The Week That Was: October 25, 2010

montenegro Is Norman Number One?

Orascom Development Holding has begun to lay the infrastructure for the resort that's expected to be the home of Montenegro's first golf course.

The course will be the centerpiece of Lustica, a waterfront resort taking shape on 1,400 acres along the nation's rocky Adriatic coast. Orascom, operating through Podgorica-based Lustica Development AD, has master-planned the resort to include 750 villas, 1,600 condos, several hotels (2,200 total rooms), two marinas, meeting space, a village center, schools, a spa, a medical center, and other attractions.

Golf Course Architecture reports that the first phase of the project is scheduled to open at the end of 2013. Other sources say that the first phase will include a hotel, one marina, and an 18-hole golf course.

It appears to me that Greg Norman will design the golf course. Lustica's website includes the West Palm Beach, Florida-based designer as part of the development team, although it doesn't specifically name him as the course's designer. Norman doesn't list Lustica on his website, but he clearly doesn't object to his name being mentioned on Lustica's.

Orascom developed the famed El Gouna resort on Egypt’s Red Sea coast, where it’s building a second golf course, and it also plans to build a Kurt Rossknecht-designed course in Andermatt, Switzerland.

As I reported several months ago, a U.S. design firm has been hired to evaluate potential sites for golf courses in Montenegro and map out a golf development strategy. Dana Fry of Columbus, Ohio-based Hurdzan Fry Environmental Golf Design, who's helping to conduct the study, told GCA earlier this year, “I predict that five or more courses will be built in the country in the next five to ten years.”

australia Ross Perrett, On 'the Beach'

Tom Doak’s overlooked golf course in Australia is about to come off life support, as a new ownership group has stepped up to revive the links-style layout in St. Andrews Beach.

Most everybody is familiar with Barnbougle Dunes Golf Links in Bridport, Tasmania, which Doak co-designed with Michael Clayton and is ranked among the world’s top courses. But in the same year that Barnbougle Dunes opened, in 2004, Doak also opened the Gunnamatta track at St. Andrews Beach Golf Club, on a site that he’s said “may be the best piece of property I’ve ever had to work with.”

Although St. Andrews Beach was immediately ranked among Australia’s top 10 golf courses, the accompanying lots didn’t sell, nor did memberships into its private club. The property was eventually taken over by receivers, and it closed for several months beginning in 2008. It reopened as a daily-fee track, St. Andrews Beach Golf Course, in October 2009.

The property's new owner is a group led by Ross Perrett, one of the principals of South Melbourne-based Thomson Perrett Golf Course Architects. Perrett's partners, according to a press release, are a Melbourne-based accounting firm, the course's current managers (a company called Golf Services Management), and “a Chinese friend who has a passion for golf.”

Earlier this year the Age, a Melbourne-based newspaper, identified the “Chinese friend” as “an Asian developer” and put the sales price at $7 million.

For the money, the new owners got Doak’s course, 20 apartments, and what the club graciously calls a “rustic” clubhouse. More important, they acquired some adjacent property where they plan to build a second 18-hole course along with a 40-room hotel, 120 apartments or condos, a day spa, and a shopping area.

The new owners say they aim to turn St Andrews Beach into “one of Australia’s leading golf facilities.”

mongolia Golf in the Land of Genghis Khan

This week Golf Course Industry magazine checks in with a first-person account of building the first 18-hole, fully grassed golf course in Mongolia.

The course will be part of Sky Resort. The writer, Jim Connelly, is a certified agronomist who's been hired to grow its grass -- no mean feat in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia's capital, where wintertime temperatures can drop to 50 degrees below zero and summertime temperatures can rise to 100 degrees.

Despite those extremes, Connelly believes that golf has a future in Mongolia.

“Golf follows economic prosperity," he writes, “and Mongolia’s future looks bright due to the demand for energy, coal, and mineral exports to China and Russia.”

The nation, he says, is “changing from a very poor country into a developing nation that is attracting foreign business investments from Europe, Asia, and America, bringing business opportunity, building embassies, establishing English-language schools, and looking for recreation.”

Some of that recreation is coming to life at Sky Resort, whose golf course has been designed by Santa Rosa, California-based GolfPlan (Ron Fream's company). The resort's ski area opened this year, and a hotel, a spa, and other attractions will follow.

Sky Resort is being developed by MCS Group, a Mongolian conglomerate whose subsidiaries include Genghis Khan Beer.

Connelly's seeding began this year and will conclude next spring.

More Good Press for Golf

While recovering from recent shoulder surgery, Greg Norman didn't play any golf for almost a year. And he didn't miss the game in the least.

“I didn't touch a golf club for 11 months,” Norman told the Palm Beach Post, “and quite honestly, I actually really enjoyed it.”


It gets worse.

“There was a part of my day that I always used to allocate for golf, like five, six, seven, eight hours a day,” Norman continued. “So I had a lot more time on my hands, and I enjoyed life a heck of a lot more.”

Okay, I understand that Norman loves golf. I'm sure he'd readily admit that golf has meant everything to him. And maybe his statement was taken slightly out of context.

Still, comments like the ones he gave the Post aren't the kind of press that golf needs these days. When a sport is losing players left and right, it's doesn't need one of its superstars suggesting that he can live just fine without it.

talking points New Horizons

Here are some comments made by speakers at the recent Asia Pacific Golf Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, as reported by the Bangkok Post and other sources.

Greg Norman: We have to get more players into the game and be increasingly creative in the ways to attract them. Golf has to become more accessible and affordable. It has to open up.

Gary Player: Not enough is being done to get our young to play golf, and if we do not do something radical now, the game will suffer going forward.

Hud Hinton of Troon Golf: The game is too expensive to play, too difficult to play, [and] too expensive to operate, and the pace of play is too slow.

Norman again: There's nothing to say that a golf course has to be 18 holes. Why shouldn't 12-hole courses be successful in Asia?

Player again: Something needs to be done about the golf ball. It is just going too far, and I urge the USGA and the R&A to do something quickly before these new balls make today's golf courses obsolete.

kazakhstan Glorious Nation for Golf

What’s the first image that pops into your mind when someone says Kazakhstan?

No doubt, it’s the clueless TV journalist in the hit movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. But these days Kazakhstan is a lot more than the butt of Sacha Baron Cohen’s jokes. Thanks to the rising price of oil, the nation’s economy is relatively strong and its people have money to spend on Western-style comforts –- including vacations at seaside resorts.


Kazakhstan, which is nearly as big as India, has more than 1,000 miles of coastline along the Caspian Sea, with many potential sites for such destinations. Since 2007, a Syrian development group has targeted one of them –- a 4,200-acre spread along Kinderli Bay near the Turkmenistan border, between the coastal towns of Fetisovo and Akau -– for a resort community that will include roughly 500 villas and cottages, 23 hotels, a theme park, a water park, an amusement park, various sports venues, a campsite, a 27- or 36-hole golf complex, and other attractions.

The developers, a group called Syrian International Business Centre Group, call it the Kinderli Sun & Beach Holiday Resort, or simply Kinderli Beach. SIBC has signed a development agreement with Kazakhstan’s government, which plans to build an airport on 825 acres of nearby property. The parties believe the resort will attract 300,000 visitors a year, mostly people from Kazakhstan and Russia.

SIBC’s executive chairman, Eng Bashar S. S. Al-Atassi, has said that he hopes to make Kinderli Beach “the first sustainable holiday destination of the 21st century.”

Unfortunately, he’s not yet been able to secure financing for the construction -- Kazakhstan's banks have taken a pounding on their real estate loans -- and he spent some time earlier this year wooing potential investors in Malaysia, where SIBC has a subsidiary company.

If you think the golf complex at Kinderli Beach will be a novelty in Kazakhstan, you’re way off. The nation has a half-dozen golf properties, the best-known of which is an Arnold Palmer-designed track at Zhailjau Golf Resort in Almaty. The course hosts the Kazakhstan Open, a stop on the European Tour.

The Week That Was: October 18, 2010

cyprus Faldo Quenches a Thirst for Golf

Hong Kong-based Palmerston Hotels & Resorts has opened the fourth 18-hole golf course on Cyprus, the parched island in the eastern Mediterranean.

The 6,900-yard layout has been designed by Nick Faldo -- er, make that Sir Nick Faldo -- and anchors Elea Golf Club in Paphos. The club is part of Elea Golf & Spa Resort, which will eventually consist of 200 villas, 100 apartments, a boutique hotel, a resort village, and a spa.


According to a press release graciously reprinted by Cyprus Property News, the “magnificent” par-71 track “commands a striking location above the shimmering Mediterranean Sea” and has been “meticulously crafted through dramatic landscape.”

For his part, Faldo humbly said, “This golf course certainly has the potential to play a pivotal role in establishing this part of the world as a leading European golf destination.”

These days Palmerston is hoping to build similar golf resorts in Italy, Sardinia, and Cuba.

I'm sure it was just an oversight, but the press release failed to mention that Cyprus doesn't have any water. Of course, that hasn’t stopped its government from approving new golf projects.

vietnam A Treasure Changes Hands

Saigon-based Vina Properties Development Group has acquired Vietnam's premier golf property, Dalat Palace Golf Club in Dalat City (Lam Dong Province). For multiple years in this decade, Vietnam Golf and Golf Digest have ranked Dalat Palace as the nation's top course.

The club is located in what is arguably Vietnam's favorite summer vacation destination, an area originally made popular by French colonists and Vietnamese royalty and still known as as “Petit Paris.”

According to Asia Travel Tips, the club is “notable for its clever mix of holes weaving through rolling topography that is nonetheless eminently walkable; for its extraordinary landscaping featuring hydrangea, bougainvillea, red salvia, impatiens, and mimosa; and, thanks to the mile-high town’s cool climate, for its immaculate bentgrass greens, a rarity in Southeast Asia.”

ATT says that the club's “first eight holes were opened for play in the early 1930s,” but the club says that its original nine -- designed by H. S. Colt and C. H. Alison -- opened in 1922. Designers working for IMG, the big, Cleveland, Ohio-based sports management company, overhauled the original nine and added a second nine in the mid 1990s.

Along with the golf course, Vina Properties bought a pair of hotels, the 43-room Dalat Palace Hotel and the 140-room Dalat du Parc.

The company plans to give the course a minor makeover -- bunkers will be rebuilt, cart paths will be resurfaced, drainage issues will be addressed -- and eventually build a new, modern clubhouse. But the existing clubhouse, which dates from the 1920s, will be preserved.

“It is too rich an amenity to ever be excluded from the experience at Dalat Palace,” says the club's general manager.

canada In Ontario, Less Just May Be More

Pending approvals by the appropriate authorities, Saginaw Golf Club is going to be downsized and transformed into a multi-purpose recreation center.

It's a matter of survival, says the club's owner.

“We’re a one-dimensional facility right now. You come here, you play golf, that’s it,” Andy Byrne told the Cambridge Times. “We’re two nine-hole golf courses, but the model is not working for economic reasons. We definitely can’t keep going the way we’re going.”

Byrne aims to sell most of the club's Essex course to a residential developer. On the rest of his 64-acre property, he plans to build tennis courts, batting cages, a mini-golf course, and a golf academy. The club's par-3 Vista nine will continue to operate.

Byrne also had a few choice things to say about the dreary state of the golf business in Ontario.

“The whole golf industry is terrible; it’s awful,” he said. “Ten years ago, the industry was great. You could make a decent living and enjoy what you were doing.

“There’s too many golf courses, and we’re part of the problem. We have two nine-hole courses, and you only need one, really, to do what we want to do.”

Bryne plans to file a rezoning application with the city of Cambridge by the end of the year.

texas Robert Von Hagge, RIP

Robert von Hagge, the Texas-based golf course architect, died last week.

I didn't know von Hagge, but the contributors at Golf Club Atlas have been sharing some of their memories of him. Here's my favorite, from another Texas-based designer, Jeff Brauer:

My best personal remembrance of Bob was following him in an interview down near Corpus Christi, Texas. As I walked in, he was saying his good-byes, kissing the two women's hands who were on the committee and telling them how nice they smelled. They were eating it up, no doubt. I had to joke that the only time I told a woman about her smell, it was to comment on how bad she smelled. I learned a valuable sales lesson that day!



Von Hagge was born in 1927, and his entire life revolved around golf. According to a biography published by the Woodlands Villager, he was born and raised on a golf course. By the age of 17, he'd spent time as a caddy and a caddy master, an assistant superintendent, and an assistant pro.

In the mid 1950s, eager to begin designing courses -- his father, Ben, was a golf course architect who'd worked briefly with Donald Ross in the 1920s -- von Hagge went to work for Dick Wilson. He stayed with Wilson until 1962, when he created his own firm.

By my count, unreliable as it may be, Von Hagge designed about 70 golf courses in the United States and more than 50 in various foreign nations, among them Mexico, France, Italy, Argentina, Denmark, Venezuela, Australia, Japan, Spain, Jamaica, and the Bahamas.

One of his courses, Les Bordes Golf Club in France's Loire Valley, is widely considered to be the top course in France. Just a month or so ago, the club's owners decided to build a second Von Hagge-designed track.

In a 2008 interview with Golf Course Architecture, von Hagge said, "I see nothing but growth, for our firm and the rest of the industry, because the world is becoming so small. . . . I think the future is unlimited.”

talking points Adapting to Changing Times

Not many golf course designers have spent as much time in China as Brian Curley.

Curley, one of the principals of Scottsdale, Arizona-based Schmidt-Curley Design, helped to design the 12 courses at the Mission Hills resort in Shenzhen and the six courses that have opened thus far at Mission Hills Haikou, not to mention various other tracks in the People's Republic.

No, he hasn't seen it all. But he's seen a lot, and certainly more than most of us have.


A week or so ago, Golf Club Atlas posted an wide-ranging interview with Curley, who had this to say about some of the differences between golf in China and the United States:

Golf doesn’t have an economic problem, it has a golf problem. Operators, in my opinion, are too slow to adapt to changing times. I was recently sent an e-mail from a club asking the membership if it was okay to bend the “no denim” rule at the clubhouse for one night -- a cowboy cookout theme.

I am afraid that younger golfers will take a pass on golf. You cannot tell a prospective 35-year-old member he has to give up his Blackberry for five hours. Times have changed.

Golf is a great game with a long history and it’s not going away, but, with the quick advances in technology and multi-tasking mentalities, it will need to adjust. I’ve told operators they should get rid of the GPS screens on carts (that you bump your head on) and change it to ESPN!

This certainly isn’t the case for all courses (Augusta is certainly in no dire need to “adapt”), but some courses will need to do so to survive.

Asia, on the other hand, is different. The sport is new and exciting. Plus, unlike the Western World, they embrace combining business with golf. Women play more. Families promote golf to children as a tool to advance in business. . . .

Moreover, golf is a social game, and Asians — especially Chinese — are very social. Americans change their shoes in the parking lot and want a quick round in order to get back to their other responsibilities and family. To many Asians, the golf club and its expansive clubhouses that get ridiculed by the West represent their family/social scene. They are not afraid of multi-tasking. Cell phones are not only everywhere, but you will see signs boasting cell service quality at clubhouses and on first tees.

I am not saying one view is “right” and the other “wrong” -- it is just the state of our world today, and I think Western operators could learn something from how Asian clubs function. China never got the early “rules” of golf and adapted the game to their culture. There is no old guy at the back of the room wearing a blue blazer with dandruff exclaiming, “That’s the way we did it back when Hogan played here.” . . .

Shameless Self-Promotion, October 2010

In this week's news wrap, I mentioned Yelena Baturina's proposed golf course in suburban Moscow, the one that she's "invited" Jack Nicklaus to design. If you want to learn more about her plans -- including details about the Kyle Phillips-designed course she owns and some future golf projects that she's put on the table -- you should check out this month's World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

The World Edition, as most of you know, is the publication that serves as the foundation for much of the material on this blog.

The October issue also includes reports on the second 18-hole course at Les Bordes International Golf Club in France, a 36-hole complex in China that's being developed by the "godfather of Chinese golf," a multi-course planned community in Croatia, a Graham Cooke-designed golf course in Finland, and a course in Aruba that's being developed by U.S. interests.

There's more: News about planned courses in England, Poland, India, Morocco, and South Africa, along with stores about renovations by Jack Nicklaus in Sweden and Howard Swan in Tanzania.

If your business depends on news about golf development and construction all over the planet, you should be reading the World Edition. There's really no other publication like it.

But you don't have to take my word for it. If you'd like to see this month's World Edition, give me a call at 301/680-9460 or send me an e-mail at WorldEdition@aol.com.

spain Ticket to Ryder

If Spain is selected to host the Ryder Cup in 2018, the matches will be played on a Robin Hiseman-designed golf course in a northern suburb of Madrid.

Spain and five other nations -– France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, and Sweden -– have bid to host the Ryder Cup, with the winner to be announced sometime next year, probably in the spring.

The Royal Spanish Golf Federation aims to build a new track on property known as Valdeloshielos Farm in Tres Cantos. The federation’s idea is to build two 18-hole tracks, one tough enough to challenge the world’s top professionals, the other suited to everybody else.

Hiseman, who works at European Golf Design in Berkshire, England, plans to design a “classic” course with viewing areas for spectators and space for corporate hospitality tents. The federation has identified a site for a hotel.

Hiseman has designed a “personal” golf course for Terry Tai-Ming Gou, the chairman of Foxconn, in the Czech Republic, but he’s probably best known for “ghost-designing” Colin Montgomerie’s “signature” course at Royal Golf Club in Bahrain. (It’s part of the Riffa Views planned community.) These days, he’s also working with Montgomerie at the Palm City golf resort in Frederikshavn, Denmark.

The Week That Was: October 11, 2010

russia In Moscow, Golf Loses Its Prime Supporter

Now that Yuri Luzhkov has been booted out as Moscow's mayor, what's the future of golf development in Russia's most important city?

In 2006, as part of an economic-development strategy, Luzhkov said he wanted to open 10 regulation-length golf courses in and around Moscow by 2011. It was a dream that never came true, as the mayor's construction plans were undermined by a combination of economic hard times and developer malaise. These days metropolitan Moscow has just four 18-hole courses, and, as best I can determine, only one or maybe two others are expected to come out of the ground anytime soon.

Sad to say, but it may be a while before golf gets back on track in Moscow. Several weeks ago, Luzhkov was dismissed as the city's mayor, mostly because he was a pain in the neck to the national government, and his successor has already canceled the golf-construction plan.

The Moscow Times says that the cancellation of Luzhkov's plan “is unlikely to significantly affect the future development of golf in Moscow,” but a local real estate agent interviewed by the paper suggests otherwise. The agent, Natalya Kats of Usadba, believes that developers who've committed to building golf courses will happily switch to more lucrative ventures.

“Golf courses are not in high demand in a country where it rains or snows for nine months of the year,” Kats told the paper.

She added: “If an investor has an alternative, it would be more profitable to build a multi-functional complex, a mall, or homes on the plot.”

The Times also speculates that the demise of Luzhkov's construction proposal “may affect plans” to build a high-profile golf course in Moscow's western suburbs. The to-be-named course, announced just last month, is being developed by Luzhkov's wife, Yelena Baturina, who's said to be Russia's richest woman. It's been widely reported that Baturina wants Jack Nicklaus to build a “world-class” layout on her property, but Nicklaus hasn't as yet commented on the reports.

The Times also reports that a municipally financed, nine-hole course has opened in city's Kurkino district. Think of it as Luzhkov's farewell gift to Moscow.

scotland Herb Kohler's Royal Flush

During this summer's British Open, I'm guessing that millions of TV-watching golf fans longed to own the hotel that overlooks the famous road hole on St. Andrews' Old Course. Well, for the right price, it may just be available.

The hotel is owned by Herb Kohler, the Wisconsin-based plumbing titan, and he's losing money on it. In fact, Kohler is losing money on all of his golf-related assets in Scotland, according to financial statements reviewed by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Of course, Kohler can afford to lose a little money here and there. Forbes says he's worth $2 billion and ranks him #316 on its list of the world's billionaires.

Kohler's ventures in Scotland may yet turn to gold, but not anytime soon. In the six years since he began buying companies in the birthplace of golf, the records show, he's had just one profitable year. His total losses in the years from 2005 through 2009 amount to roughly $13 million.

Besides the 144-room Old Course Hotel Golf Resort & Spa, Kohler's most notable Scottish holding is Duke's Golf Course. He also owns two buildings that he plans to restore and refurbish. One of them is described by the Journal Sentinel as a "rundown mansion," and the other is "a dilapidated former hotel" along the Old Course's 18th hole.

In the United States, Kohler's holdings begin with Kohler Company, the bathroom-fixtures colossus. He also owns a hotel and a pair of 36-hole, Pete Dye-designed golf complexes in the Sheboygan area, the best-known of them being Whistling Straits, the site of this year's PGA Championship.

wales Celtic Manor: Mission Hills West?

In the wake of this year's Ryder Cup matches, rumors again began to swirl about a possible sale of Celtic Manor Resort. And this time the rumors have focused on a likely buyer.

He is David Chu, the fellow who touched off China's golf boom. Chu owns the Mission Hills golf resort in Shenzhen, the world's largest golf club, as well as Mission Hills Haikou, the fast-growing golf resort on Hainan Island.

Chu is already connected to Celtic Manor, according to the Western Mail. The paper says that Chu's company "signed a reciprocal agreement with the Celtic Manor in 2005 to enhance trade and tourism between the U.K. and China."

I have no idea what that means.

I do know that all the talk about the sale would end if Celtic Manor's owner, Sir Terry Matthews, simply squelched the rumors. Instead, Matthews has cheerfully kept them alive by saying things like, “I don’t have anything, or very few things, that are not for sale.”

Based on Matthews' statements, it appears that no sale is imminent -- not with Chu or with any of those other oft-discussed buyers, be they Russian oligarchs or Middle Eastern oilmen. Still, Matthews continues to fan flames.

“It depends on the price,” he told the Mail. “Everything I do would be for the right deal. I don’t treat many things as my baby that you can’t have. I just don’t.

“But I know the owners of Mission Hills extremely well, and you would think if they have interest it would be reasonable that they call me.

“They have my phone number, I have their phone number.”

croatia Running Up That Hill

Ground hasn't yet been broken on Greg Norman's golf course in Dubrovnik, and its developers have placed the blame on “the very complicated bureaucratic processes for permit procedures in the Republic of Croatia.”

The course is to be the centerpiece of Golf Park Dubrovnik, which has been called Croatia's biggest current development venture. Golf Park Dubrovnik will take shape on Srd Hill, which towers more than 1,300 feet above the city, and include houses, a hotel or two, a spa, meeting space, and other attractions, including an 18-hole private course, a practice center, and a beginner-friendly six- to nine-hole course that will be open to the public.

Ivan Kusalic of Rasvoj-Golf tells the Croatian Times that he and his partners (a group that includes Norman) are committed to the project and hope to complete the entitlement process sometime next summer.

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

united states An Example for the Rest of Us

Since he took office in early 2009, President Barack Obama has reportedly played 52 rounds of golf. If that sounds like a lot, you should know that the National Golf Foundation says that someone who plays 26 rounds of golf a year just barely qualifies as an "avid" golfer.


Not surprisingly, the president has mostly played at secure military tracks in the Washington area. His favorite courses are, apparently, at Fort Belvoir in Virginia, where he's played 18 times, and at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where he's played 17 times.

As has been widely reported, Obama also likes to squeeze in some golf when he's on vacation. On Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts, he's played five times at Vineyard Golf Club, twice at Farm Neck Golf Club, and twice at Mink Meadows Golf Club. He's also played twice at Grove Park Inn in Asheville, North Carolina, and he's played four rounds on three courses in Hawaii.

The president's critics say his golf outings are evidence that he isn't not working hard enough. I say I wish the golf business had 10 million more players just like him.

The NGF: 'A Course a Day,' Then & Now

In a recent post, I characterized the National Golf Foundation as being "often unreliable" -- a turn of phrase that appears to have touched a raw nerve at the Jupiter, Florida-based trade group.

Shortly after the post was published, I received a condescending e-mail from one of the group's vice presidents. (I guess my offense didn't merit a response from the president himself.) My aggrieved correspondent delivered a stern warning -- he said that he takes "that type of accusation very seriously" -- and noted that he and his colleagues "hold ourselves to a high standard with regard to the veracity and integrity of our research."

And, predictably, he called my characterization "irresponsible."

I'm thinking that maybe my correspondent is expecting an apology. If that's the case, he's going to be disappointed.

Instead, I'm going to talk about a far more serious example of irresponsibility, one that has put hundreds of golf courses out of business and hundreds more on the endangered list. These course closings can be traced, I believe, to a well-intentioned but ultimately misguided course-construction campaign that has all but destroyed the development side of the U.S. golf industry.

As many of you have already guessed, I'm going to write about four little words that the NGF has made infamous: "A course a day."

In the late 1980s, the NGF's savvy researchers examined stacks of demographic data and concluded that the United States didn't have enough golf courses to accommodate the large number of Baby Boomers who'd start playing golf as they moved toward retirement. Supply and demand -- or at least expected demand -- weren't singing in perfect harmony, the NGF decided.

So the NGF teamed up with a marketing company to create and promote a "strategic plan" whose aim was to build thousands of golf courses. The NGF gathered industry leaders for a series of golf "summits," and it spread the news about its overly optimistic research to all who'd listen.

The centerpiece of the plan was a call to open "a course a day" through the year 2000. It was a daunting challenge, to be sure, but not, we were assured, a reckless one.

Heck, the NGF's research supported it.

As the NGF hoped, its credo sparked a frenzy of construction. The nation's developers, bless their greedy little hearts, began building golf courses as if America's appetite for the game was insatiable. By the time they'd spent all their bankers' money, they'd opened something like 3,500 or 4,000 new golf courses. In some years during the 1990s, they even exceeded the NGF's wish and opened more than a course a day.

The construction boom of the 1990s was among history's greatest examples of American enterprise at work. Our industry's achievement was borderline heroic -- our version of putting a man on the moon. Armed with the gospel according to the NGF, we came, we saw, and we conquered. Fortunes were made, new frontiers were explored, and the gravy train rolled across the nation, from Myrtle Beach to Palm Springs.

Unfortunately, there would soon be blood on the tracks. By the mid 1990s, it became apparent that those aging Baby Boomers weren't playing nearly as much golf as the NGF predicted they would. Much to our dismay, the number of rounds played in the United States began to fall, not rise. An ever-larger number of golf courses were forced to battle for an ever-smaller number of golfers.

By the end of the 1990s, if not before, it was clear that the U.S. golf industry had built too many courses. As a result of the race to build "a course a day," the industry got stuck in a sinkhole of decline that it hasn't been able to climb out of.

For this, you can thank the NGF. The people who call me irresponsible.

So who do you think the NGF blames for the mess? Its vaunted research? Its over-hyped exuberance?

Not a chance. In 2004, in an interview with Sports Illustrated, the NGF's president blamed the over-building on developers.

"What no one remembers," said Joe Beditz, "is that 10 years later, in 1999, we issued a second report saying our assumption of 3 to 4 percent growth wasn't happening. . . . We said, 'Stop!' But the developers went ahead and built another 1,500 courses anyway. They saw gold in them thar fairways. Instead of a golf boom we had a construction boom, and everyone built in the same markets at the same price points. . . . People built irrationally, and now they're blaming us."

Ignore the feigned surprise and the phony suffering. The blame was not misplaced.

And while we're on the subject, can someone tell me why it took the NGF a decade to discover its error? By that time, the damage was mostly done.

To be fair, the drive to build "a course a day" had many beneficial effects on golf. It drew lots of media attention to the game, gave it sizzle, and spread its appeal not just from coast to coast but across the entire planet. People started to put the words golf and cool in the same sentence.

What's more, I know that the NGF thought it was doing a good thing. It intended to grow the business, not destroy it. But today, it's apparent that the idea of building "a course a day" was a ticking time bomb. The NGF's research, the foundation of the construction program, simply didn't pan out. There was, ultimately, not nearly as much gold in them thar fairways as the NGF said there would be.

Today, the bleeding continues. Let's take a quick look at the current golf landscape, with statistics courtesy of the NGF:

-- In 2003, there were 30.6 million U.S. golfers. Today there are 27.1 million.

-- In 1990, 12.1 percent of the U.S. population played golf. By 2000, the number had fallen to 11.1 percent, and in 2008 it was down to 10.2 percent.

-- In 2001, 518 million rounds of golf were played in the United States. In 2008, 489 million were played.

-- In 1988, our nation had 4,900 private clubs with 3 million members. Today it has 4,400 clubs with 2.1 million members.

-- In the 1990s, we had something like 16,000 public golf properties. Today we have 11,600.

The numbers tell a grim story: The U.S. golf business has been shrinking not just since the market crash of 2008, but for more than a decade. Slowly but surely, things have been getting worse for many years. And every one of us, each in our own way, is paying for the delirium of "a course a day."

So what does the NGF say about the golf industry today, just two decades after it put us on a construction spree?

It says that we need to un-do what we've done. To narrow the gap between supply and demand, it says that we need to close between 1,500 and 2,000 golf courses. This, it promises, will make everything better.

In other words, we need to close a course a day for the next five years!

Has a familiar ring, doesn't it?

"This is not necessarily a bad thing for owners and operators as a whole," Beditz wrote in "The Future of Public Golf in America," a report published by the NGF this year.

The sentiment may be true, but let me note that going out of business is nearly always a very bad thing for the individual people who actually go out of business. I sure hope that the NGF hasn't forgotten the fundamental truth about statistics: the numbers represent real-life people.

The NGF's new, upside-down version of "a course a day" begs an obvious question that the NGF needs to answer: Are you sure you've got it right this time?

Because much is at stake. And not everyone is sold on the notion that a tidal wave of golf-course closings will solve the industry's problems.

"Some industry pundits wistfully believe that golf's health crisis is no more than a temporary imbalance between supply and demand, and that it will heal naturally once the game sheds some 1,500 to 2,000 golf courses," David Hueber wrote in an article for the Journal of Sustainable Real Estate. "However, that laissez-faire attitude leads to an unmanaged outcome, and the root causes for the industry's chronic condition will persist if it is not diagnosed and left untreated."

Hueber's name may be familiar to some of you. In the 1980s, he was the NGF's president.

Later in his essay, Hueber writes: Theoretically, having fewer golf courses and maintaining the same number of golf rounds played on a national basis would provide more business for the remaining golf courses. However, there is no guarantee that this cure will work. . . . It is difficult to determine what closures in what locations would bring the demand and supply into balance.

Let me add my two-cents' worth, because there's a sub-text to the NGF's current message that frightens me. The NGF says that the nation's most at-risk facilities -- the ones most likely to close -- are older nine-hole courses, par-3 and executive-length 18-hole tracks, and courses that offer cheap greens fees.

It just so happens that these are the places that typically give birth to and nurture new golfers. If we lose 2,000 of these "affordable" golf courses, where will we be five, 10, or 20 years from now, when our industry is disproportionately stocked with private tracks and $75- to $100-a-round daily-fee layouts? Where will beginners learn to play? Where will the nation's First Tee programs establish themselves?

And what about seniors and blue-collar golfers? Where will they play when affordable courses disappear?

How does the NGF propose to grow the game without a critical mass of low-cost, low-pressure venues? Why does it presume that the rounds currently being played on low-priced courses will simply transfer to more expensive tracks?

Personally, I don't think it's going to happen. I fear that the number of U.S. golfers will simply continue to shrink, due to the high cost of entry. Which means that things will just keep getting worse.

I'll be honest: Thinking about stuff like this makes my head spin. I'd leave it to the experts, if I trusted them.

Many years ago, when I was the managing editor of a business magazine, I learned that you can tell a lot about an organization's values, loyalties, and ambitions simply by examining its board of directors. So here are the companies on the NGF's board: Callaway Golf, Footjoy, TaylorMade, Toro, Golf Pride, the Golf Channel, Edwin Watts Golf, Billy Casper Golf, and my favorite, Textron Financial, a company that isn't even in the golf lending business anymore.

Does anyone out there think that the NGF's board is an accurate reflection of the golf business?

Where are the small companies? The golf-course owners? The design firms and construction companies -- or, for that matter, anyone associated with the development side of the business? Don't any of them deserve a seat at golf's main table?

If you're wondering who the NGF really works for, who it really represents, scan that list of its board members again. The NGF listens closest to our industry's biggest, richest, and most powerful companies. Nobody else.

The NGF doesn't care about a sole proprietor like me or about any of the mom-and-pop companies that are trying to eke out a living in our mess of an industry. It doesn't care about any of the course designers and builders who are starving for work or who've already lost their jobs.

And most assuredly, the NGF doesn't care about the owners of the 1,500 to 2,000 golf facilities that it says must soon go out of business. Make no mistake, the NGF has sold them down the river. It's decided that the golf industry can't get healthy until they die. Today it's promoting their demise, just as it once promoted an irresponsible construction program. They are among the sacrifices that must be made to atone for the sin of building "a course a day."

When I started writing this blog, I was wondering if the NGF was expecting me to make an apology. Now I'm thinking that everyone who still works in golf deserves a long-overdue apology from the NGF.

The Week That Was: October 4, 2010

scotland That Old College Try

When Donald Trump secured permission to build his seaside resort community at the Menie Estate, he predicted that it would spark the construction of other golf courses in Aberdeenshire. It appears that he was right on the mark.

The Aberdeen Evening Express reports that J. W. Muir Group's golf project at Blair's College, which has been treading development water for two years, is moving ahead. While the community's Paul Lawrie "signature" golf course won't capture nearly as much media attention as Trump's Martin Hawtree-designed layout, it'll certainly help to draw golfers to northeastern Scotland.

Muir plans to build up to 220 single-family houses and 60 “affordable” houses on its property, which is just outside Aberdeen. The company will also refurbish the decaying but historic college, a former Catholic seminary, as a luxury hotel with meeting space.

Lawrie, a former winner of the British Open, was born in Aberdeen and now lives just minutes from the college. He'll receive design assistance from Robin Hiseman of European Golf Design.

The course could open in 2013.

maldives Managing the Float

It appears that the Maldives is really trying to make good on its plan to build a "floating" resort outside Male, its capital and largest city.

Just weeks ago, when I blogged about the Maldives' mind-bending development experiment, I didn't actually believe it was likely to get past the idea stage. But now comes word, from the Hindustan Times, that the government of the Netherlands has come aboard to help the planet's lowest nation build a hotel, some houses, and an 18-hole golf course atop the Indian Ocean.

“Both the governments have agreed,” said the creative director of Dutch Docklands, the company that's been hired to design the resort. “A formal announcement is expected next week.”

Construction of the hotel is scheduled to begin next year, and the whole she-bang, golf course and all, are supposed to open by 2017.

And here's another surprise: the Netherlands also plans to help establish some floating agricultural fields in the Maldives.

scotland Living Well Is the Best Revenge

Loch Lomond Golf Club, the preferred private retreat of Scotland's rich and famous, lost more than $72 million in 2008 and is carrying more than $200 million worth of debt.

Talk about living beyond your means. Now you know why Loch Lomond is such a darned nice club.

The Herald has reviewed a financial report recently filed by the club and provided all the gory details. The numbers suggest that Loch Lomond's members, who recently agreed to assume ownership of the club, won't have an easy time digging themselves out of the hole they're in.

But you don't have to take my word for it. Here's what the club's auditors have to say on the subject: “These conditions . . . indicate the existence of a material uncertainty which may cast significant doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern.”

To generate income, the Herald says, Loch Lomond is likely “to go on a membership drive” and -- horrors! -- “operate more efficiently.”

vietnam The Countdown Continues

The seasons are changing, so it must be time for yet another crackdown on golf development in Vietnam.

As you probably know, several years ago Vietnam's fearless leaders discovered that provincial officials had approved something on the order of 200 new golf courses -- way more than the nation could hope to accommodate, at least in the near term. So the government whittled the 200 down to a more sensible but still extremely high number, 89, and vowed to build the tracks only on property that's unsuitable for agriculture.

Unfortunately, Vietnam is fundamentally suspicious about golf, and over the past two years it's embarked on more reviews and investigations than you can shake a hickory stick at. The government's latest move, says VietNamNet Bridge, is to establish a task force that will "inspect the implementation of golf course planning in provinces and cities nationwide."

Vietnam currently has about 20 golf courses, maybe as many as 24. To open 89 by 2020, the stated goal, developers need to open roughly six courses a year over the next decade -- a difficult feat even when economies are humming along nicely and one that I suspect won't be achieved.

south korea The Layover & the Hangover

Greg Norman has put his name on wine, kobe beef, and turf, and now he's put it on a limited-edition version of Johnnie Walker Blue Label scotch.

Diageo Global Travel hopes to sell 20,000 bottles of the scotch, exclusively for customers of Korean Air. The bottles have their own serial numbers, sort of like Warhol lithographs or mug shots, to make them more valuable.

I presume you've heard of a message in a bottle. Well, Norman's liquor has a message on the bottle. Hand-written, according to a press release.

The decanter also has a message: In life, your success and performance is driven from within. Keep Walking.

I'll drink to that.

Affordable Golf? Let's Talk About It

I'll bet you can't remember the last time someone offered you a chance to attend a golf-industry conference for free. Then again, I'll bet you can't remember the last time you were invited anywhere to talk about affordable golf.

It's a long-overdue idea, and you can thank Richard Mandell, an architect based in Pinehurst, North Carolina, for it.

Mandell's Symposium on Affordable Golf will be held on November 8 and 9, 2010 at -- appropriately, I think -- the Elks Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina. (Southern Pines is just a few miles down the road from Pinehurst.) Mandell calls the event "an open forum on how to look at golf in a different light, one that is more sustainable than many business models that have failed over the past few decades."

Among the topics to be addressed: "The Folly of Replicating Tournament Conditions," "Cost-Conscious Lessons to Learn from the Golden Age," and "Environmental Tasks that Can Also Make the Game More Affordable."

The speakers include Ron Forse, the golf course architect; Ran Morrisset, one of the co-founders of Golf Club Atlas; Jaime Diaz, a writer for Golf Digest; and Ron Boyd, the president of Williamsburg Environmental and one of my colleagues at Golf Course Business Consultants.

"Don't expect a silver-bullet answer at the symposium," says Mandell. "Instead, expect to roll up your sleeves and get busy."

For more information, and to register, visit SymposiumOnAffordableGolf.com.

One other thing: The Elks Club Lodge is next to Southern Pines Golf Club, where the symposium's participants have been invited to gather for 18 holes on Tuesday.

The price: $35. Very affordable.

worth reading Past Imperfect

"If phone engineers thought like golf architects," Ron Whitten writes in November's Golf Digest, "our cell phones would still be attached to the wall."

Actually, that's one of the nicer things Whitten has to say about today's golf course architects, a group that, he contends, offers "plenty of artistry, but almost no innovation." His sour summation of contemporary course design adds a super-size helping of insult to the economic injuries that architects have taken of late, as their commissions have slowly disappeared.

The article is called "Why the Lack of Innovation?" Here's Whitten's major complaint:

Every architect worships the past -- the 1920s or teens or even earlier -- and molds designs to those ancient templates. Nobody has an original thought. As Pete Dye says, every hole's a copy of some other hole. There is no hip-hop, rap, or even jazz in golf architecture; it's all Stephen Foster and John Philip Sousa. Which means modern-day courses are gussied-up reproductions, with strategies conjured up by Old Tom Morris or Old MacDonald, bunkers styled after Alister Mackenzie or George Thomas, and greens patterned on relics like the Redan, Biarritz, and Eden.

A paragraph like that stings, particularly when it comes from golf's most influential design critic. But the most sobering part of the article is Whitten's conclusion about what a lack of innovation means to the future of golf architecture.

"The profession of golf design," he argues, "is in danger of going the way of slide-film developers, TV repairmen, and travel agents."

That's not good.

"Architects need to reinvent their product," he says, and restore "the relevance of the profession of golf architecture."

To be sure, at times Whitten lays it on a little thick. But he's delivered an earful. No doubt, "Why the Lack of Innovation?" is going to provoke distress and probably some resentment among architects, who must be wondering exactly how their professional lives can possibly get any worse.

vietnam Tan Vien, Back From the Dead

A year after government officials put it on the chopping block, a planned “international tourism area” along Suoi Hai Lake is still alive, minus one of its two golf courses.

The Tan Vien resort, which will occupy more than 4,000 acres in the Ba Vi district of western Hanoi, had been approved in 2007 but was canceled last year, as part of a crackdown on construction that wipes out rice fields and other vital agricultural property. Later in 2009, however, the Hanoi People’s Committee took a second look at the project, shrunk it a bit, and reinstated it.

More importantly, Tan Vien’s developer, PetroVietnam Premier Recreation JSC, recently announced that it remains committed to the project, though it didn’t say when construction might begin. The company believes that the resort could attract as many as 650,000 visitors a year.

PetroVietnam Premier Recreation, an affiliate of the state-owned Vietnam National Oil & Gas Group, says it was established (in 2006) to “speed up the modernization of Vietnam.” At Tan Vien, the modernization will take the form of villas and other housing types, hotels, meeting space, an eco-tourism area, water- and land-based sports centers, and one 18-hole golf course.

PetroVietnam Premier Recreation plans to build the golf course in the first phase of the project, which will take shape along the man-made lake, 40 miles west of the city.

The Week That Was: September 27, 2010

spain Greg Norman: The Reign in Spain

Greg Norman, the globe-trotting golf superstar, has agreed to buy one of the world's most glamorous golf properties.

I'm talking about Club de Golf Valderrama in Sotogrande, in southern Spain. The club features what is arguably the Old World’s finest golf course, a Robert Trent Jones-designed track that made an indelible impression on the world of golf in 1997, when it hosted the first Ryder Cup matches played in continental Europe. The club will host the Andalucía Masters later this month.

Norman and David Spencer, the CEO of Stripe Group, will buy Valderrama from Soto Properties, a firm controlled by Jaime Ortiz-Patino. Cadiz News reports that the transaction is expected to close "in the coming weeks" and guesses that the price will be in the neighborhood of $48 million.

Typically Spanish chimes in a delectable nugget -- "a new project for the development of Valderrama will be presented shortly" -- but doesn't elaborate.

If Spencer’s name rings a bell, it’s probably because he’s a former CEO of Leisurecorp, the Middle Eastern company that created the world’s richest golf tournament, the Dubai World Championship, and developed the Norman-designed course that hosts it, at Jumeirah Golf Estates. Jumeirah fell on hard times when the world’s economy collapsed, and Leisurecorp’s parent company, Nakheel, booted Spencer from his job. But it appears that he’s landed on his feet.

canada At Tsawwassen, It's Locke & Load

The long-awaited redevelopment of Tsawwassen Golf & Country Club has begun.

Ron Toigo, the majority partner of Shato Holdings, bought Tsawwassen three years ago, with an eye toward making it the centerpiece of a community called Tsawwassen Springs. It took him a while, but he's persuaded the town of Delta, a close-in southeastern suburb of Vancouver, to let him build several hundred townhouses and other housing units adjacent to the layout.

As part of the plan, Delta-based Ted Locke will give Tsawwassen’s executive-length golf course a thorough makeover, most noticeably in its length. The 4,276-yard track, which opened in 1966, will be stretched to roughly 6,000 yards.

The Delta Optimist reports that nine new holes are under construction and will be ready for play late next summer. In 2012, the new nine and nine renovated holes from the existing layout will debut as the community's 18-hole golf course.

Toigo is a celebrity in Vancouver, and not just because he owns a chain of donut shops. Toigo owns the Vancouver Giants, the city’s most prominent junior hockey team, in partnership with hockey legend Gordie Howe, long-time NHL coach Pat Quinn, and crooner Michael Buble, who was born in British Columbia. Buble and Quinn are also minority partners in the Tsawwassen Springs venture, along with Ross Clouston, the president of Talisman Homes.

Would it surprise you to learn that Tsawwassen Springs will include an outdoor ice-skating rink?

china Sand-bagging for the Dunes

Tom Weiskopf's 36-hole golf complex on Hainan Island is scheduled to open by the end of the year, according to Breaking Travel News.

The complex, called Dunes at Shenzhou Peninsula, will be the centerpiece of a 4,500-acre resort community that includes houses, a couple of big hotels, a marina, several beach clubs, and other attractions. The community is being developed by CITIC Pacific.

The website calls Shenzhou Peninsula “a comprehensive paradise resort with unique and beautiful natural scenic spots” featuring hotels that “will guarantee visitors a perfect vacation experience.” Weiskopf's course, which will be accompanied by “a stunning clubhouse,” will offer “breathtaking views of the South China Sea.”

Weiskopf was somewhat less effusive. “The natural scenery found at Shenzhou Peninsula is ideal for the best golf course imaginable,” he said. “I am confident that the Dunes will be very well received by the golfing public and am confident it will receive many accolades in the years to come.”

the world Eyes on the Prize

Can playing golf help a young exec climb the corporate ladder?

For people who live in China and India, the answer is most definitely yes. According to an online survey of business sentiment in 24 countries, nearly half of the respondents in China (47 percent) and India (46 percent) consider golf to be a means of getting ahead.

China and India have the top spots in the survey. The global average is 22 percent.

“Golf is an elite sport in India, and people want to be seen with a club in a golf course with some famous personality or a corporate honcho,” a former official of the Indian Golf Union told the Financial Express. “It’s just about constructing an image and a perception of oneself in front of others.”

The response in nations where golf is well-established was somewhat cooler than average. In the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, only 20 percent believe golf is an effective networking tool.

australia Watson Takes To the Greens

One of Australia’s biggest home builders is moving ahead with plans to build more than 2,000 houses around a golf course in Queensland.

Mirvac will build the community on 1,225 acres around Gainsborough Greens Golf Course, an 18-hole track in Oxenford, a town that’s 40 miles southeast of Brisbane. Mirvac, which started selling the houses a month or so ago, figures the property can accommodate 2,292 single-family houses and other housing types, a community center, a shopping area and a medical center.

Mirvac has co-owned Gainsborough Greens since 2006, but it assumed sole ownership last year. It’s hired Ross Watson to oversee a four-year renovation of the 6,637-yard golf course, which was designed by Fred Bolton and opened in 1990. Watson, who’s based in Robina, Queensland, expects to create what will essentially be a new layout, complete with a new clubhouse. Some of the track’s holes will be rerouted to accommodate the houses.

Mirvac has been selling houses for nearly 40 years, and it has a subsidiary that manages 45 hotel properties (roughly 5,600 hotel rooms) in Australia and New Zealand. The company is also building houses around another course in suburban Brisbane, the Greg Norman-designed Brookwater Golf Course in Brookwater.

Watson has designed two courses that Golf Australia ranks among the nation’s top 50: Magenta Shores Golf Club in New South Wales and Pacific Harbour Golf Club in Queensland.