british virgin islands Wanted: Golf Course

If you've got an itch to build the first golf course in British Virgin Islands, your first call should be to Kederick Pickering.

Pickering, one of the territory's elected officials, recently beseeched his colleagues to support the construction of a golf course and a high-end hotel, as part of a broad-based effort to attract wealthy vacationers.

“People don’t go on holidays just to lie on the beach and read a book,” said Pickering, who evidently never met my wife and daughter. “If you are going to be in the high-end tourism, you have to provide the quality of entertainment people need.”

Obviously, those needs extend to golf. The way Pickering sees it, BVI is already losing golfers to islands like St. Thomas, St. Croix, and Puerto Rico, and he worries that Cuba -- “Things are changing in Cuba,” he warned -- will soon start to siphon off even more of them.

“We can talk to thy kingdom come, but we need a golf course,” argued Pickering, in comments reported at BVInews.com. “We have to come to a common understanding, or we are going to lose the people we are trying to attract.”

One other thing BVI needs, according to Pickering: a marina capable of hosting mega-yachts.