50 Getting established in golf course design is a hit-and-miss business, but the one thing that can generally be said is that it takes a long time. The small size of the industry means that, despite numerous attempts to create pathways for new designers, getting one’s start is unpredictable and depends largely on meeting the right people at the right time. Few golf architects have ever met the right person at the right time in the way that David McLay Kidd did. It’s true that, as the son of the longtime manager of the golf courses at Gleneagles, Scotland’s greatest golf resort, he was closer to the industry than most would-be architects, but that kind of thing only goes so far. Kidd was working for Gleneagles Golf Developments, a business set up under the aegis of the resort to help design and build new courses, when the call that would change his life came in. Mike Keiser had sold his greetings card company and got an appetite for developing golf courses by creating the Dunes Club on the shore of Lake Michigan, not far from his Chicago base. He found and, against all the advice he received, bought a huge tract of sandy ground on the coast of southern Oregon, near the small town of Bandon. And he was looking for the right designer to bring his vision to life. “The key link was through Rick Somers, who is a very close friend of Mike’s and runs Great Golf Resorts of the World,” says Kidd. “Mike was talking to Rick about his land in Oregon, and Rick said, ‘If you want to build a links course, perhaps you should hire a Scottish architect’. Mike replied, ‘I would, but there aren’t any’. Rick happened to be involved with Gleneagles Golf, and knew my dad, and that’s how the connection was made.” David and his father Jimmy visited Bandon fairly quickly. “I thought it sounded like an interesting opportunity, so I went out for a week with my dad,” says Kidd. “I had already seen some plans, and my boss at Gleneagles, Ian Ferrier, had been out there David McLay Kidd was in his late twenties and had never built a new golf course when he was asked by Mike Keiser to create Bandon Dunes. Thirty years later, he’s one of the industry’s biggest names. Adam Lawrence hears about his career. Taking the wide road DAVID MCLAY KIDD INTERVIEW
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