Despite the disappointingly fine weather, we set off to play golf. There is much to do in Bandon – parasurfing (yeah, right), beach walking, whale watching, sea kayaking, inland and dune hiking – but that’s not why we’ve come all this way. The only one thing utterly unique to Bandon is the golf courses, where there is drama around every corner. Between the two courses, there are no fewer than 12 holes sited hard on the brim of the cliff that drops 100 feet to the beach below. The 463-yard par-four fourth hole at Pacific Dunes is simply one of the best holes in golf, its location hard against the cliffside, both beautiful and demanding. Many holes are masterpieces of strategic design, where players are beguiled into playing a high-risk shot.

By far the best architectural design feature of the two courses, however, is the bunkering, which is most reminiscent of the natural, often unkempt sand hazards at Royal County Down Golf Club, along Northern Ireland’s east coast. The massive wind-flashed bunker running for 70 yards up beside the 13th green at Pacific Dunes is a 40-foot-high paean to natural hazards. Here it’s easy to believe that golf was meant to be a found rather than a manufactured game.

This was all created according to the sensibility of a Chicagoan, Michael Keiser, the brains and cash behind Bandon Dunes. Keiser obtained 3,300 acres of untouched dune land along the Oregon coast and then proceeded to hire an architect no one had ever heard of, a 27-year-old Scot named David McLay Kidd. Kidd is a purist, and he insisted on certain things that Keiser went along with. It had to be a walking course, no carts allowed; and it was not to end up being surrounded by houses and condos.

Keiser was equally intuitive when he chose the young traditionalist American designer Tom Doak to build Pacific Dunes. Doak’s course is perhaps even more raw than Kidd’s, and though it may not be quite as difficult as Bandon Dunes, a round at Pacific Dunes is about as much fun as you’re ever going to have on a golf course. Bandon is Keiser’s admirable statement: Golf is best kept simple, and the standard North American concept of over-built, over-maintained and overly luxurious golf experiences is not the one truest to the spirit of the game.

At the turn of the 20th century, the town of Bandon was booming with fishing and logging, but it was hit by fire in 1914 and 1936. In the 1936 blaze, only 16 of the town’s 500 buildings were left standing. The cause of both fires was the eruption of the highly combustible gorse bushes that had grown to surround Bandon and the nearby coastline. The irony was that the town’s founder, an Irishman named Bennett, had imported the fast-growing bush from his home in Bandon, Ireland.

History aside, Bandon ’s natural setting is awe-inspiring. Over a dinner of freshly caught halibut and prawns in the waterside room of the Bandon Channel House, we watched row after row of pelicans stream in off the ocean, gliding effortlessly under their massive wingspans as they searched for fish in the rippling evening waters of the Coquille River. They would swoop and circle, then dive straight in and come up with a dinner of their own.

The town is wonderfully quaint and seems somehow insulated from the realities of the world. But the secluded, distant feel that adds to the dreamy quality of the place may soon vanish. Bandon Trails, the third course on the site (set to open this month) is being designed by the gifted team of Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore, the pair responsible for the Sand Hills Golf Club in Nebraska. Some of the most dramatic dunes on the coast – well over 200 feet high – will be incorporated into Bandon Trails.

This is but one of the developments planned. A new hotel is being built directly beside the courses and rumours of massive expansion are rampant. Six, seven, even 10 courses.

If that’s true, it would be a shame, though this opinion has nothing to do with the quality of the golf and the resort. Keiser will surely hire the world’s best architects, and with the stunning dune land he has at his disposal, Bandon could well become one of the world’s great golf resorts, standing shoulder to shoulder with places like Hilton Head in South Carolina and Mexico’s Cabo del Sol. But these resorts have nothing like the charm Bandon possesses at this moment, a charm that it carries precisely because of its dreamy seclusion. This sense of being elect will evaporate when there is a new hotel, several new golf courses, a nearby air-strip and another dozen restaurants. Bandon could become the Carmel of Oregon.

Rose, our waitress at the Channel House, summed it up best when I asked her what she thought of Bandon Dunes expanding. “Good, I guess,” she said, shrugging. “It’ll be good for the economy in Bandon, but then if it’s that much bigger and there are that many more people… well, then it won’t be Bandon.”

I thought of her words the next day as we played our final round. As painful as it is for a lifelong golfer to recommend it, although there is room in these seaside dunes to create another 10 magnificent golf courses, perhaps there are enough already. Perhaps Bandon is now best left alone. Because at five times the size, well, it wouldn’t be half as great.

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