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The club is located in what is arguably Vietnam's favorite summer vacation destination, an area originally made popular by French colonists and Vietnamese royalty and still known as as “Petit Paris.”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