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