Stephen Goodwin is the author of  Dream Golf:  The Making of Bandon Dunes, a book that was a dream assignment since Goodwin is hopelessly smitten with links golf.  To do the research for the book, he made frequent trips to Oregon and got to know the remarkable people whose vision and talent shaped Bandon Dunes.  The list starts with Mike Keiser and Howard McKee, and includes, of course, some of he most gifted golf architects of this (or any other) era:  David Kidd, Tom Doak, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw.   It was Goodwin’s ambition to write a book that would be true to the spirit of Bandon Dunes and capture at least some of the boldness and originality of the undertaking.  A revised edition of Dream Golf was published in June 2010 by Algonquin Press.

The stunning photograph on the cover of the book, as well as the pictures inside, were taken by Wood Sabold, a fine art photographer who lives in Bandon and has been taking pictures at the resort since the earliest construction.   He has generously allowed me to use his photographs on this web site.  If you see a picture of Bandon Dunes that isn’t captioned, it’s his.

Briefly, some boilerplate:  Goodwin was a contributing editor at Golf Magazine. He has written extensively about golf course design and golf history, and his articles and essays on golf have appeared in Golf, Links, The Met Golfer, Golf Connoisseur, The Washington Post,and the U. S. Open Program.    His life list of courses played is somewhat schizophrenic, with a good many classic courses on one side of the ledger, and a ton of public courses on the other.   His writing has been pretty equally divided between articles on classic courses and  designers (Macdonald, Ross, Tillinghast, Strong, among others) and public tracks in places like Myrtle Beach, Charleston, and Jacksonville.

With my son, Nick, at Bandon Dunes

On this site, he intends to write regularly about public golf, a subject he has learned the hard way — i. e., by investing a public course, Whiskey Creek, in Ijamsville, Maryland.  The experience has made him sympathetic to those who put their hearts and dollars into the development of a public course; given all the obstacles that have to be cleared, it strikes him as a triumph when an afforable public course, whether muni or daily fee, opens for play.  

Goodwin has written three novels (Breaking Her Fall is the most recent).  He has two grown-up children, two good-looking stepchildren, two great dogs, and a wife who makes life worth living every single day.  He lives in Manassas, Virginia, teaches at George Mason University, and runs a fair-sized garden.