{"id":122,"date":"2009-11-30T12:18:09","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T17:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnstrawn.com\/?p=122"},"modified":"2013-11-24T15:24:52","modified_gmt":"2013-11-24T20:24:52","slug":"a-conversation-with-david-mclay-kidd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/golf\/personalities\/122\/a-conversation-with-david-mclay-kidd","title":{"rendered":"A Conversation with David McLay Kidd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Second in a Series<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

David McLay Kidd\u2019s first golf course design project, Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast, was a spectacular success, launching a career that is, judged by the standard biographical trajectory of most prominent golf course architects, still in its adolescence. An unlikely prodigy in a profession whose leading practitioners emphasize the virtue of experience and the wisdom that comes with maturity, Kidd emerged full-blown, as it were, gifted and composed.<\/em><\/p>\n

I had the good fortune to meet David on the cusp of his fame, in a soft pre-opening of Bandon Dunes. Mike Keiser, Bandon\u2019s developer, invited a group of friends, mostly from his hometown of Chicago, to play his new course, and through a mutual friend I was asked to join them. There was no clubhouse yet, and the caddies were Coast Guardsman on their day off. I was, nonetheless, dumbfounded by how great the course was, and a little envious of the lucky designer given the chance to create a course on such a\u00a0matchless site. I had never enjoyed a round of golf more, and I looked forward to meeting the designer.<\/em><\/p>\n

At dinner that night, after Mike had shared his hope that Bandon would not go down as \u201cKeiser\u2019s Folly,\u201d I met David, who was amiable, engaging and modest in a confident way, or confident in a modest way, I couldn\u2019t decide which. I told him how much I admired what he had done. He was gracious and grateful for his good fortune. Over the next decade and a half David would leverage that opportunity into one of the grandest portfolios any golf designer has ever accumulated. Along the way two books were written with David as a central character: Stephen Goodwin\u2019s Dream Golf: The Making of Bandon Dunes, a graceful recreation of\u00a0Mike Keiser\u2019s quixotic\u00a0quest; and Scott Gummer\u2019s The Seventh at St Andrews: The Castle Course, a terrific and intimate chronicle of Kidd\u2019s creation of a new course in the home of golf. They are two essential texts for anyone interested in golf course design and designers.<\/em><\/p>\n

David and I spoke in October, 2009.<\/p>\n

\"The

The 5th at Bandon Dunes<\/p><\/div>\n

JS: I understand you\u2019re shutting down your office in the UK.<\/p>\n

DK: Over the last six or seven years we had an office outside of London and an office here on the west coast and I was frantically jumping between the two on a monthly basis with three design guys in each office, and we were slowly getting busier and busier and busier. In \u201907 we were at our absolute peak with 7 projects under construction all at once, and with another \u2013heaven knows\u2014literally dozens of projects on our books that could have started within the next couple of years had the economy stayed going the way it was going. But as you know everything came to a grinding halt and it became pretty obvious that the projects we had on our books were all in trouble\u2014not a single one of them was going to survive under its existing business plan.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m 41 so I didn\u2019t think I could pack up and retire just yet. A caddying career probably wouldn\u2019t sustain me. I\u2019d be liable to wrap a wedge around some country-club golfer\u2019s head at Bandon Dunes about my third round, so I doubt caddying would be a long-term solution for me. I had to figure out a way to stay in the golf course design and construction business even if it was like Nero fiddling while Rome burned.<\/p>\n

So the best opportunities were going to be entirely new projects or older ones with a completely new master-plan or business plan\u2014new ideas to challenge the new economic landscape we find ourselves in. Just having 500 homes at a million bucks a lot was unlikely to be a sustainable business model \u2013 and frankly people who called me then and now with that model raised my eyebrows and made me wonder if they knew what the hell they were talking about. So with all of that in mind I decided that our UK office wasn\u2019t going to be sustainable.<\/p>\n

There didn\u2019t seem to be anything left in the United Kingdom. We\u2019d done three projects back-to-back: St Andrews, Machrihanish, and a new project called gWest that was just finished. I don\u2019t seem to be getting very many calls in western Europe. I know (Robert ) Trent Jones, Junior is doing some European work, but we\u2019re really not getting many calls. So I didn\u2019t think the UK office was sustainable\u2014anything that did come our way we could support from the US.<\/p>\n

The second reason for closing that office was my desire to be wholly located in the US and not try to operate two different offices. Third of all it seemed easier for me to target an entirely new market in South America and Asia, so I\u2019ve been spending the last year or so doing that and now we\u2019re starting to see that some of the projects we have secured are real and are moving forward. We\u2019re in initial clearing stages on a project in Nicaragua, we\u2019ve just signed a contract in Korea and I\u2019ve just come back from a trip to Cambodia, so we\u2019re pushing ahead with things in South America and Asia. Of course if something pops up elsewhere in the world I\u2019d give it my interest but we\u2019re not targeting other places like the middle east or Europe.<\/p>\n

JS: If you close the UK office, what will your associate, Paul Kimber, do?<\/p>\n

DK: By the end of the year Paul will have moved off into his own ventures. He and I may collaborate on things in the future. We\u2019ll see where that goes. But our relationship as employer\/employee will have severed by the end of the year. That\u2019s all happened in an amicable way. Paul wants to stay in the UK, but we have no active projects moving forward.<\/p>\n

Paul\u2019s been a fantastic collaborator for the last almost ten years. We\u2019ve done some amazing projects together, and it\u2019s come to a kind of natural conclusion. He\u2019s more than smart enough to do his own thing\u2014I hope he has raging success in the years to come and I get to bathe in a little reflected glory having been instrumental in moving him where he is at now and helping him move forward. We\u2019re still great friends. There\u2019s no animosity on either side. He\u2019s been an extremely loyal and extremely profitable employee and I think he\u2019ll do great as he moves forward. I just hope he doesn\u2019t steal any major projects away from me in the next couple years. But I\u2019ll take my chances.<\/p>\n

JS: You started with a pretty good project at Bandon, but it\u2019s hard to imagine how you could top the projects in your Scottish portfolio\u2014The Castle Course at St Andrews or Machrihanish. Aren\u2019t you in danger of being an Alexander, with no more worlds to conquer? Are there better projects out there?<\/p>\n

\"17th

17th at The Castle<\/p><\/div>\n

DK: No, there\u2019s almost no way, unless I had been tempted to do the Trump project in Aberdeen, which I was approached about\u2014there wasn\u2019t much left that I could see opportunity for. I was truly blessed to be able to do those three projects. We rolled from one to the next virtually seamlessly for five years. Unheard of, really. And Scotland\u2019s tiny\u2014what would you reckon, one quarter the size of Oregon? To have three major projects back to back, I certainly can\u2019t be unhappy. And from Paul\u2019s point of view, he\u2019s got an unbelievable starting point, similar to the starting point I had with Bandon Dunes\u2014he\u2019s had with those three projects back-to-back. I wish him all the best, and I don\u2019t want him to steal any major projects off me, but if he does he will have done it for all the right reasons.<\/p>\n

JS: Speaking of Bandon. It\u2019s obvious in retrospect that it was a great opportunity, but what did you think when you first looked at in, what, 1994?<\/p>\n

DK It\u2019s hard for people to appreciate now, fifteen years later, but when I saw Bandon, there was no expectation\u2014 there was no \u201cBandon.\u201d Nobody knew where Bandon-by-the-Sea was. Who the hell would come to coastal southwest Oregon to play golf?<\/p>\n

I might be working for a guy called Mike Keiser whom nobody had ever heard of in the golf business\u2014I mean, barely anything heard of him full-stop. Although he had achieved some great things, they weren\u2019t widely known\u2014he wasn\u2019t some massive industrialist. I could see huge potential and see how a guy like me could sort of sneak under the wire in the US because it was a low-profile project by an inexperienced developer. Mike hadn\u2019t developed anything before other than his 9-holer. So I saw a wonderful opportunity but didn\u2019t think I was competing with the \u201cbig dogs\u201d to get it, so to speak.<\/p>\n

The land back then was so overgrown with pine trees and gorse you couldn\u2019t see the dunescape that you see today. You couldn\u2019t even see it on Pacific Dunes\u2014it was all covered in gorse. But on the Bandon Dunes site we took out $100,000 worth of crappy timber\u2014wood that was all turned to pulp. None of it was turned to logs. There was not a tree out there more than ten inches in diameter. They were sixty-feet tall with a tiny piece of green on top.<\/p>\n

JS: What do you think of Steve Goodwin\u2019s book, \u201cDream Golf,\u201d about the creation of Bandon?<\/p>\n

DK: It\u2019s kind of unfortunate that it wasn\u2019t written closer to the time of construction. It gives the facts and it paints the story, but I am not sure it does so from a truly human perspective because so much time has passed and people\u2019s memories fade. That\u2019s why I was so keen that the book that I did with Scott Gummer was done right there at the time, to record exactly what was said at that time\u2014it\u2019s a far better historical record of the people\u2019s story of how The Castle Course was created. But it\u2019s still thrills me to have those two books on my bookshelf detailing two projects that I was I was intimately involved with\u2014I don\u2019t think there are many other golf designer in the world, certainly not top lever players who have a couple of hard-back novels done about them.<\/p>\n

JS: Here you are barely 40 and you\u2019ve had two books written about your accomplishments. That usually only happens to sports stars.<\/p>\n

DK: Sometimes I pinch myself and think, \u201cthat\u2019s pretty cool.\u201d But I don\u2019t float around out there on a day-to-day basis thinking about the books or these amazing projects or all that. Day-to-day I am thinking about which developer I can phone up to see if he\u2019s got any work.<\/p>\n

JS: It is an extraordinary thing you accomplished, David. I loved playing Bandon Dunes the first time I played it and I\u2019ve loved playing it every time since. We go every year at least once or twice for Bandon outings and Bandon Dunes is still my favorite course to play.<\/p>\n

DK: It\u2019s wonderful to receive such praise that is so almost undeserved. Bandon was so easy, in terms that it was almost there already. Sure, there are some parts that are frankly created and there are a few ridges that got pushed over so I could see through, but the vast majority of that landscape is as I found it. I probably wasn\u2019t smart enough to dream up better ideas than what was already in front of me\u2014and I had been raised on a diet of very unconventional golf, at least from an American perspective.<\/p>\n

It seemed entirely OK to me to have fairways that were pitching and rolling and things that weren\u2019t entirely obvious and greens that flowed off and pot bunkers halfway down fairways– none of that seemed alien to me. I wasn\u2019t pushing any boundaries in my own head, although I seemed to be pushing what the sensibility was by American golf design standard but I didn\u2019t really know it.<\/p>\n

\"David

David Kidd’s Debut: The 15th at Bandon Dunes<\/p><\/div>\n

There wasn\u2019t whole lot in Coos Bay I could go compare it to. In my head I was playing \u2018round Machrihanish or the Ailsa Course at Turnberry or Carnoustie or the Old Course\u2014those were the models in my head that I was playing greens. It always gives me more pleasure when I hear people \u201cooh\u201d and \u201caah\u201d about other things that I know I had to work harder to create.<\/p>\n

Tetherow is getting lots of attention and cost half what Pronghorn did. Sure it\u2019s caused some controversy but that controversy runs both ways. Lots of people think it\u2019s absolutely amazing but I know that site was weak\u2014we had to create what you see. Professionally I am almost prouder of the projects that were harder to do. And I could not have done Tetherow in my twenties the way I did Bandon. And The Castle is an entirely fictitious course, like Kingsbarn.<\/p>\n

JS: I am not a subscriber to that \u201cGod (or Nature) created this course and I just had to find it\u201d mantra. Every course is an artifice, something made by man at some level. Golf isn\u2019t \u201cnatural\u201d\u2014you never find any creature other than man cavorting about with balls and sticks. But that aside, how did you actually go about routing Bandon Dunes on a \u201cnatural\u201d site? Steve Goodwin writes in Dream Golf said you didn\u2019t really have good base maps to work from.<\/p>\n

DK: I did the routing for Bandon exactly the way I have done the routings for quite a few golf courses since: I laid it out entirely in the field. I walked that land over a two year period on my own, with Mike, with my father, and learned that chunk of land much the same way a child would learn the surroundings to his house. I knew intimately where the highs and lows were, where the great views were, where the humps and hollows were, and in my head I didn\u2019t so much consider the routing as 18 golf holes\u2014I know it\u2019s another one of those pass\u00e9 lines but there genuinely were a million different ways that great golf holes could have been laid out at Bandon. I looked at it as an exploration of that landscape: how could the golf course explore the land.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s no coincidence that the third tee is the highest point on the golf course. It\u2019s no coincidence that the 16th green ended up way out on the point. I know that that is not great novel writing, but it\u2019s solid novel writing, if you take my point. I gave a very good overview of the \u201cbook,\u201d so to speak, on the 3th tee, because you see everything. I satisfied the initial lust to see the ocean on the 4th green. And then again on the 6th green. And then I built the thing up to a crescendo, finishing with 15, 16 and 17. Brad Klein talked about the fact that it was all building up in match play terms \u2013that I obviously had it in my head when I was designing it that I was thinking about match play, and that\u2019s probably true. Although I don\u2019t remember consciously thinking it, but as a Scotsman only ever playing match play, that would certainly be part of my subconscious.<\/p>\n

JS: How did you hold this sense of the place in your head? And did you start with green sites?<\/p>\n

DK: We went through a year or more laying out a course within a 160 acre parcel whose northern boundary was basically where the 11th green is. If you drew a line parallel to the beach from say, 4 through 11 green and roughly back to the second, that was the original property line. And the whole 18 holes always sat in that parcel. Mike was always happy with the back 9. 10 through 18 as you see it today were laid out early and always stayed like that. But 1 through 9, he was never happy with. The 6th and 11th greens were a shared double green and he was never happy with it.<\/p>\n

Over six months we walked it at least three times. Mike always came back to not being happy with the front 9. And I kept trying to make the case that I firmly believed that the golf course I had laid out was the very best golf course I could lay out within the parcel. And one day he just said, \u201cso the only solution is more land?\u201d And I said, \u201cwell, yeah, but we both know that land is owned by an ambulance-chasing lawyer, and he has no intentions of selling it.\u201d So that\u2019s just not an option I had ever considered.<\/p>\n

And then right at the 11th hour, the guy went bankrupt, and Mike was able to secure the land from a bankruptcy sale. Even then he was already talking to Tom about doing the second course, but Mike said to me, \u201cjust take whatever land you want for this next 9.\u201d And I tried to explain to Mike that given that his new land holding was large\u2014it ran all the way up to Whiskey Run Beach, where Old MacDonald\u2019s being built; I said\u2014this changes the playing field entirely\u2014you have to go back to first principles, to everything we\u2019ve ever considered: the access road, the clubhouse position, everything is now up for grabs.<\/p>\n\"6th\n

The \u201cheart\u201d of the project is not in the same spot anymore, I told him, because we\u2019ve moved the body. We have to reconsider the core of this development. You\u2019re going to build numerous golf courses, it makes all kinds of sense to do that from a single core, as Gullane does, as St. Andrews<\/a> links do, as Gleneagles does, which I obviously know extremely well. Let\u2019s go back and take another few weeks or few months and reconsider the core of this development. And guess what? Mike said, \u201cno. All I want you to change is the front nine.\u201d<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t believe it. I tried my best to push and shove at him, but as the Scots would say, \u201che\u2019s thrawn. \u201d Once Mike makes up his mind, that\u2019s it. His genius appears like an Achilles heel to those who don\u2019t know him and don\u2019t appreciate where his true talent is. He was fine with where things were and didn\u2019t see the need to change it all and was more than willing to allow this development to grow organically and to evolve, and he wasn\u2019t willing to master plan it to the n\u2019th degree, as some 4000 acre development. \u201cOK, we\u2019ve got 9\/10th of it right, let\u2019s just tweak the last little bit and we\u2019ll let the dice fall as they fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s what then happened: I changed the front nine\u2014that\u2019s why the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth holes stretch out as they do. If you look at it on a plan the whole routing is very cohesive until you get to four green, and then it stretches up the beach for two holes and then cuts back on itself\u2014and that was the change brought about by the landholding. Then when Pacific and Trails came along they had to be entirely remote from the original golf course. There was no way to get to them from the original clubhouse.
\nMike likes the quirkiness. It\u2019s part of the mystique of Bandon. He likes the fact it\u2019s not planned out like a Mercedes\u2014it\u2019s like a kick-car. He likes the organic growth. If it were a Palm Desert master-planned resort community it would have completely missed what Mike was trying to achieve\u2014which is to make it look like it had just developed over hundreds of years. He short-circuited that hundreds of years by making a good decision and sticking with it and then making another good decision, but the two decisions didn\u2019t necessarily overlap well.<\/p>\n

JS: Was there some tension about that revision? Did it affect your relationship?<\/p>\n

DK: No, not at all. Mike and my father are exactly the same age. I always treated Mike with the same deference and respect as I would have treated my own father. So it was easy for me to accept his instructions. If he said, \u201cOK, David, I listened to all the arguments but it\u2019s still going to be black,\u201d I would have said, \u201cOK.\u201d The great thing about Mike is he is consistent. I never experienced Mike to say one thing in the morning and then change his mind in the afternoon. He pretty much stayed consistent. Sometimes that is wonderfully liberating, because you give him an idea and he says, \u201cOK, go ahead and do it,\u201d and other times it\u2019s infuriating, because he\u2019ll say, \u201cno, I don\u2019t want you to do that, I want you to do this.\u201d But he stays consistent.<\/p>\n

JS: Once he\u2019s made up his mind then you can\u2019t persuade him?<\/p>\n

DK: It seems like that to me. You had your chance to change his mind, but once he went firm on it\u2014once he gives the \u201cfinal answer,\u201d like on the TV show\u2014you pretty much know that\u2019s it. I\u2019ve chatted to Tom Doak about this and he agrees\u2014once you\u2019ve got Mike\u2019s final answer, you could rely that\u2019s he not going to dither, but it just might not be the answer you really wanted.<\/p>\n

JS: You had training and preparation in golf course design, of course, but were you expecting or were you prepared for the fame and acclaim that came with the success of Bandon Dunes?<\/p>\n

DK: I wasn\u2019t expecting it all. I was hoping a golf magazine might put mention of it in a sidebar. The first little mentions I treasured and stuck them in a scrapbook and wrote next to them the date. They\u2019re little clippings\u2014maybe a quarter of a page from a golf magazine. I had no idea what was going to happen. I was thrilled that anybody was paying attention.<\/p>\n

Once the double paged spreads started coming out and the covers of golf magazines you\u2019d have to pinch yourself. And while I was hugely flattered by all the attention and the wonderful things people were saying, we Scots are known for having a big chip on our shoulder. We spent a thousand years or more getting beat up by the Romans and then the English, so we\u2019ve got this general chip on our shoulder that tells us that we never quite achieved our greatness. That mindset always told me that Bandon was likely to be a one-hit wonder, that I would never achieve it again, that somehow I had got lucky and better revel in it. So that made me focus far harder on what came next. I wanted to try to use the incredible good fortune I had been given to try to make a career.<\/p>\n

JS: Let me ask you about Fancourt, David. I played it a couple of years ago and when someone told me on about the 6th hole that it was \u201cdesigned by David Kidd\u201d I said, \u201cno way.\u201d<\/p>\n

DK: Montagu at Fancourt was a remodel of a Gary Player rip-off of the style of Augusta. Would I build that now as an original work? No chance. Was it fun to dabble with something so gardenesque? Yeah, it was fun to think about flower beds and fountains and lakes and at least try out that genre.
\nIt was a heavy-handed remodel rather than an original work. The impetus for it was a drop in the rankings. The condition of the poa greens was a factor. And then Ernie Els missed a putt on 18 for 59 on the day after the President\u2019s Cup in 2003 from the tips. That really bruised the ego of Dr. Plattner , so he wanted the course rejuvenated and toughened up a bit. So we spent a fair a chunk of money redoing it and on opening day Reteif Goosen shot a 66, so we improved it, but only by six strokes.
\nI don\u2019t feel that I am snobbishly attached to being \u201cminimalist\u201d and \u201cnaturalist\u201d at every turn. If it called for it, and I was intrigued to do it, having had the experience of Fancourt, I have some inkling of how it can be done. I am glad it was in South Africa, though, and not in California.<\/p>\n

JS: Your Irish course, Powerscourt, is in more as a parkland style.<\/p>\n

DK: Powerscourt was my attempt to be minimalist in terms of both design and maintenance. The owners there, the Slazinger family, had told me \u2013 \u201cwe don\u2019t ever want more than eight full-time greenkeepers, including the superintendent, and that\u2019s our budget.\u201d And that number could drop to four in the wintertime. So what could we do to achieve that? By comparison, The Castle Course has almost thirty staff in the summer. The brief you give the architect can make a massive difference. Powerscourt is reasonably high-end by Irish standards, but not by American standards, so the maintenance budget needed to be modest.<\/p>\n

JS: What was your solution?<\/p>\n

DK: You needed to use entirely sustainable grasses\u2014no drug addicts. The whole golf course, barring the greens, were a combination of fescue, bent and predominantly turf-type ryegrass. The greens were creeping bent. So the grassing was extremely easy to maintain apart from the putting surfaces. And then another thing was we made the whole golf course ride-on. The few bunkers that are out there are all soft-edge, so you use a TORO sidewinder and get to every bit of them. You compare that to Tetherow or to The Castle, and they\u2019re weed-wacking all those hillocks and ridges we<\/p>\n

\"The

The Castle Course at St Andrews, Number 3<\/p><\/div>\n

created\u2014there\u2019s a vast amount of maintenance to maintain that look.<\/p>\n

JS: Who do you see are your rivals in design these days?<\/p>\n

DK: I feel fortunate to say that I believe my rivals are Bill Coore and Tom Doak and Gil Hanse and Kyle Phillips\u2014a pretty great bunch of designers. I feel I really have to be on my absolute \u201cA game\u201d to beat anyone of them in a bid situation. They all have great resumes. I continue to feel like the underdog whether it\u2019s true or not because it serves me very well.<\/p>\n

JS: Do you find yourself competing against the same group of rivals for jobs?<\/p>\n

DK: Virtually every project we\u2019re being interviewed for or bidding on includes Bill Coore and Tom Doak.<\/p>\n

JS: It\u2019s not the Nicklauses and the Palmers and Trent Jones?<\/p>\n

DK: Not usually. And if it is, I\u2019m always kind of concerned that the developer doesn\u2019t really know what he\u2019s after. If you\u2019re interviewing me and Jack Nicklaus it\u2019s like you don\u2019t know whether you want a sports car or a motorbike.<\/p>\n

But if I know Bill Coore was there last week and Tom\u2019s there next week, they\u2019re much more focused on what they\u2019re after. Perhaps what the developers underestimate or don\u2019t realize if that while the business is very competitive, we do talk. I am more than capable of phoning Bill up and saying, \u201chey, I know you went there last week. Is the guy decent, is he a good human being, is the site any good?\u201d And I know that Bill will tell me straight. We would rather win a project from one another fairly than any cloak-and-dagger way. And again, I am somewhat the underdog so I have to fight a little harder.<\/p>\n

JS: Do the clients contact you? How do you learn about projects?<\/p>\n

DK: They\u2019re coming to us. As a general rule I never try to cold-call. They\u2019re coming to me. I work existing networks to penetrate new markets.<\/p>\n

JS: Hills\/Forrest recently announced an alliance with Arjun Atwal for golf design in India? Would you ever work with a player consultant?<\/p>\n

DK: I might have considered it more in my early career. There was a time when Faldo\u2019s management was trying to hook me up with Nick Faldo, and the initial conversation was for some kind of joint-billing, more like the Coore-Crenshaw path rather than with me as a complete subordinate. It was after Bandon and I am glad I didn\u2019t go down that road\u2014I prefer being my own person. I collaborate every day, but I do it with the design guys in my own firm. We have nothing else to do but design golf courses—that is our whole mission. We have no vineyards, no apparel\u2026<\/p>\n

JS: What! No David Kidd pinot noir?<\/p>\n

DK: I don\u2019t even drink anymore\u2014the books are completely out of date. I haven\u2019t had a drink in two years. I am not going to try to get a client drunk to get his business. Well, that\u2019s not true\u2014I just won\u2019t be getting drunk with him.<\/p>\n

In my head aligning with a golf professional bridges the gap between commercialism and trying to stay faithful to true golf design. I don\u2019t want to do a deal with the latest Indian golfer and have him have any input to what I am creating at all\u2014that\u2019s commercially motivated, and I don\u2019t want to be motivated that way. That\u2019s fine for you if want to do it, but I don\u2019t want to go down that road.<\/p>\n

JS: But it\u2019s a conundrum\u2014even at Bandon, Mike wants to make money. Munis are different, of course, so I don\u2019t know if the Links Trust expects to make money on The Castle Course, but there\u2019s a commercial aspect to nearly every golf project.<\/p>\n

DK: And we\u2019ve been lucky enough that virtually every project we\u2019ve done has been commercially successful. The Castle Course is the busiest course in Scotland, apart from the Old Course. It also has the highest green fee at \u00a3135. That course has no \u201cbranding\u201d on it\u2014I hadn\u2019t done anything in Scotland. Nobody in the UK has heard of me, there\u2019s no Bandon Dunes there. Queenwood that I did is so private nobody\u2019s heard of that other than an elite few, so the reason for the Castle\u2019s success is the golfing adventure offered, even if that is somewhat controversial. People still want to see it. They want to play it, to see for themselves.<\/p>\n

Had I collaborated with a well-known Scottish pro, say, what would have happened? Would the golf design still be as bold, or would it start to be watered down to try and not offend anyone, or try to be the common denominator between two or three or four people with different design ideas? I think that\u2019s exactly where it would have gone. Is my opinion driven by egotistical, artistic desires, or is there some kind of commercial, long-term sense to it? Would Bandon have been a commercial success if there had been a collaboration with a Tour pro? I genuinely think not.<\/p>\n

Tell me one yet that\u2019s a huge raging success. When Hills-Forrest and your Indian pro do something unbelievable, call me because I would love to come and see it.
\nJS: Believe me, I am hoping we can find a site that will let us do that. But with the economy being in the shape it\u2019s in, what do you do?<\/p>\n

DK: I think we\u2019re in for three to five years of virtually nothing here in the US, and probably clean around the world. We don\u2019t need much work, especially now that we\u2019re much smaller than we were. We operate as design and construction service providers. We\u2019re not involved in a single project where we\u2019re just providing raw design\u2014we\u2019re always involved in construction, all the way through to general contractor, which is what we\u2019ve been doing in Scotland these last five years.<\/p>\n

JS: Is that more daunting, more risky?<\/p>\n

DK: Our clients are getting great projects at great value\u2014especially now in these hard economic times. We
\ncan squeeze suppliers in local markets. We have the experience to do that. Bandon was built with no general contractor\u2014that was me out there with the local guys.<\/p>\n

JS: What about Asia, where you have no ties?<\/p>\n

DK: I don\u2019t exactly know yet\u2014we\u2019re just at the starting gates. We did the same thing in South Africa. We have a way of maintaining control during construction and increasing our share of the value of that project.<\/p>\n

JS: Good luck with that, David, and with your move into Asia generally. I hope our paths will cross there and not just in Oregon or at the odd trade show. I really appreciate your candor in our conversation<\/p>\n

DK: Thanks for asking me.<\/p>\n

All pictures courtesy of DMK reprinted with permission.\u00a0 David Kidd’s website is: http:\/\/www.dmkgolfdesign.com\/<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Second in a Series David McLay Kidd\u2019s first golf course design project, Bandon Dunes on the Oregon coast, was a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,9,17,7],"tags":[944162,1023],"class_list":["post-122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf-course-architecture","category-golf","category-courses-and-travel","category-personalities","tag-st-andrews","tag-david-mclay-kidd"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2009\/11\/Bandon-Dunes-15-jpeg-8x10-.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1092,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122\/revisions\/1092"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/johnstrawn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}