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.

Tiger Woods: Goodbye To All That

The New York Times Magazine has published a long, gloomy story about the fall of Tiger Woods and its affect on golf, particularly the PGA Tour. Jonathan Mahler, who wrote "The Tiger Bubble," ties the sex and the money into a neat bundle and makes some troubling observations about where the sport is headed.

Here's part of what Mahler had to say about the Tour and where it stands with its corporate partners:

The PGA Tour is at a critical juncture. Next year it will begin negotiating new TV contracts with CBS and NBC. In the meantime, the tour is trying to secure sponsors for 10 events in 2011 while economic conditions are not exactly favorable. Two of the hardest-hit industries, financial services and car manufacturing, are responsible for underwriting a third of the PGA Tour’s sponsored events. More to the point, the entire economic model of a golf tournament is looking a bit suspect. At the moment, the value of a company’s flying clients and employees to a sunny locale to drink Grey Goose cocktails and get tips on their short games from professional golfers is most likely to be lost on many of its shareholders.

Mahler also discusses the Tour's inevitable globalization, noting that it "could provide new revenue streams to the tour." He writes:

Just as Michael Jordan inspired a flood of foreign players to seek their fortunes in the National Basketball Association, Woods helped globalize the PGA Tour. When he first went pro in 1996, 26 of the tour’s 200 active members were not Americans; today the PGA Tour has 77 foreign golfers from 21 countries.

Mahler also wonders about corporate America's willingness to fund a tarnished brand.

For years, Woods fueled a frenzy of investment in the game -- from corporate sponsors, advertisers, broadcasters, clothing and equipment manufacturers, even golf-course developers. It was, you could say, a classic economic bubble, the Tiger Bubble. The question now is whether Woods’s crash will end up being just a temporary correction for golf or if the bubble has truly burst. Even if he does manage to dominate his sport again, will investors return to an enterprise whose fortunes have seemed so inextricably linked to a single brand?

Finally, Mahler talks with Jay Williamson, a middling golfer -- not a single victory during his 15 years on the Tour -- who's nonetheless managed to earn more than $5.5 million. Williamson speculates about the sport's prospects:

“I just don’t think golf will ever get back to where it was. I think we’ve worn some of our sponsors out, and I just don’t think in this kind of economic environment we’re going to attract the kind of money we did in the glory days. I hope I’m wrong, but I just feel it.”

The story is worth reading, and I encourage you to check it out.

GREECE Costa Navarino: One Down, Six To Go

Later this spring, probably in May, a shipping tycoon plans to open the seventh golf course in Greece. And before he's done, he may open six more.

The new course is part of Costa Navarino, a collection of four related resorts that will take shape on 2,470 non-contiguous acres along Navarino Bay and the Ionian Sea, on the southwestern Peloponnesian coast. It's no stretch to say that Costa Navarino figures to eventually become the premier golf destination in Greece.

Costa Navarino is being developed by Achilles Constantakopoulos, the managing director of Tourism Enterprise of Messinia, SA (TEMES). Constantakopoulos also owns one of the world’s largest shipping companies, Athens-based Costamare Shipping Company, SA.

Constantakopoulos has one goal: to make Costa Navarino the most popular vacation destination in the Mediterranean, if not in the entire world. To do so, he aims to build thousands of houses, at least seven hotels (and possibly as many as 11, with a total of about 3,000 rooms), six spas, meeting space, and many other attractions, including as many as seven golf courses.

The four resorts that make up Costa Navarino will be located in the villages of Romanos, Pylos, Kynigos, and Rizomylos, all of which are within a half-hour’s drive of each other. The villages are in Messinia, one of the least developed prefectures in Greece, at least in terms of holiday amenities.

The first course has been co-designed by Bernhard Langer, the German golf pro, and Ross McMurray of European Golf Design. It's the centerpiece of Navarino Dunes, which is located on 352 acres in Romanos. When it's completed, Navarino Dunes is expected to have a bunch of vacation-style houses (including time-share condos), two hotels (including a 445-room Westin), meeting space, a spa, and a golf academy.

Here’s the scoop on Costa Navarino's future development plans:

-- The second resort, Navarino Bay in Pylos, will be the most luxurious in Costa Navarino. The 370-acre spread will have villas, two hotels (including a Banyan Tree), a spa, and a golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr. The course and an accompanying academy are expected to open in 2012.

-- The third and largest resort, Navarino Blue, will take shape on 740 acres in the hills of Kynigos. Blue will have two 18-holes golf courses, a sports-oriented hotel, an equestrian center, a tennis center, and a health spa.

-- The fourth resort, part of a seaside village in Rizomylos, will have five hotels, a boardwalk with shops, an outdoor theater, a water park, and one golf course, possibly a nine-hole track.

So far, I've counted five golf courses. Constantakopoulos hasn’t said where or when the other two tracks will be built.

NICARAGUA The Names of the Game

Is Kevin Fleming having second thoughts about the golf course he wants to build in Nicaragua?

The Jack Nicklaus-designed track is supposed to be the centerpiece of Seaside Mariana Spa & Golf Resort, which is planned to take shape on a 1.2-mile stretch of beachfront along Nicaragua's Pacific coast, near San Rafael del Sur. Presuming it's built, it would be Nicklaus' first “signature” course in Central America and would unquestionably set the standard for golf development throughout the region.

In a recent interview with International Property Journal, however, Fleming complained that only 15 to 20 percent of Seaside Mariana's potential buyers have been attracted by the golf course. A far larger number -- half of the community's potential buyers, Fleming says -- have been lured by its spa.

"There's more interest in eco-adventure [than golf]," Fleming groused.

This should concern all of us in the golf business. Twenty years ago, when I began writing about golf development, we were told, in gleeful tones, that only about half of the residents in a typical golf community actually played golf. This was, supposedly, evidence of golf's unsurpassed power to spark house sales, even among people who had no interest in the game.

Soon, though, the numbers started to fall. We heard that just a third of the home buyers were golfers, then a quarter.

And now Fleming is telling us that the number has fallen even farther.

How low can it go before no developer in his right mind will build a golf course?

On the face of it, Fleming's hiring of Nicklaus is an absolute no-brainer. Nicklaus is the most famous golf designer on earth, with a list of award-winning projects as long as your arm. Wherever you go on our planet -- Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia, or wherever -- people will tell you that the local Nicklaus course is the one you should play. He may charge a king's ransom for his services, but a parade of developers in more than 30 countries will swear that he's worth every penny.

But not in Nicaragua, apparently.

And Fleming isn't the only developer who's questioning the value of "signature" golf these days.

Jim Anthony has inked three of the biggest names in golf design -- Nicklaus, Tom Fazio, and Gary Player -- to design golf courses for his Cliffs communities in North and South Carolina. He was the first U.S. developer to hire Tiger Woods to design a golf course, for Cliffs at High Carolina in suburban Asheville.

Anthony has been selling houses at High Carolina for more than a year. At last count, he'd sold 39.

So where does Anthony stand on the value of "signature" golf today?

He recently admitted that the number of people who buy a house based on its proximity to a golf course is "dwindling."

This is discouraging news for the golf industry in general and for premier golf designers in particular -- not just for Nicklaus but for Fazio and Robert Trent Jones, Jr. and Greg Norman and all the others whose courses anchor many of the world's most luxurious, most desirable golf communities.

Only a few years ago, when it came to selling houses, these designers were money in the bank. Now, due to their prowess as real estate salesmen, they've become victims of their own success.

In a sense, they're all imprisoned by their brands. Nicklaus, for example, can only design one kind of golf course -- an expensive, spectacular course -- because every track he designs will inevitably be compared to the 270 or so he's already designed. Sure, his firm can offer a cheaper alternative -- a "Nicklaus Design" course, say, just as Player can offer a "Black Knight" design -- but, frankly, the downscale alternative doesn't bring much magic to a marketing campaign.

So where do the "brand-name" designers go from here?

And where does golf development go?

INDONESIA Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020, West Java

The Italian city of Venice, with its canals and gondoliers, its beauty and romance, is serving as the inspiration for a waterfront community in West Java, Indonesia.

The community is called Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020, and it aims to become the “Riviera of Indonesia.” On its website, TanjungLesungVenice2020.com, Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 effusively describes itself as “iconic” (a stretch, seeing as it hasn’t yet been built), “one of the most unique cities in the world” (ditto), and -– hang on tight -– “a city so serene that it will change your view about life.”

I can already feel the bliss.

Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 will spread over 1,250 acres along the western coast of West Java, roughly a three-hour drive from Jakarta. (A planned toll road is expected to shave some time off the trip.) As best I can determine, it’ll have 2,000 single-family houses and vacation villas, three hotels, a retail area, a water park, and an 18-hole golf course designed by Greg Norman.

And yes, its residents and visitors will travel within its boundaries by boats and gondolas, at least part of the time. Otherwise it wouldn’t be quite so serene.

Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 is being developed by Oliver Tham, the principal of Thams Developments. Tham, who was born in Malaysia but is based in Australia, has likened West Java to the Gold Coast of Australia, and he’s a true believer when it comes to the area’s development prospects.

“There has never been a region in the world with such great potential,” his website says.

Tham plans to break ground on the golf course in 2011.

Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 is the first major phase of a 3,125-acre resort destination called Tanjung Lesung, which will be developed over the next 10 to 20 years. Tanjung Lesung’s master plan has been created by the Jakarta-based Banten West Java Tourism Development Corporation, which has so far persuaded developers to build some houses, a hotel with a spa (the Tanjung Lesung Resort Hotel), a beach club, a school, a medical center, and other attractions.

Tjahjadi Rahardja, the director of the development corporation, is reportedly one of Tham’s partners, along with Setyono Djuandi Darmono, the principal of PT Jababeka TBK. The latter developed the Koto Jababeka planned community near Jakarta, which includes Jababeka Golf & Country Club.

The next phase of Tanjung Lesung, which will occupy another 1,250 acres, is to have 2,000 additional housing units, three more hotels, a marina village, an “education campus,” and a second 18-hole golf course. In phase three (also 1,250 acres), the development corporation wants private interests to build more houses and hotels, and possibly a theme park.

Tham says he expects to see “no less than six golf courses” in the area around Tanjung Lesung in the future. He also reports that he hopes to build golf communities in China, India, and Mexico someday, and that he’s decided that any golf courses he builds will be designed by Norman.

DUBAI Is Tiger Woods Dubai Dead?

The news from Dubai keeps getting worse for Tiger Woods. Especially if it's true.

As you know, the work on Woods' much-ballyhooed first golf course, the centerpiece of Tiger Woods Dubai, was suspended last year, when sales of houses in the high-falutin' desert community ground to a halt. If the project's developers had kept to their original construction schedule, the course would have been open already.

Now, in a story titled "Tiger's Golf Course Ventures Beset by Delays," CNN says that "doubts remain over the immediate future of Tiger Woods Dubai" for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that "the real estate market in the emirate has collapsed."

No real news there, folks. We all know that the project's "immediate future" is dicey. And we know that Dubai's housing market is very wobbly, if not completely "collapsed."

So CNN spread a little more doubt on the situation.

According to the news agency, the Middle East's rotten economy and Woods' marital infidelities (now with steamy text messages!) have led "economic and golf industry experts" to wonder if the golf course "will ever be completed."

All of which leads me to ask: Is that the sound of a golf project dying?

Or is it merely a distortion of reality by some commentators in the golf business, full of sound and fury but ultimately signifying nothing?

Heck, I don't know. Can you trust the message if you don't trust the messenger?

To be sure, Dubai Properties Group has dismissed all this nasty talk about the project's possible demise. The company's CEO, Khalid Al Malik, told CNN, "Part of the project is sold, and the other part will go to the market once it's completed, because we believe it's better to do it then."

Al Malik's statement doesn't scan well. I think he means that some of the houses in Tiger Woods Dubai have been sold, which is true, and that the rest of them will go on sale after the golf course is completed.

Does that sound right?

Because if I'm reading him correctly, there's an obvious follow-up question that must be asked: Without the income from the real estate sales, where will the money for the golf construction come from?

I can't answer that question, either. But I should note that Dubai Properties Group is a government-owned entity, and governments always find ways to fund programs they think are important.

SOUTH KOREA Trinity Golf Club, Seoul

Any day now, South Korea’s richest woman is expected to break ground on her second golf course, a Tommy Fazio-designed layout in suburban Seoul.

The 7,400-yard track will be the featured attraction of Trinity Country Club, and Fazio says it’ll be “one of the hardest, maybe the hardest course in South Korea.”

The club is being developed by Lee Myung-hee, the daughter of Samsung’s late founder and, according to Forbes, South Korea’s seventh-richest person (estimated net worth: $1.79 billion). Her brother, Lee Kun-hee, who recently resigned as Samsung’s chairman, is South Korea’s richest person, with an estimated net worth of $2.32 billion.

Lee is the chairwoman of Shinsegae Group, which owns several hundred stores of various kinds, including the nation’s Starbucks outlets. Its flagship holding is Shinsegae Centum City in Busan, which Guinness World Records says is the world’s largest department store. (It’s a colossus, with eight floors of shopping, a spa, an ice rink, a golf driving range.)

Fazio’s golf course will take shape on property near Lee’s first golf course, Jayu Country Club. Lee hopes to open it in 2012.

VIETNAM Crazy Eights

In the summer of 2008, just months before the world's economy imploded, a parade of developers planned to build something like 18 new golf courses in and around Hanoi.

Today only eight are still alive. And by the time you read this, there may be even fewer, because Vietnam's government has been whacking golf projects faster than an HBO crime family.

The most recent executions occurred earlier this month, when officials in Hanoi told 11 developers that they should, in the words of a Vietnamese news service, "pursue other plans." The reason? The developers' golf courses -- along with the houses and hotels that were to accompany them -- were going to be built on rice fields and were therefore not in the national interest.

So 11 developers are out of luck and at least a little out of pocket. You can add their projects to the nearly 100 golf licenses that have been revoked in Vietnam over the past year or so.

But here's the odd part: I've been reading the newspapers, and I haven't heard a word of complaint from any of the developers whose Hanoi projects were whacked. Not one peep about the unfairness of it all.

Why not?

I think it's because Hanoi has done the developers a favor, and they know it.

Hanoi doesn't need 18 golf courses. For the time being, at least, it can get by nicely with the two or three it already has, plus the one or two that are said to be under construction. It may never need anywhere close to the eight that remain on the books.

The tourism ministers won't admit it, but Vietnam is not a golf-mad country. Heck, it's not even a country where golf can honestly said to be growing.

This is a country that, according to the New York Times, had two golf courses in 1975, when the Vietnam War ended. In the 35 years since, the nation has built 15 or 20 more courses but has managed to grow only about 5,000 golfers -- about the number you'll find in a seniors-only community in suburban Phoenix.

Sure, Vietnam needs some golf courses for tourists, but those courses will be built in places like Nha Trang and Phan Thiet, where there are warm beaches and women in bikinis. How many vacationers are going to spend a week in Hanoi, even if it has a dozen golf courses?

Roughly 6.5 million people live in metropolitan Hanoi, and the fact is that hardly any of them golf. Wouldn't it be wiser for Vietnam to develop the golfers before it develops the golf courses?

I don't know about you, but I'm not convinced that golf is a growth industry in Vietnam.

IRELAND Carne Golf Club, Belmullet

Construction has resumed on the new nine at Carne Golf Club in County Mayo, Ireland.

Carne’s existing 18, the last course designed by Eddie Hackett –- he died in 1996, three years after it opened –- has been called “one of Ireland’s last true hidden gems,” and it appears that Hackett knew he’d created something special. When the course opened, he said, “There will be no better links course in the country or, I doubt, anywhere.”

The 6,742-yard track is often described as “wild,” “natural,” and even “lunar” -– you should check out the pictures at the club’s website, CarneGolfLinks.com -– and the same descriptions will probably also be applied to the new nine, a 3,500-yard track that’s been designed by Jim Engh, an architect based in Castle Rock, Colorado.

Mitch Scarborough, an architect in Engh’s firm -– both architects are members of the club and are working pro bono -– says the addition is taking shape on “a super wild, incredible site with enormous dunes.”

“It’s mind-blowing, how wild it is,” adds Scarborough.

The club is in Belmullet, a town located along the nation’s northwestern coast. It’s owned by Erris Tourism (Turasoireacht Iorrais Teo), a community-owned group that was created to promote tourism in the area, which is far off the nation’s well-beaten tourist tracks.

The addition has been routed through the highest dunes on the club’s 260-acre property. The members began building it in 2005, and they finished three or four holes before the construction stopped, in 2007. They anticipate that the new nine will open in late 2011.

CHINA Crime Pays

Did you know that Jack Nicklaus has been involved in illegal activities in Beijing? So has his son, Jack II.

And they aren't the only golf architects who've run afoul of the law in China's capital. So have Nick Faldo, Peter Thomson, Graham Marsh, Ron Fream, and more than a dozen others.

Their crimes? They've designed golf courses in and around the city.

As you know, it's against the law to build golf courses in China and has been for many years.

Despite the prohibition, Beijing has seen plenty of golf development. The list starts with Pine Valley Golf Resort, which has an 18-hole Nicklaus "signature" track and 27 holes by Jack II, and it includes Faldo's Honghua International Golf Club, Marsh's Huatang International Golf Club, and Fream's Win-River Golf Club.

Thomson is a two-time offender, with Grand Canal Club and Beijing Links Golf Club.

Some other prominent scofflaws are Bob Shearer (Yaoshang Golf & Country Club), Brad Benz (Beijing Golf Club), and Scott Miller (Huanggang International Golf Club).

In fact, according to a statement by a member of China's parliament, only one of the golf courses in metropolitan Beijing -- the Chinese government says there are 20, but I found more than 30 -- has been built legally.

So if you're a member of Beijing International Golf Club, the first course built in Beijing (in 1986), you can breathe easy.

The rest of you? Up against the wall, hands above your heads. Spread 'em.

I'm just kidding, of course.

But so is the Chinese government. And everybody knows it.

Even the guy who blew the whistle on Beijing's golf courses, Sun Anmin, quickly gave the industry a pass. He told Beijing Youth Daily that the illegal courses could be legalized simply because they've created jobs and preserved green space.

If that's all it takes, why persist in the charade?

Clearly, China is one of those places where it's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

EGYPT Sanford & Sun

Which U.S. architect has designed the most golf courses in Egypt?

The answer is John Sanford, a Jupiter, Florida-based designer who’s completed four golf properties in the Land of the Pharaohs and has others slated to open in 2010 and 2011.

Sanford’s first course, at the Jolie Ville resort in Sharm El Sheik, opened in 2000.

Six years later, Orascom Hotels & Development -– the company that built the landmark El Gouna resort along the Red Sea -– opened a Sanford-designed course at the Taba Heights resort community in Taba.

Then, in 2008, came a 27-hole complex -– an 18-hole course, a nine-hole, par-3 course, and a practice center with three practice holes -– at another Red Sea resort, Makadi Bay in Hurghada.

Last year, Cairo-based Hassan Allam Group wrapped up construction on Sanford’s nine-hole course at Little Venice, a resort that’s expected to open next spring in Ain Sokhna City, on the western coast of the Suez Gulf.

And in the summer of 2010, a 27-hole complex jointly designed by Sanford and Nicklaus Design will be unveiled at Palm Hills Golf Club in Sixth of October City.

More important, Sanford isn’t done in Egypt: His course at Hacienda Bay, near El Alamein on the Mediterranean coast, is under construction and scheduled to open in the fall of 2011.

CHINA Are You Sure It Can't Happen There?

You probably already know plenty about the golf boom in China. I'm sure you've heard that golf courses are being built in the People's Republic at a dizzying, near-exponential pace that could easily result in the opening of 1,000 or more new tracks over the next two decades.

Such growth hardly seems possible, until you remind yourself that everything in China happens on a scale that would be unimaginable in a normal-sized country. If its golf participation continues to grow as it has over the past decade, China can easily accommodate another 1,000 golf courses, maybe even 10,000.

That's why it sometimes seems as if China is an unstoppable force. It's one of the few places on earth where people are still writing checks, so it has a gravitational pull on all of us who make a living in golf.

But maybe it's time to ask the obvious question: Is there an immovable object out there somewhere?

I ask because several news services have recently reported some disturbing news about the real estate market in the People's Republic.

MarketWatch, citing a study by a research firm called Standard Chartered, says that real estate prices in China more than doubled in 2009.

Allow me to state the obvious: Such an increase isn't sustainable.

MarketWatch also says that real estate prices on Hainan Island, China's major golf hot-spot, increased by more than one-third in the first five weeks of 2010.

Clearly, also not sustainable.

Just last week, the New York Times noted that real estate prices in Shanghai have increased by more than 150 percent since 2003 and, as a result, an 1,100-square-foot apartment now costs $200,000.

Okay, that doesn't sound like much. But consider the newspaper's next sentence: "Shanghai residents typically earn less than $5,000 a year."

My math isn't very good, but I believe the apartment is roughly 40 times the salary. In the United States, you can't get that kind of mortgage, at least not anymore.

The New York Times also says that "speculators are snapping up properties on the expectation that prices will continue to rise, as prices have nearly every year for more than a decade."

As a result, according to the Times, "developers are scrambling to build more mansions, villas, and high-rise apartments with names like Rich Gate, Park Avenue, and Palais de Fortune."

Sound familiar? Because I have a distinct recollection of something like that happening in the United States just a few years ago.

And look at us now.

If you think that the Chinese government hasn't noticed, or isn't concerned, you'd be wrong.

"There is a bubble forming, and it is bound to burst if effective measures are not applied soon," a government official recently told China Daily, a state-run newspaper.

If the bubble bursts, some of the sizzle will inevitably leave China's golf business. We saw it happen in the United States. Buyers get skittish, bankers tighten up, over-leveraged developers go broke. Things fall apart. And when they do, there's nowhere to hide.

It happened here, and it can happen there. Those fabulous golf communities that are taking shape in China could, virtually overnight, become ghost towns.

Don't think so? Because it's also become clear that China has its share of developers who are afflicted with a "build it and they will come" mentality.

In the current issue of Executive Travel magazine, a U.S. golf architect, David Dale, says that some Chinese golf communities are taking shape in places that are so far off the beaten track that they can't possibly pencil out.

“There are 54-hole complexes going up in remote places, three hours from the nearest city, and there’s no logical way for the operating numbers to make sense,” says Dale, a partner in Santa Rosa, California-based GolfPlan. “But they’re in a projected growth corridor, and the land is seen as having huge appreciation potential.”

This is no surprise. If you were a developer, how would you maximize the potential of land in the middle of nowhere?

Well, you'd make your community as exclusive and as full of cachet as it could possibly be. You'd build an ultra-expensive golf course (maybe even two) designed by a "brand-name" architect, and you'd build huge, luxurious houses that would be coveted by home buyers eager to show off their new-found wealth.

Kind of like what Tim Blixseth did at Yellowstone Club. Or what Bobby Ginn and Bonita Bay Group did in Florida. Or what Pivotal Group did in Park City.

I could give other examples, but I'm sure you get the point.

Which leads me to a related issue, this one raised by Michael Hurdzan in a recent issue of Sports Illustrated.

"The danger I see," said Hurdzan, a Columbus, Ohio-based golf architect, "is that the developers and golf architects will go out and make the same mistakes in Asia that they made here in North America. They'll build mostly big resorts and private clubs. They won't make it a people's game."

And wouldn't it be ironic if things worked out that way in the People's Republic?

CROATIA Golf Park Dubrovnik, Dubrovnik

Late last year, Greg Norman visited Croatia, where he pitched a proposal to build a golf complex atop Srd Hill, overlooking the city of Dubrovnik.

Srd Hill (a.k.a. Mount Srd) is certainly an appealing site, as it looms more than 1,300 feet above Dubrovnik and offers inspiring views of both the ancient walled city and the Adriatic Sea. The hill was a popular hangout until 1991, when, during Croatia’s war of independence, the cable car that took tourists up and down was destroyed. Now the hill, which is difficult to climb, is rarely visited and stands as a symbol of times that Dubrovnik would love to forget.

So we’re sure that the city fathers and Croatia’s tourism officials listened closely to Norman and his colleagues, for they are eager to establish Dubrovnik as a vacation destination. No doubt, many of them agreed with Ivan Kusalic, the director of Razvoj Golf and a member of the development team, when he called the venture a “project of national interest.”

And we’re sure that they didn’t need to remind themselves that various developers have been trying to develop the property on Srd Hill since 2003, if not before.

Norman and Kusalic are part of Golf Development Company, Ltd., which plans to build a resort called Golf Park Dubrovnik. The resort is expected to consist of a hotel (maybe two), a spa, meeting space, and, perhaps most important, a means of linking the property to the city.

Golf Park Dubrovnik has been called Croatia’s biggest current development venture. Norman will design its golf complex, which will consist of a private 18-hole course (possibly a tournament-worthy layout), a public six- to nine-hole course designed for beginners, and a Norman-branded practice center.

Norman is also one of the partners in Golf Development Company, which owns about 800 acres. Another partner is Braslav Turcic, who served as a consultant to a German group that tried to build a similar project, called Golf Park Srd, on the property in 2003.

Today an Israeli arms dealer, Aaron Frankel, owns the site. Frankel has been trying to build a golf course on the property for several years; he met with Jack Nicklaus in 2006, presumably to discuss the course’s design.

If Golf Park Dubrovnik is ever completed, it would be Croatia’s fourth golf property.

INDIA The End of the Dream

I have seen the future of golf in India, and it scares the hell out of me.

I saw it in the form of a horror story called "Going Greens: India's Golf Boom" that was published in February by Global Post. You should read it for yourself. Do it in a clean, well-ventilated place.

The story starts all bright and sunny. Over the past five years, it says, "new courses have mushroomed all over the country," which is a good thing. Even better, it says, more new courses are in planning or under construction. Ashit Luthra, the chairman of the Indian Golf Union, gives a prediction: "We are just short of 200 courses, and we expect that we will put up in the next decade more than 100 courses."

So far, nothing to fear.

But things soon started to get weird.

I read that "India's skyrocketing residential real estate market has played a big part in the boom." I read that golf, "aided by corporate support and a rising middle class," is "fast becoming big business in India."

Then I read something that took my breath away. It came from Luthra, who says that golf "is becoming a corporate sport."

A corporate sport? Big business?

Are these supposed to be virtues? Is this good for golf?

Only if you're running around with dollar signs in your eyes.

Yes, golf is hot in India, just as it is in any nation with a lot of people, a lot of money, and a functioning economy. But remember, nearly a half-billion Indians live in abject poverty. If you do the math, the way the World Bank did, you find that one-third of all the really poor people in the entire world live in India.

That's really scary.

But let's not dwell on the slumdogs. Let's focus on the millionaires.

Heck, that's what India's golf industry is doing!

"Virtually every major real estate developer in India is turning to golf," says Global Post, "as a way of marketing their properties to an elite."

In other words, big companies are using golf to sell real estate to rich people.

No surprise there. It happened in the United States, and it's happening now in India and China. It'll happen in Russia and Middle East, once their economies revive. Maybe it'll happen everywhere.

But I have the sense that the golf industry in India doesn't fully realize what it's gotten itself into. Does it know that the development model it's supporting has completely flopped in the United States?

The people who are supposed to be tending to India's nascent golf industry are now officially taking direction from corporate big-wigs -- home builders, hotel operators, resort developers -- who have absolutely no stake in the future of golf.

I know it feels right. Corporate bosses are smart people. They're persuasive. They instill confidence. They have the appearance of success.

You have opinions. They have marketing studies to support their opinions.

Unfortunately, these people are bad for golf. All they really care about is selling houses and time-share condos, about filling hotel rooms and restaurants and water parks. As long as golf helps them do these things, they're the game's biggest supporters.

But when the home buyers disappear and the vacationers turn their fickle attention to other destinations, they'll abandon golf. Their shareholders will demand it. It's the first rule of Big Business.

If you want a golf boom that will inevitably go bust, you turn it over to Corporate India. You give it to the bottom-liners who are in the business of making money, not making great golf courses or making golf affordable or bringing new players into the game or worrying about the sport's future.

And before you know it, you discover that the only golf courses worth building are the ones designed by guys like Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and Greg Norman, because you need to put a "brand name" on your product.

You discover that your nation needs a lot of "championship-standard" courses, because they command the highest greens fees and attract the richest players.

You discover that your city needs to build not just one or two golf courses but five or even 10, so you can attract legions of free-spending tourists who desire to play several different courses during their week-long holidays.

And in a few years, you realize that you've priced your "rising middle class" out of the market and created a nation of golf snobs. You realize that you don't have any home-grown golfers, because you never extended a hand to youngsters and beginners. You realize that you have a game that's expensive and, even worse, exclusive.

Then, when it's too late, you realize that you don't really have much of a golf industry at all.

And finally, you realize that you've missed a golden opportunity.

Just as we did in the United States.

ENGLAND TBD @ Park Hall, Mansfield Woodhouse

Jonathan Gaunt helped Donald Steel redesign the Carlson Farm Course at Greensboro Country Club in Greensboro, North Carolina, and, on his own, he’s designed more than a dozen golf courses in the U.K., Spain, Denmark, Turkey, and the Czech Republic. Next up, the Bakewell, England-based architect will design a “destination” golf course in Mansfield Woodhouse, a close-in northern suburb of Mansfield, England.

The 18-hole, 5,623-yard track will take shape on 125 acres near the Park Hall mansion, which will be transformed into a hotel, 16 lodges, and apartments for vacationers.

It’s the first golf venture for Mansfield-based Vital Property, Ltd., which plans to submit an official application to Mansfield’s district council in early 2010.