David McLay Kidd Calls Bend Home

David McLay Kidd is accustomed to being one of the most sought-after golf course architects in the world.

After all, since he designed the original course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort on the southern Oregon Coast in the late 1990s, few in the Bend resident’s business have received as much acclaim.

Kidd moved to Bend, Oregon while designing Tetherow Golf Club during Bend’s boom. During the high-flying days, DMK Golf Design maintained three offices on three continents and had 54 employees.

But in 2009, with two more heralded projects just completed, Kidd’s company was suddenly out of work. Apparently, even boasting one of the biggest names in the golf industry was not enough to be spared from the “Great Recession.” After recession took its toll on the real estate-dependent golf industry, DMK Golf Design was down to just four full-time employees and he closed his offices in London and Fiji.

Reinventing Demand

Today, DMK Golf Design is growing again. Kidd works from his small NorthWest Crossing office from which he runs his international golf design company. The company has a dozen employees now, Kidd said, with two projects in the works, one more about to get started, and still two more on the drawing board.

“I had to reinvent myself,” said Kidd. “We are targeting Asia, South and Central America, basically emerging markets, wherever they are.”

“We’re really busy now,” Kidd said with his distinct Scottish accent. “It feels like going back to where I was in ’08. I’m trying to schedule this trip and that trip, and I have to fly from here to there and how do I do that?
By the spring, we’re going to be at 100 percent capacity, and we’re going to have to decide whether to expand again or be more selective about the projects we take on.”

His current projects include a high-end, 18-hole private resort course on the Pacific coast of Nicaragua, and a $60 million, 27-hole course on a small island in South Korea. The South Korea project, just off the coast of Inchon, represents his first effort in Asia and a shift in focus for Kidd.

Kidd hopes to break ground on a coastal course in Portugal in January. Later in 2012 he plans to begin a public course in Brewster, Wash., near Lake Chelan (his first project in the U.S. since Huntsman Springs in Idaho opened in 2009), and another high-end course around an estate near London.

An Advocate of Bend

Kidd found a home in Bend, where he has become an outspoken advocate of the city. “I absolutely believe that Bend is every bit as appealing today as it was five years ago,” Kidd said. “The economics are up against it right now. But eventually that will turn, it always will. And Bend is no less desirable.”

Kidd said he takes pride in “exporting expertise and importing money” to Central Oregon, something he expects will continue.

Quoted from the Bend Bulletin, published November 30, 2011.