55 Machrihanish Dunes, on Scotland’s west coast, was a dream project for Kidd, who holidayed in the area during his youth the site that were ruled completely off limits unarguably compromised the course, making for a long and difficult walk. But it was still a major achievement for Kidd, who had spent childhood holidays at Machrihanish, gazing out into the dunes at the end of the existing course there and dreaming of one day being able to build in them. And the fact that the course was built so cheaply was a major factor in making it sustainable. “I don’t think we spent a million pounds to build Machrihanish Dunes!” he says. It was around the time of the opening of Machrihanish Dunes, in 2009, that Kidd’s UK story started to reach its ending. The Great Recession of 2007-08 was disastrous for golf development all over the world, but in the UK, where budgets were generally low, and where Kidd was maintaining a substantial payroll, it was catastrophic. “The recession of 2007 caused everything to dry up in the UK,” he says. “We continued to do well until 2009 and then the work just dried up. I either had to close everything down or figure out how to create a lifeboat, and I decided I had a better chance to do that in the US than the UK. I closed my UK office down by the end of 2009 – that was the most painful business thing I’ve had to do. The people I was working with had been with me for a long time and I regarded them as great friends.” So, Kidd upped sticks and moved to Oregon, where he had first made his name. He continues to work around the world – he built the Beaverbrook course to the south of London, which opened in 2016, and finally got to finish the Dunas course at the Comporta resort in Portugal, which was mostly built before its developer, the Espirito Santo banking family, went rather spectacularly bust in 2014. But he is US-based, as is his team – which caused issues when Comporta came alive again during the Covid pandemic (see GCA issue 73 for more details on Comporta). He became an American citizen in 2015. “I’d been a green card holder for ten years and I had started hearing rumours about immigration restrictions,” he says. “A green card isn’t for ever, you have to renew it, so I took citizenship.” His American years have also been up and down. He built a number of courses, including the Stonebrae club in California, and Tetherow in Bend, Oregon, now his home club in his hometown, that were criticised for being overly severe, in both greens DAVID MCLAY KIDD “ I closed my UK office down by the end of 2009 – that was the most painful business thing I’ve had to do” Photo: Machrihanish Dunes
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