Vietnam has established exactly what a nation of 5,000 golfers needs: An equity golf club.
Excuse the sarcasm. I've long had queasy feelings about golf development in Vietnam, and now I'm starting to get nauseous.
Here's the news:
The developer of Saigon Golf Club, a group called Saigon Development & Investment Corporation -- a name that in and of itself gives me some discomfort -- has begun to sell ownership interests into its plush club, which will feature a golf course designed by Greg Norman. SDIC is hoping to sell a total of 600 shares, at a price that hasn't yet been made public.
According to Thanh Nien News, a press release issued by SDIC notes that “shareholders can choose to apply for membership or treat their shares purely as an investment.”
Get 'em while they're hot! Use the profits to send your kids to college!
Saigon Golf Club will be part of a 335-acre community in suburban Ho Chi Minh City, the metropolis once known as Saigon. At build-out, the community is expected to consist of a few hundred villas and condos, a hotel, a “city spa” managed by Six Senses Resorts & Spas, a health and fitness center, restaurants, and other attractions. A year or so ago, at the golf course's ceremonial ground-breaking, SDIC pledged to create Vietnam’s “most exclusive residential, golf, and country club community.”
A side note: Roughly one-quarter of the community's villas will be Greg Norman “signature” units. These “Reflection by Norman” villas are to be located on a private island, and their design will be based on “Norman-inspired” principles.
As for the club's 18-hole, championship-length course, it's scheduled to open in late 2012 or early 2013. But here's a let-the-buyer-beware moment for prospective shareholders: SDIC has said that the track will be “typical of [Norman's] trademark aggressive layouts.”
I presume that any members who get discouraged by the course's difficulty will take solace in the fact that they've bought into what SDIC has called “the best in golfing facilities as well as a luxurious atmosphere of private club living.”
One other thing: the story in Thanh Nien News says the layout has been “recognized as one of the world’s best seven golf courses under construction."
By whom? I'd very much like to see such a list.
Some information in this post was originally published in the January 2011 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.
abu dhabi What Happens to a Dream Deferred?
Remember the visually arresting, post-modernist clubhouse that was supposed to support the golf courses at the Saadiyat Island community in Abu Dhabi?
Well, it hasn't yet been built. The dozers aren't scheduled to arrive until the golf club attracts enough members to make the expenditure worthwhile.
And what about the community's second course, the one to be designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr.?
No, it hasn't been built either. Heck, hardly anybody even talks about it anymore. Like Frank Gehry's artful clubhouse, an expression of the psychic delights sparked by oil-fueled boom times, it's become yet another victim of the global economic crash.
In fact, none of the grandest attractions promised for sprawling Saadiyat Island -- the Guggenheim museum, the Louvre museum, the campus of New York University -- have yet seen the light of day.
Not to worry, though. Everything that's been promised -- the houses, the hotels, the office space, the marinas -- will come in due time. Just ask the community's developer, Tourism Development & Investment Company.
“The timing has changed substantially, but we have not taken anything out,” TDIC's chief financial officer recently told the National. “The master plan stays.”
But for how long? In a desert, the sands of time are mere dust in the wind.
Today Saadiyat Island, which has been planned to spread over nearly 6,700 acres, is pretty much an empty place. It has a golf course, a Gary Player “signature” track that opened last year, and a beach club that opened last month. A pair of resort-style hotels, a St. Regis and a Park Hyatt, are expected to open next month.
And there's a visitors' center, complete with a scale model of Saadiyat Island's glorious ambitions. It's where the dream dies hard.
So what comes next?
TDIC, the development arm of Abu Dhabi’s tourism authority, says that Saadiyat Island's next big crowd-attractor will be the Louvre Abu Dhabi. When? In 2014, probably. Tentatively. Nothing chiseled in stone.
“If the world comes back strong and the demand starts to grow and tourism starts to build into the region at the rate that it has over the last three years -- if that continues, 2020 could absolutely be possible to build out a large majority of Saadiyat,” says the CFO. “If it slows down at all, 2020 extends.”
The message: These days, promises are meaningless. Circumstances are beyond anybody's control. Even the best-laid plans are peppered with contingencies and best-case scenarios and fallback positions. We live in a time of uncertainty. A world of “if.”
Some information in this post originally appeared in the November 2008 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.
peru A Taste of Pizá
A Mexican golf architect and the Peruvian Golf Association are hoping to raise enough money to build a nine-hole, beginner-friendly golf course in suburban Lima.
José Agustin Pizá, the principal of Pizá Golf Architecture, hopes to build the course and an accompanying practice center in Cruz de Hueso, on a 56-acre parcel owned by the association.
“This story has gone national in Peru, and I know there are some businesses that are interested in donating to help make it happen,” Pizá recently told Golf Course Architecture. “The involvement of the national government, through the sports federation, is huge. That is very rare in Latin America.”
Pizá, a member of the European Institute of Golf Course Architects, isn't taking a fee for the design work. In Mexico, he's responsible for two courses: a nine-hole, par-3 layout at Puerto Escondido Golf Course on Baja California Sur, and a nine-hole addition at Club Campestre in Tampico, in the state of Tamaulipas.
He's also served as an on-site project manager for Gary Player Design, during the construction of Player's course at the CostaBaja resort in La Paz.
Pizá hopes to start the work in Cruz de Hueso next year. Depending on how the fundraising campaign goes, the facility may open three holes at a time over several years.
Golf Course Architecture reports that the track will be “the first publicly accessible golf course in Peru,” a claim that may not be true. Of the 14 courses that WorldGolf.com lists in Peru, 10 are said to offer public play.
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