The Week That Was: July 25, 2010

canada ClubLink May Buy Glendale G&CC

Glendale Golf & Country Club may have lost more than 30 percent of its membership in recent months, but it's apparently found a suitor.

The Hamilton Spectator reports that the club is talking take-over with ClubLink, Canada's largest golf course operator. ClubLink currently controls just one golf property in the Hamilton area, Heron Point Golf Links in Ancaster, and it would like a stronger presence in Canada's ninth-largest metropolitan area.

"We have not put an offer in yet, but we are talking with them and I suspect they have other interested parties outside of ClubLink," said ClubLink's vice president of sales and marketing. "It's a wonderful golf club, and it would fit in nicely for us."

Glendale, which was founded in 1919, is rumored to be facing bankruptcy.

england "Metal God" Designs a Golf Course

K. K. Downing, the lead guitarist of the heavy-metal band Judas Priest, will officially open his 18-hole golf course in September.

The course is located at Astbury Hall, Downing's estate in Shropshire, England. Thanks to all those world tours that the band has headlined since the late 1960s, Downing has had the opportunity to play many of the planet's finest golf courses.

“I have been lucky to work in two industries that have allowed me to be so creative, especially golf course architecture, which has enabled the visions in my head to be transformed beautifully into a reality,” the "Metal God" told the Shropshire Star.

The daily-fee course will be managed by Troon Golf, which is looking to generate business in the U.K.

north carolina Trump Aims To Make a Point

Over the past year, Donald Trump broken ground on a golf course in Scotland and purchased golf properties in New York and New Jersey. Now he's looking to buy a golf course in North Carolina.

Trump's latest target is Point Lake & Golf Club in suburban Charlotte. The private club, which is located on Lake Norman, features a Greg Norman-designed golf course.

According to a report by Ron Green, Jr., a reporter for the Charlotte Observer, club officials recently talked things over with Trump's son, Eric, and other company representatives.

"Discussions continue," a member of the club's advisory committee told Green. "It's an option we're looking at, but it's not imminent."

A sale would have to be approved by the club's 1,100 members.

mexico Schmidt Curley Touts its New Course

Amanali, a master-planned community Tepeji del Rio, Mexico, has opened the first nine holes of its Schmidt Curley-designed golf course.

According to a press release that provides virtually no useful information, the back nine of Amanali Country Club is under construction.

The press release says that Schmidt-Curley has designed three courses in Mexico. As best I can determine, the firm has designed one, Maravia Golf Club in La Paz. It's co-designed (or "ghost-designed") two with Nick Faldo, Ventanas de San Miguel in San Miguel de Allende and Kanai Golf Resort in Playa del Carmen.

Brian Curley, the lead designer on the Amanali project, said in the press release, "We have several exciting ongoing projects in Mexico, a country poised for future growth and easily accessible from our Scottsdale headquarters."

Do you think he really made such a bland and meaningless statement? Or did a well-intentioned publicity person put those silly words into his mouth?