January 11, 2024 • 47 mins
In this throwback podcast you’ll hear part 1 of the building of Bandon Dunes, as told by Mike Keiser, the owner, David McLay Kidd and his father, Jimmy, the architects, and Josh Lesnik and his father, Steve, who won the bid to manage it. Bandon Dunes, the original course at what is now the best pure golf destination in America, and arguably the world, was an outlier that opened in 1999. Like Sand Hills in Mullen, Nebraska, which opened in 1995, to build a golf course in a remote location using a minimalist architect or architects was anything but what was being built in America in the 90s.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Mike was relatively quiet.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
He was basically listening to what everyone was saying, and
everyone seemed to be happy to be there, even before
they had even before they'd hit a shot, they were
delighted to be there.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Maybe it was.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The just the atmosphere of an opening day and a
golf course.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But when they came.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Back in, Mike Goodness, the comments and the clubhouse, and
the atmosphere in the clubhouse was just out of this world.
You could almost even today, I could you can feel
it here in the back of your next standing up
because you knew that something had happened to you in
a place which was out in the middle of nowhere.
It was an incredible day.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Put another log on fire.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Nobody here is getting tired. Welcome to the fire pit
with Matt Chanella.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Welcome back. Settle in this story is one that means
a little more to me than most. After all. On
May twelfth, twenty seventeen, we named our son Bandon, which,
according to some research by my wife, means cooperative, courteous,
and she says people named Bandon tend to be considerate. Apparently,
(01:21):
peace and harmony are of the utmost importance to someone
named Bandon. If you've been to the resort or have
met my son, you'd say most of the above is true.
As far as our sun goes. It's a work in
progress in terms of the destination. I've been covering the
development of Abandon Dunes since two thousand and one, and
I've been going there every year for my annual Buddies trip,
(01:43):
the Uncle Tony Invitational, since two thousand and seven. The
fire pit at Bandon Dunes in the middle of the
Grove cottages, the nights I've had there, the stories I've
told and heard there, that was the inspiration for this podcast.
Today you'll hear part one of the building of Bandon
Dunes as told by Mike Kaiser, the owner, David McLeay
(02:04):
Kidd and his father Jimmy, the architects, and Josh Lesnik
and his father Steve, who won the bid to manage it.
I interviewed Mike Kaiser on his own David and Josh together,
and Steve Lesnik and Jimmy Kidd together. Bandon Dunes, the
original course at what is now the best pure golf
destination in America and arguably the world, was an outlier
(02:26):
that opened in nineteen ninety nine. Like sand Hills and Mulla, Nebraska.
The story we told in the previous episode of this podcast,
to build a golf course in a remote location using
a minimalist architect or architects was anything but what was
being built in America. In the nineties, Mike Kaiser of
Recycled Paper Greetings in Chicago started developing courses with the
(02:50):
Dunes Club, a private but non pretentious nine hole course
built in the sand of New Buffalo, Michigan. Kaiser was
then brought in to invest a little money into what
Young's Cap was building in Nebraska.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
My model has always been even though Dornick and St.
Speaker 6 (03:04):
Andrews old are important, Pine Valley has always been my
model because it's in the US. It's not remote, but
it's sort of a hole in the wall place and
it's totally natural, built on sand dunes. It doesn't have
an ocean, but magnificent sand dunes. So that was my
motivator and model for the Dunes Club. And when I
(03:25):
saw sand Hills that was in the same genre as
Pine Valley, and before we knew.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
It, Dick was full.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
That gave me a lot of courage out there in
Mandon because that was the missing ingredient the courage to
build something in Bandon.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Or Kaiser says that when sand Hills got one hundred
and fifty members in Mullen, that's the mitosis of modern
minimalism in America. As Bill Corr said, a watershed moment.
But what if it didn't work? Why was this worth
the risk? For Mike Kaiser, you.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Know, Josh and I discussed you know what happens if
no one comes, or what happens if we break even?
Because we all had bats the first year how many
rounds we would do, and twelve thousand rounds is break even.
And most of our bats about how many rounds we
would do were less than twelve thousand rounds. So in
my group, no one thought we would break even. And
(04:20):
their discussion, I remembered brabi than the Ninetyfore, Well, if
it doesn't work, I'll give it three years for it
to catch on, and if it doesn't, we'll turn.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
It into a sheep ranch, which is a bit ironic
considering this podcast is going live on the eve of
the opening of the Sheep Ranch, the sixth course at
Bandon Dune's another Billcore and Ben Crenshaw designed. Their story
is told in episode six of The fire Pit. But
we start this story in January of nineteen ninety one,
(04:50):
Mike Kaiser's first trip to Bandon, Oregon, five hundred miles
north of San Francisco, almost three hundred miles south of Portland.
Kaiser is standing on what's now the fourteenth tea of
bandoned trails, looking out over Gorse choked dunesland out to
the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
I went to the lookout site which you've seen with
Shorty and Charlotte Dowe, the caretakers of thirty five years
of the property who knew the property better than anyone,
and he said, if you're looking for a golf course,
Shorty said, I'll take you to the spot, and the
spot is marked today is the spot that Shorty down
took Mike Kayser and I looked out and said, this
(05:27):
is it. There can't be another site. It was just
I later toured the land, which was twelve hundred acres,
but just from that lookout site it had everything. It
had beautiful sand dunes that had the ocean. You just
knew it was as good as Dornick, or in the
same brat as Dornick and Belly Bunion without knowing the
(05:47):
specific so that one tour with Shorty and Charlotte was.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
All I needed to see.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
So then all I had to do was buy it
from Duke Watson and Seattle Washington, and yet David Kidd
and his father on board to do a routing.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Before we get to the kids, I circled back on
the cost.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
They were asking five.
Speaker 6 (06:11):
It had been in the market for four and a
half years, according to Shorty Dow and a broker, so
I felt that there were there weren't any buyers, that
I was probably the only buyer, and therefore Anne decided
that you would be much more effective if I was
seeking a fifty percent discount.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I went there in person.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
So I flew out to see Duke Watson, the owner,
along with his two brothers in law, and said, Duke,
I don't have enough money to do this project, so
I can only pay you half of what you're asking.
If you're asking five, I'll give you two and a half.
And he said, let us let us go caucus. So
they went into these three there were in their eighties
or the old guys, go into another room and came
(06:51):
back fifteen minutes and I said, well take it.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
They became big fans.
Speaker 6 (06:56):
That Duke in particular came down at numerous times and said,
you know, it was always dream to build a resort,
and you've gone and done it.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Now that he has the land and we know Kaiser's inspirations,
he was looking for some authenticity in terms of the
course itself, which is about the time Kaiser had a
conversation with Rick Summers, who worked for Glen Eagle's Golf
Developments in Scotland and worked with David McLay Kidd, who
was in his mid twenties.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
And in that conversation, Rick said, why don't you hire
a Scottish architect if you're trying to build a Scottish
links course, And Mike said, I would, but there aren't any.
Speaker 8 (07:32):
The old died one hundred years ago.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
And then Ian Ferrier, also of Glen Eagle's Golf Developments,
made a trip to the States to try and drum
up some business.
Speaker 6 (07:41):
And Ian came to see me and said, if you're
looking for someone to do a links golf course, which
is how I defined it, there's only one group for you,
and that's the Kid family. David Kidd and his father
Jimmy know what they're doing. Come on over to Glen
Eagle's and we'll show.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
You entered Jimmy Kidd, David's father and the director of
agronomy at Glen and Eagles in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
We will bring Mike to Scotland. We will base them
at Glen Eagles Hotel. We will visit Irish Links, we
will visit Scottish Links. We will convince Mike that we
know everything about Link's golf, how it should play, how
it should look, what kind of vegetation and such light.
And we got to we got down to North Berwick.
It was the very last one that we played, and
(08:22):
we played the second hole. Mike pushed one onto the
beach and he said, well that's set, I'll drop another ball.
Speaker 8 (08:27):
I said, no, you want, Mike go down there and
play it.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeahlish As you can't play it, I said, get down
on the beach and play it back.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
He knoked it back to nine feet and hold the
pup for a three. And at that point I knew
had the project.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
I was totally captivated by Jimmy Kidd, who's my age
in particular, who convinced me that he knew everything you
could passively know about golf and Scarland and especially link Scott.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Jimmy Kidd was a bit of a legend. His son
David was still leaning on.
Speaker 7 (08:59):
His d You know, my father was in a group
along with Walter Woodsits and Andrews, George Brown at Turnbree
and I'm merry out of others that he came up
through the ranks with. And my childhood was staying at
these golf courses, with these superintendents and golf crews. I
(09:19):
completely immersed in Scottish golf.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Josh Lesnik was trending to work
in his father's business.
Speaker 9 (09:28):
You know, I grew up in the golf business as well.
I mean he grew up with superintendents, and I grew
up more on the service side, working at Kemper Lakes,
which was, you know, one of the first upscale daily
fee golf courses opened in the in around nineteen seventy nine,
nineteen eighty, I think all eighteen holes open and I
(09:48):
worked there in summers of high school and college.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Because services is.
Speaker 9 (09:52):
A way that my dad, the founder of Kemper Sports,
always felt that we could differentiate ourselves.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Stars haven't aligned yet, but we're getting there. The kids
receiving an invite to Kaiser's land in Abandon. That's a
big step.
Speaker 7 (10:08):
And my father and I flew out in July of
nineteen ninety four to Bandon Dun's and we spent a
week on the site with Shorty Dow who just passed
a year ago or so, who was the caretaker of
the sixteen hundred acres if I remember right, that Mike
had purchased, and my father and I spent a week
(10:29):
going around the land. My dad and I were super
excited at what the possibilities were. We thought the piece
of land that Mike had had huge potential, and we
thought maybe somehow we were sneaking under the wire into
America for a developer that some way, somehow was going
(10:50):
to hire these complete unknowns to build a golf course.
But what happened was during that week, Shorty kept asking
my dad and I for our business cards. I mean
he kept asking and asking and asking, and so it
became obvious that he was collecting business cards. So I said, sure,
I'll give you a business card, but I want to
(11:12):
see your collection. And when I saw the collection he had,
my heart sank because the collection had all of my
heroes in it. I mean, Mike had had everybody out there,
you know, we weren't sneaking under anywire. I mean, this
guy is It was obvious. He was pretty sophisticated, and
he was able to get Jack Nicholas, Tom Fasio, Pete Dye,
(11:36):
whoever he wanted on the phone, and could have hired
any of them. So it was pretty obvious to my
dad and I that we were in a competition and
we were way the hell out of our league, especially me.
I'm twenty six years old and I haven't done Jack,
you know.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Pausing David's narrative for a second. Going back to Josh,
where the Lesnicks were also eyeing for the contract to
work with Kaiser.
Speaker 9 (12:03):
There was a bit of a competition as to who
was going to manage bandon Dunes. The company David worked
for at the time that he mentioned, Glen Eagles Golf,
also had a management arm or said they had a
management arm. Not sure what all they were managing, but
there was a bit of a bakeoff between Kemper Sports
and Glen Eagles Golf. It happened at our sister company, Kemper. Lesnik,
(12:26):
the public relations agency, has an office downtown we met
Mike there. Glenn Eagles was there. David wasn't in that meeting.
I was there just watching my dad do his thing.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Which is he's a phenomenal salesperson.
Speaker 9 (12:39):
And thankfully Mike selected Kemper Sports to manage it, and
he called me the next week after that meeting and said,
I'd like you to think about moving out there.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
Steve Lesnig founded Kemper Sports in nineteen seventy eight with
a focus on golf course development and various aspects of management.
Steve reflects on k Are picking his son as the
first general manager of Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 10 (13:04):
It was another a great insight of Mike we all
know he has so many because he recognized that Josh
had a passion for the game that equaled his own.
And Matt, as you well know, his extraordinary people's skills
(13:24):
really contributed to the development of Bandon doings.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
Meanwhile, the kids, specifically David, was back in Bandon and
he wasn't having an easy time coming to terms with
their odds to get the job of building the golf course.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
I took a little bit of a fans to the
whole thing. I figured that my dad and I as
these you know, colloquial skulls out there on this piece
of land with this mega rich guy from Chicago going
to fly in in his private jet. You know, we
were just entertainment. I mean, there's no way this guy's
going to hire us. So I take it upon myself
(14:04):
to be blunt, I mean just kind of brutally blunt
with them, because I figure he's not going to hire
us anyway, so what the hell? So I paint out
this scenario that if you really want to build a
real links course in America, in this place that's miles
from anywhere, then you need to be authentic. But I
(14:26):
know you won't do it. I mean, I've seen what
links golf is in America. Links golf in America is
Peble Beach, with everyone driving golf cars and playing into
poll A greens with perfectly trimmed bunker edges. You know,
I pick up any American golf magazine and every new
course is called a links course, and they're not links
at all. They're not even close to a links course.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
He's very entrepreneurial, he could say brash. I would say
entrepreneurial and cantident.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
Call it what you want. But David brought all of
it to a pitch meeting at the c Star Guesthouse
in downtown Bandon.
Speaker 7 (15:00):
And I gave what would be today a PowerPoint presentation,
but I did it with poster boards and a sharpie pens,
and I wrote down on these poster boards, you know,
like no cart paths, and make you know they would walk,
and that the fairways would be uneven and there'd be
pot bunkers, and the clubhouse shouldn't be on the water's edge.
(15:22):
It should, you know, the best green should be on
the water's edge.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I said to David, if we deviate at any anytime
from offering Mike anything more than a true and I
mean a true Links experience, Irish Links experience here, you
will not hire us as architects.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
He will go elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I mean.
Speaker 7 (15:42):
It was completely the antithesis of American golf development circa
the nineteen nineties. It was everything that golf was not,
and lo and behold, it pretty much was exactly what
the audience was there to hear. That was I was
pushing an open door with Mike. That was actually what
(16:02):
his intentions were.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
I think it was a meeting of eight or so
of us who'd flown out with me from Chicago, eight
friends and avid golfers and Goersionado's who were there basically
to say, you've got to be nuts to do this.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And I think David Kidd gave his presentation to convince them,
to convince me that it wasn't such a crazy idea.
He kedn, you know, how do we get hired? AIKIDN,
Do I really want to do this?
Speaker 5 (16:33):
In theory, the kids had the job and that was
because of their commitment to building true links, and Kemper
Sports had the job to manage it. But why does
Josh Lesnik, the age of twenty nine think he was
Kaiser's chosen one.
Speaker 9 (16:47):
I think in the end, maybe the way Mike feels
if Kemper Sports was going to manage it and the
owner was willing, the owner of Kemper Sports was willing
to send his son out there, that they weren't going
to let me fail. They were going to get me
all the support I needed to be successful opening.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
That resort.
Speaker 9 (17:08):
And that's, you know, what our company's all about is
supporting the general managers to be successful. And I had
a ton of support, whether it be accounting, legal operations, policies, procedures,
all the things that maybe weren't my straints mine probably
more in building the relationships and communications and building the
brand abandoned Dunes. But you know, I think he was
(17:31):
just like, well, the company's not going to let Josh fail.
Let's send let's send him out there.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Steve Lesnick agrees.
Speaker 10 (17:37):
By having my son go out this was going to
have my full attention and the full attention of the organization,
because we certainly were not going to let Josh fail
or not be successful, or not.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Hit the ball out of the park.
Speaker 10 (17:51):
I know we've all watched the last dance these last
couple of weeks, and it is true that in a
way organization win championships. But you know what, the players play,
and Josh played, and those first three years were crucial
to all of us, to the success of all of us,
the reputation of all of us, and he did a
(18:11):
great job, and I'm very, very proud of him.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Like I said a few minutes ago, in Theory, the
kids had the job to build the course. Josh the
GM and David the Kid explained.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I'm not sure Mike ever gave him the job.
Speaker 9 (18:25):
Every time he came out there, he was like, let's
see what he can do, and he just kept living
up to the task. Every time he had an idea
about a hole in the route and this and that,
Mike liked it more and more and gave him more
and more of a I.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Mean, David, is that how you kind of remember it?
Speaker 8 (18:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (18:43):
I wrote Mike a proposal that basically sold him my
time on a day basis a day rate, and Mike
sent me back a fax that was on recycled paper
and hated no paper, and it said, Okay, let's go,
and that's all it said, classic Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
David had never done a golf course. He just had
this lineage that I thought, as long as his father,
Jimmy was involved, it would work out okay, And so
it was. Jimmy was a great help to David. They
came over and bushwacked through the gorse plants and came
up with this routing that was pretty good. Not good
(19:28):
enough to build, but pretty good. And they were the architects.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
We heard why Josh thought he got hired, So why
does David think he got to build bandits?
Speaker 7 (19:38):
I think Mike hired me for what I didn't know,
You know, I didn't know how it screwed up because
I never built much jails.
Speaker 8 (19:46):
What I had was this extremely.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Raw in instinct for what golf is in the British Isles,
and so it wasn't uncommon to me I had. I
barely played many golf courses driving a golf cart on
a concrete path, much less built one. So I didn't
know how to do that. I hadn't built a bunch
(20:10):
of lakes with fountains on a golf course, much less
played one.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
As for kids compensation, he was getting a daily fee.
Speaker 7 (20:18):
It was about a couple of hundred bucks. I think
something in there. But I was working for a company,
so I lived on site at Bandon through the whole
entire build, so pretty much it was like eight or
nine months I was on site, and that year I
made forty thousand.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
That year.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
You think Mike Kaiser got a steal the best deal ever?
Speaker 5 (20:44):
Did Mike Kaiser on the team he had assembled.
Speaker 6 (20:48):
David had never designed a golf course, and Josh had
never managed a golf course or anything. So I had
dude talk about rookies, real rookie.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
But David had his dad Jimmy.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
Too sort of hubbler, a little bit and guide him,
and David then didn't find in his own and Josh's dad,
Steve Lesnick, was president and owner of Kemper Sports. I
figured that the dad there, Steve Lesnick, would not let
his son fail, and in fact, Josh did great on
his own, but that remained in my mind a big
(21:22):
thing that Kemper Sports was not going to let this
be anything other than a great success, and they worked
hard at it.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Josh and David, both in their twenties, would meet on
what would be the Twelfth Hole abandoned dunes about two
hundred yards from the coastline.
Speaker 9 (21:37):
Because I remember my first visit flying out with Mike
and we basically went went straight to what is now
the twelfth Tee to meet you, and Mike said, well,
this looks like a part three. What are we going
to do here? He said, well, we're standing on this dune.
This is going to be the tea. That part that
(21:58):
looks like a green right there, that's going to be
agreed And Mike, well, what are you going to do
in between? He said, not much, maybe just like one
really deep bunker. And you know that's the Twelfth Hole
today as it stands there, And.
Speaker 6 (22:16):
I said, well, I'm in the greeting card guy, greeting
card business guys, and I know the power of a
visual and this is a great photograph. And Josh, take
a photo of this right now before we build it,
because after we build it, it's going to be a
bat News photograph. And we're going to take that photo
and we're going to make reading cards and send them
to everyone we know in the golf business. And there
(22:37):
was our initial press release that not hard on copy.
It was just a photo of number twelve and the
copy was for additional information called jeshuas.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Josh was busy getting the word out. David was busy
in the dunes.
Speaker 7 (22:53):
The sequence we worked through was we started on the
holes that were on the ocean, so twelve, fifteen, and
sixteen were the first one that got built, and those
are iconic gouffles. So I think that Josh and I
both were we lacked hesitation. We were both sort of
(23:14):
point and shoot at that point in our lives. We
did not have any doubts in what we were doing.
We didn't I guess we were too dumb to know
the risks that we were involved in or the how
it could all go wrong.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
We were.
Speaker 7 (23:29):
It was straight point and shoot. I mean we were like, Okay,
I'm going in this direction, lead follower, get this out
of my way. I mean, I'm going this way. And
we both had our own little teams that were happy
to follow. I mean, if we were both Godfathers and
the Mafia, we had the group around us that would
have died for us.
Speaker 8 (23:50):
At that point.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Mike Kaiser stayed close to the process.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
Truly, and it was David and Jimmy and then later
Jimmy Withdrew once we had a routing and it was
pretty much all David and his brash approach, and you know,
I approved everything and liked what I saw, hold by
hold by hold.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Josh remembers the thirteenth Pole as being something he had
never seen before.
Speaker 9 (24:13):
You had, you know, an American shaper, and no one
could believe that you wanted to leave that fairway with
all the dunes in it, and you know, having David
there was, I mean, it was so inspirational for the
whole project.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
But that fair every time I walk.
Speaker 9 (24:30):
Down that fairway, I think about those discussions and how
you and Jimmy, your dad were wanted to leave the
dudes there no, it's unlike any other American fairways. You're
saying that may be common in Scotland, but one very
common here. And that's just one of the so many
ways you had effect on that property in that project.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Really a neat memory.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
I asked David of the original routing that got them
the job, what if anything changed during the build?
Speaker 7 (25:00):
Well, the first routing, the back nine never really changed.
Holds ten through eighteen were on the very first layouts
and they pretty well got built. The front nine got
completely changed. The original parcel that Mike had bought, the
northern boundary was basically the existing third hole. The third
(25:25):
hole was on the plan, but everything north of that
did not exit.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
Mike didn't own that land.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I hope he told you about David Schumann and the
land next door. He might not have said this, but
David and his father's original layout and the twelve hundred
acres was about three holes short of being really good.
And I told David that and he was sort of
respond so I've used a bob a land. What do
(25:53):
you want me to do? And I said, I don't know.
You're the golf court, you're the golf architect. You think
of it virtually at that moment it was you know,
it was weeks and weeks later our neighbor to the
north declared bankruptcy. It enabled meet to buy it and
to give to David what became.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Number five, six, seven, and eight the really good holes.
Those in particular were gifts from big golf guys. Who
would have thought that within months of having this log
jam with David Kid that the land would present itself.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
We know Bandon Dunes now as pristine minimalism, with picturesque imperfections,
natural nuances and such a soulful approach to the game
as it was meant to be. But back then, I
wondered if there was much of a social life in
and around this budding destination.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
It's a small resort town. It wasn't even a resort
town at that time. It was becoming a resort town.
And when you live in a small resort town and
your David Kid or you're Josh, you're kind of always on.
I mean, you're always that's you're representing Bandon Dunes, You're
representing Mike Kaiser. So work never ends. Fortunately, as it grew,
(27:11):
you know, David was surrounded by the people that work
for him, I was surrounded by the people that work
for us, and.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
You know, maybe there's one local bar in town.
Speaker 8 (27:22):
Where you could go Lloyd's abandon.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Lloyd's abandoned, which I heard reopened. I haven't been back there,
but goodness, I heard it reopen.
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Everyone had been going to the Arcade, which is owned
by a family that works at the resort, and a
couple of caddies bought it.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
And it's a great place, the Arcade Tavern.
Speaker 9 (27:41):
But back then it was Lloyd's, and uh, you know,
I had a house and would open my house to anybody,
and you know, so it's just small resort town and
you kind of live and work and play with those
that you work with.
Speaker 7 (27:56):
Wait, there was there was a law of drinking went
on by then was a lot. When I was building
the golf course in the heat of battle in late
ninety seven and then through ninety eight, there was nothing there.
There wasn't even a road up onto the golf course,
so we were hiking through sand to get out onto
(28:17):
the golf course every day. And then sometimes I would
drive up to Empire while the guys were working and
I'd buy a bushel of oysters or some tuna and
I'd bring it back to the site and I'd build
a fire below the sixteenth Green. We did this many times,
and I would barbecue the oysters, cut up the tuna,
(28:40):
put cold beers down there, and then after work people
would drive down where the sheep branches now break out
onto the beach, and their pickup trucks come around and
park underneath what is now sixteen Green and we would
party there until I got dark or very dark, and
we'd be hitting golf balls down the beach and drinking
(29:01):
beers and eat oysters. Uh.
Speaker 8 (29:04):
And that went on quite a bit.
Speaker 9 (29:06):
Yeah, and then I would I would get a call
the next day from Mike Kaiser about what was what
happened the night before, because as David mentioned earlier, there
was a caretaker was also the sheriff of the property,
Shorty Dow and his wife Charlotte. But Shorty would monitor
everything that was going on, and no matter how hard
(29:26):
I tried, I couldn't get him to call me with
the information.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
He would call Mike and say.
Speaker 9 (29:31):
Oh, yeah, the you know, the Scottish geyser, and David
would have his interns and you know, there were a
lot of fun things that happened down there on the beach.
I'm sure I wasn't. I wasn't always invited in those
parties or didn't know about.
Speaker 7 (29:42):
Him, Josh, you needed plausible deniability.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
And uh sure, you know.
Speaker 9 (29:48):
Then I'd get a call the next day from Mike
about something that might have happened on the beach, and
I was supposed to be responsible for this place, but
I think it was It was more fun and nothing
too bad happened, and a lot of a lot of
good came out of it. So some not so good
you guys at one of your oyster clam bakes or
whatever you guys were doing on the beach, Simon drove
(30:12):
the old Blue into the ocean and was surfing on
the hood of this pickup truck, and the pickup truck
went out to see and Simon jumped in the water
and was was okay. He came to the beach and
Shorty had watched this whole thing happen. And I got
a call the next day from Mike Kaiser saying, where
(30:35):
is my pickup truck?
Speaker 8 (30:38):
Yeah, that wasn't such a good one. That was a
tough one.
Speaker 9 (30:43):
I got the call the next day, like you know,
and Mike was probably messing with me, like Josh, you're
supposed to be in charge.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
You know what's good? Look what happened on your watch.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
Fuck.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
One of the mornings, he and Charlotte were driving on
the beach, which they always did, and Charlotte looked out
the window, looking towards the ocean, towards the orient, and said,
isn't Shorty, isn't that Troy's truck? And Troy was our
superintendent and he had a truck. Isn't that Troy's truck
out there in the ocean? And Shorty said, well, well,
(31:15):
my gully, that's a truck. That's Troy's truck out in
the ocean. So Ranther then get angry about destroying perfectly
good property, which I could have gone in that direction.
I decided to lecture David, as follows, David, one of
your people, or if you for all I know, I
don't want to know whose idea was, maybe to remunerate
(31:36):
me for the lost truck. And that's how we left.
We left it as a very funny story. I didn't
lose money, and we'll never know that the specific details
of just who cooked up the Hey, let's drive Troy's
truck into the ocean, let it float away.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
Mike's right, We'll never know until now.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
The fuller story was that Simon the intern, was the
local high school math teacher down on the beach in
that pickup truck and he got it stuck in the sand,
and then the tide came in and.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
All sorts of ship then ensued.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
So those where yeah, there was hard charging times back then.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Was there any adult supervision.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
And the golf course there was, And the golf course
I approved every read every the routing.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So there was oversight there.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
And David and I got to know each other and
know what we liked together, networked really.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Well, which brings us to Mike's site visits.
Speaker 7 (32:43):
That was probably the hardest part of the whole project
was Mike would fly in pretty regularly, so probably at
least every third week for the seven or eight months
we were in construction, and he would fly in with
a bunch of what he called retail golfers, which I'm
sure Josh had to deal with too. So Mike would
(33:04):
fly in with you know, three, four six of his
golfing buddies who were doctors or lawyers or you know
who knows that this was not their business. They were just,
you know, keen amateur golfers with an opinion, and Mike
would wander around the golf course with me, I mean,
(33:25):
not wonder. It was very focused, and he would want
me to explain what I was doing, what I was
planning to do. He would question me about why things
were the way they were, and his buddies would have
a free for all doing the same thing and telling
Mike what they thought. So they'd be like, no, I
(33:46):
don't think that bunker should be there, I think it
would be better over there, or why don't you move
that hole over here? And Mike, as Josh knows, would
listen to all of this, and it was absolutely infuriated
because I'd be working my butt off with my guys
to try and build something really cool, and these guys
(34:08):
that didn't know Jack would turn up with all of
these thoughts and they'd be in my head, infecting Mike
with all of their myriad of ideas, and I'd be
trying to herd cats and it.
Speaker 8 (34:23):
Was really, really tough.
Speaker 7 (34:24):
It got to the point one day where one of
Mike's buddies was suggesting some idea that just couldn't work,
wouldn't work and Mike was nodding his head in agreement,
and I was just seething inside. I mean, just wanting
to just scream. And at some point with a few
(34:48):
minutes later or an hour later, I went to Mike
and I said, hey, you know that guy made this
suggestion and you agreed. I'm going to bring the bulldozer
back and and do what it is. I totally disagree
with you, but if that's what you want, then that's
well do. And Mike got pretty stern with me, and
(35:09):
he said, hey, you need to understand. When I'm agreeing
with one of my friends, it means I hear them.
It doesn't mean I'm saying yes unless I tail you
to change something.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
More on Mike's visits, from Josh's perspective.
Speaker 9 (35:24):
You didn't want to be a naysayer with Mike and
his friends. But his visits to the property, as David said,
extremely focused. I mean, I don't know anybody that takes
their time more seriously than Mike Kaiser. From the minute
he steps on property, he's laser focused on whatever. You
(35:47):
know again, I mean I talked to him on the
phone for twenty years as we were building the whole
place in all the golfer I talked about the phone
every day, and he's equally as precious with his time
on the phone. But on property, whatever it is. If
we're do we need to build more rooms, where are
we going to build them? What are we going to do?
What's the room? You know, And every minute on property
(36:09):
is scheduled, doubt as to what he's going to do.
And then you know, at the end of the day,
dinner and let's talk about dinner and how the food
and beverage works and what's the best, and you know,
by the end of his they were typically two night trips,
so he'd come in on a Tuesday morning, he'd stay
Tuesday Wednesday night, and he'd leave Thursday afternoon. You know,
(36:30):
by Thursday night, I was exhausted, I can tell you that,
and everybody around me was exhausted, because he's his mind
is incredible and you have to be on all the
time and you're getting a lot done when he's around.
And it's been that way since my very first trip
in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
You can't talk about the development abandoned dunes without a
deeper dive on Howard McKee, who died of colon cancer
in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 6 (36:57):
He was a very good friend of mine from Chicago.
He had moved to Chicago from Portland and then therefore
knew the coast of Oregon very well. He was the
managing partner of skid Moro Owings and Meryl in Portland
and very well connected.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
With planners, et cetera. And he said, well, if your
helpent to build a golf course somewhere on the ocean,
and either the east coast or the west coast, you
should go take a look at Oregon. We've got a beautiful,
beautiful coastline, which is true. I dubbed it America's links Land.
It's sixty miles of uninterrupted beautiful sand duns, big enough
(37:34):
for probably a fifty golf courses.
Speaker 7 (37:36):
Howard's a real contribution was getting the permits. Without Howard,
there would be no abandon Duns because he was the
one that went through all of the permitting. And it
was complex. So even though you're in rural Oregon, you're
still dealing with all of the state and federal regulators
to get a resort permitted. And that required a law
(38:00):
of bureaucratic and polar ticking. And I did my base
to help there. But that was all Howard McKee. Without him,
there'd be no Bandon, right, Josh, I.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
Agree with that. Howard was a brilliant guy.
Speaker 9 (38:12):
That the old saying that you ask him what time
it is and he tells you how to build the watch.
I mean, you ask him what time it is and
he tells you what time means.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
I mean he was he was.
Speaker 9 (38:22):
Brilliant and he could convince anyone of anything, and so
that was that was a huge part of his contribution.
And then I would call him kind of the project architect,
if you will, after that, I mean he wasn't you know,
David was a golf course architect and we had building architects, but.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Howard kind of oversaw that. And I would have weekly
meetings with Howard, you know, for.
Speaker 9 (38:55):
You know, the year and a half before we open,
weekly meetings on kind of how where is the progress,
how's everything going? And really really an interesting, interesting guy
to work with.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
The pub on property is named after Howard McKee. There's
a labyrinth in the trees near one of the foot
trails in his honor. But what there isn't at Bandon
Dune's thanks to Howard, is a clubhouse on land best
used for golf.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
I knew there were models from Scotland where it was
the clubhouse was on the on the ocean, and when
it wasn't on the ocean, So no model told me
what to do, so I went in sort of blank slate.
And it was the kemper of people who were the
president at the time, not Steve Lesnick, but someone is
no longer with him, who said, you've got to put
(39:42):
the clubhouse out here where currently number sixteen is his
gorgeous site. And one of Howard McKee's great moments was
he was listening to all this and he waited for
a suitable time to go by and watched eli Us
say yeah with the clubhouse right here in the best place,
and Howard said, where are the beer trucks going to go?
(40:06):
And there is silence when everyone realized that in order
to get to this club a great clubhouse site on
the ocean, we needed a road from way back five
six hundred yards inland. We start this long road with
cars to park and beer trucks and ups delivery. And
(40:26):
it went from what a great idea to put the
clubhouse out here in this photogenetic site to what a
stupid idea. You know, want beer trucks on this great site,
Let's make it a golf hole. And one of the
most photographed pole at the resort still to this day
is that number sixteen A short part.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
For so there's damn good golf. The clubhouse is inland
where it's supposed to be. Word has obviously gotten out
and around town that the course is about to open.
Meet Mick Peters of Mixed hair Surgeons. Peters isn't a
great player, but he's avid and he's been barbering in
Bandon for fifty four years.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And in the shop we said, oh yeah, they're gonna
be a world class golf course in band and who's
going to come to Bandon to play golf?
Speaker 8 (41:15):
That was that was the talk right off the bat.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Bob Gaspar now known as Shoe because he looks like
the jockey Bill Shoemaker, lived in Bandon and was one
of Mixed clients.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
As the story went on, Shoe came in and he
was getting a haircut. He said, I'm going to go out.
They're looking for a caddy master. He said, I'm going
to go out and apply for that. I said, cool,
So he did and of course, as the shoe story
went on again, he got it and he was in
my shop again. I've got this here, and he says, man,
that first day is a really filling up. I said, wow,
(41:50):
I said, is the first he taken yet? He said,
I don't know, but I'm going back out there and
i'll check and i'll call you. So he did, and
he called me.
Speaker 8 (41:59):
He said, no, it's open.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
I said.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
He said you want it? I said yes, and he
said you'll have to have a board him. I said,
that's cool.
Speaker 8 (42:07):
I can do that.
Speaker 5 (42:10):
KUIs of reflects on the build up to the first
tea time.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
The entire time leading up to opening day was an
equally low point of you know, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Everyone who's everyone who saw it said what a dumb
i'd be.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
You know, golf guys now, golf guys, bankers, business men,
family friends, all meaning well for me, which was pulled
the plot, don't do this. It's a terrible idea. So
I lived with that for the two and a half years,
and it took to build it. And I'd say the
crescendo was the night before opening day at Van and
Dune said nineteen ninety nine, I was having dinner with
(42:47):
Josh and Steve Lesnik and Howard McKee, and it was raining,
and it was supposed to rain the next day, and
I knew we had a pretty good t sheet the
next day. But to take the negative side of it,
we whine about the weather is going to be bad
and all of our all the people who were thinking
about coming, will come and we'll have an empty golf course.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
What was us so on Sunday, May second, nineteen ninety nine,
the first to the first t the Mick Peters forsom.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
You know, looking back on it, it was special at
the time, but we didn't know exactly how special it
was going to be. It was just getting to go
play golf and be the first one on a fantastic course.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
It was just it was bigger than I expect that.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
I didn't think there would be that many people there watching,
and I was so nervous I couldn't already put the
ball on the tee.
Speaker 5 (43:52):
Which is where we're going to hit pause on the
building of Bandon. Part two will go live next Sunday.
We'll pick up where we're leaving off, find out how
Mick Peters played, how the course was received, and we'll
get a better sense of what Bandon meant to the
future of golf in Oregon and in America in general.
But before that, a few reflections from our main characters.
(44:14):
As Kaiser said at the start, Pine Valley Dunes Club
and sand Hills were his inspiration for Bandon Dunes, but
they're all private. I asked him if there was ever
a chance Bandon wouldn't have been open to the public.
Speaker 6 (44:25):
I had decided that I was a populist as related
red to golf. I loved playing Pine Valley, I loved
playing Marion, but I appreciated more Pebble Beach and Pinehurst
because they were equally great in.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Public and in Scotland, where my models were.
Speaker 6 (44:43):
Even though most of the courses have a private membership,
they allow man Chanella and Mike Guiser go.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Over and be tourists and made them full of green speed.
So that was really my model, the Scottish.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
Model Josh lesnik On when he realized he was part
of something special.
Speaker 9 (44:58):
And it was, you know, that first day and I'd
met David and when we got to where sixteen green
and seventeen t would become for me.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
When I saw that, I was like this is different.
Speaker 9 (45:15):
But no one really realizes now as you look back,
just how risky this all seemed, how crazy it all seemed.
It was so unconventional, you know, to stress what David
was saying, golf courses were being built close.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
To people, you know, close to cities.
Speaker 9 (45:32):
People didn't necessarily care about the site for golf. You
could have mud and clay and rock under the soil,
but if we were close to people and you could
put houses around it. That's the kind of golf courses
people were building in the nineties, eighties, nineties in America.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
This was close to nobody.
Speaker 9 (45:50):
This is going back to the golden age when you
look for the best site for golf and you know,
no bank would finance it. No, no, everybody thought it
was crazy. Mike's friends thought it was crazy. Mike thought
it was crazy.
Speaker 7 (46:04):
I don't think Bandon Dunes is near as unique as
you guys think it is.
Speaker 8 (46:10):
Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 7 (46:11):
If it were in the British Isles, it would be
one of dozens of really good links courses, but it
would not be unique. It's only unique here where there
is nothing else like it.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Put another log on five.
Speaker 4 (46:36):
Nobody here is getting tired.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
Are you looking for good value on great golf apparel?
As a listener to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth
and Jeff Cunningham at link Seoul in Oceanside, California are
offering you a twenty five percent discount on all future
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and off the course. Whenever you go to linksoul dot com,
just use promo code matty G twenty five m A
(47:09):
t t y G twenty five. Thank you for listening
to The Firepit. It's produced by Alex Upeggi. It's edited
by Rex Lint. The theme song is by Joe Horowitz.
Please rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts and
we might track you down and send you one of
(47:30):
our new Imperial Roe Pats. Got a question, comment, or
a story for us to track down, you can find
me on Twitter at Matt Janella or on Instagram at
Matt Underscore Janella. And if you haven't already done so,
please subscribe to The Firepit on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or
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can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is where
(47:52):
we post portions of our podcast and add some visual surprises.
Mike was relatively quiet.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
He was basically listening to what everyone was saying, and
everyone seemed to be happy to be there, even before
they had even before they'd hit a shot, they were
delighted to be there.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
Maybe it was.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The just the atmosphere of an opening day and a
golf course.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
But when they came.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Back in, Mike Goodness, the comments and the clubhouse, and
the atmosphere in the clubhouse was just out of this world.
You could almost even today, I could you can feel
it here in the back of your next standing up
because you knew that something had happened to you in
a place which was out in the middle of nowhere.
It was an incredible day.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
Put another log on fire.
Speaker 4 (00:49):
Nobody here is getting tired. Welcome to the fire pit
with Matt Chanella.
Speaker 5 (01:00):
Welcome back. Settle in this story is one that means
a little more to me than most. After all. On
May twelfth, twenty seventeen, we named our son Bandon, which,
according to some research by my wife, means cooperative, courteous,
and she says people named Bandon tend to be considerate. Apparently,
(01:21):
peace and harmony are of the utmost importance to someone
named Bandon. If you've been to the resort or have
met my son, you'd say most of the above is true.
As far as our sun goes. It's a work in
progress in terms of the destination. I've been covering the
development of Abandon Dunes since two thousand and one, and
I've been going there every year for my annual Buddies trip,
(01:43):
the Uncle Tony Invitational, since two thousand and seven. The
fire pit at Bandon Dunes in the middle of the
Grove cottages, the nights I've had there, the stories I've
told and heard there, that was the inspiration for this podcast.
Today you'll hear part one of the building of Bandon
Dunes as told by Mike Kaiser, the owner, David McLeay
(02:04):
Kidd and his father Jimmy, the architects, and Josh Lesnik
and his father Steve, who won the bid to manage it.
I interviewed Mike Kaiser on his own David and Josh together,
and Steve Lesnik and Jimmy Kidd together. Bandon Dunes, the
original course at what is now the best pure golf
destination in America and arguably the world, was an outlier
(02:26):
that opened in nineteen ninety nine. Like sand Hills and Mulla, Nebraska.
The story we told in the previous episode of this podcast,
to build a golf course in a remote location using
a minimalist architect or architects was anything but what was
being built in America. In the nineties, Mike Kaiser of
Recycled Paper Greetings in Chicago started developing courses with the
(02:50):
Dunes Club, a private but non pretentious nine hole course
built in the sand of New Buffalo, Michigan. Kaiser was
then brought in to invest a little money into what
Young's Cap was building in Nebraska.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
My model has always been even though Dornick and St.
Speaker 6 (03:04):
Andrews old are important, Pine Valley has always been my
model because it's in the US. It's not remote, but
it's sort of a hole in the wall place and
it's totally natural, built on sand dunes. It doesn't have
an ocean, but magnificent sand dunes. So that was my
motivator and model for the Dunes Club. And when I
(03:25):
saw sand Hills that was in the same genre as
Pine Valley, and before we knew.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
It, Dick was full.
Speaker 6 (03:33):
That gave me a lot of courage out there in
Mandon because that was the missing ingredient the courage to
build something in Bandon.
Speaker 5 (03:40):
Or Kaiser says that when sand Hills got one hundred
and fifty members in Mullen, that's the mitosis of modern
minimalism in America. As Bill Corr said, a watershed moment.
But what if it didn't work? Why was this worth
the risk? For Mike Kaiser, you.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Know, Josh and I discussed you know what happens if
no one comes, or what happens if we break even?
Because we all had bats the first year how many
rounds we would do, and twelve thousand rounds is break even.
And most of our bats about how many rounds we
would do were less than twelve thousand rounds. So in
my group, no one thought we would break even. And
(04:20):
their discussion, I remembered brabi than the Ninetyfore, Well, if
it doesn't work, I'll give it three years for it
to catch on, and if it doesn't, we'll turn.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
It into a sheep ranch, which is a bit ironic
considering this podcast is going live on the eve of
the opening of the Sheep Ranch, the sixth course at
Bandon Dune's another Billcore and Ben Crenshaw designed. Their story
is told in episode six of The fire Pit. But
we start this story in January of nineteen ninety one,
(04:50):
Mike Kaiser's first trip to Bandon, Oregon, five hundred miles
north of San Francisco, almost three hundred miles south of Portland.
Kaiser is standing on what's now the fourteenth tea of
bandoned trails, looking out over Gorse choked dunesland out to
the Pacific Ocean.
Speaker 6 (05:06):
I went to the lookout site which you've seen with
Shorty and Charlotte Dowe, the caretakers of thirty five years
of the property who knew the property better than anyone,
and he said, if you're looking for a golf course,
Shorty said, I'll take you to the spot, and the
spot is marked today is the spot that Shorty down
took Mike Kayser and I looked out and said, this
(05:27):
is it. There can't be another site. It was just
I later toured the land, which was twelve hundred acres,
but just from that lookout site it had everything. It
had beautiful sand dunes that had the ocean. You just
knew it was as good as Dornick, or in the
same brat as Dornick and Belly Bunion without knowing the
(05:47):
specific so that one tour with Shorty and Charlotte was.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
All I needed to see.
Speaker 6 (05:55):
So then all I had to do was buy it
from Duke Watson and Seattle Washington, and yet David Kidd
and his father on board to do a routing.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Before we get to the kids, I circled back on
the cost.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
They were asking five.
Speaker 6 (06:11):
It had been in the market for four and a
half years, according to Shorty Dow and a broker, so
I felt that there were there weren't any buyers, that
I was probably the only buyer, and therefore Anne decided
that you would be much more effective if I was
seeking a fifty percent discount.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
I went there in person.
Speaker 6 (06:29):
So I flew out to see Duke Watson, the owner,
along with his two brothers in law, and said, Duke,
I don't have enough money to do this project, so
I can only pay you half of what you're asking.
If you're asking five, I'll give you two and a half.
And he said, let us let us go caucus. So
they went into these three there were in their eighties
or the old guys, go into another room and came
(06:51):
back fifteen minutes and I said, well take it.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
They became big fans.
Speaker 6 (06:56):
That Duke in particular came down at numerous times and said,
you know, it was always dream to build a resort,
and you've gone and done it.
Speaker 5 (07:04):
Now that he has the land and we know Kaiser's inspirations,
he was looking for some authenticity in terms of the
course itself, which is about the time Kaiser had a
conversation with Rick Summers, who worked for Glen Eagle's Golf
Developments in Scotland and worked with David McLay Kidd, who
was in his mid twenties.
Speaker 7 (07:22):
And in that conversation, Rick said, why don't you hire
a Scottish architect if you're trying to build a Scottish
links course, And Mike said, I would, but there aren't any.
Speaker 8 (07:32):
The old died one hundred years ago.
Speaker 5 (07:34):
And then Ian Ferrier, also of Glen Eagle's Golf Developments,
made a trip to the States to try and drum
up some business.
Speaker 6 (07:41):
And Ian came to see me and said, if you're
looking for someone to do a links golf course, which
is how I defined it, there's only one group for you,
and that's the Kid family. David Kidd and his father
Jimmy know what they're doing. Come on over to Glen
Eagle's and we'll show.
Speaker 5 (07:55):
You entered Jimmy Kidd, David's father and the director of
agronomy at Glen and Eagles in Scotland.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
We will bring Mike to Scotland. We will base them
at Glen Eagles Hotel. We will visit Irish Links, we
will visit Scottish Links. We will convince Mike that we
know everything about Link's golf, how it should play, how
it should look, what kind of vegetation and such light.
And we got to we got down to North Berwick.
It was the very last one that we played, and
(08:22):
we played the second hole. Mike pushed one onto the
beach and he said, well that's set, I'll drop another ball.
Speaker 8 (08:27):
I said, no, you want, Mike go down there and
play it.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Yeahlish As you can't play it, I said, get down
on the beach and play it back.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
He knoked it back to nine feet and hold the
pup for a three. And at that point I knew
had the project.
Speaker 6 (08:42):
I was totally captivated by Jimmy Kidd, who's my age
in particular, who convinced me that he knew everything you
could passively know about golf and Scarland and especially link Scott.
Speaker 5 (08:55):
Jimmy Kidd was a bit of a legend. His son
David was still leaning on.
Speaker 7 (08:59):
His d You know, my father was in a group
along with Walter Woodsits and Andrews, George Brown at Turnbree
and I'm merry out of others that he came up
through the ranks with. And my childhood was staying at
these golf courses, with these superintendents and golf crews. I
(09:19):
completely immersed in Scottish golf.
Speaker 5 (09:23):
Meanwhile, back in Chicago, Josh Lesnik was trending to work
in his father's business.
Speaker 9 (09:28):
You know, I grew up in the golf business as well.
I mean he grew up with superintendents, and I grew
up more on the service side, working at Kemper Lakes,
which was, you know, one of the first upscale daily
fee golf courses opened in the in around nineteen seventy nine,
nineteen eighty, I think all eighteen holes open and I
(09:48):
worked there in summers of high school and college.
Speaker 4 (09:51):
Because services is.
Speaker 9 (09:52):
A way that my dad, the founder of Kemper Sports,
always felt that we could differentiate ourselves.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Stars haven't aligned yet, but we're getting there. The kids
receiving an invite to Kaiser's land in Abandon. That's a
big step.
Speaker 7 (10:08):
And my father and I flew out in July of
nineteen ninety four to Bandon Dun's and we spent a
week on the site with Shorty Dow who just passed
a year ago or so, who was the caretaker of
the sixteen hundred acres if I remember right, that Mike
had purchased, and my father and I spent a week
(10:29):
going around the land. My dad and I were super
excited at what the possibilities were. We thought the piece
of land that Mike had had huge potential, and we
thought maybe somehow we were sneaking under the wire into
America for a developer that some way, somehow was going
(10:50):
to hire these complete unknowns to build a golf course.
But what happened was during that week, Shorty kept asking
my dad and I for our business cards. I mean
he kept asking and asking and asking, and so it
became obvious that he was collecting business cards. So I said, sure,
I'll give you a business card, but I want to
(11:12):
see your collection. And when I saw the collection he had,
my heart sank because the collection had all of my
heroes in it. I mean, Mike had had everybody out there,
you know, we weren't sneaking under anywire. I mean, this
guy is It was obvious. He was pretty sophisticated, and
he was able to get Jack Nicholas, Tom Fasio, Pete Dye,
(11:36):
whoever he wanted on the phone, and could have hired
any of them. So it was pretty obvious to my
dad and I that we were in a competition and
we were way the hell out of our league, especially me.
I'm twenty six years old and I haven't done Jack,
you know.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Pausing David's narrative for a second. Going back to Josh,
where the Lesnicks were also eyeing for the contract to
work with Kaiser.
Speaker 9 (12:03):
There was a bit of a competition as to who
was going to manage bandon Dunes. The company David worked
for at the time that he mentioned, Glen Eagles Golf,
also had a management arm or said they had a
management arm. Not sure what all they were managing, but
there was a bit of a bakeoff between Kemper Sports
and Glen Eagles Golf. It happened at our sister company, Kemper. Lesnik,
(12:26):
the public relations agency, has an office downtown we met
Mike there. Glenn Eagles was there. David wasn't in that meeting.
I was there just watching my dad do his thing.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
Which is he's a phenomenal salesperson.
Speaker 9 (12:39):
And thankfully Mike selected Kemper Sports to manage it, and
he called me the next week after that meeting and said,
I'd like you to think about moving out there.
Speaker 5 (12:51):
Steve Lesnig founded Kemper Sports in nineteen seventy eight with
a focus on golf course development and various aspects of management.
Steve reflects on k Are picking his son as the
first general manager of Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 10 (13:04):
It was another a great insight of Mike we all
know he has so many because he recognized that Josh
had a passion for the game that equaled his own.
And Matt, as you well know, his extraordinary people's skills
(13:24):
really contributed to the development of Bandon doings.
Speaker 5 (13:31):
Meanwhile, the kids, specifically David, was back in Bandon and
he wasn't having an easy time coming to terms with
their odds to get the job of building the golf course.
Speaker 7 (13:41):
I took a little bit of a fans to the
whole thing. I figured that my dad and I as
these you know, colloquial skulls out there on this piece
of land with this mega rich guy from Chicago going
to fly in in his private jet. You know, we
were just entertainment. I mean, there's no way this guy's
going to hire us. So I take it upon myself
(14:04):
to be blunt, I mean just kind of brutally blunt
with them, because I figure he's not going to hire
us anyway, so what the hell? So I paint out
this scenario that if you really want to build a
real links course in America, in this place that's miles
from anywhere, then you need to be authentic. But I
(14:26):
know you won't do it. I mean, I've seen what
links golf is in America. Links golf in America is
Peble Beach, with everyone driving golf cars and playing into
poll A greens with perfectly trimmed bunker edges. You know,
I pick up any American golf magazine and every new
course is called a links course, and they're not links
at all. They're not even close to a links course.
Speaker 6 (14:48):
He's very entrepreneurial, he could say brash. I would say
entrepreneurial and cantident.
Speaker 5 (14:54):
Call it what you want. But David brought all of
it to a pitch meeting at the c Star Guesthouse
in downtown Bandon.
Speaker 7 (15:00):
And I gave what would be today a PowerPoint presentation,
but I did it with poster boards and a sharpie pens,
and I wrote down on these poster boards, you know,
like no cart paths, and make you know they would walk,
and that the fairways would be uneven and there'd be
pot bunkers, and the clubhouse shouldn't be on the water's edge.
(15:22):
It should, you know, the best green should be on
the water's edge.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
I said to David, if we deviate at any anytime
from offering Mike anything more than a true and I
mean a true Links experience, Irish Links experience here, you
will not hire us as architects.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
He will go elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
I mean.
Speaker 7 (15:42):
It was completely the antithesis of American golf development circa
the nineteen nineties. It was everything that golf was not,
and lo and behold, it pretty much was exactly what
the audience was there to hear. That was I was
pushing an open door with Mike. That was actually what
(16:02):
his intentions were.
Speaker 6 (16:04):
I think it was a meeting of eight or so
of us who'd flown out with me from Chicago, eight
friends and avid golfers and Goersionado's who were there basically
to say, you've got to be nuts to do this.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And I think David Kidd gave his presentation to convince them,
to convince me that it wasn't such a crazy idea.
He kedn, you know, how do we get hired? AIKIDN,
Do I really want to do this?
Speaker 5 (16:33):
In theory, the kids had the job and that was
because of their commitment to building true links, and Kemper
Sports had the job to manage it. But why does
Josh Lesnik, the age of twenty nine think he was
Kaiser's chosen one.
Speaker 9 (16:47):
I think in the end, maybe the way Mike feels
if Kemper Sports was going to manage it and the
owner was willing, the owner of Kemper Sports was willing
to send his son out there, that they weren't going
to let me fail. They were going to get me
all the support I needed to be successful opening.
Speaker 4 (17:07):
That resort.
Speaker 9 (17:08):
And that's, you know, what our company's all about is
supporting the general managers to be successful. And I had
a ton of support, whether it be accounting, legal operations, policies, procedures,
all the things that maybe weren't my straints mine probably
more in building the relationships and communications and building the
brand abandoned Dunes. But you know, I think he was
(17:31):
just like, well, the company's not going to let Josh fail.
Let's send let's send him out there.
Speaker 5 (17:36):
Steve Lesnick agrees.
Speaker 10 (17:37):
By having my son go out this was going to
have my full attention and the full attention of the organization,
because we certainly were not going to let Josh fail
or not be successful, or not.
Speaker 4 (17:49):
Hit the ball out of the park.
Speaker 10 (17:51):
I know we've all watched the last dance these last
couple of weeks, and it is true that in a
way organization win championships. But you know what, the players play,
and Josh played, and those first three years were crucial
to all of us, to the success of all of us,
the reputation of all of us, and he did a
(18:11):
great job, and I'm very, very proud of him.
Speaker 5 (18:14):
Like I said a few minutes ago, in Theory, the
kids had the job to build the course. Josh the
GM and David the Kid explained.
Speaker 4 (18:23):
I'm not sure Mike ever gave him the job.
Speaker 9 (18:25):
Every time he came out there, he was like, let's
see what he can do, and he just kept living
up to the task. Every time he had an idea
about a hole in the route and this and that,
Mike liked it more and more and gave him more
and more of a I.
Speaker 4 (18:40):
Mean, David, is that how you kind of remember it?
Speaker 8 (18:43):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (18:43):
I wrote Mike a proposal that basically sold him my
time on a day basis a day rate, and Mike
sent me back a fax that was on recycled paper
and hated no paper, and it said, Okay, let's go,
and that's all it said, classic Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
David had never done a golf course. He just had
this lineage that I thought, as long as his father,
Jimmy was involved, it would work out okay, And so
it was. Jimmy was a great help to David. They
came over and bushwacked through the gorse plants and came
up with this routing that was pretty good. Not good
(19:28):
enough to build, but pretty good. And they were the architects.
Speaker 5 (19:32):
We heard why Josh thought he got hired, So why
does David think he got to build bandits?
Speaker 7 (19:38):
I think Mike hired me for what I didn't know,
You know, I didn't know how it screwed up because
I never built much jails.
Speaker 8 (19:46):
What I had was this extremely.
Speaker 7 (19:49):
Raw in instinct for what golf is in the British Isles,
and so it wasn't uncommon to me I had. I
barely played many golf courses driving a golf cart on
a concrete path, much less built one. So I didn't
know how to do that. I hadn't built a bunch
(20:10):
of lakes with fountains on a golf course, much less
played one.
Speaker 5 (20:14):
As for kids compensation, he was getting a daily fee.
Speaker 7 (20:18):
It was about a couple of hundred bucks. I think
something in there. But I was working for a company,
so I lived on site at Bandon through the whole
entire build, so pretty much it was like eight or
nine months I was on site, and that year I
made forty thousand.
Speaker 8 (20:34):
That year.
Speaker 7 (20:40):
You think Mike Kaiser got a steal the best deal ever?
Speaker 5 (20:44):
Did Mike Kaiser on the team he had assembled.
Speaker 6 (20:48):
David had never designed a golf course, and Josh had
never managed a golf course or anything. So I had
dude talk about rookies, real rookie.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
But David had his dad Jimmy.
Speaker 6 (21:00):
Too sort of hubbler, a little bit and guide him,
and David then didn't find in his own and Josh's dad,
Steve Lesnick, was president and owner of Kemper Sports. I
figured that the dad there, Steve Lesnick, would not let
his son fail, and in fact, Josh did great on
his own, but that remained in my mind a big
(21:22):
thing that Kemper Sports was not going to let this
be anything other than a great success, and they worked
hard at it.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Josh and David, both in their twenties, would meet on
what would be the Twelfth Hole abandoned dunes about two
hundred yards from the coastline.
Speaker 9 (21:37):
Because I remember my first visit flying out with Mike
and we basically went went straight to what is now
the twelfth Tee to meet you, and Mike said, well,
this looks like a part three. What are we going
to do here? He said, well, we're standing on this dune.
This is going to be the tea. That part that
(21:58):
looks like a green right there, that's going to be
agreed And Mike, well, what are you going to do
in between? He said, not much, maybe just like one
really deep bunker. And you know that's the Twelfth Hole
today as it stands there, And.
Speaker 6 (22:16):
I said, well, I'm in the greeting card guy, greeting
card business guys, and I know the power of a
visual and this is a great photograph. And Josh, take
a photo of this right now before we build it,
because after we build it, it's going to be a
bat News photograph. And we're going to take that photo
and we're going to make reading cards and send them
to everyone we know in the golf business. And there
(22:37):
was our initial press release that not hard on copy.
It was just a photo of number twelve and the
copy was for additional information called jeshuas.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
Well.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Josh was busy getting the word out. David was busy
in the dunes.
Speaker 7 (22:53):
The sequence we worked through was we started on the
holes that were on the ocean, so twelve, fifteen, and
sixteen were the first one that got built, and those
are iconic gouffles. So I think that Josh and I
both were we lacked hesitation. We were both sort of
(23:14):
point and shoot at that point in our lives. We
did not have any doubts in what we were doing.
We didn't I guess we were too dumb to know
the risks that we were involved in or the how
it could all go wrong.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
We were.
Speaker 7 (23:29):
It was straight point and shoot. I mean we were like, Okay,
I'm going in this direction, lead follower, get this out
of my way. I mean, I'm going this way. And
we both had our own little teams that were happy
to follow. I mean, if we were both Godfathers and
the Mafia, we had the group around us that would
have died for us.
Speaker 8 (23:50):
At that point.
Speaker 5 (23:51):
Mike Kaiser stayed close to the process.
Speaker 6 (23:54):
Truly, and it was David and Jimmy and then later
Jimmy Withdrew once we had a routing and it was
pretty much all David and his brash approach, and you know,
I approved everything and liked what I saw, hold by
hold by hold.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
Josh remembers the thirteenth Pole as being something he had
never seen before.
Speaker 9 (24:13):
You had, you know, an American shaper, and no one
could believe that you wanted to leave that fairway with
all the dunes in it, and you know, having David
there was, I mean, it was so inspirational for the
whole project.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
But that fair every time I walk.
Speaker 9 (24:30):
Down that fairway, I think about those discussions and how
you and Jimmy, your dad were wanted to leave the
dudes there no, it's unlike any other American fairways. You're
saying that may be common in Scotland, but one very
common here. And that's just one of the so many
ways you had effect on that property in that project.
Speaker 4 (24:52):
Really a neat memory.
Speaker 5 (24:54):
I asked David of the original routing that got them
the job, what if anything changed during the build?
Speaker 7 (25:00):
Well, the first routing, the back nine never really changed.
Holds ten through eighteen were on the very first layouts
and they pretty well got built. The front nine got
completely changed. The original parcel that Mike had bought, the
northern boundary was basically the existing third hole. The third
(25:25):
hole was on the plan, but everything north of that
did not exit.
Speaker 8 (25:29):
Mike didn't own that land.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I hope he told you about David Schumann and the
land next door. He might not have said this, but
David and his father's original layout and the twelve hundred
acres was about three holes short of being really good.
And I told David that and he was sort of
respond so I've used a bob a land. What do
(25:53):
you want me to do? And I said, I don't know.
You're the golf court, you're the golf architect. You think
of it virtually at that moment it was you know,
it was weeks and weeks later our neighbor to the
north declared bankruptcy. It enabled meet to buy it and
to give to David what became.
Speaker 6 (26:11):
Number five, six, seven, and eight the really good holes.
Those in particular were gifts from big golf guys. Who
would have thought that within months of having this log
jam with David Kid that the land would present itself.
Speaker 5 (26:30):
We know Bandon Dunes now as pristine minimalism, with picturesque imperfections,
natural nuances and such a soulful approach to the game
as it was meant to be. But back then, I
wondered if there was much of a social life in
and around this budding destination.
Speaker 9 (26:48):
It's a small resort town. It wasn't even a resort
town at that time. It was becoming a resort town.
And when you live in a small resort town and
your David Kid or you're Josh, you're kind of always on.
I mean, you're always that's you're representing Bandon Dunes, You're
representing Mike Kaiser. So work never ends. Fortunately, as it grew,
(27:11):
you know, David was surrounded by the people that work
for him, I was surrounded by the people that work
for us, and.
Speaker 4 (27:20):
You know, maybe there's one local bar in town.
Speaker 8 (27:22):
Where you could go Lloyd's abandon.
Speaker 4 (27:25):
Lloyd's abandoned, which I heard reopened. I haven't been back there,
but goodness, I heard it reopen.
Speaker 9 (27:31):
Everyone had been going to the Arcade, which is owned
by a family that works at the resort, and a
couple of caddies bought it.
Speaker 4 (27:38):
And it's a great place, the Arcade Tavern.
Speaker 9 (27:41):
But back then it was Lloyd's, and uh, you know,
I had a house and would open my house to anybody,
and you know, so it's just small resort town and
you kind of live and work and play with those
that you work with.
Speaker 7 (27:56):
Wait, there was there was a law of drinking went
on by then was a lot. When I was building
the golf course in the heat of battle in late
ninety seven and then through ninety eight, there was nothing there.
There wasn't even a road up onto the golf course,
so we were hiking through sand to get out onto
(28:17):
the golf course every day. And then sometimes I would
drive up to Empire while the guys were working and
I'd buy a bushel of oysters or some tuna and
I'd bring it back to the site and I'd build
a fire below the sixteenth Green. We did this many times,
and I would barbecue the oysters, cut up the tuna,
(28:40):
put cold beers down there, and then after work people
would drive down where the sheep branches now break out
onto the beach, and their pickup trucks come around and
park underneath what is now sixteen Green and we would
party there until I got dark or very dark, and
we'd be hitting golf balls down the beach and drinking
(29:01):
beers and eat oysters. Uh.
Speaker 8 (29:04):
And that went on quite a bit.
Speaker 9 (29:06):
Yeah, and then I would I would get a call
the next day from Mike Kaiser about what was what
happened the night before, because as David mentioned earlier, there
was a caretaker was also the sheriff of the property,
Shorty Dow and his wife Charlotte. But Shorty would monitor
everything that was going on, and no matter how hard
(29:26):
I tried, I couldn't get him to call me with
the information.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
He would call Mike and say.
Speaker 9 (29:31):
Oh, yeah, the you know, the Scottish geyser, and David
would have his interns and you know, there were a
lot of fun things that happened down there on the beach.
I'm sure I wasn't. I wasn't always invited in those
parties or didn't know about.
Speaker 7 (29:42):
Him, Josh, you needed plausible deniability.
Speaker 4 (29:47):
And uh sure, you know.
Speaker 9 (29:48):
Then I'd get a call the next day from Mike
about something that might have happened on the beach, and
I was supposed to be responsible for this place, but
I think it was It was more fun and nothing
too bad happened, and a lot of a lot of
good came out of it. So some not so good
you guys at one of your oyster clam bakes or
whatever you guys were doing on the beach, Simon drove
(30:12):
the old Blue into the ocean and was surfing on
the hood of this pickup truck, and the pickup truck
went out to see and Simon jumped in the water
and was was okay. He came to the beach and
Shorty had watched this whole thing happen. And I got
a call the next day from Mike Kaiser saying, where
(30:35):
is my pickup truck?
Speaker 8 (30:38):
Yeah, that wasn't such a good one. That was a
tough one.
Speaker 9 (30:43):
I got the call the next day, like you know,
and Mike was probably messing with me, like Josh, you're
supposed to be in charge.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
You know what's good? Look what happened on your watch.
Speaker 8 (30:53):
Fuck.
Speaker 6 (30:54):
One of the mornings, he and Charlotte were driving on
the beach, which they always did, and Charlotte looked out
the window, looking towards the ocean, towards the orient, and said,
isn't Shorty, isn't that Troy's truck? And Troy was our
superintendent and he had a truck. Isn't that Troy's truck
out there in the ocean? And Shorty said, well, well,
(31:15):
my gully, that's a truck. That's Troy's truck out in
the ocean. So Ranther then get angry about destroying perfectly
good property, which I could have gone in that direction.
I decided to lecture David, as follows, David, one of
your people, or if you for all I know, I
don't want to know whose idea was, maybe to remunerate
(31:36):
me for the lost truck. And that's how we left.
We left it as a very funny story. I didn't
lose money, and we'll never know that the specific details
of just who cooked up the Hey, let's drive Troy's
truck into the ocean, let it float away.
Speaker 5 (31:56):
Mike's right, We'll never know until now.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
The fuller story was that Simon the intern, was the
local high school math teacher down on the beach in
that pickup truck and he got it stuck in the sand,
and then the tide came in and.
Speaker 8 (32:14):
All sorts of ship then ensued.
Speaker 7 (32:18):
So those where yeah, there was hard charging times back then.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Was there any adult supervision.
Speaker 6 (32:27):
And the golf course there was, And the golf course
I approved every read every the routing.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
So there was oversight there.
Speaker 6 (32:35):
And David and I got to know each other and
know what we liked together, networked really.
Speaker 5 (32:40):
Well, which brings us to Mike's site visits.
Speaker 7 (32:43):
That was probably the hardest part of the whole project
was Mike would fly in pretty regularly, so probably at
least every third week for the seven or eight months
we were in construction, and he would fly in with
a bunch of what he called retail golfers, which I'm
sure Josh had to deal with too. So Mike would
(33:04):
fly in with you know, three, four six of his
golfing buddies who were doctors or lawyers or you know
who knows that this was not their business. They were just,
you know, keen amateur golfers with an opinion, and Mike
would wander around the golf course with me, I mean,
(33:25):
not wonder. It was very focused, and he would want
me to explain what I was doing, what I was
planning to do. He would question me about why things
were the way they were, and his buddies would have
a free for all doing the same thing and telling
Mike what they thought. So they'd be like, no, I
(33:46):
don't think that bunker should be there, I think it
would be better over there, or why don't you move
that hole over here? And Mike, as Josh knows, would
listen to all of this, and it was absolutely infuriated
because I'd be working my butt off with my guys
to try and build something really cool, and these guys
(34:08):
that didn't know Jack would turn up with all of
these thoughts and they'd be in my head, infecting Mike
with all of their myriad of ideas, and I'd be
trying to herd cats and it.
Speaker 8 (34:23):
Was really, really tough.
Speaker 7 (34:24):
It got to the point one day where one of
Mike's buddies was suggesting some idea that just couldn't work,
wouldn't work and Mike was nodding his head in agreement,
and I was just seething inside. I mean, just wanting
to just scream. And at some point with a few
(34:48):
minutes later or an hour later, I went to Mike
and I said, hey, you know that guy made this
suggestion and you agreed. I'm going to bring the bulldozer
back and and do what it is. I totally disagree
with you, but if that's what you want, then that's
well do. And Mike got pretty stern with me, and
(35:09):
he said, hey, you need to understand. When I'm agreeing
with one of my friends, it means I hear them.
It doesn't mean I'm saying yes unless I tail you
to change something.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
More on Mike's visits, from Josh's perspective.
Speaker 9 (35:24):
You didn't want to be a naysayer with Mike and
his friends. But his visits to the property, as David said,
extremely focused. I mean, I don't know anybody that takes
their time more seriously than Mike Kaiser. From the minute
he steps on property, he's laser focused on whatever. You
(35:47):
know again, I mean I talked to him on the
phone for twenty years as we were building the whole
place in all the golfer I talked about the phone
every day, and he's equally as precious with his time
on the phone. But on property, whatever it is. If
we're do we need to build more rooms, where are
we going to build them? What are we going to do?
What's the room? You know, And every minute on property
(36:09):
is scheduled, doubt as to what he's going to do.
And then you know, at the end of the day,
dinner and let's talk about dinner and how the food
and beverage works and what's the best, and you know,
by the end of his they were typically two night trips,
so he'd come in on a Tuesday morning, he'd stay
Tuesday Wednesday night, and he'd leave Thursday afternoon. You know,
(36:30):
by Thursday night, I was exhausted, I can tell you that,
and everybody around me was exhausted, because he's his mind
is incredible and you have to be on all the
time and you're getting a lot done when he's around.
And it's been that way since my very first trip
in nineteen ninety seven.
Speaker 5 (36:49):
You can't talk about the development abandoned dunes without a
deeper dive on Howard McKee, who died of colon cancer
in two thousand and seven.
Speaker 6 (36:57):
He was a very good friend of mine from Chicago.
He had moved to Chicago from Portland and then therefore
knew the coast of Oregon very well. He was the
managing partner of skid Moro Owings and Meryl in Portland
and very well connected.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
With planners, et cetera. And he said, well, if your
helpent to build a golf course somewhere on the ocean,
and either the east coast or the west coast, you
should go take a look at Oregon. We've got a beautiful,
beautiful coastline, which is true. I dubbed it America's links Land.
It's sixty miles of uninterrupted beautiful sand duns, big enough
(37:34):
for probably a fifty golf courses.
Speaker 7 (37:36):
Howard's a real contribution was getting the permits. Without Howard,
there would be no abandon Duns because he was the
one that went through all of the permitting. And it
was complex. So even though you're in rural Oregon, you're
still dealing with all of the state and federal regulators
to get a resort permitted. And that required a law
(38:00):
of bureaucratic and polar ticking. And I did my base
to help there. But that was all Howard McKee. Without him,
there'd be no Bandon, right, Josh, I.
Speaker 4 (38:09):
Agree with that. Howard was a brilliant guy.
Speaker 9 (38:12):
That the old saying that you ask him what time
it is and he tells you how to build the watch.
I mean, you ask him what time it is and
he tells you what time means.
Speaker 4 (38:20):
I mean he was he was.
Speaker 9 (38:22):
Brilliant and he could convince anyone of anything, and so
that was that was a huge part of his contribution.
And then I would call him kind of the project architect,
if you will, after that, I mean he wasn't you know,
David was a golf course architect and we had building architects, but.
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Howard kind of oversaw that. And I would have weekly
meetings with Howard, you know, for.
Speaker 9 (38:55):
You know, the year and a half before we open,
weekly meetings on kind of how where is the progress,
how's everything going? And really really an interesting, interesting guy
to work with.
Speaker 5 (39:08):
The pub on property is named after Howard McKee. There's
a labyrinth in the trees near one of the foot
trails in his honor. But what there isn't at Bandon
Dune's thanks to Howard, is a clubhouse on land best
used for golf.
Speaker 6 (39:21):
I knew there were models from Scotland where it was
the clubhouse was on the on the ocean, and when
it wasn't on the ocean, So no model told me
what to do, so I went in sort of blank slate.
And it was the kemper of people who were the
president at the time, not Steve Lesnick, but someone is
no longer with him, who said, you've got to put
(39:42):
the clubhouse out here where currently number sixteen is his
gorgeous site. And one of Howard McKee's great moments was
he was listening to all this and he waited for
a suitable time to go by and watched eli Us
say yeah with the clubhouse right here in the best place,
and Howard said, where are the beer trucks going to go?
(40:06):
And there is silence when everyone realized that in order
to get to this club a great clubhouse site on
the ocean, we needed a road from way back five
six hundred yards inland. We start this long road with
cars to park and beer trucks and ups delivery. And
(40:26):
it went from what a great idea to put the
clubhouse out here in this photogenetic site to what a
stupid idea. You know, want beer trucks on this great site,
Let's make it a golf hole. And one of the
most photographed pole at the resort still to this day
is that number sixteen A short part.
Speaker 5 (40:45):
For so there's damn good golf. The clubhouse is inland
where it's supposed to be. Word has obviously gotten out
and around town that the course is about to open.
Meet Mick Peters of Mixed hair Surgeons. Peters isn't a
great player, but he's avid and he's been barbering in
Bandon for fifty four years.
Speaker 3 (41:06):
And in the shop we said, oh yeah, they're gonna
be a world class golf course in band and who's
going to come to Bandon to play golf?
Speaker 8 (41:15):
That was that was the talk right off the bat.
Speaker 5 (41:18):
Bob Gaspar now known as Shoe because he looks like
the jockey Bill Shoemaker, lived in Bandon and was one
of Mixed clients.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
As the story went on, Shoe came in and he
was getting a haircut. He said, I'm going to go out.
They're looking for a caddy master. He said, I'm going
to go out and apply for that. I said, cool,
So he did and of course, as the shoe story
went on again, he got it and he was in
my shop again. I've got this here, and he says, man,
that first day is a really filling up. I said, wow,
(41:50):
I said, is the first he taken yet? He said,
I don't know, but I'm going back out there and
i'll check and i'll call you. So he did, and
he called me.
Speaker 8 (41:59):
He said, no, it's open.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
I said.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
He said you want it? I said yes, and he
said you'll have to have a board him. I said,
that's cool.
Speaker 8 (42:07):
I can do that.
Speaker 5 (42:10):
KUIs of reflects on the build up to the first
tea time.
Speaker 6 (42:14):
The entire time leading up to opening day was an
equally low point of you know, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Everyone who's everyone who saw it said what a dumb
i'd be.
Speaker 6 (42:25):
You know, golf guys now, golf guys, bankers, business men,
family friends, all meaning well for me, which was pulled
the plot, don't do this. It's a terrible idea. So
I lived with that for the two and a half years,
and it took to build it. And I'd say the
crescendo was the night before opening day at Van and
Dune said nineteen ninety nine, I was having dinner with
(42:47):
Josh and Steve Lesnik and Howard McKee, and it was raining,
and it was supposed to rain the next day, and
I knew we had a pretty good t sheet the
next day. But to take the negative side of it,
we whine about the weather is going to be bad
and all of our all the people who were thinking
about coming, will come and we'll have an empty golf course.
Speaker 5 (43:09):
What was us so on Sunday, May second, nineteen ninety nine,
the first to the first t the Mick Peters forsom.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
You know, looking back on it, it was special at
the time, but we didn't know exactly how special it
was going to be. It was just getting to go
play golf and be the first one on a fantastic course.
Speaker 1 (43:36):
It was just it was bigger than I expect that.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
I didn't think there would be that many people there watching,
and I was so nervous I couldn't already put the
ball on the tee.
Speaker 5 (43:52):
Which is where we're going to hit pause on the
building of Bandon. Part two will go live next Sunday.
We'll pick up where we're leaving off, find out how
Mick Peters played, how the course was received, and we'll
get a better sense of what Bandon meant to the
future of golf in Oregon and in America in general.
But before that, a few reflections from our main characters.
(44:14):
As Kaiser said at the start, Pine Valley Dunes Club
and sand Hills were his inspiration for Bandon Dunes, but
they're all private. I asked him if there was ever
a chance Bandon wouldn't have been open to the public.
Speaker 6 (44:25):
I had decided that I was a populist as related
red to golf. I loved playing Pine Valley, I loved
playing Marion, but I appreciated more Pebble Beach and Pinehurst
because they were equally great in.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Public and in Scotland, where my models were.
Speaker 6 (44:43):
Even though most of the courses have a private membership,
they allow man Chanella and Mike Guiser go.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Over and be tourists and made them full of green speed.
So that was really my model, the Scottish.
Speaker 5 (44:53):
Model Josh lesnik On when he realized he was part
of something special.
Speaker 9 (44:58):
And it was, you know, that first day and I'd
met David and when we got to where sixteen green
and seventeen t would become for me.
Speaker 4 (45:10):
When I saw that, I was like this is different.
Speaker 9 (45:15):
But no one really realizes now as you look back,
just how risky this all seemed, how crazy it all seemed.
It was so unconventional, you know, to stress what David
was saying, golf courses were being built close.
Speaker 4 (45:29):
To people, you know, close to cities.
Speaker 9 (45:32):
People didn't necessarily care about the site for golf. You
could have mud and clay and rock under the soil,
but if we were close to people and you could
put houses around it. That's the kind of golf courses
people were building in the nineties, eighties, nineties in America.
Speaker 4 (45:48):
This was close to nobody.
Speaker 9 (45:50):
This is going back to the golden age when you
look for the best site for golf and you know,
no bank would finance it. No, no, everybody thought it
was crazy. Mike's friends thought it was crazy. Mike thought
it was crazy.
Speaker 7 (46:04):
I don't think Bandon Dunes is near as unique as
you guys think it is.
Speaker 8 (46:10):
Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 7 (46:11):
If it were in the British Isles, it would be
one of dozens of really good links courses, but it
would not be unique. It's only unique here where there
is nothing else like it.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
Put another log on five.
Speaker 4 (46:36):
Nobody here is getting tired.
Speaker 5 (46:46):
Are you looking for good value on great golf apparel?
As a listener to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth
and Jeff Cunningham at link Seoul in Oceanside, California are
offering you a twenty five percent discount on all future
orders of What I Where All Day, every day, on
and off the course. Whenever you go to linksoul dot com,
just use promo code matty G twenty five m A
(47:09):
t t y G twenty five. Thank you for listening
to The Firepit. It's produced by Alex Upeggi. It's edited
by Rex Lint. The theme song is by Joe Horowitz.
Please rate and review this podcast on Apple Podcasts and
we might track you down and send you one of
(47:30):
our new Imperial Roe Pats. Got a question, comment, or
a story for us to track down, you can find
me on Twitter at Matt Janella or on Instagram at
Matt Underscore Janella. And if you haven't already done so,
please subscribe to The Firepit on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or
wherever you listen to a story like this one. You
can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, which is where
(47:52):
we post portions of our podcast and add some visual surprises.
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