If you were tasked with building a Mount Rushmore of 21-century American golf, aimed at celebrating the game’s most influential figures of the past generation, who would you choose?
Tiger Woods for sure.
But another must wouldn’t be a Tour pro. It would be a pioneering course developer who has transformed the recreational game for the better by flying in the face of industry convention.
The USGA would be right there with you. Instead of erecting a monument to Mike Keiser, though, the association has opted to bestow him with its highest honor. In an announcement Sunday, the governing body named Keiser, 79, as the recipient of its 2025 Bobby Jones Award, which recognizes those who embody the character, sportsmanship and respect for the game represented by its namesake.
“What inspires us about Mike is his love for what is pure and good about the game, his investment in golf that’s open to the public, his drive to promote recreational golf and the joy he feels when he plays — and those strong commitments have never wavered,” said Mike Whan, the USGA’s CEO, in a written statement accompanying the news. “We’re grateful for the example he’s set, which pushes the entire industry to think bigger.”
Like the Bobby Jones Award, which has been handed out annually since 1955, Keiser’s ties to golf go back a ways. Born in East Aurura, N.Y., in 1945, he picked up the game as a kid, caddied throughout much of his youth and competed on the golf team at Amherst College. Service in the U.S. Navy came next, followed by a successful career in Chicago as the co-founder of a recycled greeting card business.
All the while, his love of golf burned on. Nowhere did he love playing it more than in the British isles and Ireland. As Keiser, has recounted many times over the years, he often marveled at how different it felt to shoot in the 80s on a classic links like Ballybunion or Royal Dornoch than it did to card the same score on what was then the typical over-watered, tree-lined American resort course. The latter experience left him dispirited. The former made him want to go back for more.
In 1989, Keiser’s passion for the game in its raw and rugged form inspired him to build a course of his own, the Dunes Club, a 9-hole layout on lakefront land in Michigan that he didn’t want to see consumed by condos. Inspired by the tenets of Golden Age design, the Dunes Club was well-regarded by those who got to see it. But it was not a household name. Neither was Keiser.
That changed, of course, in 1999, with the opening of Bandon Dunes. That Bandon was destined for runaway success only became obvious in retrospect. In its early stages, skeptics abounded, and no wonder: a walking-only course on a hard-to-get to stretch of the Oregon coast with no spa and few frills beyond a pub and a whiskey bar, was everything the American golf market wasn’t.
The rest is well-told history. The ripple effects of Bandon have swept across the country and overseas, giving rise to great lay-of-the-land courses in locales as far-ranging as the sand barrens of Wisconsin, the shores of Nova Scotia, New Zealand and beyond. Many of those projects bear Keiser’s personal imprint; others are clear outgrowths of his influence.
In its announcement, the USGA praised Keiser for pairing his work with a commitment to giving back. The founder of the Judge Lytle Scholarship for scholar athletes at his high school alma mater in Buffalo, established in honor of a former classmate and teammate, Keiser is also a generous supporter of the Evans Scholar Foundation, which helps high school-age caddies earn college scholarships. Net proceeds from the par-3 courses at Bandon Dunes are donated to environmental and community programs.
In citing his own influences, Keiser has often mentioned Dick Youngscap, the developer of Sand Hills, a Nebraska course that stands as an early example of what is known today as “destination golf.” But unlike Sand Hills, Keiser’s projects since the Dunes Club have all been open to the public, another reflection of his convictions.
“If you build something special,” Keiser has said, “you want the public to play it.”
Fittingly, Bandon Dunes and the USGA have established a relationship that calls for the resort to host 13 USGA championships over the next 24 years, including the Walker Cup, the Curtis Cup, and both the U.S. Amateur and, later this year, U.S. Women’s Amateur.
The Bobby Jones Award will be formally presented to Keiser during U.S. Open week in Pittsburgh this summer.
