I'm fairly familiar with this splendid tale and my take is that equal parts of vision, business savvy and serendipity led to the golf mecca that is Bandon Dunes. When Mike first started his search to build a links resort, he never thought of going to Oregon, but his no-stones-unturned philosophy led him to the Oregon coast. When he was told by his closest golf/business adviser that he was "out of his fucking mind" if he thought people would go to Bandon to golf, he accepted the information cheerfully and went about his business. I'm not sure when Mike's thinking went from "rich man's folly" to "visionary businessman's great idea", but he took his sweet time. He took his time acquiring land. He took his time in deciding how to rout the first golf course, perhaps thinking it might be the only course ever built there. He took his time understanding the environment and the regulatory landscape, if you will. Some of it was luck, in the form of a timely bankruptcy of a somewhat pernicious landowner or in the form of a gorse fire or two, but almost all of it was the perfect alchemy of passion and business know-how. It's an amazing thing when you think about it, but Mike Keiser went from a golf nobody to one of the most important people in American golf in a ten-year or so period of time.
As for whether his business plan could metastasize elsewhere, I have no doubt that there are hundreds of like-minded entrepreneurs that are out there with the same sort of philosophy. Here in Chicago, we have a couple young men, one only thirty who started Groupon about three years ago. They just turned down something like $4 billion from Google. Their work environment is decidedly out of the mainstream, but they make it work.
But in the golf world, Mike Keiser seems to have hit just about every proper chord at Bandon Dunes. The overall vibe of the place, which must be largely attributable to two factors (no carts and no private memberships) has simply infected the place with an "everybody belongs" feeling. That, of course, starts at the top. Mike Keiser pays greens fees at Bandon just like everybody else. When Arnold Palmer played, he had to pull out the credit card. I'm told he was puzzled, but delighted all at the same time. I walked onto the first tee at Pacific Dunes with Mike one morning and he walked up to the starter with an outstretched hand and said, "Hi, I'm Mike". "I know, Mr. Keiser," was the man's reply. In a word, Mike Keiser is a democrat, small d, of course, because in real life he is ardently Republican.
Never said he was perfect!