The Week That Was: December 5, 2010

australia Norman's Latest Conquest

Planning officials in New South Wales have blessed a plan to build a resort community near Sydney that will feature a Greg Norman-designed golf course.

The to-be-named, 1,150-acre community will be take shape on a former coal mine, the Huntley Colliery, in Dapto, 45 miles south of Sydney. At build-out, it's expected to consist of several hundred houses (some for the general market, some for retirees), a few dozen “stay-and-play” golf cottages, a 100-room hotel with meeting space, a village center, and a small private hospital.

The developers, a group called HTT Huntley Heritage, have been trying to get the property rezoned and the project approved since 2007, if not before. They expected regional planners to approve the project in October, but the planners held off due to concerns about several issues, including what the Illawarra Mercury describes as “the impact of the proposed in-ground irrigation system at the northern end of the course on Aboriginal heritage.” The developers defused the planners' worries by agreeing to install an above-ground “traveling irrigator” instead of an in-ground system.

Norman will design a championship-length course for the community, along with a golf training center.

dubai . . . And Into Dust Thou Shalt Return

If you've been wondering about what's happened to Tiger Woods Dubai and the first golf course to be designed by one of the greatest players ever to swing a club, well, here's the grim news: the Middle East's slice of desert paradise has been all but abandoned, and it's about to become the next victim of the global economic crash.


Just two years ago, Tiger Woods Dubai was an oil sheik's ultimate golf dream, a fantasy community so exclusive that only billionaires could afford to live there. It was to have just 200 houses: $11 million villas, $15 million mansions, and what the salespeople called “"palaces,” with no prices listed. If you had to ask, they weren't for you.

None of them have been built, of course.

On the first anniversary of the car crash that led to the unraveling of a brilliant career, the Guardian paid a visit to the veritable ghost town that once held such promise. The newspaper found nothing more substantial than dust: a fake Arabian palace, an empty sales office, disconnected telephones.

Six holes of the golf course have been completed and the remaining holes have been roughed out, but what would have been Al Ruwaya Golf Club is now fenced off and hidden from public view. Something like 3,000 trees were planted along the fairways, but 8,000 trees are still waiting to be planted. They're being stored under wraps, and, according to the Guardian, they drink up a million gallons of water every month.

That's a lot of water for an operating golf course and an obscene amount for one that hasn't rung up a single greens fee.

And that's why, within just a few weeks, the people behind Tiger Woods Dubai will almost certainly give up the dream. The Guardian says they'll make their final decision before February, when Woods arrives to play in the Dubai Desert Classic.

“They better make a decision soon, because we are struggling to keep the desert at bay,” an employee on the property told the newspaper.

What was once a desert will be a desert again. From dust to dust.

“The smart money around town is on the return to nature,” the story says. “After all, what use is a billionaires playground when there are no billionaires?”


scotland A Bridge Over Troubled Golfers

Some Scottish golfers are seething about a proposal to build a foot bridge on one of the oldest, most historic golf courses in the United Kingdom.

“What they are proposing is a great tragedy,” the secretary of the Royal Perth Golfing Society told the Scotsman. “We have no objection in principle to a bridge across the river. Our objection is simply to the bridge at this location.”

The location is North Inch Golf Course, a 5,442-yard track that welcomed its first golfers (with a six-hole layout) in 1803. The course's final six holes were designed by Old Tom Morris in the early 1890s.

The proposed 656-foot bridge would cross the River Tay, connecting the villages of Perth and Scone. Its construction would require the green on the course's 15th hole -- the course's signature hole and one often cited as being among the top 100 holes in Great Britian -- to be relocated. It would also require the relocation of the course's 17th tee, reducing the par-4 hole into a par-3 hole.

And, perhaps worst of all, the construction would require the course to close at least some of its holes for about a year.

The chairman of a golf group based at North Inch said the bridge will “ruin” the course. Nonetheless, local officials are expected to approve its construction.
A local councilmember believes it'll be an “iconic” addition to the local landscape.

asia The Next Wave

Before the Australian Open, Greg Norman fielded questions from reporters gathered at a press conference. His answers to several questions have been posted at the website of Great White Shark Enterprises.

Here's a little of what Norman had to say about golf in Asia.

I am a strong believer that the East will take over the West in 20 years -- maybe a generation from now, which is about 20 years. The development of the game in places like Vietnam and China, Cambodia, Korea, Laos, Indonesia, [and] Malaysia is just incredible. . . . The development of the game there is going to be higher than anywhere else.

When China gets into gear -- there is still a moratorium on golf course construction in China -- but when they figure out a way to get to the 30 million golfers in China that the government anticipates, you know what is going to happen. They are going to develop and generate some phenomenal players, male and female.

The West is lagging now. The game is slow in the United States. It is not developing the way it did in the 1980s and 90s. . . .

Corporations are going to Asia now because they are sick of getting zero percent interest, zero percent return on their money. They are investing in the Third World countries where they are getting good returns on their money, and the growth and development are showing it. . . .