Building Bandon, Part 1: Against all odds, Mike Keiser buys remote Oregon dunesland and hires a pair of rookies to help him build and manage a golf course.

Today you’ll hear part 1 of the building of Bandon Dunes, as told by Mike Keiser, the owner, David McLay Kidd and his father, Jimmy, the architects, and Josh Lesnik and his father, Steve, who won the bid to manage it. Bandon Dunes, the original course at what is now the best pure golf destination in America, and arguably the world, was an outlier that opened in 1999. Like Sand Hills in Mullen, Nebraska, which opened in 1995, to build a golf course in a remote location using a minimalist architect or architects was anything but what was being built in America in the 90s.

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