Text and golf photos by Scott Simpson

   There can be no really first class golf course without good material to work with.  The best material is a sandy loam in gentle undulation, breaking into hillocks in a few places. Securing such land is really more than half the battle.  Having such material at hand to work upon, the completion of an ideal course becomes a matter of experience, gardening and mathematics.  -- C.B. Macdonald

        Imagine for a moment that you’re Mike Keiser, circa 2005.  You’re the toast of the golf world as a result of the improbable success of your Bandon Dunes Golf Resort on the remote southern coast of Oregon.  You’ve been told repeatedly that you’ll never lure enough golfers to make the project profitable, that golf cart rental fees are necessary to make the economics work and that Americans will never put up with the cold and wet conditions of the Oregon coast.  But with the opening of each of your three acclaimed golf courses, you’ve served up a healthy helping of crow to these critics.

        You’ve assembled an attractive 300-acre parcel to the north of Pacific Dunes.  This parcel has less extensive ocean frontage than the wildly successful Bandon and Pacific Dunes, but provides the same sandy substrate perfect for links golf.  Every golf architect on the planet has made a pilgrimage to southern Oregon in hopes of burnishing their reputations on this spectacular canvas.  Surely it was just a matter of picking from among these highly skilled architects and awaiting the inevitable fourth masterpiece.

Utilizing the way-cool sweep panorama feature of my new camera, a view of the Old Macdonald property from the adjoining 14th hole of Pacific Dunes. The property appears to be flat from a distance, but up close an endless series of hummocks and landforms are revealed, very reminiscent of the Old Course at St. Andrews.

        But if Mike Keiser were prone to conventional thinking, the Bandon Dunes property would still be a gorse-infested blight.  If you’re Mike Keiser, you trust your instincts and you go big, commissioning the most architecturally ambitious golf course project in decades, an homage to a golf course architect whose name most American golfers wouldn’t recognize and whose design concepts -- such as blind shots, penal bunkering and the importance of the ground game – are alien to the evolution of American golf.  Fortunately for us all, Mike Keiser hit it out of the park, creating a golf course one can enjoy as an architectural history lesson, a stout test of golf or both.  Then, with tongue planted firmly in cheek, he named it after the most annoying of children’s songs, ensuring that the endeavor not be considered some dry history lesson or museum piece.

        Living in Chicago, Keiser undoubtedly became familiar with C.B. Macdonald’s work at Chicago Golf Club and Shoreacres.  His extensive golf travels familiarized him with the original courses that Macdonald so revered and he also had ample opportunity to experience Macdonald’s enduring legacy, The National Golf Links of America.  And, in a world where timing is everything, it is somehow appropriate that Old Macdonald opened for play almost exactly one hundred years after the opening of The National.

        As Keiser focused on incorporating Macdonald’s work into his next project, his first instinct was perhaps even more audacious than the ultimate Old Macdonald concept.  He consulted with George Bahto, whom we met during our visit to Sleepy Hollow (read the author's Sleepy Hollow article here), to assess the feasibility of creating a replica of Macdonald’s

        In subsequent discussions with Tom Doak, Bahto and others, Keiser’s thinking moved beyond a reproduction of the Lido, as fascinating as that might have been.  At Doak’s urging, he gravitated towards the concept of building a golf course as Macdonald might have, replicating not a specific design but the design process itself.  Keiser was reportedly brutally honest in his intentions, telling Doak and co-designer Jim Urbina candidly that he already had a Tom Doak course and didn’t need a second.  (Urbina had performed the same role, albeit without the design credit, on Pacific Dunes)  He wanted and expected a Charles Blair Macdonald course; specifically he wanted his design team to identify and utilize the natural features of the land, as they envisioned Macdonald would do if presented with the site.

A partial view of the 5th green, Old Mac’s Short hole. This perspective gives a feel for the elevation change on this vast green of more than 20,000 square feet. The 10th green, seen in the background, shares a cavernous bunker with the 5th.

        To assure the broadest base of knowledge of all things Macdonald, Keiser assembled a dream team advisory board.  Bahto, Macdonald’s biographer and a golf course architect in his own right, was an obvious selection.  Keiser additionally recruited Karl Olson, longtime greens superintendant at The National, and Brad Klein, architecture editor and in charge of course ratings for Golfweek Magazine.  In one of my favorite vignettes from the development of the project, responsibility for specific holes was allocated to the advisory board through an NFL-style draft.  Imagine the dilemmas involved if you were lucky enough to be on the advisory panel:  Do you grab the Road Hole in the first round of the draft, or gamble that it will still be there when your turn comes up in Round Two?

        Not only did this unwieldy-sounding committee not produce a camel, but the horse they created is a pure thoroughbred.  The wonder is less that they successfully incorporated so many of the classic design templates

        The course features extremely wide playing corridors, with some of the widest fairways you’ll ever see, inviting the inevitable comparison to the Old Course at St. Andrews.  This makes the course eminently playable for golfers of all abilities, and it takes some effort or bad luck to actually lose a golf ball.  But the width can be deceiving and is always part of the strategic test of the hole.  Again incorporating the design ethic of the Old Course, the player is typically faced with a choice of lines off the tee.  The inevitable choice is between the safer line, which will inevitably leave a longer or less desirable angle on the approach shot, versus a more aggressive line which will invariably bring the well-placed hazards, mostly penal fairway bunkers, into play.

Next:  Lay of the Land

         Who among us can resist bragging about bargains we have landed?  My go-to bargain story is the week in 1969 I spent playing golf in Myrtle Beach with a friend.  We took advantage of a golf package that included lodging in an oceanfront room in the heart of town; 36 holes a day (I was much younger then), cart included; a hot breakfast each morning; an oyster roast a couple of late afternoons during the week; and an hour of free beer at 5 p.m. each day by the hotel’s pool. And each of us received a dozen golf balls.  Okay, they weren’t Titleists, or even Slazengers, but we were only 21 and not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially one bearing free beer.  The cost of the entire week of golf and everything else was just $99.  And that’s why I brag about it.

         Today there are 115 golf courses along the Grand Strand, and intervening years of inflation have pushed “bargain” golf package prices for a week of golf into the $200s and beyond.  But those who take advantage of an impressive Myrtle Beach golf package currently on offer for December 10 into February could very well have something to brag about in coming

The Heathland on the Legends Resort property is one of five golf courses available on the special $94 golf package. 

Photo by Elliot deBear.

         Golf courses on the package include the Heathland, Parkland and Moorland courses on The Legends site, Oyster Bay just over the state line in North Carolina and Heritage Golf Club in Pawleys Island, about a half-hour drive from The Resort.  And while you are there, you might consider visiting some of the properties for sale on the sprawling Legends Resort property.  Condos start at prices under $100,000 making them a viable choice as a getaway vacation home.

         Please contact us if you would like more information on The Legends Resort or on any golf community property in the Myrtle Beach area.

        We aren’t used to watching golf until the wee hours of the morning, but the early a.m. crankiness from our abbreviated sleep was a small price to pay for all the story lines that came out of The Presidents Cup (my wife would disagree about the value of the crankiness part). Here are a few of my takeaways, for what they are worth:

Tiger Woods’ Love/Hate Relationship with November

        Woods certainly would have been better served if last week’s Australian Open, where he finished a strong third, and this week’s Presidents Cup had been held at the beginning or even in the middle of the PGA Tour season; it would give him something to build on for the intense competition ahead rather than for the non-competitive practice sessions of the coming weeks.  But never underestimate the potential of a hard worker with supreme natural gifts, or the positive joss of a straight-shooter new caddy to replace the irascible enabler Steve Williams, Woods’ prior one.  The betting here is that, come next season, Tiger Woods will play well, probably win a major and compete for tour-leading status.  His play will never again reach its previously legendary heights; but then no one else’s will reach those heights either. 

Jim Furyk, a better comeback story

        Flamboyant swingers like Woods get the headlines, but golf is a game of steady; Furyk’s eight-piece swing and Keystone Cops pre-putting routine aside, his game is worthy of fawning over too.

Amazing Grace, but Shark Bites Himself 

        Greg Norman’s captaincy of the International team was a study in contrasts –- just like his playing career in which he was assailed fairly for making poor choices, occasionally even reckless ones, at critical times in major tournaments.  His 78 on Sunday at the 1996 Masters, which handed the tournament to Nick Faldo, ranks as one of the biggest collapses ever in golf.

        Norman’s on-course decisions came from a strong belief in his own abilities; but over-confidence, especially on tough golf courses, can tilt

        Dumb is one thing, but reckless is another, and Norman’s criticism of U.S. Captain Fred Couples’ choice of Tiger Woods as his wild card pick set up the Shark for biting criticism.  Allenby went 0 for 5 in his matches, and tanked so badly in the crucial singles match on Sunday that most observers considered the match against Hunter Mahan over well before the turn.   Woods smoked the previously well playing Aaron Baddeley in the next-to-last match, although he finished with an overall record of just 2-3 (his playing partners did not cover themselves with glory).  If Allenby contributes just two points, the Internationals might have won the Cup, something I suspect the Aussie press will not let Norman forget for a while.

        We will say this: Norman was extremely gracious –- and graceful -- in his on-air interviews during the matches, answering all questions forthrightly and heaping compliments on players on both sides.  But at the end of the event, when faced with a question about his criticism of Woods as the U.S. captain’s pick, Norman went way off target, like a Sunday at Augusta National.