Tag: David McLay Kidd

(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. 

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. 

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.

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. 

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

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 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.

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.

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

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.

(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.

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.

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.

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.