Mike Keiser is a gambler. He bets on building golf courses in the boonies and has yet to lose. Why? Because he knows the golfer’s wandering soul.

“Part of the hardwiring of golfers is that they like to travel, and that won’t change,” he told Fairways + Greens from his Chicago office a few days before Thanksgiving.

No argument here. If we can’t muster the shekels and hit the highway or skyway to whatever golf destinations populate our dreams, no matter how remote, what’s the point of even playing the game?

Keiser understands this we’ll never stop traveling fact innately, which is probably why he acted on the harebrained idea to build Bandon Dunes way out on the remote Oregon coast in the first place. It wasn’t his first foray into golf course development — the Dunes Club in New Buffalo, Mich., was — but it’s by far his greatest achievement to date.

Since the day David McLay Kidd’s first course brought a strong Scottish scent to the modern American mainland, Keiser has been dubbed many things — developer savant, economic savior, political maneuverer — all the while preaching the public-golf gospel through the genius of his go-to designers: Kidd, Tom Doak, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, Jim Urbina. And Keiser considers himself a serviceable designer as well. But unlike us, he had the clout and cash to act on his clear love for the architecture game, and the game of golf itself. He married his passion with the foresight to hire up-and-comers like Doak (who had been around for years, working under the radar, before he laid out Pacific Dunes) and the Texan Coore, who with Crenshaw has moved to the top of the American golf design heap with Bandon Trails, Sand Hills, Friar’s Head and, most recently, Lost Farms in Tasmania, another minimalist dazzler next door to Doak’s Barnbougle Dunes.

A dozen years down the road from Bandon’s debut, Keiser keeps the hits coming. He’s got another on his hands in Cabot Links on Canada’s Cape Breton Island. Despite Keiser’s initial pushback, the project ended up filling all his unwritten requirements: It’s on the ocean. It’s on sand. It’s hell and gone from a major city. And it’s really good, thanks to the incredible vision and earthmoving work of Canadian-born architect Rod Whitman and the persistence of Managing Director (and Keiser’s investment partner) Ben Cowan-Dewar.

A half-hour conversation with Keiser ranged into several corners of the globe, including Bandon, where the resort’s fifth track, a 13-hole par-3 circuit by Coore and Crenshaw dubbed The Bandon Preserve Golf Course, will open May 1.

Let’s start with Cabot Links. I played a round with Rod Whitman …

Did he beat you?

I think he probably did. He didn’t keep score. He’s a pretty good stick.

That’s very diplomatic of him. You came all the way up there just to get beat by him.

I love his work at Cabot Links. Ironically, a couple of the best holes are along the lagoon, away from the ocean — the par-3 No. 8 and the cape par-4 No. 9.

Isn’t that a pretty body of the water, with the harbor and the estuary and the river that flows into it? And 8 is my favorite hole up there.

He got it right. It’s a very nice site.

He did beautiful greens. If you believe, as I do, that the greens are the heart of the golf course — some say heart, some say soul, I don’t know which is right — they make the golf course.

The greens at Old Macdonald just blew me away, too.

All they are is patterned after St. Andrews and National [Golf Links, on Long Island]. I have said that National has the best greens in North America. And many think that of St. Andrews for the world. Put those together and that’s the model for Old Macdonald. Some people are just baffled by them. Usually they haven’t been to Scotland, they’ve been brought up on small greens — we’ve been building small greens for 40 years because they’re cheaper and “more strategic” — but golf started with playing on a flat surface. You couldn’t tell the green from the fairway.

I love that kind of golf. It gets the blood flowing. I’m never at a loss for excitement when I go to a place like Bandon Dunes. It’s so pure.

I’m with you.

I got the same feeling at Cabot Links — the setting, the St. Andrews feel since it’s right next to the town. And the entire town had really embraced it. The caddies are all retired schoolteachers …

I love that. That little town has 2,000 people, and you wouldn’t assume it’s a golf town since there’s no golf within an hour. So when we said we were looking for caddies, 40 people showed up. That was my biggest question about Bandon when we first opened: Would people use caddies, and if they did, where would we get them? It’s a challenge that takes care of itself; word gets out. In Cabot’s case, 40 generally retired people said, “This sounds good — we like it.” They get to meet people, they know exactly the spirit of golf, the spirit of St. Andrews — which resides basically anywhere you have a links course.

Rod Whitman filled me in on the story: He checked out the site in the dead of winter and then contacted you. You went up and checked it out. What did you think when you first saw it?

Not much. But the credit should go to Ben Cowan-Dewar. He got the deal together, got the land, the backing of the locals and of the provincial government. And he picked Rod. So he needed someone to partner with. I was early on his list. Josh Lesnik [of Kemper Sports] went up first and vetted it. I’d heard that it wasn’t worth my trip, but Josh was surprised by the ocean frontage and for that reason felt it was worth a look.

I too visited in March, which was not a pretty time of year in Inverness [the town where Cabot Links is located]. The golf course was a field, not unsightly but a field. And the town was not quite as nice as it is now. There’s been a bit of gentrification, meaning paint on the houses, over the past three years because people were getting ready for tourists to come. Prior to that there was really no hope, which is why the locals put together the deal that Ben then cemented. When I saw it, keeping in mind it was a different country and way out there in the Maritimes, I was looking for reasons not to do it. And it was Ben and Josh who convinced me it was worth another visit. I warmed up enough to it, because of the oceanfront and, frankly, the price of the land. I said, “OK, we’ll give it a try.”

Josh and I were worried that it would immediately be “Bandon East,” and could it live up to that? We weren’t so sure. In the year that followed the stock market crash, I really got cold feet, so I told Rod, “We’re not going to build it next year, but rather than shut it down, I’m going to give you a small amount of money to rent a bulldozer and just move dirt around.” He transformed a somewhat industrial looking site into a dunescape. Before there were any holes planted, he moved it from somewhat angular shapes — which you’d expect from a coal mine and a railroad yard — and he rounded it out.

In my mind, it’s already a hit. The weather is a lot like Bandon, the people are great and there’s great food — you can eat lobster until you literally explode. They’ve got the little distillery just down the road ...

Once you get to it — with the distillery, the town, the golf course, another gorgeous bay about 20 minutes away with a very nice hotel and restaurant — it’s a nice little zone.

Shifting back to Bandon, you’ve got the Preserve opening on May 1. How did that all come about?

The first thing was Bill and Ben, while they were building Bandon Trails and trying to get as many holes as they could on the ocean side of that high dune, prowled around where Bandon Preserve is. They couldn’t make it work for par 4s and 5s, but said, “There are a lot of good par 3s down there.”

So they planted the idea. It jelled because I heard more and more from Baby Boomers — I’m a year older than it takes to qualify as a Baby Boomer, so I hang out a lot with them — “Yeah, we just can’t play 36.” At which point I moved Bill and Ben’s idea to, “What if we built a par-3 course?” I expected them to say, “Yeah, that would be OK,” but a surprising number responded, “Hurry up and build it!”

In other words, if it were there already, they’d be there. So that was the extent of my marketing research, and I thought it was pretty strong. I didn’t know how many holes we’d get, but I knew the site was big enough and exciting enough to do any number of holes. At that point I got Bill to take a look, and he said, “We can build 18 if we go all the way to the ocean.”

We both decided that was too long a walk back for the Baby Boomers to deal with, so we decided on 10 to 12 holes. It became a real thing, and once we agreed on what I would pay Bill and Ben, they got started [working on what eventually became 13 holes].

That land is so good, all dunes, all sand. It might not be the best piece of land there, but it’s close.

And I think that par 3s are the most memorable holes. The greens are important, but the par 3s make or break a course. With 13 photogenic holes on the new course — some more than others — it’s more memorable in many ways than the big courses.

I’m moving to the model of a course with six par 3s. The old standard was four. I think five is better than four, and six, for the average golfer, is better than five.

That’s why I love Pacific Dunes — the four par 3s on the back nine. There’s so much variety.

When you stand on the tee on any of them, you know you can make a 1 on each of them, and you’re confident you can make birdie. I don’t think that on a par 4 or 5.

And it helps to have a good caddy — on 17 [at Pacific Dunes] for instance, when he tells you to hit it just over the right bunker when the pin is back-left, the ball will go right there. And it does.

Love those caddies. And I believe we have five par 3s at Cabot Links …

Yes, and all of them are damned good. And you see a course for the first time, it’s amazing how much of the new holes had grassed in, and the bones of the course are so good. It’s going to be a lot of fun for a lot of people.

I worried about holes 4, 5 and 7. And now that I’ve seen and played 4, I don’t worry about it. Five was a perfectly flat piece of land with a sewage treatment plan in back of it. Rod covered the fence so you don’t see it. Then the brain trust of Ben, Rod and I came up with the Biarritz idea [for the green], and I now love 5. Which just proves the brilliance of C.B. Macdonald to identify the Biarritz as what you do with flat ground. It’s a pleasing architectural gambit for an otherwise dull piece of land.

Tell me about the possibility of building a muni course south of the town of Bandon.

I have been talking to the state parks for some time, and I have high hopes that we will come to an agreement. There’s some land that, joined with what I have, will make a wonderful site just off the ocean in sort of gnarly dunes like Pacific Dunes. I’m hopeful but it’s not ready to go.

The folks at Bandon Crossings love the idea.

Really? I’ve heard good things about those folks [Rex and Carla Smith]. I thought they’d be fearful about a Bandon muni.

You’re always on the lookout for good links spots. I know Barnbougle Dunes is one of your favorite spots, and you think Lost Farm could be even better?

I think it will. That’s my take. It’s more varied — big dunes that Bill figured out how to wind his way through. Like Rod Whitman’s at Cabot Links, which is brilliant.

It sort of has the feel of the shepherd’s crook at St. Andrews, where people are crossing in front …

I’ve always liked that meeting of people on the golf course.

Are you on the lookout for other building sites around the world, even in the still-rotten economy?

I’ve looked at a site in County Kerry, Ireland. The environmental impact study is being done. It’s much like the Bandon muni. It’s a wonderful site on the Dingle Peninsula about 25 minutes from Killarney, and it’s as powerful as the Lost Farms site.

I don’t know how receptive Ireland will be to building a golf course on sensitive coastal area, but it will soon be in the hands of the politicians.

My attraction isn’t this: There are currently 50 golf courses for sale in Ireland, which for a population of 4 million is a fair amount of unused inventory. My attraction is that Killarney can easily be thought of as the St. Andrews of Ireland.

Dublin can make that claim, too, but you’ve got to drive through an hour of traffic to get to its courses. Time-wise the same is true with most in Killarney, but it’s developed like St. Andrews as a tourist town.

And if you think of everything within an hour or hour and a half, there are a lot of great courses — Lahinch, Ballybunion, Waterville, Doonbeg, Old Head, Tralee. And this site is the closest of those to Killarney, 25 minutes.

Does Ireland need another golf course? No. Could Killarney use another very good links course designed by Coore-Crenshaw? That sounds pretty good.

Have you been to see the Scotland site where Donald Trump’s course is being built?

No, but everybody is curious of what he’ll do with it. He’s still doing it?

It’s opening next summer. We’ve heard the dunes are Pacific Dunes-esque.

I think they’re bigger than that. He said, “I’ve been to Bandon, and the dunes are OK, but they’re so little. What I’ve got is big dunes.” Though dunes can get too big. But it’ll be good for golf if he opens a successful links course. He’s competing with Castle Stuart not too far away. That’s the big new guy.

And it’s getting wall-to-wall raves.

Deservedly so. I think it’s fabulous.

What’s the most surprising links locale you’ve seen?

Tasmania. Cabot is quite surprising, they all are, but with the wisdom of hindsight, I’m amazed that in Tasmania there was a farm, a ranch of 12,000 acres, next to a public park of 50,000 acres of huge sand dunes. And you say, well, Tasmania is in the middle of nowhere, why would you be surprised?

I think I could probably say the same thing about Tanzania and Kenya. They probably have big sand dunes there, too, but you’ll probably never play golf there. But Tasmania is only an hour and a half from Melbourne, and right now it’s the heart of foodie and wine country. It’s like finding a huge sand dune area in the Napa Valley. That’s surprising. The Sandbelt and Tasmania is a wonderful trip.

To finish up, what’s your thought on the future of golf resort development and golf travel? Will they have to fundamentally change or be tweaked to deal with the economy, or will people just have to widen their lens to really want to travel to the great places?

Part of the hardwiring of golfers is that they like to travel, and that won’t change. The details may change, the pricing may have to become more realistic. We get credit for being a good value, but when you think about it, Bandon Dunes charges $230 for 18 holes. That’s a lot. It’s softened by the replay rate. But my response to you is, from day one we wanted to get the public golfer from Portland, Seattle, Sacramento to feel they could come and play. We have winter and shoulder rates that are quite affordable.

So in these constrained times, seasonal or value pricing will become more important. You’re seeing package pricing from Pinehurst and even Pebble Beach now. But the desire to visit resorts that have really good golf will outlast any economic uncertainty. You go and play the Top 10 and say, “Wow, were they good — let’s go play the next 20.” That’s one of the great things about golf.

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