paradise lost David McLay Kidd's Golf Course on Laucala

Late last year, a golf course opened that all of us would love to play but few of us ever will.

Oh, who am I kidding? It's a golf course that none of us will ever play.

I'm talking about David McLay Kidd's golf course on Laucala, a 3,000-acre private island somewhere in the northern part of the Fiji chain. You've probably never heard of it. No big deal. Laucala isn't for everybody. Deliberately so.

Malcolm Forbes used to own Laucala. After he died, his family sold it to Dietrich Mateschitz, the guy who put Red Bull in every tavern and grocery store in the world.

Red Bull helped to make Mateschitz extremely wealthy. Forbes says he's worth $3.7 billion. He owns a Formula One race team and a professional soccer team. He doesn't golf, but he built Kidd's course and he wants to build another one in suburban Salzburg. Golf serves his ends.

Mateschitz bought Laucala with the idea of making it a refuge for people like himself. He sells it not merely as an island paradise but as the perfect dream of an island paradise.

And the dream is very expensive.

Laucala has 25 villas. To spend just one night in the cheapest one will set you back $4,000. A place with some nicer appointments and a little more space goes for $7,000. And for Mateschitz's personal house, the one with the commanding view of practically the whole island? That would be $30,000.

For one night.

In other words, a week in even the low-rent digs on Laucala is the equivalent of nice car or a year's worth of private college. For that kind of money, you'd half-expect Robin Leach to stroll by and wish you "champagne wishes and caviar dreams."

So if it's difficult to find, well, the search for paradise is arduous. And if it's ultra-exclusive, well, paradise is reserved for the chosen few.

Laucala reminds me of a line from an old Beatles song: Got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see.

One thing's for sure: If Laucala really is a kind of heaven on earth, it had better have a damned fine golf course.

I'll bet it does, because Kidd has created some good ones. He designed the first course at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, which has been winning raves since the minute it opened. He designed the Castle Course at St. Andrews and Machrihanish Dunes, a pair of gems in Scotland, and very good courses in Oregon and Hawaii and California.

You won't find any of those golf courses in an episode of "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous." They're golf courses for the rest of us, for men and women of all sizes and shapes and colors and ages and income levels.

They're courses that ask if you enjoy a particular style of golf, not if you enjoy a particular lifestyle.

So when it comes to a golf course like the one on Laucala, my question is: Should anyone care?

Not to get all metaphysical, but if an architect designs a golf course that hardly anybody plays, does it really exist? It's like the proverbial tree falling in a forest. If nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Similarly, what kind of sound does a golf course make if there's nobody around to play it? And where would the sound come from? Who would rhapsodize about it, or criticize it? How would it find its way onto a best-of list? What place would it have in history books?

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for a golf course like the one at Laucala. Architects have been designing golf courses for the very rich since who knows when. Kenny Rogers, the county-and-western singer, used to have a personal golf course. John D. Rockefeller had at least two of them. Arnold Palmer designed one for John Kluge in Virginia.

Can you hear the sounds those courses make? It isn't very loud, is it?

Worse, the sound doesn't reverberate. It doesn't echo through the world of golf.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you design a golf course that hardly anybody plays, what good is it? In the grand scheme of things, does it make a difference? Will it ever represent anything more than a paycheck?

I bring all this up because Kidd is one of the most important architects of our time. Like a lot of his contemporaries, he likes to philosophize about the traditions that golf courses should be faithful to. He has compelling ideas about how golf should be played and the kind of experiences golf courses should deliver. He thinks about the history of the game, and, I presume, his place in it.

Kidd calls what he does "purist golf." I used to think I knew what he meant, but now I'm not so sure.

Nearly a dozen times in the United States and around the world, Kidd has taken risks and opened golf courses that are worth playing and worth talking about. On Laucala, he designed and built a golf course that signifies very little, maybe nothing.

If it makes any sound at all, it's just the sound of money talking.