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Sunday, January 30, 2011

The Week That Was: January 30, 2011

scotland Two Americans Get the Scottish Open

This year's Scottish Open will be played at Castle Stuart Golf Links outside Inverness, on Scotland’s Moray Firth. The course was designed by two Americans, Mark Parsinen and Gil Hanse, and opened to great acclaim in 2009.

The event will take place in July, the week before the British Open.

Castle Stuart is Parsinen's second golf course in Scotland, and he's already got a site picked out for his third.

His first course was Kingsbarns, near St. Andrews, a co-design with Kyle Phillips, an architect based in Granite Bay, California. One critic said Kingsbarns, which opened a decade ago, “appears so natural that you would think that it had been there for years” and “deserves to be bracketed alongside the greatest courses in the world.”

Parsinen aimed to do something even better in Inverness, on a 425-acre parcel that he once said was “the best site I’ve ever seen,” and he succeeded. Castle Stuart has been hailed as “a golfing masterpiece” that “captivates the mind and tests every element in your golfing armoury.” Golf magazine named the 7,009-yard track the “best new international golf course” for 2009, and Ron Whitten of Golf Digest recently said it “might be the most perfectly conceived and executed design ever built.”

Parsinen makes no bones about his goals for Castle Stuart. “We want the Open championship to come here,” he said in an interview with Golf Course Architecture in 2009.

My guess is that the Scottish Open will serve as a tune-up for the bigger event.

Parsinen's next golf course, to take shape on a site adjacent to Castle Stuart's existing track, will probably also be designed by Hanse, who’s based in Malvern, Pennsylvania. But don’t expect it to be built anytime soon. It took Parsinen six years to build the first course at Castle Stuart, and he’s not in any hurry to build the second.

In recent years, the Scottish Open -- officially known as Barclays Scottish Open -- has been played at Loch Lomond Golf Club, which had been owned by another American, Lyle Anderson. Anderson lost Loch Lomond when he defaulted on some loans, and a members' group acquired the club earlier this month.

canada Desperately Seeking Managers

Nova Scotia wants to sell or lease three resorts, including one with a Stanley Thompson-designed golf course.

The course is the featured attraction of Digby Pines Golf Resort & Spa in Digby, a town along the Bay of Fundy. It's a 6,284-yard, parkland-style track that opened in the late 1920s.

The province is also itching to unload Liscombe Lodge Resort & Conference Centre in Liscombe Mills and Keltic Lodge Resort & Spa in Cape Breton.

“We believe these are iconic properties and have buckets of potential,” one of the province's tourism officials told CBC News.

The province has focused on the resorts' potential because they aren't currently making any money. What's more, the company currently managing them, Connecticut-based New Castle Hotels & Resort, believes that they could use $11 million worth of improvements.

Incidentally, Keltic Lodge is located on property adjacent to another Thompson-designed track, the highly regarded Highland Links Golf Course. Golf Canada recently described the course, located in Cape Breton Highlands National Park, as “a Canadian treasure,” though it appears that the treasure has been looted. The track has been damaged by recent floods and may not open as scheduled in the spring.

Parks Canada, the owner of Highland Links, is currently trying to scrounge up the money needed to repair the course. It's possible that the agency could also spring for at least some of the upgrades called for in a renovation plan created by Ian Andrew, a Brantford, Ontario-based architect, in 2008. The course was last renovated in the late 1990s.

Roughly speaking, Thompson is to Canadian golf architecture what Robert Trent Jones is to U.S. golf architecture. He co-founded (with Donald Ross) the American Society of Golf Course Architects and designed more than 140 courses in Canada, as well as others in the United States and elsewhere. Andrew believes that he's one of the 10 greatest golf designers in history.

“We all look at him as the bar,” says Andrew. “He's the level we have to deliver at if we want to make a statement.”

Thompson has designed two other courses that are located in national parks, both in Alberta: Banff Springs Hotel Golf Course in Banff and Jasper Park Golf Course in Jasper.

india Still Looking in Goa, Part Two

After coming up empty the first time around, state officials have renewed their efforts to find someone who'll build a golf course in Goa.

The state's tourism department is seeking expressions of interest from a developer willing to establish “a PGA-standard golf course and allied tourism activities at one place, either individually or as a consortium.”

Late last year, it appeared that Goa had found a developer, as its tourism minister reported that three parties had responded to the original EOI and that the golf course would be built in Pernem, a town of the northern part of the state.

Perhaps the terms were too onerous. The revised EOI states that the prospective developer must provide the site (a minimum of 200 acres), have at least 25 years' worth of experience in the hospitality business, and have in place “a reputed international hospitality brand” to manage the facility. In addition, the ideal candidate is someone who's already operating a golf course somewhere.

Goa currently has just one 18-hole course, a K. D. Bagga-designed layout at the Intercontinental resort in Canacona. The state's goal is to “attract high-spending tourists,” particularly golf-crazy Japanese tourists, and it believes another golf course would help do it.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Some New Courses You May Have Missed

You heard that six golf courses opened at the Mission Hills resort on Hainan Island last year, right?

My guess is that you've also heard about Greg Norman's new course at DaNang Golf Club in Vietnam. And about Gary Player's course at the Costa Baja resort in Mexico, not to mention Nick Faldo's course at the Elea resort on Cyprus and Tom Fazio's course at Baker's Bay in the Bahamas.

That's because all those courses, and many others like them, were built by companies with enough money to hire press agents and publicity people. When you aim to sell high-priced real estate, you've got to spread the word.

But lots of other courses opened all over the world in 2010, most with less fanfare and much less-famous designers. Here are four of them:

Vietnam. In January 2010, an 18-hole course opened at what’s expected to become Vietnam's largest golf resort. The course -– it’s been described as a “championship signature course” –- is the centerpiece of Royal Golf Club in Tam Diep, a town about 70 miles south of Hanoi. The course was designed by Peter Rousseau of Hanoi-based P&Z Development Corporation and built by a government-run company, PV-Inconess Investment Corporation, to bring tourists and their money to Ninh Binh Province. PV-Inconess controls 1,675 acres where it’ll eventually have some villas, a hotel, a shopping area, a water park, restaurants, a sports complex, and two more 18-hole tracks.

Italy. The 18-hole Mountain course at Castelfalfi Golf & Country Club in Montaione, Italy opened last summer, and the club’s 18-hole Lake course is expected to open this year, perhaps as early as the spring. The golf complex will anchor Toscana Resort Castelfalfi, a 2,750-acre spread in the heart of Tuscany. The property constitutes all four square miles of what used to be a quaint but crumbling Italian village that included a failing golf course (Castelfalfi Golf & Country Club) designed by the late Pier Luigi Mancinelli. TUI Hotels & Resorts, a German tour operator and hotelier, junked the existing golf course and brought in Wilfried Moroder and Rainer Preissmann to design the new ones.

Ukraine. Last fall, Kiev Golf Club opened its “flagship” course, a championship-length track designed by Peter Chamberlain, a Swedish architect. The Chamberlain course, as it's called, has already been selected to host the Ukraine’s first professional golf tournament, in 2012. Kiev Golf Club is part of a 1,000-acre community that will eventually have houses, an equestrian center, polo fields, and a variety of sports-related attractions, including an outdoor pool and a golf academy. Its developers aim to attract what they call “a narrow category of status users,” including diplomats, government officials, and international businessmen. The club has two existing nine-hole courses, the 1,870-yard Park course (it opened in 2008) and the 3,143-yard Club course (2009).

Poland. Question: What do you call Poland’s first fly-in golf community? Answer: Sobienie Royal Golf & Country Club. No joke. The club is located in the village of Sobienie-Jeziory (it’s roughly 30 miles south of Warsaw), and it opened the first nine holes of its Jonathan Davison-designed golf course last fall. The second nine is scheduled to open in the fall of this year. Sobienie Royal is being developed by a Warsaw-based company, Wiodarzewska Development Group, which aims to build 80 single-family houses, 190 apartments, a hotel, a spa, and, yes, an air strip on adjacent property. Davison is an associate at Ford Golf Group, a firm based in Horam (East Sussex), England, with satellite offices in Austria and the Czech Republic. Jeremy Ford, the company’s namesake, co-designed Prague City Golf Club, the first 18-hole course in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

Sunday, January 23, 2011

The Week That Was: January 23, 2011

united states 2010: Down by 61

Final score: 107-46.

No, it's not the result of a college basketball game. It's the number of U.S. golf courses that closed in 2010, as opposed to the number that opened.

The numbers have been posted by the National Golf Foundation, which did its count in terms of what it calls “18-hole equivalents.” The Jupiter, Florida-based trade group notes that our nation has closed more courses than it's opened for five consecutive years.

The NGF also counted the number of existing courses in the United States: 15,890. Of that number, 4,382 are nine-hole tracks.

In 2004, the United States had 16,057 nine- and 18-hole golf courses.

We'll get more disheartening statistics from the NGF next month, when it publishes the 2011 edition of its report on “Golf Facilities in the U.S.”

canada The Quarry Has New Owners

An investment group led by Darren Stalteri has purchased Quarry Golf Club in Ennismore, Ontario.

The sales price wasn't announced. The Quarry features an 18-hole, 6,565-yard course designed by Shawn Watters, an architect based in Elora, Ontario. The course opened in 2007.

“It's a golf course that it doesn't matter whether you're a junior, old, young, men, senior,” Stalteri told the Peterborough Examiner. “It's a golf course that every level can enjoy.”

Stalteri formerly served as the general manager of Black Diamond Golf Club in Millbrook. He sold his interest in Black Diamond late last year and joined two other investors in the purchase of the Quarry.

The group bought the Quarry from Calgary-based Parkbridge Lifestyle Communities, Inc., which had acquired it in 2008.

Watters has designed several other courses in Ontario, including Wildwinds Golf Links in Rockwood and Oak Bay Golf Course in Port Severn.

canada Last Chance for Iroquois Golf Club?

Twice in recent years, South Dundas Township has tried and failed to find new managers for Iroquois Golf Club. Now, in a last-ditch effort ensure that the 18-hole track opens in the spring, it's again seeking help from the private sector.

I have to ask: Will this be a case of “the third time's the charm,” or will it be “three strikes and you're out”?

Responses to the township's call for proposals are due on February 15, 2011. If an acceptable manager can't be found, the course, located in the town of Iroquois, Ontario, will likely be closed.

“The board feels that they want to try, to give it every effort to find someone,” the township's chief administrative officer told the Cornwall Standard Freeholder. “If there's nothing by February 15, the board will have a very serious look at where they're going to go with it.”

The township has reportedly sunk about $200,000 into the course since it took possession of it three years ago.

“At the end of the day, our preference is that the Iroquois Golf Club continue to operate and prosper,” the township's mayor said in a press release. “However, it cannot continue to operate at the expense of other township projects and programs.”

australia Geelong Meets Its Downsizer

Links Living has selected the architect who'll downsize Geelong Golf Club, and his identity shouldn't surprise anyone.

It's Graham Papworth, an architect based in Hastings Point, New South Wales. Links Living previously hired Papworth to design golf courses it hopes to build in Airlie Beach, Queensland (at Whitsunday Springs) and in Madden Plains, New South Wales (Illawarra Golf Club). Both communities have been in the works for several years, delayed by a sluggish housing market and difficulties in securing approvals.

Geelong, which was founded in 1892, is the oldest club in Victoria. Papworth, the president of the Australian Society of Golf Course Architects, will shrink the club's 18-hole course to a nine-hole, 2,400-yard track that he says will “offer an enjoyable challenge to all standards of golfer and at the same time create a premium asset within the estate for future home owners.”

Links Group, which acquired the club in 2003, plans to build 191 single-family houses, 120 houses for seniors, and a “big box” retail store on its 115-acre property.

The club is located in the town of Geelong, about 40 miles southwest of Melbourne.

united states God Save the Republic

Last week USA Today talked golf with talk-radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh, the headliner in this season's edition of “The Haney Project.” In the course of the conversation, the newspaper asked a stupid question -- Do conservatives make better golfers than liberals? -- and Limbaugh gave a stupider answer:

I don't know any liberal golfers. I've met one pro golfer who was a liberal, and that was Scott Simpson. He came to my TV show a long time ago with Paul Azinger. And Scott was a nice guy.


If I had to say, there would be no question, conservatives make better golfers. Golf is an individual game. It's about self-reliance. There is no team. You can't depend on a government regulation or a grant or a subsidy to help you. You can't arbitrarily punish somebody else for doing better than you are doing, like liberals do all the time.

There is no question that liberals would have a tough time with this game and wouldn't like it because they'd have to rely on themselves.

How's that? I dare you to print that.

Friday, January 21, 2011

talking points Coore Values

It's only been open (officially, at least) for a month or two, but Bill Coore's new golf course in Tasmania, off the southeastern coast of Australia, is getting rave reviews. The most notable comment has come from Mike Keiser, the developer of the Bandon Dunes golf resort in Oregon, who said that it “just may be the strongest golf course built anywhere in the world since Augusta National in 1934.”

Full disclosure: Coore and Keiser have some history. Coore co-designed (with his long-time collaborator, Ben Crenshaw) one of the four existing courses at Bandon Dunes, and he's been hired to design the resort's fifth course, a 12-hole, par-3 track. It could be argued that Keiser's comments about Coore's course in Tasmania are merely marketing hype.

Still, Coore's stock as a designer has clearly risen higher than it's ever been. And as a result, when he talks, people listen.

Coore recently talked about the course in Tasmania, the Lost Farm track at Barnbougle Dunes, with John Huggan of the Scotsman. Along the way, he made a few comments about golf design. To wit:

On the lay of the land: We truly do let the site dictate what we do. We look for sites that feel like golf in its natural state. We have no preconceived notions about par or yardages. We just let it evolve. To us, course architecture is an art, not a science. It does have a technical foundation, but the creation of the holes is an art.

On being pro-choice: We like to present situations where golfers choose how to play the hole, as opposed to us dictating how they are going to play it. . . . Dictating to players is the easiest thing to do, particularly very good players. They love to play holes that tell them exactly what to do, so all that is left is 'hit between this and this.' Technically, they can do that over and over. When there is mystery involved, the decision-making process becomes part of the challenge.

On following the straight and narrow: A lot of the problem is television, where people watch the same courses over and over. They watch professional golfers being asked the same question time after time. They hear commentators talking about the 'premium' on driving the ball in the fairway. So the perception grows that hitting to those narrow spots is what the game should be. But it is the most uninteresting golf to watch and to play.

Here's a link to the story.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

Shameless Self-Promotion, January 2011

So what's happening in golf development as we kick off the new year?

“A little Napoleon” has hired Kyle Phillips to design a golf course in the Netherlands. Economically speaking, Gary Browning, a Canadian designer, believes that “things are ready to loosen up.” (Here's proof: He's expecting to break ground on at least two new courses this year.) The president of Uganda believes that Murchison Falls National Park could use a golf course. Brit Stenson and Ron Fream are working on new courses in Vietnam. Greg Norman is working on two.

What else?

Fream is also designing the first 18-hole course for a ski resort in Hebei Province, China that could eventually have five 18-hole courses. The new mayor of a small town in Slovenia -- people call him the “Obama of Piran” -- wants to build a golf course. Harry Colt is serving as the inspiration for another new course in the Netherlands. Joe Jemsek is designing a golf course in one of the world's most polluted cities.

You can read about these projects, as well as others, in January's World Edition of the Golf Course Report. We've even got an item about a British consultant who believes that Ireland's golf business won't get back on its feet until about 50 of its 433 golf clubs close.

That sounds familiar, doesn't it?

If you'd like a copy of this month's World Edition, give me a call at 301/680-9460 or send an e-mail to me at WorldEdition@aol.com.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

japan The Doctor's Appointment in Japan

Rees Jones, the "Open Doctor," is heading East, to oversee an overhaul of the West course at Ibaraki Golf Club in suburban Osaka.

Like many Japanese courses, Ibaraki's 7,056-yard West course has two greens on each hole, one for summer play and one for winter play. Jones will eliminate one set of greens, rebuild the layout’s tees and bunkers, and regrass the surviving greens. The work, scheduled to begin in early 2011, will be overseen by Bryce Swanson, one of the associates in Jones' Montclair, New Jersey-based firm.

Jones says that the West track was designed by Seiichi Inoue and opened in 1960, although other sources say the designer was Osamu Ueda.

Ibaraki’s 7,134-yard East course, which opened in 1923, will host the Japan Open in 2013.

Also this year, probably in the fall, Jones expects to open the first 18 at Yunling Mountain Golf Club in suburban Kunming, China. Yunling’s unnamed developers plan to add a third nine in the future.

Sunday, January 16, 2011

The Week That Was: January 16, 2011

canada A Montreal Stake for Weir and Andrew

Mike Weir and Ian Andrew haven't yet landed a commission to design a new golf course, but they’re just a signature away from doing their first renovation.

This summer, the duo -- Weir is Canada’s top professional golfer, and Andrew is the nation’s most promising architect -- will begin an overhaul of the Blue course at Club Laval-sur-le-Lac in suburban Montreal. The course opened with nine holes in 1917, and the club added a second nine in 1994.

“We are days away from signing the contract,” the club's greens chairman told the Toronto Globe & Mail.

The renovation has been in the works for a year or more. After some debate, the club's members approved it last fall.

“It’s always a generational thing,” the greens chairman explained. “The younger members want to change, but the older generation doesn’t.”

The Blue course is scheduled to reopen in May 2013. The Globe & Mail reports that Weir and Andrew plan to transform the track into “a member-friendly course that is also strong enough to test Canadian Open players” -- a task that's not easily or often accomplished. It's possible that a better professional test could be found at Club Laval-sur-le-Lac’s Green course, which hosted the Canadian Open in 1962.

Weir and Andrew became a design item in March 2009. Last year they were also tapped to create master plans for future renovations of Islington Golf Club in suburban Toronto and Truro Golf Club in central Nova Scotia.

philippines Another Reason To Visit Cebu

A Korean group wants to build a resort community, featuring what's been described as “an 18-hole golf course of international standards,” on Cebu Island.

The course will be the centerpiece of Queen's Castle Golf Club, which aims to lure the Korean tourists who travel to Cebu in an attempt to escape their nation's bitter winters and steep greens fees.

The club will take shape in Medellin, a city of 45,000 that's located in the northern tip of the island. The Philippine Star says that 200 Koreans go to Medellin every week “just to play golf.” These days they have two venues to enjoy: Mercedes Plantation Golf & Country Club in Medellin, which features an 18-hole course designed by Frankie Minoza, and Verdemar Golf Club in San Remigio, which has a Gary Player-designed track.

By the way, Player has also designed another course on the island, Alta Vista Golf & Country Club in Cebu City.

Queen's Castle is being developed by URI Development Corporation. Besides the golf course, URI plans to build some condos, a hotel, a spa, and other attractions.

wales Down the Drain in Coal Country

Carmarthenshire Council has waved the white flag. It's searching for a private group willing to assume management of its money-losing golf course.

The 18-hole Parc Garnant Golf Course, located outside the village of Ammanford and within a veritable stone's throw of Brecon Beacons National Park, was built on a former open-cast coal mine and opened in 1997. In 2004, according to the BBC, the Golf Union of Wales named it the best new course of the year.

Better late than never, I guess.

Unfortunately, the notoriety hasn't translated into rounds, and the course is expected to lose about $240,000 this year -- too much for the local government to handle. To help the course turn a profit, it needs professional help.

“It is a great course with stunning views of the Brecon Beacons,” a councilmember told the BBC. “There is a lot of potential there.”

The council says it's received more than 20 inquiries about the lease, including a pair of what's been described as “firm proposals.”

england A Course To Test Your Metal

If you've ever dreamed of playing golf with a rock star, get out your checkbook. Astbury Hall Golf Club is taking memberships.

The club features an 18-hole, 6,500-yard course that was designed by K. K. Downing, the lead guitarist of Judas Priest, the world-famous heavy-metal band. It's located on Downing's estate in Shropshire, England.


Don't fret: the club won't be filled with stuffy Brits, and its website notes that it “does not enforce a dress code policy.” Back in 2009, when the course's first nine holes opened, Downing told the Birmingham Post that he was intent on creating “a top-class golf center with no snobbery.”

“Astbury Hall has been born from my experiences on golf courses from around the world,” Downing said in a recently issued press statement. “I am fortunate enough to have played some of the finest the world has to offer, and I feel privileged to have been able to create a property that encompasses all my cherished experiences. I have been lucky to work in two industries that have allowed me to be so creative, especially golf course architecture, which has enabled the visions in my head to be transformed beautifully into a reality.”

Doesn't sound like a typical guitar hero, does he? You'd almost think that people were putting words in his mouth.

The course's second nine opened last fall. Downing didn't mention it, so I will: Calum Todd, a British architect, helped to design the course.

Downing, who’s 56, bought Astbury Hall in 1985 and has since acquired some additional property, giving him a total of 720 acres. He hopes to eventually have a 27-hole complex, along with 14 holiday lodges and eight other housing units.

And in case you're wondering, Astbury Hall is no rag-tag operation. Downing has hired Troon Golf to manage the property.

Friday, January 14, 2011

talking points Costs and Hidden Costs

With the possible exception of Gary Player, no celebrity designer talks more about sustainable golf practices than Greg Norman. (Never mind that Great White hasn't as yet actually delivered a “sustainable” course.) Here are Norman's latest comments on the topic, as they appeared in a transcript of a press conference at the Shark Shootout:

I don't think we'll ever get back to days of building 450 golf courses a year in America. That's done. I mean, that's history. . . .

If America wants to sit back, or our industry wants to sit back and take a study of what's happened since the 80s to where we are here today, I think the one word that really resonates, as far as I'm concerned . . . is
sustainability.

Build golf courses with sustainability. And sustainability is not going out there with the slash-and-burn approach and spend $20 million on building a golf course when it should have only been 10. The unlimited budget approach is done now, unless you have a sugar daddy who wants to come in and just build a golf course for himself.

The responsibility now for anybody in the United States and the rest of the world is to build golf courses that can sustain, generation after generation after generation.

The ongoing cost of the construction of a golf course is huge. The sustainability from environmental issues are huge. So you've got to be able to make sure those costs are kept down to a minimum, because the cost of living always escalates. So if you start in with a big price tag, that price tag never really gets reduced. It keeps getting higher and higher and higher.

When we look back at what happened in the 80s in America, a lot of the golf courses that were built, you had to have hand labor to maintain them. So then the annual dues are very, very expensive, and those annual dues keep multiplying and going up and up and up.


Note to Greg: It's time to put your money where your mouth is.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

england Heads Up

Probably by 2012, or maybe 2013, a David Heads-designed, championship-length golf course is coming to Great Paxton, a village that’s 15 miles west of Cambridge, England.

The course will be part of the 215-acre Cambridgeshire Golf Club & Academy that’s being developed by Michael Taylor, the head of City & Country.

The local parish council has expressed concerns about the project’s viability –- “There are already more than 30 golf courses in the area,” it said in a statement, “all experiencing membership difficulties in the present economic climate” -– but last fall it nonetheless granted the rezoning that Taylor’s group needs to begin work on the course.

The group hopes to break ground on the course this year.

Heads, the chairman of Stoneheads, will reportedly import 120,000 tons of fill to create the course.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

The Week That Was: January 9, 2011

japan Sayonara, Goldman Sachs

Goldman Sachs Group is leaving Japan's lousy golf business.

The New York City-based investment bank plans to sell its 45 percent stake in Accordia Golf, the largest owner/operator of golf properties in Japan. Tokyo-based Accordia, which opened for business in 2002, currently owns 131 properties.

Since Goldman Sachs took Accordia public in 2006, the investment fund's stock price has fallen by about 60 percent, a decline that reflects the cooling of Japan's torrid love affair with golf. The popularity of golf in Japan, the world’s second-largest golf market (after the United States), reached its peak in the late 1980s and early 1990s but has been waning ever since. The nation currently has an estimated 10 million golfers, a number that's expected to shrink to 6.7 million by 2015, as older golfers die and younger ones find other diversions.

In creating Accordia, Goldman's idea was to buy distressed and under-performing courses at low prices, return them to profitability, and sell them at handsome profits. It didn't foresee that Japan's golf-crazy middle class would so quickly abandon the game for less expensive pursuits -- the price of a round of golf in Japan is truly “world class” -- leading to the erosion of Accordia's value.

The Financial Times reports that “the number of players at [Japan's] golf courses” -- I presume the phrase means the number of rounds played -- peaked in 1992, at 102 million. By 2009, the number had fallen to 91 million.

“Golf is a luxury,” a financial consultant told Bloomberg. “Playing numbers are falling because of the declining population and weakening economy, as well as companies choosing not to entertain clients on the course.”

Goldman owns more than 470,000 shares in Accordia. Bloomberg says that they're currently worth $445 million.

south africa Another One Bites the Dust

One of South Africa's most prolific golf developers is also leaving the golf business.

Although it believes that the nation's housing market is “showing early signs of recovery,” Pinnacle Point Group has decided to stop building golf communities and aims to sell at least two of its best-known golf clubs. In a recent financial statement, it said that “ownership of golf courses will no longer be part of its future strategy.”

We've heard this story before, haven't we? Like so many other companies, PPG has concluded that golf development isn't what it used to be.

Available at the right price, whatever it may be, are two of PPG's premier properties, Pinnacle Point Golf Club in Mossel Bay and Clarens Golf & Trout Estate in the Free State Highlands.

These days PPG also owns Wedgewood Village Golf & Country Estate outside Port Elizabeth, which I suppose could also be on the market. Last year, the company agreed to sell Gardener Ross Golf & Country Estate in suburban Pretoria, which features an Ernie Els-designed course, but I can't determine if the sale was ever completed.

PPG has also left some to-be-built golf communities on the table. It had planned to build Romansbaai Beach & Fynbos Estate on South Africa's Western Cape, a 3,000-acre coastal community in Nigeria called Lagos Keys, and the Ile Aurore Nouvelle golf community in the Seychelles, an island chain in the Indian Ocean. Ile Aurore Nouvelle’s golf course was to be co-designed by Darren Clarke, the PGA pro, and Peter Matkovich, an architect based in Kwazula Natal, South Africa.

Various news reports say that PPG has lined up a buyer for Pinnacle Point Golf Club, which has a Matkovich-designed course.

puerto rico Keeping Up with the Joneses

Robert Trent Jones, Jr. is midway through what he calls “a major restoration” of one of his late father's courses, the East course at Dorado Beach Resort & Club in suburban San Juan, Puerto Rico.

The idea, Jones Jr. says, “is to recapture the original design while uncovering a more flexible and fun course for all players.”

The East course, the first to be built at the 1,000-acre resort, opened in 1958. The resort's Jones-designed West course was added in 1966, and two more Jones-designed tracks (the Sugarcane and Pineapple layouts) opened later.

The East and West courses were subsequently renovated by Raymond Floyd, whose work is now presumably being undone.

“I came to Dorado as a teenager, when my father was working here, and started to realize how exciting golf course architecture is," said Jones Jr., whose design firm is based in Palo Alto, California. “It was a formative moment at the very beginning of my career."

Dorado Beach was developed by Laurance Rockefeller and, in its heyday, served as a Caribbean hang-out for celebrities, jet-setters, and politicians. According to a press release, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Gerald Ford, Dwight Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy all slept there.

scotland Verdict: A Bridge Too Far

The plan to build a foot bridge on the ancient, historic North Inch Golf Course has been put on hold, probably forever.

I posted about the proposal to build the bridge on December 5, 2010. The construction would have required the course's owners to relocate the green on the track's 15th hole, the course's signature hole, an idea that rubbed a lot of local golfers the wrong way. One of them felt that moving the green, which had been designed by Old Tom Morris, would have been “a great tragedy.”

Well, the tragedy has been averted.

A local charity, Capability Scotland, says that it'll no longer allow its land to be used for the bridge. The Perth and Kinross Council, the municipal body behind the plan, will have to build the bridge somewhere else.

Morris' great-great-grandson, Melvyn Hunter Morrow, told the Scotsman that the golf course “is as important to Perth as the Stone of Destiny is to Scone, and we shouldn't eradicate or remove what is left of Old Tom's work.”

Friday, January 7, 2011

talking points What's Good for Golf

In a recent interview with GolfersGuide.com, Tom Doak shared some thoughts about Pete Dye (“he brought interest and controversy back to golf”), Tiger Woods (“his business model will have to change if he wants to stay busy at design”), signature holes (“pretty cheesy”), China (“one thing that worries me . . . are the gigantic clubhouses”), and other topics.

When the interviewer, Brandon Underwood, asked Doak to spell out the “most effective strategy the golf industry could adopt to grow the game in the next 10-15 years,” here's what Doak had to say:

In America, I think the biggest thing would be if, instead of closing so many courses, we could figure out how to turn derelict courses into low-cost facilities that cater to juniors and people


just learning to play. It's not like we need that land for more condos or shopping malls, in the short term, anyway. The game is too expensive for newcomers, and long term, that's a huge problem.

Worldwide, the most important thing is to introduce golf to China in a more sustainable form, so they don't make all the same mistakes we did. To be honest, though, the “golf industry” has been part of the problem instead of the solution. Every segment of the industry has driven up the cost of the game as they found ways to profit from golf, to the point where it wasn't sustainable anymore.

By contrast, golf is as healthy as it ever was in Scotland, because they don't make any decisions there about what's good for the “golf industry.” They run the game based on what's good for the golfers.


Here's a link to the interview.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

finland Still Waiting for St. Nick

Graham Cooke is keeping his fingers crossed, but he believes work on his long-delayed golf course in Finland could start this year.

Cooke, who’s based in Hudson, Quebec, was hired to design St. Nicholas Golf Club years ago, with a ground-breaking set for 2005, but the construction has been held up because flying squirrels make a home on part of the golf course site.

Last year, finally, the developers -– a group led by Janne Virtanen, a Finnish movie actor -– appeared to be making some progress in getting approvals and permits. Maybe it’s because Virtanen has some celebrities as partners, including Teemu Selanne, the hockey star who plays for the Anaheim Ducks; auto racers Marcus Gronholm and Sebastian Lindholm; and pop singer Timo Kojo.

The course will be built in Inkoo, a coastal city that’s 40 miles southwest of Helsinki.

Sunday, January 2, 2011

The Week That Was: January 2, 2011

new zealand Another Station Break

Don't look for work on the Bob Charles-designed golf course at Glendhu Bay Station to begin anytime soon.

A judge's ruling has sent the developers, a group known as Parkins Bay Preserve, Ltd., back to the drawing board once again. Despite calling their proposal “in many ways highly laudable,” Judge Jon Jackson has concluded that the developers' 450-acre community -- 42 single-family houses, 75 overnight accommodations, a lodge, and an 18-hole, championship-length golf course -- is inconsistent with existing environmental regulations.

The project, opposed by a variety of environmental and conservation groups, has been hung up in New Zealand's courts for more than two years. Local officials approved it in 2008.

Assuming it's ever built, Parkins Bay Golf Resort will take shape on Glendhu Bay Station, a 7,250-acre farm outside the town of Wanaka, in the south-central part of New Zealand's South Island. The property has been in the family of Bob and Pam McRae since the late 1960s.

The McRaes have enlisted John Darby, the principal of Queenstown-based Darby Partners, Ltd., to oversee the development of Parkins Bay and co-design its 7,014-yard golf course. Charles -- “Sir” Bob, as he’s known in these parts -- lends a certain je nais se quois to the endeavor, as he's not merely one of New Zealand’s most successful professional golfers but a national hero. People started to call him “sir” in 1999, when he became a Knight Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, one of the nation’s highest honors.

Darby and Charles have worked together before, on the golf course at the Millbrook resort in Queenstown. On his own, Darby has designed several high-profile courses in New Zealand, including the one at Jack’s Point resort in Queenstown.

scotland Getting There Is Half the Fun

One of the top links in Scotland is for sale.

It's Machrie Golf Links, a 6,254-yard layout designed by Willie Campbell in 1891 and modernized by Donald Steel in the late 1970s. The course is the featured attraction of a club that describes the track as “a subtle beast with a sense of humour” and promises that playing it will be “a bewitching and exalting experience.”

Okay, we all know the club is biased. So I sought another opinion.

I found one on PGATour.com, where I read that “there may be no better place to experience the true delights of a Scottish links than at the Machrie.”

“The name may not have the panache of a Royal Troon, Carnoustie, or St. Andrews,” says the story on the Tour's website, “but this little-known course contains more links character than all of the rest together.”

If only getting to Machrie wasn't so difficult. The course is located on Islay, the southernmost island of the Inner Hebrides, off Scotland's western coast. Islay has a population of about 3,000. On a clear day in what's called “the Queen of the Hebrides," you can see all eight of the island's single-malt whiskey distilleries.

Location, location, location. That's part of the reason why Machrie is for sale.

The course is an amenity for the Machrie Hotel & Golf Links, which has been taken over by its lenders. It's not hard to see why. The hotel has 16 rooms and 15 chalets, and it's the biggest hotel on the island. It attracts overnight guests during the summer, but the Caledonian Mercury says that it “struggles to fill its rooms during other lean months of the year.”

The property had been owned by a group led by Graham Ferguson Lacey, who'd hoped to attract more business by enlarging the hotel and adding a second golf course. His plans never went anywhere.

According to the Mercury, some people on the island worry that a buyer may not soon be found. This is a legitimate concern. Undoubtedly, a historic, classically designed, highly regarded golf course appeals to many prospective buyers. But it comes with a tiny, seasonal hotel in a place that hardly anyone outside the U.K. can find on a map. Who'd want to own a place like that?

Mike Keiser, are you reading this?

new zealand A Makeover for Royal Wellington

The members of Royal Wellington Golf Club have given the green light to a $7 million overhaul of their golf course.

The renovation, which begins this month, will be overseen by Greg Turner and Scott Macpherson, the principals of Queenstown-based Turner Macpherson Golf Design. The partners plan to lengthen the track, toughen up its greens and bunkers, and bring some of the streams that run through the club's property into play. They also plan to add a new nine for the club’s members.

The club expects the work to take three years.

Royal Wellington is one of New Zealand's premier golf properties. Established in 1895, the club has hosted the New Zealand Open seven times, but its 7,053-yard track no longer challenges touring pros. It last hosted the Open in the mid 1990s.

Turner has called Royal Wellington “a special place and a special club,” but he believes its golf course is “adequate rather than exceptional.”

colombia High on Tourism

Is Colombia about to raise its golf profile?

The nation has 55 golf properties -- among South American nations, only Argentina and Brazil have more -- and last year it hosted the PGA Tour’s first sanctioned tournament on the continent, an event on the Nationwide Tour.

What's more, the Los Angeles Times reports that the soon-to-open Karibana Beach Golf Club in Cartagena, which features a 6,900-yard, Nicklaus Design course, is being considered for some kind of tournament.

So much for Colombia being nothing more than a narco-state. You've come a long way, baby.

The fact is, people from all over the world are visiting Colombia in ever-larger numbers these days, and the nation's tourism business is booming. The number of international travelers who made their way to Colombia increased by 17 percent in 2009, to 1.7 million.

And that number doesn't include passengers from cruise ships, which carry an average of 1,500 vacationers. During the peak season, from October to April, cruise ships dump their passengers into Cartagena 25 times a month.

Karibana Beach will be Nicklaus' second course in Colombia. It joins Ruitoque Country Club in Bucaramanga, which features a Nicklaus Design track that opened in the late 1990s. (The course was designed by Chet Williams.)

Incidentally, a blogger in Colombia, operating as Good Morning Colombia, says that the PGA Tour has sized up Karibana Beach as a possible home of a Tournament Players Club.