Summary of Stephen Goodwin's Dream Golf

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 In 1985, Mike Keiser acquired sixty acres of wooded sand dunes in New Buffalo, Michigan. He was able to pay cash for the land, and he and his wife, Lindy, co-founded Recycled Paper Greetings, which generated annual sales of roughly $100 million.
#2 Mike Keiser, a lifelong golfer, was also an armchair golf course architect. He knew he’d never be a scratch golfer, but his score wasn’t the measure of his satisfaction in the game. He spent hours cutting brush on his family’s property, ridding it of the grapevines that grew luxuriantly.
#3 Mike’s program called for oceans, waterfalls, and breath-taking beauty. It contemplated the appropriation of a small town. It discussed sums of money that were significant, especially when the money would be coming straight out of Mike’s pocket. It seemed almost to have been written in haste.
#4 The author, Howard McKee, was hired to redesign the property in the early 1980s. He became friends with the founder of the Esalen Institute, Michael Murphy, and he believed in synchronicity. He saw meaning and purpose in events that seemed random to others.

Sujets

• Sport
• Autour du sport
• Histoire du sport
• Sports
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 22 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798822536418
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Stephen Goodwin's Dream Golf
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1985, Mike Keiser acquired sixty acres of wooded sand dunes in New Buffalo, Michigan. He was able to pay cash for the land, and he and his wife, Lindy, co-founded Recycled Paper Greetings, which generated annual sales of roughly $100 million.

#2

Mike Keiser, a lifelong golfer, was also an armchair golf course architect. He knew he’d never be a scratch golfer, but his score wasn’t the measure of his satisfaction in the game. He spent hours cutting brush on his family’s property, ridding it of the grapevines that grew luxuriantly.

#3

Mike’s program called for oceans, waterfalls, and breath-taking beauty. It contemplated the appropriation of a small town. It discussed sums of money that were significant, especially when the money would be coming straight out of Mike’s pocket. It seemed almost to have been written in haste.

#4

The author, Howard McKee, was hired to redesign the property in the early 1980s. He became friends with the founder of the Esalen Institute, Michael Murphy, and he believed in synchronicity. He saw meaning and purpose in events that seemed random to others.

#5

Mike Keiser, the greeting card mogul, is a partner in the company. He has no interest in the various trappings of corporate structure, and he avoids flash and ostentation. He goes to work in casual, comfortable clothes.

#6

Mike has large features, a thatch of steel-gray hair, and blue eyes that are remarkably clear and unwavering. He is good at puns. He is not the kind of boss who makes work. He hates to waste time. He does not stand on ceremony or insist on protocol.

#7

Mike was always determined to go into business. His father, a World War II pilot and winner of the Navy Cross, was a stockbroker, and his grandfather was a schoolteacher who changed careers and became a prominent banker in Binghamton, New York.

#8

Mike was a member of the Class of 1963, which was one of the most successful in the history of the Nichols School. He went to Amherst, and after a rough start due to his suspension for throwing snowballs, he graduated with his entering class.

#9

Mike was a typical college student, not very focused or driven, and he hit the books just hard enough to maintain his standing in the dead center of his class. He did play college golf, and kept his handicap down in the single digits.

#10

Mike and Lindy were married in 1968. He was trained in Explosive Ordnance Demolition, and he was stationed in Virginia Beach. His at-sea duty was to look after the underwater portion of the huge ship.

#11

Mike did not want to go back to school, so he sold something that was 100 percent recycled. The company took off when they met Sandy Boynton, an artist who was the artistic vehicle, engine, and motor for the company.

#12

The headquarters of RPG is a three-story brick building on a quiet street two blocks from Wrigley Field. The company's employees are a fair cross section of the urban population in their cultural, ethnic, religious, and sexual diversity.

#13

The success of RPG did not go unnoticed by investment bankers. They began calling on Mike and Phil, dangling enormous sums of money in front of them, and urging them to venture into new realms of capitalism. But Mike decided to diversify himself by building a golf course.

#14

Mike and Lindy Keiser are extremely generous. They don’t like debt, and they have never taken out a loan. They have bought everything with cash, and they support many charities.

#15

In the mid-1980s, when Mike Keiser first felt the stirrings of an ambition to do something in golf, he didn’t know exactly what that something might turn out to be. He had never invested in golf courses, and he wasn’t even a member of a golf club. But golf was in his blood.

#16

Golf course architects are usually not required to have a degree or take an exam to start their career. They are typically well-known and opinionated individuals who love to play golf and critique the designs of others.

#17

The first golf courses were not designed by a human, but by the hand of God. The courses had fast-playing surfaces, and were exposed to the winds that came whistling in. The courses were designed to test the player’s skill.

#18

The classic period of golf architecture extends from 1900 to 1930, and it is during this time that America discovers the sport. The country is prosperous and ready for serious leisure, and thousands of courses are built in the first three decades of the twentieth century.

#19

The first American to call himself a golf course architect was Blair Macdonald, who built the National Golf Links in 1912. He had deliberately copied several famous holes from the great links courses.

#20

The best classic golf courses are landmarks, and they seem to perfectly capture the landscape from which they were created. The designers of these courses were not afraid to try something new and exciting, and they spoke to the highest aspirations and deepest emotions.

#21

The modern period of golf architecture began after World War II. It was led by Robert Trent Jones, who was the most influential and innovative architect on the golf scene. He was also the most famous.

#22

The US Open in 1951 was a turning point for golf architecture, as it was the first time that golf courses were designed to be difficult. The average golfer who was trying to break 90 would object that there is no such thing as an easy bogey on most golf courses.

#23

The modern era of golf course architecture was created by architects who were willing to transform topography to suit their eye and ideas. They were not constrained by the site, and they could create courses that had certain kinds of uniformity.

#24

The modern era in golf was a period of profound changes in the way golf architects went about their business and in the way the game was played. The most significant symbol of these changes was the golf cart, which was introduced in the 1950s.

#25

The island green at the TPC at Sawgrass was the first of the PGA Tour’s stadium courses, which were explicitly built as tournament courses with massive mounding to give spectators a clear view of the action.

#26

In the postmodern era, golf has moved deeper into the realm of commerce. The number of American golfers has increased from 11 million in 1970 to 23 million in 1990, and has remained around that mark since.

#27

The 1980s was the decade when golf exploded, and the price of everything, from a sleeve of balls to a club membership, rose to heights that made old-timers gasp. But the game was changing, and not everyone was happy about it.

#28

When Mike built his course at Bandon Dunes, he wanted it to be a public course, open to all golfers. He’d learned from watching Jemsek run his business that adding special value to an ordinary product could make people pay for it.

#29

Mike’s first exposure to the work of top contemporary golf architects came on his winter trips with a group of friends from Nichols School. They would go to resorts in Florida and South Carolina, and play courses built by Pete Dye, Jack Nicklaus, and other architects.

#30

Mike didn’t like contemporary golf courses, because they weren’t designed for average golfers. He didn’t like how golf course designers were carried away with the power of the bulldozer. He preferred natural holes over holes that proclaimed their artificiality.

#31

As a member of the Amherst College golf team, Mike had played matches on several historic courses. The Orchards, a Donald Ross design, was the home course of the college. He had a blissful day at Merion Golf Club, and resolved to play other courses of that vintage.