The Week That Was: August 8, 2010

canada Out of Bankruptcy, Royal Oaks Is Sold

The people who've been running Royal Oaks Golf Club in Moncton, New Brunswick now own the place.

Jamie Van Wart and his father, Jim, have purchased the 10-year-old club, which features Rees Jones' first golf course in Canada. Jamie has worked at the club since it opened, most recently as its general manager, and his father has worked there for seven years.

"We're in for the long haul," Jamie told the Moncton Times & Transcript.

The Van Warts purchased the property with Curtis Foote, a train engineer who lives in the surrounding community.

In July 2009, Robert Thompson of CanadianGolfer.com described Royal Oaks as "average and dull" and "built on lousy land."

Thompson continued: Jones has not exactly demonstrated much when it comes to designs in this country. Royal Oaks was average and cracked the Top 100 in Canada on Score's list only briefly. Grand Niagara, another Jones design, this one in Ontario, has been badly received and garners almost no attention. Then there's the reno work to Royal Montreal, which most of the pros (and club members alike) think is poor and one-dimensional.

Ouch!

china Down and Out in Zhejiang Province

The cackle of internet chatter has cost some city officials in Zhejiang Province their memberships in a private golf club.

The city officials -- as many as 30 of them, according to one news account -- were members of the Wenzhou Golf Association in Wenzhou. The association's club reportedly charges $58,600 (U.S. dollars) for a membership, along with an annual fee of $1,050. The initiation fee is said to be 40 times the amount that an average farmer in the province earns annually.

The names of the club's members appeared in a local newspaper, and the news rubbed some local residents the wrong way. Particularly in the hinterlands of the People's Republic, golf is still viewed as a decadent bourgeois pastime, and an expensive private club is no place for those entrusted to oversee the workers' paradise.

So a slew of local residents took to the internet with their complaints, and the province's top party leaders heard them. The city officials -- some of whom swore they didn't even realize they were members -- were ordered to toe the Party line.

new jersey Are Happy Days Here Again?

The golf business may still be on life support in many of the United States, but it could be coming back to life in New Jersey.

Citing statistics provided by Golf Datatech, the Star-Ledger reports that in June 2010 New Jersey's private and public courses saw a 10.7 percent increase in rounds played from the number recorded in June 2009. For the year as a whole, play at the state's courses is up by 5.7 percent.

"Maybe people are more cautious with their leisure time, but [the decline] seems to be flattening out," said the director of the state's golf association.

The association credits the uptick to warm, sunny weather, reduced greens fees, and an improving economy. It's important to note, however, that the number of rounds played nationally is down by 3 percent so far this year.

michigan Change We Can Believe In

Maybe you heard that a quartet of golf legends -- Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Tom Watson, and Johnny Miller -- played a ceremonial round at Golf Club at Harbor Shores this week. The event was what Hollywood used to call a publicity stunt, designed to spotlight the recently opened golf course in southwestern Michigan and the golf community that rides on its shoulders.

The community, which features a Nicklaus "signature" design, was controversial from the start, so the club is eager to deliver a message about its value to Harbor Shores. The community, the publicists say, is a "revitalization" project designed to put people to work in the decaying town, to offset the jobs lost when the local factories shut down.

As Nicklaus said to Golfweek, “It’s more than just a golf course. It’s a community revitalization project that I deeply believe in.”

Of course, only time will tell who really benefits most from the development. But clearly, the developers -- a group led by Whirlpool Corporation -- know how to sell golf in a state that's hurting worse than most others.