm there, the sea water comes right up in there. When I did meet Mike at the end of the week, I said to him, “You know, there’s giant stumps and driftwood back in there for quite a ways. It might not be the best idea to build out there.”

What did you think of the land that you did get to work on, up on the top of the shelf above the cliffs?

Well, you couldn’t see any of it. It was all under gorse. The whole entire thing, every last bit, was under gorse. So all you could really do was try and imagine what was there.

But we knew, looking at the surroundings and the few pieces of the trails that went through there – a bunch of people had been riding four-wheelers and motorbikes through it – that it was all sand. I sort of assumed that underneath the gorse there were some cool shapes, but you really couldn’t tell, not the very first time.

You were a young architect back then, and you were working for a man who was inexperienced in building a resort. Was there any apprehension in taking on the project, or was it all excitement to get a chance like that?

It didn’t happen like that. I didn’t know shit, and neither did Mike really, you know. I don’t know if anybody had any expectations. 

From my point of view, I didn’t know that Mike was talking to a bunch of other people (as architects). From Mike’s point of view, I think he had this wild idea that he hoped he wouldn’t lose his shirt on – if the thing broke even, that was the best he could hope for.

One of the things I’ve said so many times in the 25 years since Bandon opened, when people have asked what was it like working on Bandon Dunes, it’s so hard to explain. But it wasn’t Bandon Dunes then. It wasn’t anything. It was a gorse-covered piece of maybe sand dunes on the edge of nowhere.

Bandon Dunes
Bandon Dunes, the original and eponymous course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

So how did it go when you took the job? What were your thoughts on what you could pull off out there?

You know, that’s a good question that doesn’t have a great answer.

I don’t think I ever really got the job. Mike just kept kicking the tires with me for like two years, maybe more, because I first saw the site in ’94. I guess the big story was during the week I was there, before I met Mike, I realized that there was real potential that you could really build something super cool. 

Shorty kept asking me for a business card, and I kept wondering why he needed it. Why would a guy living in the woods in southwestern coastal Oregon be so desperate for my business card? It occurred to me that he was collecting them, so I asked him, can you show me the other business cards you have? Sure enough, he brought out this stack of business cards. And the business cards made it blatantly obvious that Mike Keiser had his pick of any architect he wanted. And why in the hell would he hire a 26-year-old Scotsman with no resume?

On the one side, I was super enthusiastic about what could be built. And then reality told me that I was not going to be the one to get to build it. 

Based on that hard fact, I decided that when I met with Mike Keiser, I would absolutely tell him the absolute truth. I wouldn’t try and sugarcoat anything. I would tell him as a proud Scot from the Home of Golf the thing no American golf developer had heard: If you really want to copy the great links courses of the British Isles, you can’t sit your fat ass on a golf cart.

I didn’t stop there. You can’t build the clubhouse out on the beach. You can’t drag a road out there. You can’t put a dumpster out there. You can’t build bent grass greens and homes and plantings and all the shit I could see at that point back in the ’90s in America with golf course after golf course that kept saying they were taking inspiration from the classics. And then I would look at them and go, this doesn’t look anything like a golf course I would recognize in the British Isles. 

And so I pointed out to Mike what it would really take to build a golf course that did fully embrace the golf courses of the British Isles, particularly the Scottish and Irish links courses. And Mike’s cohort that he had with him all rolled their eyes or literally laughed out loud. But Mike didn’t. Mike didn’t laugh. He actually listened.

At the end of that week, I figured, yes, you could build something awesome out there. Is that the guy that will actually do it, or will he acquiesce to what they all seem to think American golfers want, which is this sanitized, contrived version of what I know to be golf in Scotland?

Either way, I’m not going to be the one to do it. It ain’t gonna be me because I’m 26, the son of a greenskeeper with no resume.

How long was it before you heard back that you landed the job?

I never did. That’s not how it happened. 

What happened was, Mike called me back a few months later and said, “You’re kind of a pretty ballsy kid. You said a lot of stuff that resonated with me, and why don’t you come out again and take a little more time to see the land and clear some pieces. What would be the next step? What would your next ideas be?” 

At that point? I thought, holy shit. Just maybe, just maybe. But I didn’t know if Mike was doing that with a dozen people or two people. I mean, I didn’t know that I was the only one. For all I knew, he was dating every cute girl in town.

So I said, hell yes. And I went back out there and spent another week or two weeks. I can’t remember – I made numerous trips over many years. And as we made these trips one after another, we’d do a little more clearing and staking and coming up with different layouts. And Mike would come with his friends, and they’d walk it. And then Howard McKee and Bruce Johnson were tasked with getting the permits. So I would be helping them, trying to describe what this golf course would look like, how it would be built and how we would respond to the environment it was in and getting them the information they needed for the permits.

And it was really not until about April of ’97 that Mike said to me, “OK, why don’t you come out here and shape a couple of things and let me look at them? And I’ll see if I like it.” And so even then, three years later, I still wasn’t hired. He still hadn’t said, okay, you’re going to be the guy.

So in ’97, I went out there in the spring and I shaped the first green and the 17th green with Jim Haley. And Mike flew out with Dick Youngscap (who developed Sand Hills in Nebraska, rated the No. 1 modern course in the U.S.). Mike asked Dick for his opinion, and Dick looked at what I shaped on the first green and the 17th green with Jim Haley and he said, “I think it’s great.”

And that was really the tipping point. It was only then that Mike was like, “OK, we have all the permits. I own all the land. I can write the check. Why don’t we start construction this fall?” We built the course that fall and the spring of 1998, and the course opened in ’99.

Bandon Dunes
Architect David McLay Kidd (Courtesy of Terras da Comporta/James Hogg)

How exciting was that for you, after three years of doing various levels of work on it, to finally land the job?

I was getting to work on a cool piece of land in the United States. For me, it was the biggest thing in my entire career at that point. I was in my late 20s. It was my moment, everything and more I’d ever possibly hoped for.

However, it wasn’t on anybody else’s radar. Nobody else gave a flying you know what. … It was unknown. We finished the course, and only then was there some attention paid to it.

So, there was the good and the bad, and the bad was going first (as the builder of the first course at Bandon). Who knows what I could have done if I’d have gone second. But the good thing was, there was no expectation.

When I built Bandon, Tom Doak came in, and he had to trump what I’d already done (as Doak built Pacific Dunes, the second course at the resort that opened in 2001). And most people thought what I’d done was pretty darn good. So Tom had high expectations put on his shoulders. I had zero. Nobody had any expectations. They didn’t know what Bandon was, they didn’t know who Mike Keiser was and they sure as hell didn’t know who I was. And so we built the first course with zero eyes on us. Nobody cared. We were out there for 80 hours a week the eight or nine months it took to build. And the only person that cared was Mike. He would fly in every few weeks and wander around. 

Looking back, we’d be going to eat burgers at night, and he’d say what he liked and what he didn’t like, and we’d adjust. And it was really simple. It wasn’t complicated at all. Now it’s a totally different beast – if Mike even thinks about doing something, especially at Bandon, the golf world is intensely curious.

How would you describe the need for ground game to a regular American golfer who doesn’t understand a links? And why was it so important for Bandon to have the ball roll?

I knew intuitively from my birth that golf is a game played through the air and across the ground. It’s not just an aerial game. It just blew my mind when I came to America and it became obvious to me that the game went from three dimensions where I came from, to two dimensions here. Who in the hell wants to play two-dimensional anything?

It didn’t cross my mind when I was building Bandon to build it any other way. I mean, this is what golf is. The ball goes through the air and then it lands, then it does something. It bounces, then it rolls, and then it loses pace and changes direction. And a whole bunch of things happen. It never would have occurred to me to build it any other way.

You must look back at Bandon as the simplest, most fun of times to just go out and build the coolest thing you could think of.

Jim Haley was working as the main shaper on the project, and we were building in the winter. And it doesn’t get light until 8 o’clock, and it gets dark at 4 o’clock. So there is not much daylight. And the weather was not great, sometimes pissing rain, sometimes howling gales, sometimes both together. 

uickly into the job, Jim says to me, “I’ve got to leave at lunchtime today.” I’m like, “What? What the hell? We’re desperately trying to get this thing done, and there’s another storm coming.” 

And he goes, “I haven’t done laundry in like two weeks, and I’ve got no laundry left.” I was like, “I tell you what I’ll do. I can’t operate the equipment. I’m not driving a bulldozer. You bring your laundry in every Wednesday, and in the afternoon I’ll run down to the coin-operated laundry and I’ll do both of our laundries, because I need to do mine, too.”

Can you imagine that today? I live in a different world. It was super simple to the point I spent my Wednesday afternoons in the coin-operated laundry in Bandon doing mine and the elite shaper’s skivvies. 

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Instructor Grant Rogers shares secret to success on the links

Want to play well at Bandon Dunes? Listen to this guy.


(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package on the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – Grant Rogers not only can help your swing, he can help your thinking.

After more than two decades as an instructor at Bandon Dunes, he has helped thousands of players understand the demands – and the opportunities – of links golf. He’s also one of the best storytellers in golf. Just don’t bet against him on a par 3. 

Now the  director of instruction emeritus at the resort, he sat down down to discuss Bandon Dunes in the run-up to its 25th anniversary.

You’re able to help people understand links golf. What is that like, especially people who haven’t played links golf before?

Well, I think that’s part of the challenge of being here. A lot of people are interested in links golf when they get here, but they’re not really sure about how to play it. You know, we really specialize in helping them with links-specific golf shots and some bunker tips that are special, and then some putting ideas that help them.

Grant Rogers teaches a group how to best tackle Bandon Dunes Golf Resort. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What do you teach them? 

We teach them, for one thing, how to hit shots off of tight lies. There’s a lot of tight lies out there and the ball is never elevated by the grass, so it’s a different style of golf. We also teach them to try some shots that maybe they’ve never tried before, like hitting a putter from 50 yards away or something. To get it on the green in a good spot. And how to play in the wind. There’s just a lot of interaction, because a lot of people really want to play well when they’re here, but they’re not really sure how to do It.

Have you had the chance to play much golf with Mike Keiser? 

I’ve played some golf with Mike Keiser. I know he has a passion. One thing that when you play golf with Mike Keiser is, he’s really a fast player. I have this theory that he figures out all the golf shots he’s going to hit on the way over here from Chicago. 

There are some people like Mike Keiser who can actually think their way around the golf course, figure out all the club selections, and then when you play golf with them, those clubs just fly out of the bag. 

How important is it to be able to think your way around on a links course?

Well, I think at a certain point, if you want to play your best golf, you have to be strategic. And I think a lot of people just play offense, but a lot of times you have to play defense – you have to play both. You can’t just be an offensive player on these courses. They’re too complicated. 

What stands out to me is there are a lot of holes here that are not really super long, but they didn’t make them shorter to make them easier. They made them short and complicated. There are some that are really notorious here like the 14th on Trails or the 16th hole at Pacific Dunes, and those holes just clobber golfers all day long. They’re not hard, they’re not long, they’re just very strategic.

If there was one thing you could tell somebody to practice in advance of their trip of a lifetime here, what’s the one shot they could practice at home?

Well, I think the people that I’ve met here, in general they’re serious golfers. But I think they undervalue putting, you know. I think everybody could be a better putter. So I think they should practice their putting a little bit. It’s pretty simple to be a better golfer; all you have to do is be a better putter. But you have to put in the time. 

And in order to be a better putter, you have to putt from better places. So you should practice your chipping and pitching for sure, because sometimes people just think it’s their putter, and it really isn’t. 

Going back to when you first started out here, what were your thoughts in 2000?

The way I found out about Bandon Dunes is kind of interesting. I had a friend, Jim Langley (the longtime pro at Cypress Point in California). Well, he was one of my good friends, and he called me up one day, and he said, I hear they’re going to build one of the best golf courses in Oregon. … And he said, go see it because we’re really interested knowing what’s going on out there. And so anyway, I went to see Bandon Dunes. 

At that point they were taking people on tours just to kind of introduce them to Bandon Dunes, because they were still building it. And I took one look at the fifth hole (a par 4 atop a cliff), and I thought, this is really going to be good. 

And then when they opened the course, I started playing once a week. And then somebody, I guess, told the general manager that there’s some guy that was playing golf here once a week. One day he was waiting for me on 18, and he asked, are you the guy that plays once a week? And I said yeah. He said, are you really a golf pro? And I said, I really am a golf pro. So he said, well, if you want to play once a week, you have to work here. So I looked at this guy and I said, why don’t you give me a job offer? And then he had a job offer in his coat and he just handed it to me, and that’s how I got the job. 

There’s one part of your experience at Bandon that is unique: How many holes-in-one do you have out here?

I have 17 on the Preserve, and I have four more on the big courses, so I have 21. 

You must almost feel like they’re all going to go in now. 

Well, I’m not surprised when they do, I have to admit. I used to really react, you know, and now I might give it a glance or something, but I don’t really have any emotion. It’s really strange, kind of. It doesn’t surprise me when they go in.

How many have you made with the putter on 13? (Players can putt off the tee, down a walking path and onto the green on the steeply downhill No. 13 of Bandon Preserve.)

Five. I think I’ve made five.

We had a group of golf pros that came out for a clinic that we gave them. They came from four states in the Pacific Northwest, and anyway, my area was the 13th tee with a putter, and I was trying to show them how to make a long one. And they were kind of going, well, okay, let’s see you make one. Well, I made one and then my assistant made one, just showing them.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Marie Simonds helps the resort give back

Marie Simonds is focused on helping the Keiser family help the people of Bandon.



(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

Marie Simonds is focused on helping the Keiser family help the people of Bandon and to support local environmental initiatives. She’s also one of the most accomplished amateur golfers at the resort. 

Simonds, now the executive director at the Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation, spoke with Golfweek as the resort’s 25th anniversary approached.

What was your path to Bandon Dunes?

I played golf at Boise State University, and my husband, Jeff (Simonds, the assistant general manager at Bandon Dunes) and I were looking for a different experience. So he had applied to work in a number of different places, Bandon Dunes being one, and we drove all the way out here from Boise. … We get to this little town of Bandon and we’re out playing golf, and we just both fell in love with the area. That was in 2004.

I come from Seattle then moved to Boise, and I’d never lived in a smaller town – I thought Boise was quite small. Then we came here to a town of 2,500 people and I thought, OK, I can make it a couple of years here. We can do this.

There’s a deep appreciation for how incredible the golf is here, how beautiful it is, how well maintained the courses are here, and how you can play them time and time again and there’s always something new. And it’s always something fun.

Bandon Dunes
The Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation has expanded to include supporting environmental efforts, including work on salmon fisheries as seen above, all around the South Coast of Oregon. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What all does your job here entail?

I oversee the charitable giving for the Keiser family and Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.

In 2012, Bandon Preserve (the par-3 course) opened, and the Keiser family dedicated all of the net proceeds from Bandon Preserve to go to community giving. I oversee that and have for about the last four years 

With the start of Shorty’s, the new 19-hole par-3 course (coming online in May of 2024), the ownership – who is incredibly generous – is dedicating net proceeds from the Shorty’s course to the community as well, so that will more than double what is available for community grants.

The focus is primarily on projects that are good for local conservation and ecology in the area, projects that support the local economy and economic development, and community-support projects in which we can just be a good community partner and be a part of the local community. 

How much has been raised through Bandon Preserve so far? 

Since 2012, it’s been just a bit over $8 million. … This is not a rich part of the state in general, so that kind of money has an outsized impact in an area like this.

How have things changed?

We were for the last twelve years called Wild Rivers Coast Alliance. With Shorty’s coming online, and after the first 25 years of the resort, we’ve grown and changed. The Keiser family has been generous in a variety of different ways. Heading into our 25th year, with the increase of funds through Shorty’s, there’s really an opportunity to sort of bring together all of their generosity in one place. 

What’s it been like for the recipients? 

There’s a huge amount of appreciation, I think. … They’re hardworking, and when they’re asking for something, they’re asking for something that they really need. We’ve made it a priority in working on behalf of the Keisers to try and leverage the funds they have made available to the community, so we partner with other funds from around the state of Oregon and elsewhere to see how we can help share the story about the needs of the local communities here and really bring in dollars in addition to the Keisers’ dollars.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Local barber Mick Peters gets to take first cut on each new course

A local barber took the first cut at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.



(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – Mick Peters moved to Bandon in 1962, graduated high school there and worked in a mill to save money for barber school.

After more than five decades cutting hair, he retired several years ago and sold his business, Mick’s Hair Surgeons, to his son Mark, who has added a golf swing studio that is open for rental.

One fortuitous haircut led Mick to the first tee time the day Bandon Dunes Golf Resort opened in 1999. Having become a good-luck charm for the resort, he has had the fortune to hit the opening tee shot on each course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, a tradition that will continue with the opening of the new Shorty’s par-3 course in May.

Peters spoke with Golfweek in the run-up to the resort’s 25th anniversary in May.

Back in the late ’90s, how did you first hear about the new resort?

When I first heard that they were going to build the course out here, I said, “Oh, who’s going to come to Bandon to play golf? There’s no way to get here.” As it turned out, it turned out pretty great. 

How did you land the first tee time?

Shoe (Bob Gaspar) came in for a haircut, and he’d been out there for a while. I knew was going to go out and apply for a job as a caddie master. To make a long story short, he got the job, then later on he was in getting a haircut, and he said, “Boy, that first day is really filling up.” And I said, by any chance, if that first tee time open, I would be interested. He said, “Well, I’m going out there to work, and I’ll give you a call.” So he called me about 20 minutes later or so and said the tee time’s open if you want it. I said, I do. 

I’m not a very good golfer, but it was very interesting. … After I got over the shakes, I had a lot of fun. 

Bandon Dunes
Mick Peters in the barber shop he started decades ago in Bandon, Ore., and since has sold to his son. (Gabe Gudgel/Golfweek)

When they started to open other courses, did you have to call to get a tee time, or did somebody call you and ask if you wanted to try it again? 

They call and ask if we want to be first again. So of course we did, and from then on, they call for each course and we’ve been able to hit the first ball on every course. 

Do you remember your first shot on Bandon Dunes, where it went? 

I think I sliced it a little bit, but I think it stayed in the fairway. So I was happy about that.

From then on at the first, I would just tap the ball and I’d pick it up, and then I’d have Mr. Keiser sign it. Then I would put it in my pocket and put another ball down, so I wouldn’t lose the good ball. 

Do any of the opening shots stand out to you more than the others?

I can’t remember what course it was on, but I just dubbed it, really bad. And it only went about 10 feet. I was so nervous, and Mr. Keiser said, “We take mulligans here, go ahead and put another one down and hit it.” …

I’m pretty nervous at the grand openings, and of course they have gotten bigger since that time. Now there’s a lot more people standing around. Now it’s more of an event than the first one. 

On Bandon Dunes for that first shot, it was raining so hard that there weren’t too many people there. Everybody had raincoats, and it was horrible weather. But we made it around.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Michael Keiser preaches to stop rushing and put guests first

“The slower you go, the better the experience will be for the customers.”



(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

Michael Keiser is one of the many developers who have emulated the Bandon model to great effect, first at Sand Valley in Wisconsin and now beyond.

It doesn’t hurt that he and his brother, Chris, can go straight to the source and ask their dad, Mike Keiser, for advice.

Michael is always thrilled to talk golf, especially about the secret sauce of building courses. He spoke with Golfweek about the resort’s upcoming 25th anniversary.

When did you first visit Bandon, and what are your earliest memories of being out there?

I think it was in the ’80s, within months of my dad’s first visit. … We would go walk with (Warren) Shorty Dow on his trails and spend time with Shorty and (his wife) Charlotte and their dog, Max. We would walk basically from Shorty’s house to what is now No. 14 of Bandon Trails and down to the dunes that are now Shorty’s (the new par-3 course). The gorse wasn’t quite as thick back then, and we’d make it out to the beach. That was sort of a typical day there.

I just remember how kind of cool the place was when you were 8 years old. I mean, I had no concept of golf at that point, besides like the wilderness golf we would play at (what became) the Dunes Club (in Michigan, built by Mike Keiser). We’d find arrowheads out there by the 16th hole of Bandon Dunes, and it was just an adventure. 

You know, my dad in many ways is like a Tom Sawyer figure. He finds an adventure and a game in everything, and he draws in whoever is around him who gets excited about that vision, so it was always just some adventure out there.

Is it fair to make the blanket statement that Bandon Dunes has changed the game of golf?

I think my dad’s greatest legacy is all the developers he has inspired. … There are probably 30 or so places doing it under the Bandon kind of model, their own version of the Bandon model. But there’s never going to be another person who could say they started that movement. 

So Bandon is a great achievement, but I think 50 years from now, the bigger legacy will be all the people he inspired to go find their dream golf site, even if it’s in the middle of the nowhere, and turn it into their dream golf development. Chris and I feel very lucky to be among those followers and disciples. It’s changed the course of golf course development, putting a premium on golf course architecture and sites of beauty. 

Sand Valley Lido
The new Lido at Sand Valley in Wisconsin, developed by Chris and Michael Keiser (Courtesy of Sand Valley/Brandon Carter)

What’s the best advice your dad has given you since you got into the developer’s game? Especially with Sand Valley.

There’s many permutations of it, but it’s to put the golf first. So, there’s many takeaways from that. But put the golf first, second and third.

The way I’m applying that today is that it means go slower. Going fast is not putting the golf first. Even if you find a great site and you say it’s golf first, if you’re going too fast, you’re not putting the golf first. 

So that principle has all sorts of applications, but it really starts with the golf. It means a great site that can be completely uncompromised, and it means a genius architect. And then you have patience and go slow. I think it’s still our secret sauce. 

How often do other developers or resort operators contact you for advice these days?

They do it more and more these days, and I really enjoy it. There are two groups of people, I would say. There’s an established group, and to me it’s sort of a fraternity of developers and we all counsel each other and advise each other, so it’s nice to have. (It’s about having) a sounding board – not just my dad, it’s somebody else who has done it and is doing it. Then there are the new upstarts, and they start reaching out … and I enjoy talking with them, too. 

The best advice I could ever give anybody is just go slowly. The slower you go, the better the experience will be for the customers in every facet of the business. Now it doesn’t mean dillydally or don’t start. I like going fast to the starting line. But if you can build a course over (several) years instead of one year, it can be better. … 

I see a lot of the upstarts are rushing, you know: I gotta get there, I gotta get to market or something. They have debt or investors who pressure them. I try to just counsel them to slow down, and I try to counsel myself to slow down.

What are your observations on how your dad interacts with the staff to incentivize them and keep them interested in what they’re doing?

Part of it is just his charisma. He does have a wonderful positive light that is always on. … He’s always present with people. It might just be a very short, quick interaction, but he gives people his undivided attention when he’s with them.

One important thing I’ve learned, a piece of advice he always gave me, is he said accept every single meeting request or call request. It’s a cultural way of doing things. He does that and I try to do that, and it takes time. But people appreciate being heard. If somebody does reach out, they know that he’s accessible, and that’s rare, I think. 

Having watched all this unfold for 25 years, what else is part of the secret sauce I haven’t asked about or that people might want to know?

In case it hasn’t been said enough, I think we focus on delighting our guests. We just want to delight them, and I know that every single employee at Bandon, that’s what they focus on. We empower them to do that in their own way. 

In our business we’re frugal and efficient, but (our main focus isn’t) the cost schedule or the budget. Our passion is delighting our customers, and we all truly love it. I know that message has gotten through to everybody who works at Bandon. 

It’s so exciting and exhilarating because people coming to Bandon to play golf are planning this out a year or two years in advance. They come in with such excitement and energy that it brings that energy into the resort. You just can’t help but absorb that.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Ken Nice found the chance to grow on the Oregon coast

Is he the basketball coach or the greenskeeper? H didn’t have to choose at Bandon Dunes.



(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – Ken Nice grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, and he wasn’t a golfer. Basketball was his game, and it’s still one of his passions as a coach at the high school in Bandon.

Nice took up golf after college, and with his interest piqued, he has gone on to become one of the leading voices of golf agronomy in the world since starting at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort as an assistant before it opened in 1999, then overseeing the grow-in of the other courses. He is now the senior director of agronomy at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.

He spoke with Golfweek in the run-up to the resort’s 25th anniversary.

When you started at Bandon, what was the environment like? 

March of ’99. Even for me at the time, it seemed big. The previous courses I had worked at were Trysting Tree in Corvallis and then Astoria Golf and Country Club. So we had a full-time staff of about eight or nine at Astoria. I came here and all of a sudden there were like 30 guys and a brand-new maintenance facility, a brand-new golf course in Bandon Dunes with big scale compared to a lot of what I has seen up to that point. Initially I was just blown away by the place. 

What’s interesting, 10 months later we got the fire at (the yet unbuilt) Pacific Dunes that wiped out all the gorse (which is extremely flammable and is a threat along much of the coast around Bandon). Tom Doak was able to envision the routing much better because the contours were now exposed. Up to that point it was just a sea of gorse, so you had to completely rely on topo maps. So Doak comes out and really refines his routing, and then all the sudden Mr. Keiser said the Renaissance guys (the company Doak founded) and Tom, they’re not doing anything this winter so they thought they’d just build some holes. We built 11 holes by June. It was a blur. 

And I was never given the actual construction superintendent job, for a while. I just acted like I had it. At some point they were just like, “Well, he’s been doing it, so …” I actually owe Tom Doak a lot because he was probably the first person to really champion my cause and my efforts. 

You got to work with Tom Doak again at Old Mac. That must have been like a familiar handshake. 

Getting to work with Tom for the second time, and also Jim Urbina – Jim was kind of the on-site designer at Pacific, too, ran the construction – I have learned so much from Tom. I could never do what Tom does. When you get to work with Tom or Bill Coore or David McLay Kidd, these guys put together these amazing routings. 

Just to be a fly on the wall with Tom, going through the process twice with him and also the Punchbowl (putting course), I have learned a ton from him about what’s right and what’s wrong. Aesthetically, I think a lot of time we all know what looks good and what doesn’t, but how do you create that? 

Working on a links-type golf course must have been a different experience for you, all the way to the roots of the turf? 

It’s kind of interesting that what got me into golf, my passion, was watching (British) Open Championships. So I saw these kinds of burnt-out, brownish, fast-playing and kind of raw and rugged golf courses, and that was what motivated me. That was my inspiration to get into golf. 

One of my first jobs out of Oregon State was at Astoria Golf and Country Club, and it’s on the North Coast. It’s a sandy, ocean course – not right on the ocean, but it’s very old-school. If you were to go look at it, you would say the contours are amazing and very cool. So I actually sought out the most links-like experience to start my career, and it was Astoria. 

Bandon Dunes
From left, Phil Friedmann, Bill Coore, Ken Nice and Mike Keiser walk the site of the Sheep Ranch during construction. (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What’s it been like working for Mike Keiser all these years as he tries to build a Dornoch of the United States? How do you go about it? 

First, I can’t really even say how thankful and how much gratitude I have toward the opportunity to work with him. The relationship, like all relationships, builds over time – you have to prove yourself. He’s always understated with his comments. It’s not like he’s overly effusive, but certain comments mean a ton, you know. 

For me, the biggest comment he ever made to me that probably changed our relationship but also let me know how he felt about me, was when I left Pacific Dunes and went to Bandon Trails. At the time, Pacific Dunes was dialed in, it was amazing and I could have just lived out a career as the superintendent at Pacific Dunes. 

But then I had the opportunity to go work with Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and build Trails with them and do the grow-in there. Mike Keiser and I were driving around the jobsite, and he said he respected the move that I made to come over to Trails, and that I could have rested on my laurels but I took a chance. He said that “was a strong move, a confident move and the right move.” 

That statement to me kind of let me know I was on the right path with him in terms of his confidence. After that he’s trusted me to lead the projects here forward. … That’s a huge honor for me and something I don’t take lightly. 

Speaking of taking a risk, 25 years ago nobody was building a resort like this. The whole place is a risk. How does all that stack up in building what Bandon is today? 

Because I have been here all this time and been a part of every change that has occurred, it’s probably not as impactful to me. I’ve always said: You know the movie “Men in Black,” they have that thing that erases your memory? It would be pretty cool to come here for a first time again. Somebody zappy-thing me, then I come to Bandon Dunes for a week. That would be great. 

It’s a different place entirely. I never envisioned it being this massive, this many courses. When you start on a project, how many times have you been in a golf development where you see the first one but they’re talking four or five more courses and tennis courts, you know? And then something peters out and momentum stops and it never really comes to fruition. 

Whereas Bandon Dunes has always been like, Mr. Keiser is just like, “We’re starting the construction on this,” and boom, next thing we’re going. That kind of pace, of being able to continue to work and have opportunities to develop some of these courses with such a great group of designers and teams that we’ve actually had come through here – I’m thankful every day for this job. 

What surprises your guests the most about these links? 

Our clients are so varied, you have some men and women come here that know what links golf is all about. And that’s their deal, so they’re all in.

But then there’s some that are shocked, you know. We get the comment about no grass on the fairways, the lies are too tight, you know? It depends on perception. If somebody’s coming from Florida thinking that, you know, they’re going to have similar conditions to what they’re used to, it’s kind of a shock to them. Adapting to a new style of golf is tough in a crash course kind of situation.

In town, are you known as the golf guy or the basketball coach? 

Well, I’m certainly thankful to have been able to coach for 22 years at Bandon High. That’s another whole side of the deal in terms of being thankful. That’s a lot of kids and family connections in the town that are meaningful, being integrated in the town.

It’s probably 50-50. Some of them probably don’t know what I do out here. I would like to say, the Keiser family has always been hugely supportive of my coaching and being part of the community and having involvement. You know, being a Bandon guy.

Bandon Dunes 25th anniversary: Ben Cowan-Dewar proves the Bandon model works other places

Ben Cowan-Dewar was inspired by Mike Keiser: ‘No one since Old Tom Morris has had more impact.’



(Editor’s note: Bandon Dunes Golf Resort is celebrating its 25th anniversary and Golfweek Travel Editor Jason Lusk put together a comprehensive package for the occasion, complete with Q&As of pivotal people in and around the operation. To see the entire package of stories, click here.)

BANDON, Ore. – Ben Cowan-Dewar, who dreamed of building a far-away golf resort in Nova Scotia, Canada, has learned much by studying Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon.

The Canadian developer has partnered with Mike Keiser on several of the best new golf course properties in recent decades, most notably the two highly ranked courses at Cabot Cape Breton. Cowan-Dewar has in recent years expanded to Scotland, Saint Lucia, Florida and soon western Canada.

Cowan-Dewar spoke with Golfweek about the inspiration and financial backing he derived from Keiser, the developer of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which in May celebrates its 25th anniversary. 

How much have Bandon Dunes and Mike Keiser influenced your career?

It would be hard to imagine Bandon having a more profound effect on many people’s lives than it did on mine. When I first went there (in 2001), I was a lover of golf courses who went to this far-off place and played Bandon Dunes and Pacific. I think it gave me the ability to dream, you know. I’ve been dreaming since I was a kid about building a golf course, but I think to see something like that on the coast, it sort of gave me a dream. …

There’s no chance I would have even been able to undertake Cabot 19 years ago had I not seen Bandon. I think Bandon gave me the ability to dream really big dreams. And then Mike, in his partnership and mentorship, really helped fulfill them. It had an absolutely profound effect.

Bandon Dunes Cabot
Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser and Cabot founder Ben Cowan-Dewer (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

What was your first conversation about Cabot with Mike Keiser like?

We were two years from partnering, and he was busy with trying to get Trails open. And, you know, he said he had bitten off more than he could chew in remote golf. That partly was a natural defense for a man who was probably assaulted on a weekly basis by some young buck who wanted to build a golf course in the middle of nowhere.

At the end of that conversation, which I call a very polite brush-off, he said, “Hey, wait, you’ve got to get more land, because you won’t be able to buy land for a second course (Cabot Cliffs) after the first course (Cabot Links).”

In 2007 he partnered with me and made the dream come true, and from those humble beginnings, we built on that foundation. 

He’s been an exemplar, a mentor, a partner, a father figure, and I’ve been blessed to know him.

Is it fair to say that no other modern golf developers had the impact that Mike has had? 

I would say, not even close. I would go further than that to say no one since Old Tom Morris has had more impact.

It’s been only 25 years, and if you think about Barnbougle (in Tasmania, and in which Keiser invested before it opened in 2004), and you think about Cabot, those were two that he was directly related to early on. Then you think about all of the other stuff that’s been built in that period of time since. 

I just can’t think of anybody else. You said “modern” but I would drop the modern and just say, who’s had a greater impact on golf development in history? I can’t think of anybody. 

What are some main lessons you’ve learned from Bandon or Keiser?

I have a book of what I call my Keiserisms. Mike has this unbelievable ability to make things seem very simple, even if they are anything but. I think when you have the success that he has – he’s had two very different types of businesses (golf and greeting cards), and he’s been a global leader in two different sectors. Some of that is getting people to follow you, and he has that in spades, but he just has so many really simple truisms. 

One of my favorites is to do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you’re going do it. That means if you say you’re going to have something on Tuesday, you don’t wait and have it on Wednesday. Well, that sounds pretty simple but it’s a hard thing to live by.

Simply being someone that people want to work for, to me that is one of his greatest hallmarks. You see that with all of the great architects in the world that have lined up and wanted to work with him. 

And he just has the ability to draw the very best out of people. 

Bandon Dunes Cabot
Mike Keiser was an early investor in Cabot in Nova Scotia, Canada (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort)

So many developers and courses have tried to follow the Bandon model, but few have been able to pull it off as well. What do they miss? 

I think there’s a couple of things. One, Mike said at Cabot in the early days that Cabot will be different than Bandon in 20 ways, he just didn’t know which 20 ways yet. For a man that had done the impossible at Bandon, he wasn’t trying to carbon copy it and say this is a franchise model.

And so I think whenever you’re trying to copy an original, it’s probably pretty hard. He had the original, and he didn’t go and try and copy it. He tried to make everything authentic to the locations he worked in.

He obviously focused on a couple of really key ingredients, but I think like any really good business that is consumer-facing, it’s really about delivering to your customer the very best product you can. People can lose sight of that and have their own vision, and it’s just not as customer-centric as Mike would be in his business.

What’s it like to play golf with Mike? 

He’s fast. He’s good a player too, but he’s fast more than he’s good. And that suited me quite well. He is competitive, and he loves the competition, but above all else he is fast.

On the opening day of Cabot, we stood on the first tee and saw every golfer tee off, like he has done at Bandon. So we didn’t get to play until the next morning. 

The next morning we were playing with the premier of Nova Scotia – for you, he was the equivalent of a governor – and Mike told the premier, let’s play at 8. And Mike was on the tee at 7:41, and he said, “Do we need to wait for him?” I said, “Well, he is the premier.” Mike’s ball was in the air before 8, and the premier was running down to meet us having seen us out his window. So speed trumps all.