52 before me, so I had a pretty good idea of what the site was like and where it was. I drew a plan for 36 holes where Bandon is and where Trails now is. I think I was the first to make clear to Mike what a true links was – old-style fescue grasses, rumpled fairways, walking, not putting the clubhouse right by the water. I think that was what helped Mike to see what he had there. He had been a founding member of Sand Hills, and obviously that place had broken the mould, but it had golf carts and bentgrass greens – things that weren’t true to the original British model.” It took a long time – over three years – before Keiser finally handed the keys to Bandon over to the young architect, and during all that time, Kidd was never totally certain that he had the gig. “We started construction in August 1997, and that was the first point I knew for sure I was doing it,” he says. “I was 29 years old. No-one, including Mike, had any idea that the golfing public in America would gravitate to our idea as much as they did. Mike was building something that he liked, and hoped that enough people would see it and share his views.” As the intervening years have proved in spades, they did! “It didn’t have a name, there was no real business plan,” Kidd goes on. “Dick Youngscap, the founder of Sand Hills, came out before we started building it. I met him in 1996, and I felt I was being interviewed again. It seemed that I had to convince Dick that I knew what I was doing, which I didn’t, but I talked a good talk. There was no contractor. I was the guy on site, all day every day, building the golf course. Jim Haley was the only other person on site who had ever built a golf course before – the rest were locals, fishermen and farmers. I was taking them all to the bar regularly, and I created a sense of common objective – a brotherhood. I told them that we were building something that would DAVID MCLAY KIDD “ I was the guy on site, all day every day, building the golf course” Kidd’s breakthrough design at Bandon Dunes opened in 1999. The remote Oregon resort has since built four more full eighteens, and two par-three courses. Inset, Kidd on an early site visit with general manager Josh Lesnik and developer Mike Keiser
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=