January 11, 2024 • 32 mins
In this throwback podcast on the history of Bandon Dunes, part 2 picks up on May 1st, 1999 on the eve of Bandon Dunes opening for business. I’m not even sure Mike Keiser could’ve dreamed something as big as what Bandon has become. We hear from Bandon's original caddy master, Shoe, and the local barber, Mick Peters, who has hit the first tee shot on every course at Bandon, as well as reflections from Mike Keiser, David Kidd, Josh Lesnik, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw as we also celebrate the opening of the Sheep Ranch, their third course on property.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
It really comes back to that opening day that really
capitualized everything. A golf course, we think it as a
recreational playground, but I think of it in addition as
a consumer product. So when you spill your heart out
and you spend a lot of money on a product,
let's say, you don't know if it's any good until
people are offered it to buy and use. So that
(00:27):
first day in the bookings for the first year all
told me that America was ready for Links golf, even
though it was in Banded, Oregon, it's truly remote place,
and that that made me feel that I had done
a product, a architectural structural design that the American golfer,
(00:48):
which we number in the millions, really appreciated.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
That feels good. Five nobody here is getting time. Welcome
to the fire pit with Matt Janella.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
So I'm just back from my twenty fifth trip to
Bandon Dunes, which just happened to fall in between two
episodes of this podcast. On the building of Bandon, we
refer to the old course as the home of golf.
Some say Pinehurst is the cradle of American golf, and
the book written about the building of Bandon Dunes is
dream golf. Mike Kaiser's dream has become a nightmare for
(01:41):
his competition. In twenty plus years of development of sand
based minimalism, the remote destination on the southwest coast of
Oregon has quickly become what some might say is the
best pure golf destination in the world, which is why
I dedicated two parts to this story as a recall
from part one. In the mid nineties, with twelve hundred
acres of gorse choked dunesland, Mike Kaiser started looking for
(02:04):
an architect who would do anything but what was being
done in the United States. He stumbled upon David McLay Kidd,
who was in his mid twenties, and his father, Jimmy,
who was the agronomist at Glenn Eagles in Scotland.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
I gave what would be today a power point presentation,
but I did it with poster boards and a sharp
eat pains, 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
(02:39):
on the water's edge, it should you know, the best
green should be on the water's edge.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
I said to David, if we deviate 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 6 (02:58):
He will go elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Kaiser hired the kids to build it, and he hired
Kemper Sports to manage it. He tapped Josh Lesnik, also
in his twenties, to be the first general manager. Lesnick
explains why Bandon was so unique in the US.
Speaker 7 (03:13):
Golf courses were being built close to people, you know,
close to cities. People didn't necessarily care about the site
for golf. You could have mud and clay and rock
under the soil, but if it 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 6 (03:35):
This was close to nobody.
Speaker 7 (03:36):
This is going back to the golden age when you'd
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.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Crazy against all odds and swimming into the current of trends,
Kaiser kept going one hole at a time, and on
May first, nineteen ninety nine, on the eve of opening day,
he reflected on what if all the doubters were right
and he was wrong?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, you 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.
(04:27):
And the discussion I remembered probably than the night before, 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
it into a sheep ranch.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
The Sheep Ranch opened on June first, twenty twenty, the
fifth eighteen hole golf course at Bandon Dunes. Plus there's
the Preserve, a thirteen whole Part three course, Shorties, another
version of a Part three course at the back of
the range, and the punch Bowl, a two and a
half acre putting course which you can play for free.
Needless to say, I'm not even sure Kaiser could have
(05:00):
dreamed something as big as what Bandon has become. But
for now, let's go back to the beginning. We're back
in Bandon. It's nineteen ninety seven and word is out
in the town of three thousand that there might be
a golf course coming. Meet Mick Peters, a recreational golfer
who has been barbering in Bandon for fifty four years.
Speaker 8 (05:20):
In the shop, we said, oh yeah, they're going to
be a world class golf course in band And who's
going to come to Bandon to play golf?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That was That was a talk right off the bat.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Bob Gaspar, also known as Shoe because he looks like
Jockie Bill Shoemaker, was a customer at Mixed Hair Surgeons.
Speaker 9 (05:39):
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 a story went
on again he got it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
He was in my shop again.
Speaker 10 (05:57):
It's gotten hiss there and.
Speaker 9 (05:58):
He says, man, that first day is really filling up
I said, wow, I said, is the first tea taken yet?
He's 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. He said, no, it's open.
Speaker 11 (06:13):
I Nick, how would you like to be the first
one off?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I said yes, and he said you will have to
have a bourse him. I said, that's cool, I can
do that.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Mike Peters, Mick's oldest son.
Speaker 12 (06:23):
Is in Dad, called and said, I got the first
tea time for Bandon Dunes. He says, you want to play.
I'm like sure. He's like, we need to find two
more people. I'm like, okay, we'll see if we can
find two more people.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
A friend of.
Speaker 12 (06:37):
Mine and his father in law joined us, and we
showed up that morning and it was a typical Bandon day.
It was raining, cats and dogs. We showed up in
our golf attire and they handed us Gortek's golf rain
stuff because it was pouring down rain.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Josh Lesnik on him memorable day.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Yeah. We opened on May second, nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 7 (07:05):
It was rainy and I'd say fifties, maybe high forties,
low fifties, and we were booked from the first tea
time to the last tea time.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
You know, mostly Oregonians. It was kind of a regular day.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
We didn't do a big VIP invitational and invite. We
just did whoever's going to make tea times or he
let him play an opening day. Mike Kaiser's plan was
to be there and hand out the opening day coins
to each player.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
David Kidd wasn't at Opening Day, but his father Jimmy,
who was in town collaborating with the maintenance team, stood
next to Mike Kaiser and helped pass out coins to
everyone who played that day.
Speaker 13 (07:49):
Opening Day was the most surprising thing. I've been at
a few opening days, and they were a pretty big
and pretty grand affair as well. The opening day at
Bandon was anything but grand, anything but baked. It was
a wet, miserable day if I remember rightly. It was
a typical Scottish links day.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Shoe again with more details.
Speaker 11 (08:09):
It was a full ticket once again, I believe two
hundred and forty eight people and we didn't have any rooms,
so everybody had to stay in town, either stay in
town or just drive home again.
Speaker 14 (08:19):
Uh.
Speaker 11 (08:19):
Local golf, local golf for us as Eugene and Portland.
Nobody around here, particularly except for our golf club members
play golf here. I had made it up bag tags
for everybody, this big stack of bag tags, and I
thought this would be cool. We're going to tag the
bags once again. We didn't know what we were doing.
Cars pulled up, but it wasn't just one car at
a time. It was like everybody pulled up. The tags
(08:41):
went by the window, you know.
Speaker 14 (08:44):
Uh.
Speaker 11 (08:44):
It was poor and rain. MIC's up on the tee,
He's huddled down. Everybody's trying to smile. All these people
here to play golf, pouring.
Speaker 7 (08:56):
Micked, the local barber, was the first player at Bandon
Dudes that day. Mick Peters and his sons were the
first ones to play, and they since have been the
first ones to play every single opening, including the preserve,
of every golf course in Bandon.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
We're going to have a lot more on Mick Peters
and his sons and their legacy abandoned in episode ten
of The fire Pit, but for now Nick stays focused
on his first t shot of the first course.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It was just it was bigger than.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
I expect that. 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 3 (09:36):
Mike Peters has been second off on every new course
at Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 12 (09:43):
I was like, what are we doing? Why are we
doing this? You know, until we walked up onto the
tee and then you saw it over the first tea
and the whole course. It was like, you couldn't get me.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Out of here.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, I mean just Bandon Weather.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
Yeah, a big deal.
Speaker 12 (09:58):
And it was an absolute gorgeous golf course. And I,
like I said, I'd never seen it. I had no
idea what I was getting into until I stepped on
that first tee and it really was on inspiring.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
As first off. Mixed tradition is to tea up a
ball and with his first swing he only hits the
ball a few feet.
Speaker 8 (10:18):
I do that, and then I have mister Kayder sign it,
and I put it away, and I grab another ball
and I hit it again.
Speaker 15 (10:26):
But I am at I'm the first guy that hits
the ball. There was only I'm not going to say
the name, although I have in the past. There was
one person that didn't show up the first day.
Speaker 7 (10:39):
It was one of my friends down and he decided
it was too rainy and cold to show up. Every
other person shut up. Was just one person that didn't
show up. It was rainy and cold, no doubt, I'll
give him a break.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
But everybody else played. Who is this guy? He's a local,
he's a friend.
Speaker 7 (10:58):
He's a uh, he was a friend until he didn't
show up.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Shoe showed up. Of course, what would Bandon be without Shoe.
Speaker 11 (11:10):
There was a big trailer. One of our local cranberry
growers brought a barbecue trailer, backed it up back here,
right back to where the where the pub's at. He
was cooking hamburgers and hot dogs for everybody. The rain
finally stopped, sun came out, it turned beautiful. The cranberry
grower's name was Jack, and by the end of the day,
(11:31):
because he had a bottle of Jack, hamburgers and hot
dogs were flying everywhere.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I swear man, you wouldn't know a boom.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Here it goes. It was great.
Speaker 11 (11:40):
It was the greatest experience because it was just it
was banded, nothing fancy, you know. The hot dogs and
hamburgers were free. Everybody had a great time.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
What's the rain stopping?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It was extremely.
Speaker 6 (11:54):
Rewarding. It was really it was a really neat day and.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
It was fun to see the staff all together and
really have the customers out there was great fun day.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Jimmy Kidd on watching Mike Kaiser as his dream unfolded
in front of him.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Mike was relatively quiet. He was basically listening to what
everyone was saying, and everyone.
Speaker 13 (12:17):
Seemed to be happy to be there, even before they
had even before they had hit a shot, they were
delighted to be there. Maybe it was the the just
the atmosphere of an opening day and a golf course.
But when they came back in Mike Goness, the comments
and the clubhouse and the atmosphere and the clubhouse was
just out of this world.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
It was an incredible day.
Speaker 13 (12:37):
You could always 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.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So everything until opening day was rough, and then from
then on the golfers took over.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Guys like you, Matt said, this is fun, Link's golf,
what we like.
Speaker 7 (12:59):
Even at that we weren't sure kind of what it
would become. By that point though, we were quite sure
our rounds were going to, you know, exceed what our
expectations were the first year, because there was an article
written in December of ninety seven by Bob Robinson, and
he was a well known golf writer, and he wrote
(13:22):
a story about Vanda Dune's, you know, almost six months
before we opened. Came out in December. We were set
to start taking tea times January first of ninety eight.
The article comes out in December. The phone started ringing
that day. Shoe was in there answering him. The phone
has not stopped ringing since that day.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
And I give a huge amount of credit to making
that a reality to Josh. You know, he was the
one that got the message out there and got people
to pay attention and come and look.
Speaker 10 (13:53):
And it was those first few people.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I remember Brian Callen Cumming who was with Golf Magazine
at the time, and Josh and I played the back nine,
I think with him and his reaction was my first
experience of an American golf journalist seeing this and saying, wow,
this is different. And that was all as I remember it.
(14:17):
That was old Josh. He was the one bringing these
people and had those connections, and we were seeing that
reaction happen because of his skills delivering the message.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
What Josh got to do was be fun and fun
to be with and hire people and find caddies when
everyone said you'll never find caddies, and go to the
Portland Golf Show and convince people that it's only four
and a half hour drive. So Josh was great on publicity,
David was great on building the golf course, and Howard
McKee was the magical architect guy.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
So all systems are go. Bandon Dune's was open for business,
and we learned it part one of this podcast. Kaiser
had already bought the land that would become the second
course on property. So I asked Mike how soon after
opening day of Bandon did he commit the Pacific Dunes
a tom Dope design?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Almost immediately, I mean it was within within days. It
was overwhelming, And let's give Josh credit for We opened
in May, early May nineteen ninety nine, and then the
opening day we knew that we had bookings.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Whether people would actually show up, we didn't know.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But as the days ticked by, we realized that all
the bookings we had were going to become real rounds
that people would drive and fly from who knows where.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You made it, make it a success. So I'd say
within the first.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Two months, if not the first couple of weeks, Josh
and I and Howard all said yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Because we opened open Pacific Dunes in two thousand and one,
two years later, so that tells you that we did.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Could he split on the second golf course last year?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
On May second, twenty nineteen, David Kidd was on the
first tea for the twentieth anniversary of Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
You know, it's amazing to think that in twenty years,
with fifty thousand approximately visitors per year, we're looking at
a million individuals have now visited Bandon Dunes. Sure some
of them visit every year, but the number I use
is a million people. A million golfers have visited Bandon
(16:31):
Dunes now over the first twenty years. That's pretty amazing.
I think it awakened in American golfers' willingness to accept nature,
that golf through nature is what golf is truly.
Speaker 10 (16:45):
Meant to be.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
That's why we've seen golf move away from being ornate
and overly manicured and become far more natural. It speaks
to our current ethos that we want things to be
sustainable and have less inputs, less chemicals, less of everything
(17:08):
so that nature can take a hold. And Bandon Dunes
was the grind zero for that in America twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
But his shoe explains the impact of this resort goes
a lot deeper than some of the natural sand bunkers
throughout the property.
Speaker 11 (17:23):
You know, it's really basically made the town come alive,
and not only Bandoned, but Koos County actually the entire
state of Oregon almost Well, no, it's true. It's true
because look how many there's so many people that would
never venture west of the Mississippi River that are coming here,
(17:46):
and they've never been to Pacific Northwest. I mean, this
place is this place is beautiful.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I mean it just is.
Speaker 11 (17:53):
And so this has brought people here that heretofore would
never have come this way.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
But almost almost.
Speaker 11 (18:01):
Everybody in town in the county gets a check from
Bandon Dunes for one thing or another. Newspapers, flowers, coffee,
you know, meat, you name it, and they get a check.
And that doesn't even take into consideration a payroll for
six hundred and forty in staffers and then an additional
(18:24):
three hundred to three hundred and fifty caddies that goes
out into the community.
Speaker 6 (18:28):
I think, Matt, you know.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
For for Mike and I, the one thing we always
say to each other is we look at each other
and like, can you believe this?
Speaker 6 (18:39):
You know, because we.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
It's hard to say, you know, like we didn't look
at Bandon Dunes as a business every day. We didn't,
but we knew we were opening a business, and you
can't do things stupid.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
We're doing it for.
Speaker 7 (18:51):
The love of the game, but it was still a business,
and you know, to budget to do ten thousand rounds
the first year and end up doing close to thirty thousand,
and now you know, multiply those numbers by the five
courses now and it's like, we still can't believe it.
(19:12):
I can't believe it. Mike can't believe it. I mean,
there's no way you could have imagined that it would
become what it's become. It's, you know, thankfully to the
work the architects did and the site selection, and it's uh,
I still have to pinch myself.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Some final reflections from several key players who have helped
make Bandon so special. We'll start with Josh Lesnik, followed
by David Kidd.
Speaker 7 (19:44):
I've been involved with a number of other places, and
but Bandon is is uh yeah, it's home.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
It's my home away from home. It's my happy place.
Speaker 7 (19:54):
I love you know, the second you step foot on
that property and breathe in that air and then get
to p hit those golf courses and Bandon Dunes being
my favorite golf course anywhere in the world, Yeah, there's
I don't know that anything could ever take over Bandon
Dunes's my favorite place in the world.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I never tire of talking about Bandon Dun's. I never
tire of every visit I make. I especially love it
when I get to take Bandon virgins there who are
not Bandon East as yet to experience the place with
a newbie.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
Is still a huge kick. And I know it's the
same for you guys.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
I mean taking I probably take at least one or
two Create sms to band in a year, and in
that eight sum I try and make sure there's at
least one or two virgins and introduce them to the
place and know that it's just blowing their minds.
Speaker 10 (20:54):
And that's such fun to be part of.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
To see that wonder again and experience it through someone
else's eyes seeing it for the first time.
Speaker 10 (21:03):
I'll never ever tire of that.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Kidd and Leslig again on what they learned from working
with Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
You know, he is the master of cutting through the
bas and getting to the heart of the matter. He
simplifies things to their absolute core, really really quickly, better
than anybody I've ever made before.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
I could be doing mental gymnastics trying to figure something out,
and I could call Mike and it'd be like he
could figure it out in a second and get to.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
The get to the mottom of it.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
And it's he keeps things really really simple and accomplishes
amazing things. Yeah, I mean that would you know everything nothing.
He never wanted to see anything that was more than
one page. If you sent him anything more than one page,
it was too much, too complex, Just don't do it,
don't send it to him.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
So I mean working.
Speaker 7 (21:59):
With him, you know, as I said earlier, I think
one of his many legacies and it's all you know,
its opinion and people can look back. But I feel
like he's with each architect he's worth worked with each
golf course architect, they may have built their.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
Best golf course with working with Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 7 (22:21):
I think that's part of his his brilliance is just
working with people and working with the artists David and
Tom Doak and Bill Kohr and you know, and keeping
it simple and just achieving incredible things. It's amazing, amazing
to work with them.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I asked them both, what if there was no Mike
Kaiser in your life?
Speaker 10 (22:46):
I would still.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Like to think that I would have uh found my
way in golf course design. But I wouldn't have the
you know, the band and Dunes logo on my shirt
and would have made it much much harder and the
road would have been a lot longer. But I would
still want to believe that I would have managed to
(23:11):
be a force of relevance in golf course architecture. You know,
there were a number of other projects that I managed
to get in and around. You know, I was on
numerous sites that are now world beater golf courses. You know,
I was at Friar's Head that kre Crenshaw did two
years before they got there. I was on numerous others
(23:33):
the Preserving Carmel. I was on that site before Fasio
did it, so there were lots of other projects that
I was managing to squeeze myself into one way or another.
So I would like to think that I would have
made a break somehow, some way, and I think Josh
would have too. I think we both were full of
(23:55):
piss and vinegar, and one way or another we would
have made it.
Speaker 7 (23:59):
I I'm afraid to think about that, you know, I think,
I think I I'm not sure I would have found
what I truly love about the game of golf and
the business of golf without Mike. I don't know what
(24:20):
had taken a long time. I didn't I didn't go
play golf in scotlanduntil I was forty years old, and
it would have taken me a lot longer to find.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
Out what I loved about the game if it weren't
for Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
I mean it's I think he's done that for a
lot of Americans probably who have now gotten to abandoned
and got onto play Sand Valley and kind of seen.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Dream golf and what makes the game of golf so lovable.
Speaker 7 (24:52):
So I don't want to think about what it would
be like with no Mike Kaiser and no Abandon Dunes.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Bill Core and Ben crunch I just opened their third
course for Mike Kaiser at Bandon Dun's. They've built seven
courses for what's referred to as the Dream Golf Portfolio
and are under construction on their eighth cab at Saint Lucia.
That accounts for almost a third of what kren Crenshaw
have built from Scratch, Core and then Crenshaw on the
overall impact of Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 16 (25:20):
We've gotten so far away more than our share of
very special sites, and a great number of those have
come from Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
He's been He is simply the most incredible and.
Speaker 16 (25:40):
Should be the most highly acclaimed golf developer in the world.
And the products that he puts out there and the
care that he puts into them is just beyond comparison.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
And he finds these sites, he.
Speaker 16 (25:58):
Goes back to that that that nucleus of playing golf
on sandy firm ground, and in Mike's case, at least
until Sand Valley, it was always about somewhere near the sea.
Speaker 14 (26:12):
He just finds it to be. It's a it's a
connection to five hundred years of golf history, and he
he just I think he believed before he started doing
these golf developments that that was a connection that would
resonate with American golfers as well as European and other
(26:32):
other nationality golfers. And he brought it to us. He
gave us the opportunity to experience it.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
And he was right.
Speaker 14 (26:40):
I mean, it's a it's a It may be the
oldest form of golf in the world, but I think
it's still the most appreciated.
Speaker 17 (26:49):
Maybe it was his first trips over the British Isles,
and you know, people make a journey to go see
those golf courses in the way they are in their
natural state. But Mike was after some sandy ground and
picturesque ground, no matter where it was. And he was
(27:10):
going to tap into that golfer who wants to travel,
much like you know a surfer or a sailor that
would go to remote places around the world to enjoy
their avocation.
Speaker 9 (27:25):
Uh.
Speaker 17 (27:26):
You know, you've heard the surfers going, you know, to
Tierra del Fuego too. You know who who knows where.
Speaker 18 (27:34):
In the Pacific to go find that wave and and
and that experience and that's golfers have a way of
you know, if they if they're one or two groups
that travel together and get to a place and enjoy golf.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
That's that's who he's after.
Speaker 17 (27:52):
And he's really done a great job UH with that.
It's the repeat customer UH in places that eat, sleep,
and drink golf. And Bill and I are just a
recipient of his outreach. We can't thank Mike enough. And Mike,
(28:14):
you know, extends to all the other architects that we know,
and they've done a great job too, So it's pretty
unique and we're very honored to be part of that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
I got two kinds of letters from men in particular.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Ladies are beginning to go up there, but there's still
a small minority of people who play man. So the
letters I see go into two categories. The buddy's trip,
I was great. Here's a photo. We had a fabinoust
ten or eight and twelve will you do it? Eight, twelve,
sixteen of you? I like those stories. They're basically all
the same saying we had a fabinous time even though
(28:54):
it rained, or even though where's the wind.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
There's always a wrinkle. But the.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Buddies have a great time, and many of them come
back here in and eure Ope. But the ones that
really get me are the father's son trips, which are
fewer than the buddy trips, but those are very heartfelt,
you know, I like you know, we came all the
way from Boston. It's been one of my life's dreams.
The father writes to me that I can take my
sons to Bandon Dudes, and we did, and we had
(29:24):
a glorious time, and don't know if we'll do it again,
but it was just badulous being with my sons or
a lot of father's sons make it a fourshome rights.
And so I've got a soft spot because I have
two sons and four kids. They all like Bandon Dudes.
So I like the father's son father daughter letters.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
In particular.
Speaker 19 (29:51):
I ask every guest on the fire pit to share
their favorite fire pit and give me a reason or two.
Speaker 10 (29:57):
Why do you have one?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
It's probably the one of growth cottage, Jim. We're building
one right now for and I haven't seen it at
cheap Branch, so it's going to have some growth.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Cottages doesn't really have a view. You're just part of nature.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And the one that's a cheap branch is going to
be resplendent with the visuals. You'll be overlooking the golfers.
So wait until you see that right now. It's the
Growth Cottages.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
I'm looking at it right now, the putting course that
Gamble sands. On the far side of it is a
fire pit that looks down into the Columbia River Gorge
and to the North Cascade Mountains. And it is by
far my favorite fire pit.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
Ysh, my favorite fire pit experience.
Speaker 7 (30:49):
Again, you know, after the playoff and the Uncle Tony
Invitational and winning. You know, I think you'll recall I
came into the fire pit pretty hot that night.
Speaker 6 (31:01):
And I mean, any fire pit where.
Speaker 7 (31:03):
Joe Horowitz is playing music should be my favorite, but
that night, you know, it was.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
That was a pretty special occasion.
Speaker 7 (31:12):
I appreciated your advice and that night and we really
we enjoyed the fire pit, and we enjoyed Joe.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
And that's that fire pit.
Speaker 7 (31:20):
Abandoned Dude's near the Grove Cottages is my favorite fire pit,
no doubt.
Speaker 19 (31:26):
That's the inspiration for this podcast. As I've said before,
Without that fire pit, I don't know that we even
have a podcast called the fire Pit I mean, that's
how special that fire Pit is.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Are you looking for good value on great golf apparel
as a listener to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth
and Jeff Cunningham at Linksoul in Oceanside, California are offering
you a twenty five percent discount on all future orders
of what I Wear All Day, every day, on and
off the course. Whenever you go to linksoul dot com,
just use promo code MATTYG twenty five m A T
(32:05):
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 our
new Imperial ropats. Got a question, comment, or a story
(32:27):
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 we post portions
of our podcast and add some visual surprises.
It really comes back to that opening day that really
capitualized everything. A golf course, we think it as a
recreational playground, but I think of it in addition as
a consumer product. So when you spill your heart out
and you spend a lot of money on a product,
let's say, you don't know if it's any good until
people are offered it to buy and use. So that
(00:27):
first day in the bookings for the first year all
told me that America was ready for Links golf, even
though it was in Banded, Oregon, it's truly remote place,
and that that made me feel that I had done
a product, a architectural structural design that the American golfer,
(00:48):
which we number in the millions, really appreciated.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
That feels good. Five nobody here is getting time. Welcome
to the fire pit with Matt Janella.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
So I'm just back from my twenty fifth trip to
Bandon Dunes, which just happened to fall in between two
episodes of this podcast. On the building of Bandon, we
refer to the old course as the home of golf.
Some say Pinehurst is the cradle of American golf, and
the book written about the building of Bandon Dunes is
dream golf. Mike Kaiser's dream has become a nightmare for
(01:41):
his competition. In twenty plus years of development of sand
based minimalism, the remote destination on the southwest coast of
Oregon has quickly become what some might say is the
best pure golf destination in the world, which is why
I dedicated two parts to this story as a recall
from part one. In the mid nineties, with twelve hundred
acres of gorse choked dunesland, Mike Kaiser started looking for
(02:04):
an architect who would do anything but what was being
done in the United States. He stumbled upon David McLay Kidd,
who was in his mid twenties, and his father, Jimmy,
who was the agronomist at Glenn Eagles in Scotland.
Speaker 4 (02:18):
I gave what would be today a power point presentation,
but I did it with poster boards and a sharp
eat pains, 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
(02:39):
on the water's edge, it should you know, the best
green should be on the water's edge.
Speaker 5 (02:44):
I said to David, if we deviate 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 6 (02:58):
He will go elsewhere.
Speaker 3 (03:00):
Kaiser hired the kids to build it, and he hired
Kemper Sports to manage it. He tapped Josh Lesnik, also
in his twenties, to be the first general manager. Lesnick
explains why Bandon was so unique in the US.
Speaker 7 (03:13):
Golf courses were being built close to people, you know,
close to cities. People didn't necessarily care about the site
for golf. You could have mud and clay and rock
under the soil, but if it 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 6 (03:35):
This was close to nobody.
Speaker 7 (03:36):
This is going back to the golden age when you'd
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.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
Crazy against all odds and swimming into the current of trends,
Kaiser kept going one hole at a time, and on
May first, nineteen ninety nine, on the eve of opening day,
he reflected on what if all the doubters were right
and he was wrong?
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, you 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.
(04:27):
And the discussion I remembered probably than the night before, 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
it into a sheep ranch.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
The Sheep Ranch opened on June first, twenty twenty, the
fifth eighteen hole golf course at Bandon Dunes. Plus there's
the Preserve, a thirteen whole Part three course, Shorties, another
version of a Part three course at the back of
the range, and the punch Bowl, a two and a
half acre putting course which you can play for free.
Needless to say, I'm not even sure Kaiser could have
(05:00):
dreamed something as big as what Bandon has become. But
for now, let's go back to the beginning. We're back
in Bandon. It's nineteen ninety seven and word is out
in the town of three thousand that there might be
a golf course coming. Meet Mick Peters, a recreational golfer
who has been barbering in Bandon for fifty four years.
Speaker 8 (05:20):
In the shop, we said, oh yeah, they're going to
be a world class golf course in band And who's
going to come to Bandon to play golf?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
That was That was a talk right off the bat.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Bob Gaspar, also known as Shoe because he looks like
Jockie Bill Shoemaker, was a customer at Mixed Hair Surgeons.
Speaker 9 (05:39):
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 a story went
on again he got it.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
He was in my shop again.
Speaker 10 (05:57):
It's gotten hiss there and.
Speaker 9 (05:58):
He says, man, that first day is really filling up
I said, wow, I said, is the first tea taken yet?
He's 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. He said, no, it's open.
Speaker 11 (06:13):
I Nick, how would you like to be the first
one off?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
I said yes, and he said you will have to
have a bourse him. I said, that's cool, I can
do that.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Mike Peters, Mick's oldest son.
Speaker 12 (06:23):
Is in Dad, called and said, I got the first
tea time for Bandon Dunes. He says, you want to play.
I'm like sure. He's like, we need to find two
more people. I'm like, okay, we'll see if we can
find two more people.
Speaker 6 (06:37):
A friend of.
Speaker 12 (06:37):
Mine and his father in law joined us, and we
showed up that morning and it was a typical Bandon day.
It was raining, cats and dogs. We showed up in
our golf attire and they handed us Gortek's golf rain
stuff because it was pouring down rain.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
Josh Lesnik on him memorable day.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
Yeah. We opened on May second, nineteen ninety nine.
Speaker 7 (07:05):
It was rainy and I'd say fifties, maybe high forties,
low fifties, and we were booked from the first tea
time to the last tea time.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
You know, mostly Oregonians. It was kind of a regular day.
Speaker 7 (07:24):
We didn't do a big VIP invitational and invite. We
just did whoever's going to make tea times or he
let him play an opening day. Mike Kaiser's plan was
to be there and hand out the opening day coins
to each player.
Speaker 3 (07:39):
David Kidd wasn't at Opening Day, but his father Jimmy,
who was in town collaborating with the maintenance team, stood
next to Mike Kaiser and helped pass out coins to
everyone who played that day.
Speaker 13 (07:49):
Opening Day was the most surprising thing. I've been at
a few opening days, and they were a pretty big
and pretty grand affair as well. The opening day at
Bandon was anything but grand, anything but baked. It was
a wet, miserable day if I remember rightly. It was
a typical Scottish links day.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
Shoe again with more details.
Speaker 11 (08:09):
It was a full ticket once again, I believe two
hundred and forty eight people and we didn't have any rooms,
so everybody had to stay in town, either stay in
town or just drive home again.
Speaker 14 (08:19):
Uh.
Speaker 11 (08:19):
Local golf, local golf for us as Eugene and Portland.
Nobody around here, particularly except for our golf club members
play golf here. I had made it up bag tags
for everybody, this big stack of bag tags, and I
thought this would be cool. We're going to tag the
bags once again. We didn't know what we were doing.
Cars pulled up, but it wasn't just one car at
a time. It was like everybody pulled up. The tags
(08:41):
went by the window, you know.
Speaker 14 (08:44):
Uh.
Speaker 11 (08:44):
It was poor and rain. MIC's up on the tee,
He's huddled down. Everybody's trying to smile. All these people
here to play golf, pouring.
Speaker 7 (08:56):
Micked, the local barber, was the first player at Bandon
Dudes that day. Mick Peters and his sons were the
first ones to play, and they since have been the
first ones to play every single opening, including the preserve,
of every golf course in Bandon.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
We're going to have a lot more on Mick Peters
and his sons and their legacy abandoned in episode ten
of The fire Pit, but for now Nick stays focused
on his first t shot of the first course.
Speaker 2 (09:22):
It was just it was bigger than.
Speaker 8 (09:26):
I expect that. 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 3 (09:36):
Mike Peters has been second off on every new course
at Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 12 (09:43):
I was like, what are we doing? Why are we
doing this? You know, until we walked up onto the
tee and then you saw it over the first tea
and the whole course. It was like, you couldn't get me.
Speaker 6 (09:55):
Out of here.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Yeah, I mean just Bandon Weather.
Speaker 6 (09:57):
Yeah, a big deal.
Speaker 12 (09:58):
And it was an absolute gorgeous golf course. And I,
like I said, I'd never seen it. I had no
idea what I was getting into until I stepped on
that first tee and it really was on inspiring.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
As first off. Mixed tradition is to tea up a
ball and with his first swing he only hits the
ball a few feet.
Speaker 8 (10:18):
I do that, and then I have mister Kayder sign it,
and I put it away, and I grab another ball
and I hit it again.
Speaker 15 (10:26):
But I am at I'm the first guy that hits
the ball. There was only I'm not going to say
the name, although I have in the past. There was
one person that didn't show up the first day.
Speaker 7 (10:39):
It was one of my friends down and he decided
it was too rainy and cold to show up. Every
other person shut up. Was just one person that didn't
show up. It was rainy and cold, no doubt, I'll
give him a break.
Speaker 6 (10:50):
But everybody else played. Who is this guy? He's a local,
he's a friend.
Speaker 7 (10:58):
He's a uh, he was a friend until he didn't
show up.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Shoe showed up. Of course, what would Bandon be without Shoe.
Speaker 11 (11:10):
There was a big trailer. One of our local cranberry
growers brought a barbecue trailer, backed it up back here,
right back to where the where the pub's at. He
was cooking hamburgers and hot dogs for everybody. The rain
finally stopped, sun came out, it turned beautiful. The cranberry
grower's name was Jack, and by the end of the day,
(11:31):
because he had a bottle of Jack, hamburgers and hot
dogs were flying everywhere.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I swear man, you wouldn't know a boom.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
Here it goes. It was great.
Speaker 11 (11:40):
It was the greatest experience because it was just it
was banded, nothing fancy, you know. The hot dogs and
hamburgers were free. Everybody had a great time.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
What's the rain stopping?
Speaker 2 (11:51):
It was extremely.
Speaker 6 (11:54):
Rewarding. It was really it was a really neat day and.
Speaker 7 (12:00):
It was fun to see the staff all together and
really have the customers out there was great fun day.
Speaker 3 (12:05):
Jimmy Kidd on watching Mike Kaiser as his dream unfolded
in front of him.
Speaker 5 (12:10):
Mike was relatively quiet. He was basically listening to what
everyone was saying, and everyone.
Speaker 13 (12:17):
Seemed to be happy to be there, even before they
had even before they had hit a shot, they were
delighted to be there. Maybe it was the the just
the atmosphere of an opening day and a golf course.
But when they came back in Mike Goness, the comments
and the clubhouse and the atmosphere and the clubhouse was
just out of this world.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
It was an incredible day.
Speaker 13 (12:37):
You could always 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.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
So everything until opening day was rough, and then from
then on the golfers took over.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
Guys like you, Matt said, this is fun, Link's golf,
what we like.
Speaker 7 (12:59):
Even at that we weren't sure kind of what it
would become. By that point though, we were quite sure
our rounds were going to, you know, exceed what our
expectations were the first year, because there was an article
written in December of ninety seven by Bob Robinson, and
he was a well known golf writer, and he wrote
(13:22):
a story about Vanda Dune's, you know, almost six months
before we opened. Came out in December. We were set
to start taking tea times January first of ninety eight.
The article comes out in December. The phone started ringing
that day. Shoe was in there answering him. The phone
has not stopped ringing since that day.
Speaker 4 (13:40):
And I give a huge amount of credit to making
that a reality to Josh. You know, he was the
one that got the message out there and got people
to pay attention and come and look.
Speaker 10 (13:53):
And it was those first few people.
Speaker 4 (13:55):
I remember Brian Callen Cumming who was with Golf Magazine
at the time, and Josh and I played the back nine,
I think with him and his reaction was my first
experience of an American golf journalist seeing this and saying, wow,
this is different. And that was all as I remember it.
(14:17):
That was old Josh. He was the one bringing these
people and had those connections, and we were seeing that
reaction happen because of his skills delivering the message.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
What Josh got to do was be fun and fun
to be with and hire people and find caddies when
everyone said you'll never find caddies, and go to the
Portland Golf Show and convince people that it's only four
and a half hour drive. So Josh was great on publicity,
David was great on building the golf course, and Howard
McKee was the magical architect guy.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
So all systems are go. Bandon Dune's was open for business,
and we learned it part one of this podcast. Kaiser
had already bought the land that would become the second
course on property. So I asked Mike how soon after
opening day of Bandon did he commit the Pacific Dunes
a tom Dope design?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Almost immediately, I mean it was within within days. It
was overwhelming, And let's give Josh credit for We opened
in May, early May nineteen ninety nine, and then the
opening day we knew that we had bookings.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Whether people would actually show up, we didn't know.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
But as the days ticked by, we realized that all
the bookings we had were going to become real rounds
that people would drive and fly from who knows where.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
You made it, make it a success. So I'd say
within the first.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Two months, if not the first couple of weeks, Josh
and I and Howard all said yeah.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
Let's go.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
Because we opened open Pacific Dunes in two thousand and one,
two years later, so that tells you that we did.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Could he split on the second golf course last year?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
On May second, twenty nineteen, David Kidd was on the
first tea for the twentieth anniversary of Bandon Dunes.
Speaker 4 (16:10):
You know, it's amazing to think that in twenty years,
with fifty thousand approximately visitors per year, we're looking at
a million individuals have now visited Bandon Dunes. Sure some
of them visit every year, but the number I use
is a million people. A million golfers have visited Bandon
(16:31):
Dunes now over the first twenty years. That's pretty amazing.
I think it awakened in American golfers' willingness to accept nature,
that golf through nature is what golf is truly.
Speaker 10 (16:45):
Meant to be.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
That's why we've seen golf move away from being ornate
and overly manicured and become far more natural. It speaks
to our current ethos that we want things to be
sustainable and have less inputs, less chemicals, less of everything
(17:08):
so that nature can take a hold. And Bandon Dunes
was the grind zero for that in America twenty years ago.
Speaker 3 (17:16):
But his shoe explains the impact of this resort goes
a lot deeper than some of the natural sand bunkers
throughout the property.
Speaker 11 (17:23):
You know, it's really basically made the town come alive,
and not only Bandoned, but Koos County actually the entire
state of Oregon almost Well, no, it's true. It's true
because look how many there's so many people that would
never venture west of the Mississippi River that are coming here,
(17:46):
and they've never been to Pacific Northwest. I mean, this
place is this place is beautiful.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
I mean it just is.
Speaker 11 (17:53):
And so this has brought people here that heretofore would
never have come this way.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
But almost almost.
Speaker 11 (18:01):
Everybody in town in the county gets a check from
Bandon Dunes for one thing or another. Newspapers, flowers, coffee,
you know, meat, you name it, and they get a check.
And that doesn't even take into consideration a payroll for
six hundred and forty in staffers and then an additional
(18:24):
three hundred to three hundred and fifty caddies that goes
out into the community.
Speaker 6 (18:28):
I think, Matt, you know.
Speaker 7 (18:30):
For for Mike and I, the one thing we always
say to each other is we look at each other
and like, can you believe this?
Speaker 6 (18:39):
You know, because we.
Speaker 7 (18:41):
It's hard to say, you know, like we didn't look
at Bandon Dunes as a business every day. We didn't,
but we knew we were opening a business, and you
can't do things stupid.
Speaker 6 (18:50):
We're doing it for.
Speaker 7 (18:51):
The love of the game, but it was still a business,
and you know, to budget to do ten thousand rounds
the first year and end up doing close to thirty thousand,
and now you know, multiply those numbers by the five
courses now and it's like, we still can't believe it.
(19:12):
I can't believe it. Mike can't believe it. I mean,
there's no way you could have imagined that it would
become what it's become. It's, you know, thankfully to the
work the architects did and the site selection, and it's uh,
I still have to pinch myself.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
Some final reflections from several key players who have helped
make Bandon so special. We'll start with Josh Lesnik, followed
by David Kidd.
Speaker 7 (19:44):
I've been involved with a number of other places, and
but Bandon is is uh yeah, it's home.
Speaker 6 (19:52):
It's my home away from home. It's my happy place.
Speaker 7 (19:54):
I love you know, the second you step foot on
that property and breathe in that air and then get
to p hit those golf courses and Bandon Dunes being
my favorite golf course anywhere in the world, Yeah, there's
I don't know that anything could ever take over Bandon
Dunes's my favorite place in the world.
Speaker 4 (20:14):
I never tire of talking about Bandon Dun's. I never
tire of every visit I make. I especially love it
when I get to take Bandon virgins there who are
not Bandon East as yet to experience the place with
a newbie.
Speaker 10 (20:33):
Is still a huge kick. And I know it's the
same for you guys.
Speaker 4 (20:37):
I mean taking I probably take at least one or
two Create sms to band in a year, and in
that eight sum I try and make sure there's at
least one or two virgins and introduce them to the
place and know that it's just blowing their minds.
Speaker 10 (20:54):
And that's such fun to be part of.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
To see that wonder again and experience it through someone
else's eyes seeing it for the first time.
Speaker 10 (21:03):
I'll never ever tire of that.
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Kidd and Leslig again on what they learned from working
with Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 4 (21:11):
You know, he is the master of cutting through the
bas and getting to the heart of the matter. He
simplifies things to their absolute core, really really quickly, better
than anybody I've ever made before.
Speaker 7 (21:27):
I could be doing mental gymnastics trying to figure something out,
and I could call Mike and it'd be like he
could figure it out in a second and get to.
Speaker 6 (21:35):
The get to the mottom of it.
Speaker 7 (21:36):
And it's he keeps things really really simple and accomplishes
amazing things. Yeah, I mean that would you know everything nothing.
He never wanted to see anything that was more than
one page. If you sent him anything more than one page,
it was too much, too complex, Just don't do it,
don't send it to him.
Speaker 6 (21:58):
So I mean working.
Speaker 7 (21:59):
With him, you know, as I said earlier, I think
one of his many legacies and it's all you know,
its opinion and people can look back. But I feel
like he's with each architect he's worth worked with each
golf course architect, they may have built their.
Speaker 6 (22:18):
Best golf course with working with Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 7 (22:21):
I think that's part of his his brilliance is just
working with people and working with the artists David and
Tom Doak and Bill Kohr and you know, and keeping
it simple and just achieving incredible things. It's amazing, amazing
to work with them.
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I asked them both, what if there was no Mike
Kaiser in your life?
Speaker 10 (22:46):
I would still.
Speaker 4 (22:47):
Like to think that I would have uh found my
way in golf course design. But I wouldn't have the
you know, the band and Dunes logo on my shirt
and would have made it much much harder and the
road would have been a lot longer. But I would
still want to believe that I would have managed to
(23:11):
be a force of relevance in golf course architecture. You know,
there were a number of other projects that I managed
to get in and around. You know, I was on
numerous sites that are now world beater golf courses. You know,
I was at Friar's Head that kre Crenshaw did two
years before they got there. I was on numerous others
(23:33):
the Preserving Carmel. I was on that site before Fasio
did it, so there were lots of other projects that
I was managing to squeeze myself into one way or another.
So I would like to think that I would have
made a break somehow, some way, and I think Josh
would have too. I think we both were full of
(23:55):
piss and vinegar, and one way or another we would
have made it.
Speaker 7 (23:59):
I I'm afraid to think about that, you know, I think,
I think I I'm not sure I would have found
what I truly love about the game of golf and
the business of golf without Mike. I don't know what
(24:20):
had taken a long time. I didn't I didn't go
play golf in scotlanduntil I was forty years old, and
it would have taken me a lot longer to find.
Speaker 6 (24:29):
Out what I loved about the game if it weren't
for Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 7 (24:35):
I mean it's I think he's done that for a
lot of Americans probably who have now gotten to abandoned
and got onto play Sand Valley and kind of seen.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
Dream golf and what makes the game of golf so lovable.
Speaker 7 (24:52):
So I don't want to think about what it would
be like with no Mike Kaiser and no Abandon Dunes.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Bill Core and Ben crunch I just opened their third
course for Mike Kaiser at Bandon Dun's. They've built seven
courses for what's referred to as the Dream Golf Portfolio
and are under construction on their eighth cab at Saint Lucia.
That accounts for almost a third of what kren Crenshaw
have built from Scratch, Core and then Crenshaw on the
overall impact of Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 16 (25:20):
We've gotten so far away more than our share of
very special sites, and a great number of those have
come from Mike Kaiser.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
He's been He is simply the most incredible and.
Speaker 16 (25:40):
Should be the most highly acclaimed golf developer in the world.
And the products that he puts out there and the
care that he puts into them is just beyond comparison.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
And he finds these sites, he.
Speaker 16 (25:58):
Goes back to that that that nucleus of playing golf
on sandy firm ground, and in Mike's case, at least
until Sand Valley, it was always about somewhere near the sea.
Speaker 14 (26:12):
He just finds it to be. It's a it's a
connection to five hundred years of golf history, and he
he just I think he believed before he started doing
these golf developments that that was a connection that would
resonate with American golfers as well as European and other
(26:32):
other nationality golfers. And he brought it to us. He
gave us the opportunity to experience it.
Speaker 6 (26:39):
And he was right.
Speaker 14 (26:40):
I mean, it's a it's a It may be the
oldest form of golf in the world, but I think
it's still the most appreciated.
Speaker 17 (26:49):
Maybe it was his first trips over the British Isles,
and you know, people make a journey to go see
those golf courses in the way they are in their
natural state. But Mike was after some sandy ground and
picturesque ground, no matter where it was. And he was
(27:10):
going to tap into that golfer who wants to travel,
much like you know a surfer or a sailor that
would go to remote places around the world to enjoy
their avocation.
Speaker 9 (27:25):
Uh.
Speaker 17 (27:26):
You know, you've heard the surfers going, you know, to
Tierra del Fuego too. You know who who knows where.
Speaker 18 (27:34):
In the Pacific to go find that wave and and
and that experience and that's golfers have a way of
you know, if they if they're one or two groups
that travel together and get to a place and enjoy golf.
Speaker 6 (27:51):
That's that's who he's after.
Speaker 17 (27:52):
And he's really done a great job UH with that.
It's the repeat customer UH in places that eat, sleep,
and drink golf. And Bill and I are just a
recipient of his outreach. We can't thank Mike enough. And Mike,
(28:14):
you know, extends to all the other architects that we know,
and they've done a great job too, So it's pretty
unique and we're very honored to be part of that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
I got two kinds of letters from men in particular.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
Ladies are beginning to go up there, but there's still
a small minority of people who play man. So the
letters I see go into two categories. The buddy's trip,
I was great. Here's a photo. We had a fabinoust
ten or eight and twelve will you do it? Eight, twelve,
sixteen of you? I like those stories. They're basically all
the same saying we had a fabinous time even though
(28:54):
it rained, or even though where's the wind.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
There's always a wrinkle. But the.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Buddies have a great time, and many of them come
back here in and eure Ope. But the ones that
really get me are the father's son trips, which are
fewer than the buddy trips, but those are very heartfelt,
you know, I like you know, we came all the
way from Boston. It's been one of my life's dreams.
The father writes to me that I can take my
sons to Bandon Dudes, and we did, and we had
(29:24):
a glorious time, and don't know if we'll do it again,
but it was just badulous being with my sons or
a lot of father's sons make it a fourshome rights.
And so I've got a soft spot because I have
two sons and four kids. They all like Bandon Dudes.
So I like the father's son father daughter letters.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
In particular.
Speaker 19 (29:51):
I ask every guest on the fire pit to share
their favorite fire pit and give me a reason or two.
Speaker 10 (29:57):
Why do you have one?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
It's probably the one of growth cottage, Jim. We're building
one right now for and I haven't seen it at
cheap Branch, so it's going to have some growth.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Cottages doesn't really have a view. You're just part of nature.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
And the one that's a cheap branch is going to
be resplendent with the visuals. You'll be overlooking the golfers.
So wait until you see that right now. It's the
Growth Cottages.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
I'm looking at it right now, the putting course that
Gamble sands. On the far side of it is a
fire pit that looks down into the Columbia River Gorge
and to the North Cascade Mountains. And it is by
far my favorite fire pit.
Speaker 6 (30:45):
Ysh, my favorite fire pit experience.
Speaker 7 (30:49):
Again, you know, after the playoff and the Uncle Tony
Invitational and winning. You know, I think you'll recall I
came into the fire pit pretty hot that night.
Speaker 6 (31:01):
And I mean, any fire pit where.
Speaker 7 (31:03):
Joe Horowitz is playing music should be my favorite, but
that night, you know, it was.
Speaker 6 (31:10):
That was a pretty special occasion.
Speaker 7 (31:12):
I appreciated your advice and that night and we really
we enjoyed the fire pit, and we enjoyed Joe.
Speaker 6 (31:19):
And that's that fire pit.
Speaker 7 (31:20):
Abandoned Dude's near the Grove Cottages is my favorite fire pit,
no doubt.
Speaker 19 (31:26):
That's the inspiration for this podcast. As I've said before,
Without that fire pit, I don't know that we even
have a podcast called the fire Pit I mean, that's
how special that fire Pit is.
Speaker 3 (31:42):
Are you looking for good value on great golf apparel
as a listener to this podcast, my friends John Ashworth
and Jeff Cunningham at Linksoul in Oceanside, California are offering
you a twenty five percent discount on all future orders
of what I Wear All Day, every day, on and
off the course. Whenever you go to linksoul dot com,
just use promo code MATTYG twenty five m A T
(32:05):
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 our
new Imperial ropats. Got a question, comment, or a story
(32:27):
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 we post portions
of our podcast and add some visual surprises.
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