Bandon Dunes

Bandon Dunes, the course that launched an entire resort and a movement in American links golf, sits perched on bluffs a hundred feet above the Pacific Ocean, with a dozen holes running directly along the coastline. David McLay Kidd's routing captures the raw, treeless character of Scottish links golf with wide fairways tumbling over natural dune formations, pot bunkers guarding approach angles, and persistent ocean wind transforming the course's personality from hour to hour.

The story of Bandon Dunes begins not on the windswept Oregon coastline where the course sits, but in the imagination of a Chicago businessman who believed that American golf had lost touch with the game's essential character. Mike Keiser had made his fortune in the recycled greeting card business, building a company that reflected his practical, no-frills sensibility. But his deepest passion was golf, and his travels to Scotland and Ireland throughout the 1980s and 1990s had convinced him that the links experience -- walking golf on firm, fast ground, shaped by wind and weather, with minimal artifice -- was the purest expression of the sport. He wanted to bring that experience to American soil, and he was willing to stake his reputation and his capital on finding the right piece of land to do it. That search led Keiser to the southern Oregon coast, to a stretch of wild, windswept duneland a few miles north of the small town of Bandon. The property sat on a bluff high above the Pacific Ocean, with native sand dunes, coastal gorse, and shore pines creating a landscape that bore a striking resemblance to the linksland of the British Isles. Howard McKee, a land use expert who became an essential partner in the project, helped Keiser navigate the regulatory and environmental challenges of developing the remote site. The location was, by conventional resort standards, almost absurdly inconvenient -- hours from any major city, accessible by a small regional airport or a long drive through the Cascades. Keiser saw this isolation not as a liability but as an asset. The journey itself would be part of the experience, filtering the audience to those who cared enough about golf to make the trip. For his architect, Keiser made an unconventional choice. David McLay Kidd was a young Scotsman in his late twenties who had grown up around golf at Gleneagles, where his father served as head greenkeeper. Kidd had worked under his father and assisted on projects in the UK, but Bandon Dunes would be his first solo design commission.

Keiser saw in Kidd the right temperament for the project: a designer steeped in the traditions of Scottish links golf, unburdened by the conventions of American course architecture, and young enough to pour himself completely into the work. Kidd spent eighteen months on site, living among the dunes and studying the land with an intensity that bordered on obsession. He spent eighteen hours a day walking the property, staking potential tee locations and green sites, and working with the natural contours rather than imposing a predetermined vision. The greatest challenge was not finding the golf holes -- the land was rich with possibilities -- but clearing the fragile dunes of overgrown gorse and Monterey pines that had colonized the site, obscuring the natural landforms beneath. Kidd's routing took full advantage of the coastline, threading the course along the bluff so that a dozen holes run directly above the Pacific, with views stretching across twenty-three miles of undisturbed shoreline. Bandon Dunes opened for play on May 19, 1999, and the response was immediate and emphatic. Keiser had hoped the course would draw 10,000 rounds in its first year, the number he calculated was needed to break even. It registered 25,000. Golf publications showered the course with praise, and Golf Digest named it the Best New Public Course of 1999. Word spread quickly through the golfing community that something genuinely different had been built on the Oregon coast -- a course that felt more like Ballybunion or Dornoch than any American resort destination. The course plays as a par 72 at 7,212 yards from the tournament tees, with additional tee options ranging down to 5,072 yards. The terrain is pure linksland: firm turf over sand, undulating fairways, deep pot bunkers, and greens that accept running approach shots. Wind is a constant companion, and the varying conditions create a different experience on every visit.

The prevailing breeze comes from the north, making the outward holes that play into the wind particularly demanding. The fourth hole, a 443-yard par four, is recognized by Golf Magazine as one of the top 500 holes in the world. Kidd's genius here was in the sequencing: the hole is the first to reveal the ocean, but he withheld that view from the tee, choosing instead to introduce the Pacific on the approach shot, creating a moment of visual drama that players remember for years. The fifth, a 445-yard par four running north directly into the prevailing wind along the cliff edge, is widely regarded as the most difficult hole on the course. The sixteenth, a driveable par four of just 363 yards, is the signature hole, featuring a gorge beyond the tee and ocean cliffs behind the green. The approach is stunningly gorgeous and treacherous in equal measure, with the Pacific serving as the ultimate penalty for an overly aggressive play. The sixth, a 217-yard par three to a raised plateau green with the ocean lurking left and a pot bunker guarding the right, demands a standout exacting tee shots on the course. Bandon Dunes is a walking-only facility. Golf carts are not permitted except for documented medical need. Caddies are available and encouraged. This policy, which Keiser insisted upon from the beginning, reinforces the links ethos that animates the entire resort: golf is a walking game, played at the pace the land dictates, with the wind in your face and the turf beneath your feet. The success of the original course sparked what became a remarkable resort developments in golf history. Pacific Dunes, designed by Tom Doak, followed in 2001 and has been consistently ranked among the top courses in the United States.

Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw contributed Bandon Trails in 2005, weaving a routing through sand dunes, meadows, and coastal forest. Tom Doak and Jim Urbina designed Old Macdonald in 2010, an homage to C.B. Macdonald's template hole philosophy. Coore and Crenshaw returned to build the 13-hole par-three Bandon Preserve in 2012, with green fees benefiting the Bandon Dunes Charitable Foundation. Sheep Ranch, another Coore and Crenshaw design featuring a full mile of ocean frontage, opened in 2020. Most recently, Shorty's, a 19-hole short course named after Shorty Dow -- the previous landowner and Keiser's good friend -- opened on May 2, 2024, designed by Rod Whitman, Dave Axland, and Keith Cutten. David McLay Kidd's original course remains the foundation upon which all of this was built. It proved that American golfers were hungry for an authentic links experience, that a walking-only resort could thrive commercially, and that the game did not need manicured perfection to be deeply satisfying. The course demonstrated that the principles of links golf -- firm conditions, strategic options, respect for the land's natural contours, and an honest relationship between the golfer and the elements -- could translate to the American landscape with results that rivaled the ancient courses of Scotland and Ireland. Bandon Dunes currently ranks among the top 30 courses in the United States and among the top 50 in the world. It has fundamentally altered the trajectory of American golf course design, inspiring a generation of architects to pursue minimalist, site-sensitive approaches and encouraging developers to seek out dramatic natural settings rather than engineering artificial ones. What Keiser and Kidd started on the Oregon coast in 1999 has become one of the defining stories in modern golf.