Music plays.
Mike Keiser: I’m a hard-boiled capitalist. When you create a product, you know it works or not when you make money on it. I am Mike Keiser. I develop golf resorts in remote locations.
Throughout, Mike is in an office or out on a golf course. And dramatic aerial and ground views show some of the courses he’s developed, sandy hills, forests of tall pines, ocean waves on rocky coastlines, nearby hills and cliffs.
Onscreen text:
Charles Schwab Presents
The Challengers
A series about people who
Question. Engage. Succeed.
Mike Keiser
Josh Lesnik
President, Kemper Sports
Josh Lesnik: I’ve been working on the Keiser portfolio of courses for the last 20 years. What Mike did really has turned the industry on its head. He said, “I’m going to go to where the golf ground is great and try and build a great golf course on great property with great architecture and see if they’ll come.”
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The Dunes Club
New Buffalo, Michigan
Mike: My first course was in homage to the world’s number one golf course, Pine Valley. The course I built was nine holes. It’s on sand with some beautiful dunes, close to Lake Michigan. And it was successful, so that motivated me to decide to do at least one other golf course.
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Bandon Dunes
Bandon, Oregon
Mike: As I got ready to build Bandon Dunes with David Kidd and his dad, Jimmy Kidd, I realized that America really hasn’t built links courses. Why don’t we have golf courses like Dornoch in America?
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Royal Dornoch Golf Club
Scotland
Why don’t we have golf courses like Dornoch in America?
Aerial shots show golf courses in very urban landscapes and set among neighborhoods full of houses.
Josh: In the late ’90s, people were building golf courses close to major metropolitan areas. They were building them to sell homes, to sell real estate. Really squeezing the golf course between homes. And what Mike did was really against the norm at that time in golf course development.
Mike: It slowly but surely dawned on me that to do a course like Dornoch, in particular, in America, even if it’s a remote site, just might work out.
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I work very closely with the architects.
Mike: I work very closely with the architects, not because I don’t trust them, but because I enjoy it. And if both the architect and I weigh in, I think the result is better. I leave them alone to do their best routing, then I walk it with them and tell them what I think. I actually rate each hole on a scale of 1 to 10 and share my scorecard with them.
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Cabot Cliffs
Nova Scotia
Aerial views of Cabot Cliffs course in Nova Scotia show its lovely green fairways and seaside cliffs.
Mike: Cabot Cliffs, number 16, which is a par 3, over the beach to an unbelievable green site. That’d be a 9. That’s a 9 that wants to be a 10.
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St. Andrews (old)
Scotland
Lahinch Golf Club
Ireland
Old Head Golf Links
Ireland
Mike: My total encyclopedia of knowledge is based on playing all the great courses numerous times and deciding which holes and which courses I liked the best and which I didn’t.
So my job when I walk a brand-new routing with an architect is to represent the retail golfer—that is, the golfer like me who usually doesn’t break 90. And, therefore, my first take on this beautiful to-be par-3 was we needed a bigger bailout left. We needed a much bigger backstop in the back of the green. So where we ended up is he gave me additional bailout space on the left, a lot of backstop space in back.
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Mammoth Dunes #8
Wisconsin
Mike: And he finally convinced me that the green is all about carrying it over sand, and we should have no bailout front. And that’s the way we built it.
We are in Rome, Wisconsin, population 600 people. I certainly wasn’t looking for a golf course site in the Midwest, much less in central Wisconsin.
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*Footage Courtesy of DMK Golf Design
Mike: I had no idea that half of Wisconsin is sand-based. 100-foot sand dunes covered in plantation pines. Our use of paper is declining dramatically, and most of the paper mills have gone out of business. And therefore most of the demand for these red pine plantation trees is dwindling. So you can buy land very cheaply.
When you restore it as acreage, it returns to its sand-barren origins of what it was like 200 years ago and what it’s been like for 12,000 years. It was worth building in this remote site—something a lot like Bandon but without the ocean.
The ultimate question is: Will enough golfers go play it at a certain greens fee to make money at it? And the answer was “yes.”
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“A mammoth marvel.”
—Golf.com
“Sand Valley is the Bandon Dunes of the Midwest.”
—Golf Digest
Mike: It actually worked. It’s my almost religious belief: If the architect does a good enough job, they will come.
On screen text:
Ask questions. Be engaged.
[Charles Schwab logo]
Own your tomorrow®
Mike: When I began building golf courses, I knew nothing about grass. If you were to quiz me now, we would find that I still know almost nothing about grass. It is really boring.
Onscreen text:
[Charles Schwab logo] [PGA Tour logo]
The Official Investment Firm
Music ends.
Thanks to
DMK Golf Design
Sand Valley Golf Resort
Bandon Dunes Golf Resort
Cabot Links
©2019 Charles Schwab & Co., Inc. All rights reserved. Member SIPC.
