Jeff Simonds is the head golf professional at Bandon Dunes Golf Course. In August, 2011, after shattering the golf resort’s record for most meat loaf consumed in a week, I conducted a no-holds-barred, hard-hitting interview with Jeff. No subject was off limits, including tufted puffins, snails, and horse heads.
Jeff Simonds
Golf Conversations: I’ve played all four of your courses this week and I’m practically speechless. I think that Mike Keiser should be put into the Golf Hall of Fame.
Jeff Simonds: Absolutely.
GC: Each course is just beautiful. I am not of the whiner school: “Well, the greens are little bumpy” or “The greens are too undulating.” Revel in your surroundings: Look at the scenery, look at the ocean, look at the people. Well, maybe two out of three.
(laughter)
JS: It’s pretty rare to find four golf courses that are this unique – even side by side – that can challenge any level of golfer. We get beginners who come through here; they’ve read about it and they just want to come experience it. Even if you can’t get the ball airborne, you can have a great time out there.
GC: Why are you looking at me when you say that?
(laughter)
JS: It’s a ground game with not a lot of forced carries. Pretty much everyone can have fun out here. It’s a nice, casual golf experience that you can’t get anywhere else.
GC: And instead of going overseas, you can come here, have good food, good toilets, good showers, and you can understand what people are saying. You’ve got the whole ball of wax here.
JS: It’s links golf and it’s in America. The best of both worlds.
GC: I loved it! So how’d you end up here at Bandon Dunes?
JS: I’ve been here for 8 years. Came from Boise, Idaho. I was working at some private clubs in Boise and everything was driver-wedge, driver-wedge, driver-wedge.
GC: I know. It gets rather tedious, doesn’t it?
(laughter)
JS: I hate to say golf was boring but it didn’t require much thinking. At the time, only Bandon Dunes and Pacific Dunes existed. I played college golf and knew about this place and wanted to come out here and check it out.
I was willing to take any job that was offered to me to come work here. I did get offered a job and once I was in, I was hooked.
GC: What was your first job here?
JS: A golf shop assistant. I was in the PGA program but took a seasonal job to get here and Trails was just starting to go under construction and I knew there was opportunity here. It wasn’t long before I started getting promoted and it’s just a fantastic place to be.
GC: How did you move up the ladder?
JS: There’s luck, there’s timing, there’s hard work. The fact that Mr. Keiser kept building new golf courses helped. After about a year, year-and-a-half, I became the head professional at Pacific Dunes which was certainly faster than I ever expected.
GC: Yes, I’d say so.
JS: I was 24, 25 when that happened. And Pacific Dunes became the Number One ranked public golf course, so what could be better than that?
GC: That was quite a feather in your visor.
JS: And we got to do the Curtis Cup; I was the host professional for that. Another great experience that I wasn’t expecting to get right away. And the following year was the US Mid-Amateur Championship which gave us a USGA Championship on all three golf courses at the resort.
GC: Where was that one held?
JS: Bandon Dunes and Bandon Trails. They played it over both courses. And the resort grew and now we have four courses with a fifth under construction.
GC: The fifth course is going to be a par 3?
JS: It’s a par-3 golf course called The Preserve. There are 13 world-class, par-3 holes. Coore and Crenshaw, when they were here designing Bandon Trails, they had that land at their disposal. But there just wasn’t a clear-cut routing to use that land and get in all 18.
Mr. Keiser and the Coore-Crenshaw team just kept going back there. It’s such good golf land, they wanted to do something with it.
GC: Never any thought of putting up a Burger King there?
(laughter)
JS: I think when they took the vote: “Add more golf” or “Fast food restaurant” – “Add more golf” just got in there.
GC: You know what the mark-up is on French Fries and soda? ROI, I think you’d do better with a Burger King. And nobody ever asks for a rain check at a Burger King.
(laughter)
Another great idea I had for you guys: you’ve got this mini-bus shuttle system that moves guests around the resort. How about a monorail like in Disneyworld?
JS: That would be a good one.
GC: Don’t mention it to Mr. Keiser. I don’t want to get you fired.
(laughter)
And my last great idea: a couple of weeks ago I was at Cabot Links in Nova Scotia.
JS: How was that?
GC: Gorgeous, spectacular! And I parred the first hole. I even had some pars here!
JS: Perfect.
GC: Oh, so here’s my idea: a high-speed bullet train from Nova Scotia to here. You play Cabot Links — aka Keiser East — in Canada, jump on the train, head to Oregon…
JS: It would have to go underground, though.
GC: Underground, around Lake Michigan, through the Rockies; hey, I’m a visionary, not an engineer. It would put a lot of construction people back to work. Again, if you want to bring this up at the next staff meeting, be my guest.
(laughter)
JS: I’m writing it down right now.
GC: Ok. The golfers who come here, is there a particular reaction you witness or hear very often?
JS: We get a good mixed bag of returning guests that are coming back for their 9th, 10th time.
GC: Bandonistas!
JS: We have a very loyal following. They come experience it once, have a great time, and they like to bring back new people. We also get people who see it for the first time. After a couple of days we can usually recognize the first-timers because they’ve still got that grin on their face, but they’re walking a little sore.
(laughter)
GC: Yes, my feet were killing me after the first day. That’s the last time I wear stiletto heels on the golf course. Maybe afterwards at McKee’s Pub, but not on the course.
(laughter)
JS: People exhibit an excitement that you don’t really see in a lot of places. You get that raw, emotional feeling when you come out here. It’s fun from a staff perspective. The staff is just as enthusiastic about the place because you’re at the best golf resort in the world, in our opinion.
So to see people come to our golf resort and have that great experience … well, everyone’s a winner.
GC: Yesterday I got on the shuttle at the Practice Center. The driver asked me, “Old Macdonald”?
I said, “How many times, when you ask people that question, do they respond: ‘Had a farm’? Or ‘Ee-i-ee-i-oh’”?
And she said, “Probably 10 or 15 times a day.”
(laughter)
She also told me that most people don’t get the reference to Charles Macdonald. By the way, I loved that shot at Old Macdonald – the 3rd or 4th hole – where you have to hit your tee shot over the hill where that old tree is.
JS: Yeah, it’s the third hole – a blind tee shot.
GC: That was a lot of fun. When we got up to the ridge, Migs was there. [NOTE: Michael "Migs" Scalici is a Bandon Dunes employee who was serving as a course ranger the day I played.] And I said, “Tell me the truth: was that the best drive you saw today?” And he said, “Uh… no.” He really disappointed me.
JS: He’s pretty good at telling the truth. But how about that view when you get up on top? You see the entire golf course right in front of you.
3rd Hole at Old Macdonald
GC: Spectacular! I’m thinking of coming back in three days. Fly back to North Carolina. Change my shoes. Get new underwear. You don’t have underwear in the pro shop, do you?
JS: I think we’re all sold out. The last reporter that came through bought it all. He’s now working at Guest Services. Feel free to grab an application on your way out. But we do have a service that will come in from town to do your laundry.
GC: Do you ever get a chance to talk with Mr. Keiser?
JS: Absolutely. He walks around and gets his fingers on the pulse of the resort. It doesn’t matter what your position is, he’s interested in your feedback. For every front-line staffer we have, there’s usually two or three working behind the scenes to help pull off whatever task it is. He checks in with everyone.
GC: How many people work here at the resort?
JS: Just over 500. Then you have the caddie corps after that. They’re all independent contractors. We’ve got our Director of Caddie Services, Ken Brooke, who leads the caddie corps.
GC: Bandon’s got a tufted puffin logo. Have you ever seen a tufted puffin here?
JS: I personally have not.
GC: Has anyone seen a tufted puffin?
JS: Absolutely!
GC: Yes?
JS: Out on the rocks, they will come and lay their eggs in nests.
GC: Next to my golf balls.
JS: Right. They hatch Titleist 4s all the time.
(laughter)
GC: I’m staying over at the Lily Pond. I pulled open the curtains this morning, opened the patio door, and saw a snail on the patio. I don’t know if that was some sort of management comment on my pace of play.
JS: You got that hint, huh?
(laughter)
GC: Yeah, I got it!
(laughter)
JS: Usually, it’s either the horse head in your bed or the snail on your patio!
(laughter)
GC: Message received! I play very quickly so I think the snail was meant for someone else.
JS: That was our fast snail.
(laughter)
GC: You know, for a golf pro, you’re pretty funny. Saw some deer, too. By my room and on the golf course.
Robert Blumenthal & Jeff Simonds
JS: The wildlife around here is pretty much at peace with the golf course. They realize that they’re not going to be bothered. I don’t think there are many that have been hit by golf balls because we’re all great golfers out here.
GC: What else can we tell people about coming out here? Obviously, there’s a better time of year, weather-wise, than other times?
JS: July, August, and September have probably our most predictable weather. It’s going to be warmer, it’s going to be less wind than what we get in June. But you can get a great day any day of the year. January and February are actually very popular months. There’s not a bad time to come out here. You can get rain almost any time but you can get also sunshine and 70 degrees. We play golf here 365 days a year.
GC: Do you get snow in the winter?
JS: It snowed a couple of times here in the 8 years I’ve been here but it doesn’t really stick.
GC: What’s your policy on rain checks?
JS: If you don’t like the weather, you get a rain check for that round of golf.
GC: Hey, that’s very nice!
JS: But once you tee off, you’re committed to the round.
GC: It’s not like in South Florida, when it starts raining on the 18th fairway and all the old guys come running into the pro shop demanding a rain check?
JS: No.
(laughter)
People come out here prepared for the weather.
GC: Yes. You have to.
JS: And we’ve got some great gear inside the golf shops to handle every type of weather. You travel out here from the East Coast and you’re kind of committed. So you go out and play and have a good time.
GC: That’s right.
JS: One of the comments we often hear is … if you play a round of golf in perfect, 75-degree weather with no wind, it’s tough to remember that. But if you come up to Bandon Dunes and you play in a 25 mph wind with some sporadic rain, you can recall every single shot you made. And you realize you played a great round of golf under challenging conditions.
GC: When I play a new course, the whole thing is like a blur. I can’t recall hardly any of the holes, but they were all so beautiful. I found myself doing a lot of standing and staring. Especially at the Pacific. This is a very special place.
I noticed there was a helicopter flying around today and was told Mr. Keiser was up there. Is this his way of avoiding me?
JS: We’re trying to keep you two separated because we don’t want that monorail built.
(laughter)
GC: Jeff, thanks for your time. And thanks for the hospitality everyone here has shown me.
JS: You’re welcome.
************************************
You can read more about my trip to Bandon Dunes Golf Resort by clicking this link.
