The Week That Was: March 27, 2011

. . . zambia . . .
Any day now, a South African design team plans to begin a complete overhaul of Nchanga Golf Club in Chingola, Zambia.

Mark Wiltshire and Mark Muller figure to spend $2.5 million on the makeover, which will include improvements to the layout's tees and bunkers and the installation of a new irrigation system. In addition, one of the course's holes will be redesigned, and the clubhouse will be upgraded.

The work will likely take six months. Nchanga's course, which opened in the mid 1930s, is expected to reopen in time for this year's Zambia Open, tentatively set for October 20-23. The renovation was requested by Konkola Copper Mines, which sponsors the tournament.

Wiltshire is a former professional golfer. Muller, a former golf course superintendent, attended the University of Massachusetts and worked on Jack Nicklaus' construction crew for five years in the 1980s.

In a marketing statement, Wiltshire said, “Our aim is to build user-friendly golf courses, enjoyable for all, and at the same time create a balance in design with tee and bunker placements to ensure a stern championship layout.”

Back in the late 1970s, Golf Digest said that Nchanga was the 14th-best course outside the United States. As best I can determine, it's one of 19 golf courses in Zambia. The remaining 18 are evenly split between nine- and 18-hole tracks.

. . . canada . . .
The developers of Cabot Links, the much-anticipated, links-style track in Inverness, Nova Scotia, appear to have settled on the architects for their second course.

According to Golf Course Architecture, the track will be designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, the proprietors of the world’s hottest design firm. The Austin, Texas-based duo got the industry’s attention with Sand Hills Golf Club in Mullen, Nebraska, solidified their reputation with the Trails course at the Bandon Dunes resort in Oregon, and recently wrapped up a restoration of the #2 course at the Pinehurst resort in North Carolina.

The magazine says their property at Cabot Links “may not be classic rumpled linksland, but it’s a site that any architect would be overjoyed to work on.”

Cabot Links is being developed by Ben Cowan-Dewar, who runs a travel-oriented company called Golf TI; Ran Morrissett, the creator of GolfClubAtlas.com; and Chicago, Illinois-based Mike Keiser, the man who made Bandon, Oregon famous.

The property’s first course, a walking-only track designed by Rod Whitman, is scheduled to open 10 holes this year, with the full 18 to open in the spring of 2012. GCA notes that the second course “has not been officially confirmed,” but Keiser has been talking about it since October 2008, when the World Edition of the Golf Course Report profiled Cabot Links.

. . . british virgin islands . . .
A political candidate in the British Virgin Islands has promised that, if elected, his party will build a golf course on Virgin Gorda, one of the main islands in the archipelago.

The course would take shape on the island's South Sound, and it would be accompanied by a five-star hotel and other tourist attractions.

“I have this vision to build up that whole area there on Virgin Gorda into a commercial paradise,” Hubert O´Neal said in a radio address.

The course would be the first in the BVI. Of course, the implication is that it won't be built unless O'Neal and the National Democratic Party's other candidates are elected. The party advocates making big investments in all kinds of development ventures, in the belief that the benefits will eventually trickle down to every member of society, making them all healthy, wealthy, and wise.

The idea of building a golf course in the BVI has been percolating for a while. Last June, I posted about an elected official who'd beseeched his colleagues to support golf construction, to prevent his nation from losing potential tourists to the nearby islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, Puerto Rico, and even Cuba, all of which have golf courses.

O'Neal is singing much the same song.

“We are going to raise the level of tourism,” he told his listeners, “and make it an opportunity for our people to improve their financial standing.”

Geez, I can practically hear the NDP's supporters cheering.

. . . scotland . . .
If you just dropped in from Mars, you may not know that Donald Trump is building a “spectacular,” even “incomparable” golf course in Scotland.

You may not know that Trump International Golf Links Scotland is being built in “a perfect location” on the nation's northeastern coast. Or that it'll most certainly become “a destination for golfers from all around the world.” Or that the Martin Hawtree-designed track will “deserve” to host a major tournament and that Trump is “certain [it] will happen.”


At least that's how Trump sees it. He likes to brag about the course that's rising out of the sands of Scotland, and CNN Money didn't have the energy to put a muzzle on him or to evaluate the veracity of his comments.

So when Trump said “There are no negatives” -- a fact that comes as a surprise to those of us who've been following his controversial project from the start -- the news service didn't question him. And when he said that his 7,400-yard links would one day be known as the “world's greatest golf course,” it didn't even suggest that Scotland already has some pretty great competition.

It seems that CNN Money didn't want to ask Trump even a single tough question. Is CNN hoping to lure him to its television network? Is it afraid of offending a potential presidential candidate?

I have no doubt that Trump is going to deliver an outstanding golf course, perhaps even a true world-class layout that will one day stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Scotland's finest. But can we at least wait until the darned thing opens before we start fawning over it?