The people who’ve worked with golf ’s most successful developer explain how he gets it done right
How does Mike Keiser do it?
Bill Coore, half of the prolifically good Coore & Crenshaw course design team, says a number of clients have asked him exactly that when wondering how best to progress with their own golf course/resort development. “Even though they are competing with Mike, rivals essentially, the respect they have for him is total.”
Keiser, of course, is the founder of Dream Golf, a collection of destination golf resorts that began with Bandon Dunes and now includes Sand Valley in Wisconsin with Rodeo Dunes in Colorado and Wild Spring Dunes in East Texas in the pipeline. He’s also co-owner of The Cabot Collection (with highly regarded properties in Canada, the U.S., the UK, France, and the Caribbean), and involved as investor or advisor in other notable properties around the world.
And if his rivals respect him, his friends and partners revere him.
Coore has co-designed almost a dozen courses where Keiser was either creator or silent partner. He first met the Chicago businessman in the early 1990s at Sand Hills in Nebraska where Keiser was an investor in Dick Youngscap’s audacious enterprise. He wouldn’t get the chance to work for Keiser for another 10 years, however, and even then it was by no means guaranteed.
Bandon Trails would be the first course at Oregon’s Bandon Dunes Golf Resort not located on rumpled linksland or the bluffs high above the Pacific, terrain with which the resort was closely associated. “Mike was perfectly candid,” says Coore. “He said we might not be interested because of where the site was. I’m not sure I’d come across that attitude before, nor have I since.”
Then, as Coore walked the land, assessed his options, and suggested having the course start and end among the dunes on the western edge of the site, he discovered another notable part of Keiser’s character. Howard McKee, Keiser’s great friend and the exceptional legal mind behind so much of Bandon Dunes’s success, was adamant that particular land shouldn’t be used. “But Mike listened carefully to my proposal,” says Coore, “and eventually made the decision to let us go ahead with the plan.”
In doing so, Keiser revealed more of the personality traits that Coore greatly appreciates. “He didn’t instantly dismiss the idea,” Coore says. “He took his time to ponder the alternatives, which really sets him apart.”
One of Keiser’s most familiar refrains, says Coore, is “Do we like this?” something he often asks the friends and advisors who join him on site-walks. David McLay Kidd, the Scot upon whom Keiser took an enormous risk when deciding who would design the first course at Bandon Dunes, adds another favorite Keiser line: “What I’m hearing is… .”
Kidd—whose design of Bandon Dunes set Keiser’s “retail golf” career in motion—says that while he is obviously willing to take a risk, Keiser also has an awful lot of common sense. “Mike very calmly and rationally distills everything down before coming to his decision,” he says. “And once he has, he makes it very clear what he wants and how to proceed.”
The combination of listening intently, acting judiciously, and explaining his decision in a way that leaves no one in doubt as to what needs to happen next has obviously worked well.
“Oh my goodness, it makes our job so much easier,” says Ben Crenshaw, Coore’s design partner. “There’s just no rush with Mike. He considers all opinions, decides what he wants to do, and lets us get on with it. He sets it out very clearly. I think it’s the best way to operate.” Kidd respects Keiser’s way of doing things so much he admits to emulating him. “There’s no ambiguity,” he says. “It’s either a very clear ‘Yes’ or very clear ‘No’, and it usually works perfectly.”
Another side of Keiser’s character is his dry, and at times acerbic, sense of humor—one that might catch people a little off-guard initially but which frequently diffuses potentially tense situations. He’s happy to poke fun, says Kidd, but, he insists, always in a light-hearted manner.
Crenshaw says he has a welcome ability to lighten the mood, and Coore likes to remember dinners in the Lodge at Bandon Dunes when Keiser hosted groups of his similarly conservative-leaning business friends and the conversation would turn to politics. “I think Mike just brought it up occasionally to make entertaining conversation,” Coore recalls. “He certainly never tried to prove a point or strive to make you see it his way. Howard McKee [who passed in 2007] and I might be the only left-of-center people in the room and Mike would say ‘Now where are those two liberals?’ It made me smile.”
Then there’s his genuine humility. “He’d never say it, of course, but Mike has changed golf enormously,” says Kidd. “He pretty much single-handedly created a whole new business model for public golf and, in that sense, has been hugely influential. But you’d never know it to talk to him.”
Josh Lesnik couldn’t agree more. “Mike is very understated,” says the Executive VP of Golf at KemperSports, the golf management company that oversees Bandon Dunes Golf Resort as well as more than 140 other courses, private clubs, sports venues, and destination resorts across the United States. “Be it an architect, manager, or friend, Mike just has a way of getting on with people and bringing out the best in them. He prefers to collaborate with others than be a lone wolf.”
Tom Doak, who has designed five of Keiser’s courses with more to come, likes to speak of Keiser’s tremendous vision. “He was not only willing to spend the time and money to find great sites, he was really the man who saw great sites as being every bit as important as great architects.”
Doak is certain that projects like Ballyneal in Colorado and Australia’s Barnbougle Dunes would surely never have happened had Bandon Dunes not ushered in this brave new world of golf development. Barnbougle’s owner, Richard Sattler, was a potato/cattle farmer who had strong entrepreneurial instincts and some success but no knowledge of golf. He wisely chose to transform his Tasmanian sand dunes into two courses (Barnbougle Dunes opened in 2004 and Lost Farm in 2010) with Keiser’s help and became fully invested in the American’s mantra of “build something good enough and they will come.”
“Mike was my mentor and confidant,” Sattler says. “And now I regard him as a great friend. He helped us create something that is world-class but also accessible to the public, which was a totally different concept for Australian golfers.”
Lesnik, like Doak, says Keiser’s eagerness and ability to find exceptional land has been instrumental in his success as a golf developer. “And after connecting the best architects with the site,” Lesnik continues, “he had the good sense to insist on designs that not just the top 10 percent of golfers could enjoy. Creating courses that were playable and enjoyable for the vast majority of people was all part of his brilliance.”
Equally important, says Doak, was making the courses accessible to all. “A lot of the really good courses being built these days are private because the client doesn’t necessarily want to be in the golf business,” he adds. “Their motivation is to create the cool place and enjoy it afterward, but they’d rather hand off the work of operating the business. Mike is really the only client I’ve had who got fully immersed in the design of his courses and operating them.”
Keiser plays golf once a week at The Beverly Country Club in Chicago or Old Elm, 30 miles north of The Loop. He is still very much in the development game, though his sons, Michael Jr. and Chris, have become increasingly more active and hands-on within Dream Golf than their father. His interest in movies, the Chicago Cubs, and other sports has waned in recent years, replaced by an eagerness to support causes that mean a lot to him (such as the Evans Scholarship Foundation) and protect the natural areas around his golf projects. For example, his 13-hole par-3 course Bandon Preserve has raised over $8 million for the Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation, which exists to “support conservation, community, and the economy on the Southern Oregon Coast.”
The improvements Keiser has effected on the Beaver State’s coastline have certainly been significant, but they could never be as impactful as what he has done for golf around the world. Ben Cowan-Dewar, CEO and co-founder of The Cabot Collection, says his business partner has done more to change golf globally than anyone in the modern era.
“He proved what he already knew from his visits to Scotland,” says Cowan-Dewar, “that amazing golf courses were a great attraction for golfers. He has filled them with wonderment and joy. And what better legacy could one ask for?”
I have played at Bandon Dunes twice. The last time, my caddie had caddied for Mike a week or two before. The caddie said that during his round with Mike, Mike was constantly quizzing him regarding what golfers were telling the caddie about what they liked, what they wanted from the experience, etc. It’s apparent to me that Mike’s success is due to giving his customers the experience they want.