Old Macdonald is far more than a golf course that pays tribute to Charles Blair Macdonald. In building this course, Mike Keiser and the design team seem destined to be evangelists themselves. Their message – there’s nothing wrong with having fun playing golf. Over the next months and years, they will likely win a lot of converts.
This team has created the most compelling modern course that I have seen (I have not seen Sand Hills). Incredibly wide fairways, wild contours, and massive greens give the course a scale that is hard to appreciate from photos. The shaping is outstanding and makes it hard to believe that Old Macdonald just opened.
There has already been a good bit of discussion about the routing. Every hole is a new assault on the senses, yet it all seems to flow together perfectly. There are strategies to ponder on every shot, but that doesn’t mean you have to think at all. Swing away and see where that gets you! Embrace the ground game and find out what fun on the golf course is about. One of the great joys in playing links golf is watching the ball follow the ground, and Old Macdonald really delivers. When the “bigness” of OM is combined with the effects of wind, the course will play differently every day – no one is going to get bored.
If CBM were able to visit and play Old Macdonald, I believe he would pay it the ultimate tribute – he would go back to NGLA and tweak some things. This doesn’t mean that I believe OM is a better course than NGLA (it’s not). But just as CBM felt like he could improve on the concepts that he used to build an “ideal course,” he would also recognize the achievement of others. I think CBM would surely appreciate what was accomplished in the building of this course and be pushed to make his masterwork even better.
Old Macdonald does not feel like a copy of any CBM course. It easily stands on its own merits as a course. Macdonald’s work may have provided the inspiration to use specific strategies, but the course on the ground is plenty unique.
The opening day experience was one I felt really fortunate to be a part of. Pretty nice to be greeted on the first tee by the owner and the designers. Throughout the day they spent time with players as they started out, watched some play on the course, and talked to groups as they came in. Everyone seemed genuinely interested in our impressions of the course and I cannot imagine their being disappointed. I also had a number of encounters with other players while I was there, and nearly everyone seemed to have the same sort of goofy “can you believe this?” grin that I did.
We finished up our second round as the last tee time group went out. Mike Keiser was standing on the first tee, and we asked about going back out for a third trip around. He seemed just as enthusiastic as we were. Our group finished in the dark, and even after 54 holes that day I think all of us wished for just a few more hours of daylight.
I suspect many more people are out spreading the word: It’s OK to have fun playing golf. If you don’t think so, there’s this course at Bandon that you simply must play.
A brilliant achievement.