Dream Golf Happenings with Michael Keiser Jr.

So this conversation we talk a lot about the comments the new twelve hole golf course that will be unveiled in twenty twenty six, as well as some of his new projects, and then Michael shares a bit of personal news at the end.

maybe nine holes, it was just nine. I think it was nine nine holes done preview play and they were operating out of a trailer and it was just sand everywhere, and it's amazing you go back and just incredible to see the evolution of that place and what has become kind of like the building of one of these great golf resorts over the last basically ten years. So that's always kind of just a fun topic in discussion for me.

and this is kind of addressing that. So this is uh, you know, they have these kind of sticks, so like kind of like a meat stick.

So like you compare them. I put them side by side with like a like on the go snack we give my daughter, uh, and the Maui Nuy nutrition just blows it away.

All right, Michael, thanks for joining us. Big news out of Sam Valley, the comments, the latest course, the sixth course. I can't believe it's the sixth course is coming online in twenty twenty six. It is I would say, in terms of the Dream Golf Profile portfolio of golf courses, this is a one of one, a very unique concept and design, which is why I wanted to chat with you. I would love to hear a little bit about how the idea of the commons came to be.

young family. We had two kids at the time. Bertie hadn't been born yet, and we lived in Edinburgh, and you know, we traveled around and I really enjoyed experiencing these golf parks and you know, every day I'd sort of put the kids in a stroller we just explore Edinburgh. It's a wonderful city to walk around. Sort of hard when you're pushing a stroller up the hills, but it was good exercise. And we loved going to the Meadows Park just south of the University because they had the

best playground in the city. And Edinburgh is filled with wonderful playgrounds. And one day we wandered over the west side of the meadows and experienced Bruntsfield Links for the first time. And Brunsfield is a thirty six hole pitching put surrounded by you know, the church and four story buildings like this is in the center, in an urban center, and it's really just a park, like any you know, Madison has a grass park and they mow out perfect

circle greens, right it is. It is a pretty lousy golf course, but it's one of the best golf experiences you could have because you know, I don't howl over my kids. At the time, there were you know, four and two, I think, and I didn't have to worry about them being kids. They're just running around slapping the golf ball. Winifred loved aiming at women pushing strollers through the course. You know they're women out pushing their kids and yelling four. You know, she could hit the ball

about twenty five feet so it was safe. Uh. And there'd be you know, college students grilling, you know and playing golf, and you know, some retirees chipping around and practicing. And I just thought it was so cool that literally this park, uh, this golf course set in a park, crisscross by sidewalks, and it was just this communal you know space. And you know, mussel Borow has a great one. We spent time in North Barrack. They have a more formal the children's course there the nine hole, which my

children joined, you know last summer. You have to you have to be a kid, you have to be as an adult, you have to be accompanied by a child. But to play it. And then the greatest golf park by far in the world, by you know, maybe the greatest golf course in the world, but by far is Saint Andrew's right, like right in the heart of town. You know, people walking around on Sundays, and you know,

even North Barrack. I remember playing one day and I had met a friends, a mother early in the week and she was walking back from market and you know, to get from town to her home, which happens to be you know, behind the sixteenth graden. They're pretty good location. You know, there's a walking trail that people use. And just doubling into her mid round and stopping the chat

and saying hi. This idea of a golf park. You know, common space in the heart of a town began to emerge and at the time we were planning a significant town of Sand Valley. We've scaled it back a bit, but what is now the commons is really in the heart of the resort and you know, dream golf our of courses play out into the wilderness and it's one of the things we all love. It is very different.

This is the heart of the resort. It's surrounded on three sides by roads and people on activities, and as you move around the resort, you walk through the commons. So this is very different than anything we've done for many reasons, but one of them is it's it's right out in front. You know, it's an open links, very few trees and it's right in the heart of our resort. So that that's really where the idea was born in twenty twenty two in Edinburgh and East Lothian.

going there on vacations with your family. How would you say that it's influenced you as a as a developer.

just saying hey, that's cool, that's fun. Let's bring that back right And that started with Bandon Dudes, my Deadlocks golf and you know, took the concept over here. So it affects our development because every time we go there,

we find something you know, new to to steal. And I mean that the one we're talking about now is conceptual, but sometimes there's just details, right, and you know, just you know, another thing that was brought to the commons or you know, for me, some of the some of the fairways at Prestwick are just wild, you know, they they are, They're wild North Barrett two and seventeen. Like, I didn't know features could be so bold, right, and it just didn't. I didn't think you could take it,

you know, that far. And certainly Saint Andrews has those, so you know, just borrowing things like that and encouraging an architect to amplify some of those shapes and of course like Comments which doesn't have these huge blowout you know ridges the way Sand Valley or Mammoth does. So I mean we could we could spend you know, ten podcasts talking about the ways that we borrow. But the big theme is that we go there, we find inspiration, and we bring it back and we apply it maybe

in unique ways and make it our own. But we were just constantly, you know, inspired by the game that's that's played there.

was new. I'd never done anything like that before, and it gave me confidence that, you know, maybe with the right architect, you know, we could build something that's pretty pretty compelling. So Commons Commons was our original driving range, right, I mean that was maybe a third of it or a quarter of it. Driving ranges tend to be pretty flat. This was the flattest piece of ground on the property, right, and so we were we were starting from a flat

piece of sand. Most of the contours from them, from the Commons came from a lake that we were building. That's forty acres that now exist, and it's it's it's gorgeous. But we needed to put that sand somewhere. So that enormous dune that you see behind the first green, you know, some people call it Mount Doom. Rob Dumas are head of agroaderby I call it Megala Dune. It's a great way to tire six and four year olds out. The kids just go up and down.

is as well. We weren't going to manufacture huge, you know, sandy features, but we're going to you know, see what we could do with, you know, eye height and below and there's features bigger than that, the seventh green place up up the hill to sort of a blind green, but most of them, you know, emulate some of the scale that I love so much in Scotland. In particular.

as taxing. And I think you guys imagine this golf course being a big afternoon destination, just you know, I think that's obviously like from a utility standpoint, when I think about your resort. The Sandbox has been such a popular hit. I mean where to the point where it's like almost impossible to get a tea time in the afternoon because of the popularity.

So like, if you're a faster group, you could just fly around and it's like, you know this this golf course, with it being twelve holes, gives you the opportunity to potentially have just a massive day if you wanted to just go all out and you could play three golf courses in one day and it would you know. One of the things I like about it is the idea

that there are still drivers in play. I think that's been one of my big sticking points with the idea of short courses in America is that everybody looks at maybe it's the preserve, the sandbox, the cradle, and it's like, okay, every hole has to be under one hundred and fifty yards, and it's like, no, we can have drivers, we can have different things. That's one of my favorite things I'd love to talk about. You know, people are you know,

probably don't know. You know, I don't think Jim is a household name, but if you are in golf architecture circles, he is a household name. One of the more talented individuals in the in the space. How did you kind of start to work with Jim Craig, And I think like it's important, Like this has been a collaboration between you and Jim Craig, very kind of a evolving process, we could call it, and one that you've had a lot of input and impact on.

he's he's wonderfully open to collaboration. But he's certainly the one coming up, you know, with the big ideas that make the golf grade. But I met him at Sand Valley, you know, in the with the first course in particular,

but the first two courses. You know, my dad was calling the shots and working with the architects, and you know I went to all of our walks with Bill and my dad, but I also lived up at Sand Valley, and I figured maybe one of the ways I could have a greater impact on the golf course is by developing relationships with the associates and shapers, which you know, my dad had never done because he works with Bill

and Tom and David. So I developed a relationship and you know, trust with Jim over the course of building the first course at Sand Valley, and he and I sort of sneakily started, you know, working on the sandbox, and he did the first routing of that golf course and we put I think the first routing was twenty two greens. Put He put twenty two greens in the ground before my dad had seen it or Bill had seen it, and and Bill liked it so much that he took it over right, and they worked together. Ben

spent an enormous amount of time working on it. And that's where I really got to know Jim, right, Bill like just building building a golf course with him, and I really I really liked Jim. I'm you know, a sucker for grinders, you know, and he just he they all everybody in that team worked so hard, but you know he, I mean, he gave his life to that golf course. He would he would he would put the floodlights on his truck on and keep shaping into the night.

You know, like it was a summer, you know, a manic summer of creation, and I just wanted to make sure he stayed safe and healthy. But he was. It was just a brilliant, you know, flash of genius. I think you know those greens that that he and Ryan and Bill and Ben made. So that's how I got to know him.

early days. Sand Valley wasn't as busy as it is now. And I went out and played the Sandbox like seven or eight times, and every time I played with a different a single different club, and it was one of the most fun days of golf that I've I think about it all the time because it was just like every time, like every hole presented so much differently when you change the club.

kind of deliver hits. How is it working with someone so you worked with jim on the Sandbox, you got to see how he worked with Bill as a supervisor. How is it working with a new architect on a project when you've had so much experience, whether it be working with David Kidd, Tom Doak or Bill Core and Ben Crenshaw.

So it's wonderful. I think that's sort of my approach, like get to know people tangentially, you know, and then so it's not a total leap of faith, Like I saw what he was capable with, Brian was capable of at the Lido, and I saw what Jimmy was capable of at Sandbox. Yeah, I think you'd have to be you know, crazy right now not to go with Tom and Bill because experience does matter, And they're both keep getting better, you know, and and they both have extraordinary teams.

You know, they're deep, uh you know so. But but I'm excited to work with you know, some new architects and working you know with jim at Rodeo Dunes. I started, you know, pretending to be sort of armchair architect, and I routed my own golf course for the second course at at Rodeo, and I kept asking friends who are architects to come out and show me what you got and if I don't think it's better, I'll steal from

it and incorporate it in my running. So a lot of people came out and helped, and Jimmy came out and helped for a day or two, and then he just never left. He just kept making it better better. A year went by. I'm like Jimmy, like, eventually I had to hire him because he, you know, he just kept showing up, you know, his truck and walking around in circles. So I just felt obliged to hire. And there was really, you know, very little of my routing left.

So that's how we got the job. It's a great way to get a job, to show.

response has been extremely positive. People love playing those greens, and I think they are the best greens at Sand Valley. They're just they're they're really fun. And you know the comments you have par fours, there's one par five and asked you to be very precise. But if we didn't amp up some of the contours and the fairways and around the greens, it would it would just be sort of an easy course, which which would be which should be fine. But really the greens of of the commons

are it's primary defense. It's wall to wall fescue out there right for how many acres that golf course is. We see the entire thing, and then we'll establish the mo lines for the fairways. But you know, a player like me could just hit driver, you know, anywhere. But if if I'm out of position, even within the fairway, it'll be very hard, you know, to get on some

of those greens from the wrong position. And then if you missed them, it shouldn't be too hard to make a bogie to get your next shot up on the green and tupat but they're gonna you have to hit spectacular shots to make birdies out there, and a par is very well earned. And but you should be able to go around and make bogies if you're a regular hack like me.

you know, I don't know if people get it. You know what he did ultimately and why I think it actually does fit the mold of some of the you know, the typical dream golf course. Is it is extraordinarily beautiful, right, He's added this beauty with the big dude in the water. I mean, it's it's right up there with some of those gorgeous views that you have at Bandoned in Sand Valley. So it was not the plan, but I think it and certainly what you said about the features is absolutely true.

But I think there's wonderful surprise. Is it's gorgeous, And can I tell you the story about the peninsula.

And at the same time, we're designing these villages. So this forty acre lake, we have a peninsula sticking out into it, and we measure fifty times cup months. So we're spending a couple of years designing this village. And the peninsula was sort of where it all came together. And we started arguing about how much density to have out on the peninsula. And the end sticks out like a mushroom, and I'm saying, we're the golf guys. The best real estate goes to golf. We're gonna have a

putting course out there. It's gonna be amazing. And it was like this battle back and forth, and you know, how much of that peninsula should be putting course and how much should be homes or restaurants or whatever it is. So we argued about that for six months, and this was all on paper because the lake didn't exist. We started building it. And I came out after this massive

hole was dug. It was the fall of the Spring or winner, and I'm standing there on what's now the tenth tea and I was like, oh, we we missed this big time. This entire peninsula is golf. This is this is spectacular. This could be the best golf at the resort. So if the team had accepted my punting green six months earlier, they would have gotten all these homes and all this real estate. But we wiped it out.

I mean that day, you know, that instant, that was all gone and now it's all golf, and there are these beautiful water holes, and that tenth hole, I think it is my favorite hole at the resort. And it's it's it's you know, Jim did an amazing job. I was worried that you have these great Scottish Lynx holes and then these gorgeous, dramatic water holes and they'd be totally disjointed. And I think he did such a fabulous job bringing you know, the bringing the links into those those water holes,

and it's such a dramatic, exciting, gorgeous finish. So I tell Jim's most expensive golf course ever built, not just because we rebuilt it ten times, but because of the opportunity cost of wiping out that village. You know, it was surrounded by the Scottish village, and he every trip he'd wipe out another neighborhood, you know, and and I kept saying, you know, dream golf, the golf comes first.

But I was tested on that because there'd be like this, you know, ten acres of a village and he'd say, you know, we could have the edge of a fairway play through that. It better be good, Jim. If it's not good, and we wipe that out. So now there's very little left but except for a pretty cool golf course.

The view from behind that green that you're describing, it's the best view on the property and it's to me it stands up against really any great finishing hole looking out that's where we're going to have, you know, some food trucks in the trees in the shade overlooking that setting sun, and I think it's going to be a place that a lot of our guests are going to want to hang out at the end of the day.

the Hinches is a great a great example. And there's a lot of variety to the size of the dunes, so it's it's like it's not like any one place, but it's big and it's brawny, you know, like like the dunes of Ireland. And I think that's that's the best description I could come up with. And you know, on Bill's course is it's big and brawny. The last six holes are some of the most dramatic and exciting,

you know, holes that I've seen anywhere. And he embraces these big features, these big dunes, and the first twelve aren't you know, aren't timid either. So Rodeo Dunes is I would describe as Irish. But in the plains, you know, under the range, you look out and you see the mountains in the background. It's it's so gorgeous, it's so peaceful. It's barren, you know, prairie with dunes. It's a beautiful place.

Wild Spring Dunes has a lot of different a lot of variety in the sort of the ecology, and it has these ravines that remind me a lot of you know, Lake Bluff, you know, the northern suburb ravines of Chicago. And it has ridges like sand Valley, the sand Ridges. It has this feature we call Mount Baldy. It's just this cone, this huge cone, you know of a dune, where both thelf the first two golf courses start and

Bills finishes. It has these rolling dramatic hills on the south end, which reminds me a lot of Pine Valley, Big big bold, you know Sandy Hills. And then in the center it has this very gentle, elegant, beautiful ground that is it reminds me of Pinehurst in its topography, but also in just sort of the exposed sandy barren. And when I got involved in the property, there were

three golf courses round it. So in the area I just described, there were two, and then there's another area which by comparison was a big step down, where there's a third. And I said, look, a condition of me getting involved, the third one's gone right. There's just no way it can be as good as the first too, and the first two could be very very good. But if we combine them into one supercourse. It could be spectacular. So if I do this, we're just building one golf course.

And everybody signed up for that. And Tom, you know, he felt sort of bad taking from the second golf architect.

for the right reasons. I have found that serendipity tends to work out and something will happen. We don't know what it will be. And alone and behold land adjacent to ours, which we'd all overlooked on Topo, including Bill kre just looked way too severe on Topo. When Mike Angus, who was coming up with their land plan, went out and walked it, he said I think this is pretty good. He called Bill, and Bill flew out and Bill said,

this is really good. So we're now on the land for the second golf course, which we hope Bill and Ben will build for us one day. And it has these very dramatic ravines like I described on Tom's and then sort of tilting Sandy, you know, Fairway. So really excited. It's gonna be different than the first course, and I'm excited to see what they come up with.

who could drive to wild Spring Dunes. And there's nowhere near the amount of great accessible golf in Texas as in the Midwest, right, I mean, the Midwest is so stacked with fabulous golf, right Wisconsin, Minneapolis, Illinois, Michigan. I mean it's we're just we're so blessed as per capita.

I don't want to slight any courses there, but per capita, Texas is not blessed with that, and the courses being built are very elite, very bunch of private clubs right now that many of which are most of which I think can be really amazing, but just inaccessible.

When we were in Edinburgh, we kept driving out to the beaches and we just decided, let's, you know, let's live in North Barrack, so we could, you know, walk to the beaches. And I took a trip with some really good friends and great guys, one of whom lived lives in North Barrick and the other two or northern irishmen, and we flew up to the Arctic Circle to play golf, believe it or not, two days after the summer solstice, and we went to La footin Links which might be

more drink golf than any other place I've ever been. Frodo, who is the developer, opened that golf course a couple of years before Bandon Dunes. It is all passion and it's built what might be the most beautiful place you know, the archipelago of I think it's the Foot Archipelago. It's otherworldly,

it's stunning. The golf is so fun, so beautiful, so good you know, the restaurants and his great grandfather's farmhouse overlooking this, you know, hour Glass White Sand Bay where there's a caravan park and when you eat, your shoulder to shoulder with people on their caravanning summer vacations. And it was, you know, about as much fun as I've had on a golf trip, you know, and I've had some great golf trips, but it was two days after the summer solstice, and in the Arctic Circle, the sun

it doesn't set. It sort of starts coming down and then it stops and it goes back. So it was a bit of a manic trip. We were playing golf around the clock, you know, three thirty in the morning, we're still playing golf. We were climbing mountains between rounds. We went to local parties, and you know, I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in twenty twelve. I've been medicated since then. I think a little under medicated. And there's different things that could sort of trigger higher energy. And

the energy has been fabulous for developing golf resorts. Right It's just sort of like, you know, if I need to work twenty hour days or sixteen hour days like I have that on reserve, but in the summer solstice, I just I just had so much fun, and you know, I was a hypomatic, but I was repped up and when I got home, I needed to sort of get on the same wavelength as my family, right And basically I slept in three days because we were playing as

many golf holes as we could. And you know, I've always drank alcohol, you know, to sort of deal with stress, and I've also drank alcohol to slow my mind down, right, sort of being undermedicated. It's you know, I sometimes I go a long time without drinking, but my brain gets going. I drink in the evening after I put my kids

down to slow it down. And that day I got back, I drank before I put my kids to sleep, and I was I started to slur my words when I was reading them their nighttime story, you know, and I overdid it and I had to tell my wife, and it was it was just the worst feeling in the world. So I stopped drinking, you know, that week, and it's been really healthy for me. That was about seven months ago, and it's been a really busy seven months. You know.

We're planning in Florida. We're now under construction in Colorado and Texas. But my sobriety has given me just a little bit of space mixed in with all that work, to be a little more self reflective and to think about, you know, just who I am and what I want. And over the last seven months, I've realized that, you know, as a person with incredible drive and ambition, I'm able to do what I love and I drag people along with, you know, with me, and not everybody has signed up

for that. You know, our team at Sand Valley has been so spectacular and making it all work when I just keep adding more and more and more, they make it work and it's extraordinary. But we've had burnout. I've burned some people out, you know, really good people who should still be with us. And I need to, you know, I need to figure out a more sustainable way to grow, you know, the next twenty golf courses and you know,

more more than anybody in the world. My my wife is the most supportive person in my life, you know, by far, like many of us. But you know, when she met me at Sand Valley, I was living in a tent right and then we built a house at the resort and our children were born, and I'm working around the clock, and she's in the woods, you know, taking care of our kids, putting her career on hold, with no friends, no family, and she's been nothing but supportive. And uh, you know, I just keep piling it on,

right like that. The more capable I become, the better our team gets. I just accelerate and I accelerate, and at the end of the day, that's that's not sustainable if you want to have a healthy, happy family. So I'm going to press the pause button on any projects and there are a lot of them, you know, and many of which we haven't talked about yet. On any projects not under construction, and you know, spend a good chunk of time, you know, prioritizing my family, you know,

my own self care. It's always been work first and then probably kids second, you know, at jossin third. And I've had that in the uh, in the wrong order. So I need to figure out how to you know, to get my priorities you know, straight and aligned, and and then and I will once we do that, we're going to We're going to get to it. And I suspect that a structure, an organization will be a little different, but we've got a lot to do and I'm looking

forward to it and it's going to be fun. But we're gonna we're going to slow down for a little bit here and uh, you know, catch I catch my breath and h and focus on what's most important, which is my family.

And I think, you know something I think about a lot at this stage and I have a kid that's in the same ballpark as your kids, is like, you know, this is these are years that you never get back, and it is it is a you know, I think, like what what you start and what you the way you start something is it is this beautiful time when you're figuring stuff out and usually you're at a different stage of life than when it really starts to flourish, and that the stages of life don't match up with

the work life balance. Always like when I started this thing. I was twenty nine years old, you know there y, and I was you know, I was dating my now wife. I was I didn't have responsibility, right, and now I have more demands of my time than ever before. But I have all this at home responsibility. And that's such a challenge. And I think you know, it's it's admirable to to take a pause and say, hold on, we need I need to figure out this this part of my life because so much energy.

my phone. So very quickly I left my phone in the other room and we were playing one morning and I forgot how he said it, but he was like dad, Dad, He was trying to get my attention, and he said, I said, tell me, I don't have my phone on me. And he said, Dad, I think before we were playing, you looked at your phone and whatever it is you saw you're thinking about now, like this is a five year old, like it was exactly right. You know, I'm like looking at it, looking at it, looking at it.

So these kids that you know, they pick up on everything, and yeah, technology is a great way to leave the present in a moment.

But one thing I saw is that like when you're when you're when your kid looks like especially young kid looks at you and you're looking at your phone, they view that as a form of rejection, which is you know, you think about like how many, how many times that can happen in a day, and it's like that that's a this just this is an aspect of parenting that nobody's really you know, this is a new thing with parenting.

super high quality time. And I think we've all seen that when we do that kids, kids respond very positively to that.

we want to use the business term. And appreciate you coming to talk about the comments, which I'm very excited about having walked it with you in the fall last year.