Dream Golf

March 6, 2006
Goodwin (Breaking Her Fall
) brings a passion for golf and a fluid narrative style to his account of one man's quest to create a British-style links course on a gorse-choked, craggy expanse of land on the Oregon coast. Mike Keiser was a successful entrepreneur whose company, Recycled Paper Greetings, afforded him the possibility of laying out $2.4 million in cash for what most people viewed as a dubious project at best. Goodwin deftly breaks down the differences between traditional, modern and postmodern golf course architecture, and relays the revelatory experiences in Great Britain that gave Keiser a love of rolling, sandy, seaside courses. He portrays Keiser as visionary, humble, generous and dynamic, though readers may wonder if he's too reverent or close to his subject (for instance, Goodwin makes no mention of Keiser's thoughts on golf courses' tendency to wreak havoc on the land, which is strange considering Keiser founded an environmentally friendly greeting-card company). Although chapters on the intricacies of development might be of interest only to businesspeople and planners, Goodwin's lively writing and clear descriptions make for an apt chronicle for golf fans of the making of Bandon Dunes, which, since its 1999 opening, has been considered one of the world's premier courses. Photos.