Shameless Self-Promotion, october 2011

Remember the old TV program “Eight Is Enough”? Well, when it comes to golf in China today, eight isn't nearly enough. Any Chinese developer itching to make a statement these days needs to build at least 10 courses.

Yes, Mission Hills' bigger-is-better concept is spreading. It started in Shenzhen, then went to Hainan Island. And now it's headed to Yunnan Province, at a spread called Sky Oasis Golf Club. The club will be the centerpiece of a 10,000-acre community roughly an hour's drive from Kunming, and it's been master-planned to have 10 golf courses.

“It's all a matter of status and perception,” says the head of the company that's designing the community's third and fourth courses. “They all know the Mission Hills story.”

A report on Sky Oasis is among the featured stories in October's World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

This month, we also provide an answer to a question that isn't asked nearly enough -- Can a country music festival and a golf community make beautiful music together? -- and we reveal the identity of the golf course architect who, upon winning a commission in Northern Ireland, told his client, If I can't get your course into the top 50 of the world, you should shoot me.

Speaking of “must-play” courses, elsewhere in the current issue you'll find a report on the next prospective “world-class” track that's planned in Tasmania, along with notices about other new courses in Australia, Estonia, the Philippines, and Grand Cayman Island.

We also give some ink to Jack Nicklaus, who's been tapped to design both a “signature” course in Brazil and a Nicklaus Legacy course in Argentina, and to Tony Jacklin, who's writing his “signature” on a forthcoming layout in Cuba.

If you're wondering, we do indeed know that China, once the world's hottest golf market, is now all but frozen stiff. But that didn't stop us from writing about the 36-hole complex that Caesars Entertainment wants to build on Hainan Island, or about Retief Goosen's 27-hole complex in Sichuan Province.

Finally, we offer a little tough love to India, which KPMG's Golf Advisory Practice believes could build as many as 100 new courses over the next decade. It isn't that we think India doesn't need more golf courses. We just think Indian developers are going to build the wrong kind of courses.

To get your copy of October's World Edition, give me a call at 301/680-9460 or send an e-mail to me at WorldEdition@aol.com.