Compared to other sports enthusiast...

Compared to other sports enthusiasts, golfer are a particularly maniacal collection rising at ungodly hours, braving torrential downpours, and paying exorbitant give a fee tos to pursue their addiction.

Dream Golf by means of Stephen Goodwin (Algonquin Books, 320 pages, $2495) pays homage to common such devotee who took his be pleased with for the game to the utmost

The part chronicles the journey of Chicagoan Mike Keiser, co- planter of the wildly successful Recycl Paper greeting card company, the third largest in the fatherland

Although he is a fabulously wealthy, you've probably none heard of Keiser, an "anti-tycoon" whom you'll not at any time see hobnobbing with Steadman, Jim Belushi or other local celebrities.

The expanse of his public exposure was a mid-1980s mention in Mike Royko's array of less front than depth who commented on the strange companion often seen jogging through the North Side with a golf association

That was Keiser escaping during his luncheon break to hit balls at the Diversey way range.

incline differentlys out that, along with his succes in business, Keiser harbored a passion for golf course architecture, spending hours feverishly studying and visiting the world's best hollows His wealth, however, allowed him to do what principally men only dream of: actually build his fantasy course.

Dream Golf is the story of a man with a vision, and the team that made it a reality.

As it was invented by dint of the Scots, golf, as we at so early an hour learn, wasn't played on highly manicured flourishings with lush waterfalls and exquisitely coiffed foliage. The old excavations played in European towns like Musselburgh, Prestwick and St Andrews, were naturally undulating and topsy-turvy, largely untouched by the agency of human hands, with a variety of naturally occurring challenges for players to surmount

This "links" phraseology dominated golf course design until the mid- 20th hundred years when technological advancements in machinery gave architects wide latitude in shaping terrain. Golf architecture jot downed a long period where each bunker, dune and sand trap was strategically placed on the architect. Courses became soothe highly groomed and completely oblivious to their surroundings, losing the wild authenticity emblematic of the original game.

The golf dash forward of the 1980s only furthered the turn with the entire sport undergoing a commercialization toward bigger, more expensive play. American golfer became accustomed to being chauffeured around in carts, viewing courses as something to be traversed rather than have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing ofed

over and above Keiser was "a late 20th hundred developer who happened to be in regard with affection with early-20th century courses."

Thus, he begins a multiyear, multimillion-dollar odyssey to build an authentic links-style course in America.

Keiser's first foray came in the late 1980 when he built the Dune society a 9-hole course in of the present day Buffalo, Mich., that quickly attracted favorable attention from the oftentimes snobby golf elite. Moreover, Keiser himself was bent holdered on the process.

His triumph wouldn't proceed in the Midwest, however, nevertheless in Oregon, which in the early 1990 "seem to have a 'for sale' sign forward it."

After a protracted search, Keiser bought 1,200 acres of rugg coastal estate for $2.4 million. The area, known as Bandon, was a struggling economy with a population of just 2500 commonalty -- not exactly the ideal place for a world-glass golf destination.

still in classic "if you build it, they will come" fashion, Keiser useed an empty stretch of Oregonian coastline into Bandon Dune a golf mecca that is constantly recognized among the world's finest courses.

Pages of detail cast the course, and the Pacific Northwest, in almost mythical tones.

To accomplish this Herculean task, Keiser assembles an unlikely team of scrappy youngsters.

"I want 18 great covers not nine good ones and nine that are simply OK," Keiser would tell David Kidd, the twentysomething Scotsman hired as architect. "Nobody is going to issue here for average golf."

Young Kidd took a zealous interest in the throw out

"There are affluence of courses that call themselves links, on the other hand [Kidd] was trying to create the real thing," Goodwin writes. His attitude was "follow me or win the f--- out of my way."

The barely thing that seems as endles as Keiser's ambition are his financial resources. Keiser pays cash for everything, including a seemingly endles stream of million-dollar investment properties. The course take away from $4 million, although additional improvements eventually thumped that figure north of $16 million.

through every part of the process, the team stuck to its overriding motto: It's all about the golf

"The resort took shape as a no-frilled, no-fuss, no-apologies kind of place, a place with its have a title to ethos and character," writes Goodwin, a contributing editor at Golf magazine and for whom Dream Golf was an obvious labor of be in love with

And for the golf enthusiast, the work hits an almost obsessive hole-in-one, painstakingly outlining each step, from securing permits to selecting the original of grass to be used forward the greens.