The 2018 Ryder Cup will be played somewhere in continental Europe, and five nations have pulled out all the proverbial stops in an effort to land the prized international golf event.
The contending nations have put on their best marketing faces, just as they do when they vie for events like the World Cup and the Olympics. They’ve summoned ghosts from Ryder Cups of the past, called in chits with powers that be, and hired promoters to butter up officials of the PGA European Tour, which oversees the selection.
To be sure, they’ve also thought long and hard about what may be the key element on the Tour’s wish list. “Essential to the bid critera,” the Tour announced last summer, “is a commitment to the development of a world-class golf facility.”
It sounds as if the Tour is saying that it expects to play the 2018 Ryder Cup on a brand-new course.
If that's the case, you can pretty much say au revoir to France, which has identified an existing track in suburban Paris, Le Golf National’s Albatross course, as its venue of choice. You can also add a little weight to the bids from Spain, Portugal, and Germany, which intend to build new courses specifically to host the 2018 Ryder Cup.
As for the Netherlands, it wants to stage the event at to-be-built or to-be-completed courses that weren’t specifically designed for the Ryder Cup but could certainly be suitable venues. How much does that count for?
And what about the designers of the golf courses -– will they influence the Tour’s decision?
It’s an important question, and here’s why: If the 2018 Ryder Cup is played on a new course, it could very well be one designed by an architect who works for the Tour. That’s because three of the courses in contention -– those in Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands -– have been designed or co-designed by architects from European Golf Design, a British company that was jointly created by the Tour and IMG, the Cleveland, Ohio-based sports marketing firm. By keeping things in the family, the Tour would allow some extra money to trickle down to the bottom line.
The Tour will select a winner sometime soon, perhaps as soon as next month. Here’s how the courses and the nations stack up:
France. The Federation Francaise de Golf has hired IMG, one of the Tour’s closest allies, to develop and deliver a winning message to the selection committee. The message is this: While France won’t build a new golf course, it’ll give both the Tour and the world of golf something with broader, longer-lasting value. It’ll create generations of golfers.
If France wins the cup, the FFG says it’ll help to build 100 driving ranges and “short” courses (pitch-‘n’-putt or par-3 tracks) in cities across the nation, in an effort to broaden golf’s appeal beyond its traditional white, male, middle-class base. France currently has 410,000 registered golfers, and the FFG believes it can, with the Ryder Cup’s promotional help, increase the number to 700,000 by 2020.
A year or so ago, when China announced a similar plan, it was hailed by golf organizations all over the planet. But so far, neither the Tour nor any other prominent voice in golf has uttered even a single word in support of France’s proposal. Is it more important to “grow the game” in Beijing than in Bordeaux? Or is it just that the money is better?
As far as a venue goes, the Albatross course -– already a “stadium” course -– has hosted the French Open for nine consecutive years and is well-liked by touring pros. And the FFG, which owns Le Golf National, says it’ll spend whatever it takes to make the track an ideal Ryder Cup venue.
The Netherlands. The Netherlands had an outstanding showing in the most recent World Cup, but it doesn’t carry much sizzle in the world of golf. That’s why it’s a long-shot to win the Ryder Cup.
A Ryder Cup in the Netherlands would be played on a Colin Montgomerie “signature” course at the Dutch, in suburban Amsterdam. The course, which was supposed to open in late 2010 (it doesn't appear to have opened yet), has been co-designed by Ross McMurray of European Golf Design. The Dutch expects to eventually build a second course, a Sam Torrance “signature” track that will likewise be co-designed by McMurray.
Spain. Spain hopes to bring the 2018 Ryder Cup to a new, Robin Hiseman-designed course in Tres Cantos, a northern suburb of Madrid. The Royal Spanish Golf Federation and some private-sector partners will foot the bill for the track, which will have viewing areas for thousands of spectators and ample space for revenue-producing corporate hospitality tents. As a bonus, the federation plans to build a second 18-hole course suited to amateurs.
Extra point: Hiseman works for European Golf Design.
Seeing that the course would be custom-fit for the Ryder Cup and designed by an architect who works for the Tour, what’s not to like about Spain’s bid?
Two big things: First, Spain has already hosted the Ryder Cup once (in 1997), so the Tour may be inclined to award the event to another nation. Two, Spain’s economy is a wreck. Although the state of a nation’s economy may not be important to the average golf fan, it’s vital to the Tour, which uses the Ryder Cup to maximize what it calls “commercial opportunities.”
Portugal. Portuguese golf officials are pinning their hopes on a Tom Fazio-designed course at Herdade da Comporta, a resort community that's to take shape on waterfront property along the Alentejo coast, about an hour's drive south of Lisbon. The site is said to be sandy and bumpy and especially well-suited to golf, and Fazio has by far the highest profile of any designer in the Ryder Cup mix.
Even better, Fazio's course, to be known as Comporta Links, has been co-designed by Ross McMurray of European Golf Design.
On top of all that, Herdade da Comporta is being developed by a heavy hitter with experience in golf development: Espirito Santo Group, a conglomerate that controls Portugal’s second-largest bank. I'm thinking that financing won't be a problem Espirito Santo. Plus it sure doesn't hurt that the company already owns several golf courses in suburban Lisbon, including the 36-hole Ribagolfe complex and Quinta do Peru Golf & Country Club.
One final note: Espirito Santo plans to build two golf courses at Herdade da Comporta. The community's other course, a David McLay Kidd-designed track, is also supposed to be worthy of hosting a Ryder Cup.
Germany. Germany's bid is led by Bernhard Langer, a former Ryder Cup captain, and supported by two true financial heavyweights: Audi, the car manufacturer, and Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds, a big investment firm with substantial land holdings.
By all accounts, a Ryder Cup in Germany would be staged at what’s being called “the Audi Course,” a track to be built somewhere near Munich, presumably on property owned by Wittelsbacher Ausgleichsfonds. It’s possible that the location would be Neuburg an der Donau, a town about 50 miles north of Munich.
No, the course won’t be designed by an architect from European Golf Design. The design will be done by Thomas Himmel, an architect based in Gauting, Germany. Himmel is currently working on solo projects in China, Switzerland, and Poland, and he and Langer are co-designing courses in Russia and Hungary. It seems likely that Langer could be persuaded to co-design the Audi Course.
A new course built with strong corporate support in a nation with a stable economy –- all that sounds like the making of a champion, doesn’t it? But if it appears that Germany is in the driver’s seat, consider this: BMW is the Tour’s official car-maker and the sponsor of its annual championship.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Tuesday, March 29, 2011
worth reading The Bigger Picture
Last week I posted a brief item about the criticism President Obama often takes for playing golf.
Just so there are no misunderstandings, let me add this to the discussion: I don't give a rat's ass if Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or anyone else wants to give Obama a figurative black eye. That's politics. That's their business.
What I don't particularly like is that every time a Republican with an agenda takes a swing at Obama's love of golf, he takes a swing at my business. And if you want to know the whole story, what really riles me is that none of the so-called leaders in our business are fighting back to defend golf's image.
We need to stand up for golf. We need to promote the playing of golf. And we most certainly need the free advertising that a golf-playing president -- like a golf-playing athlete or movie star or celebrity chef -- so generously gives us.
I'm tired of hearing loudmouths with microphones taking cheap shots at golf, even if they're only doing it indirectly. Such talk hurts our entire industry.
It's important for those of us who make a living in golf to let the American public know that our business is still alive and at least somewhat well, to counter all the negative publicity that has socked us of late. So when the president's political opponents suggest that golf is an endeavor best suited to malingerers and ne'er-do-wells, or for rich folks with nothing better to do, we need to draw the line.
In a recent post at Slate, John Dickerson addressed this issue. Here's part of his take on the subject:
Presidential golf jokes may be the laziest of all political humor, with the possible exception of jokes about presidential vacation time. Jokes about presidential appearance are also lazy, but they're just cheap shots. Golf jokes are not only intellectually lazy, but, like teleprompter jokes, they encourage the audience to be lazy, too. No one has to bother thinking about what a president actually does.
Why do we care about this dumb joke? Because it is politically potent. You'll probably be hearing variations of it a lot during the 2012 campaign.
More important, we should care because it exposes a larger problem in the way we view presidents and evaluate candidates. For presidents, who can never escape their job, we should encourage golf playing, not mock it.
A president's critics always go for the golf joke because it irritates people at a gut level. And the gut level is where you need to go if you want to pick up votes. To say a president is wrong on some policy issue or another is only so damaging. To suggest he is so clueless that he's lining up his putt while the world burns is what really gets a voter outraged. . . .
Every time you see Obama golf, [Newt] Gingrich wants you get enraged. If things really work out for Republicans, golf will start coming up in David Axelrod's focus groups, and maybe Obama's advisers will have to suggest to the president that he stop playing.
Obama should resist -- and regardless of party, we should all want him to.
The presidency is a prison. Your every move is watched and tended by the Secret Service, your opponents, and the media. Even when you're “having fun,” you do so in quotation marks. At parties or a baseball game, you're watched to see if you're having a good time. If you play basketball, your on-court demeanor is analyzed for clues to your leadership style. You don't drive. You can't keep a diary (they can be subpoenaed). You can't smoke (the kids are watching). You can't take a stroll through your old neighborhood.
All of this distorts the mind. . . .
You don't have to like golf to recognize that being able to walk in relative freedom and hang out with friends is an obvious pleasure and escape. The more tightly someone is confined, the more necessary it is to escape. One of the great problems for any president is a loss of perspective. A distraction, even for a moment, from the constant and attention-shredding duties of the day is one way to gain perspective. . . .
A president's job is to have a vision, convey that vision to others, and make the hard calls when they come to him. It's about making smart decisions, not how many hours a president spends making a decision. . . .
Just so there are no misunderstandings, let me add this to the discussion: I don't give a rat's ass if Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin or anyone else wants to give Obama a figurative black eye. That's politics. That's their business.
What I don't particularly like is that every time a Republican with an agenda takes a swing at Obama's love of golf, he takes a swing at my business. And if you want to know the whole story, what really riles me is that none of the so-called leaders in our business are fighting back to defend golf's image.
We need to stand up for golf. We need to promote the playing of golf. And we most certainly need the free advertising that a golf-playing president -- like a golf-playing athlete or movie star or celebrity chef -- so generously gives us.
I'm tired of hearing loudmouths with microphones taking cheap shots at golf, even if they're only doing it indirectly. Such talk hurts our entire industry.
It's important for those of us who make a living in golf to let the American public know that our business is still alive and at least somewhat well, to counter all the negative publicity that has socked us of late. So when the president's political opponents suggest that golf is an endeavor best suited to malingerers and ne'er-do-wells, or for rich folks with nothing better to do, we need to draw the line.
In a recent post at Slate, John Dickerson addressed this issue. Here's part of his take on the subject:
Presidential golf jokes may be the laziest of all political humor, with the possible exception of jokes about presidential vacation time. Jokes about presidential appearance are also lazy, but they're just cheap shots. Golf jokes are not only intellectually lazy, but, like teleprompter jokes, they encourage the audience to be lazy, too. No one has to bother thinking about what a president actually does.
Why do we care about this dumb joke? Because it is politically potent. You'll probably be hearing variations of it a lot during the 2012 campaign.
More important, we should care because it exposes a larger problem in the way we view presidents and evaluate candidates. For presidents, who can never escape their job, we should encourage golf playing, not mock it.
A president's critics always go for the golf joke because it irritates people at a gut level. And the gut level is where you need to go if you want to pick up votes. To say a president is wrong on some policy issue or another is only so damaging. To suggest he is so clueless that he's lining up his putt while the world burns is what really gets a voter outraged. . . .
Every time you see Obama golf, [Newt] Gingrich wants you get enraged. If things really work out for Republicans, golf will start coming up in David Axelrod's focus groups, and maybe Obama's advisers will have to suggest to the president that he stop playing.
Obama should resist -- and regardless of party, we should all want him to.
The presidency is a prison. Your every move is watched and tended by the Secret Service, your opponents, and the media. Even when you're “having fun,” you do so in quotation marks. At parties or a baseball game, you're watched to see if you're having a good time. If you play basketball, your on-court demeanor is analyzed for clues to your leadership style. You don't drive. You can't keep a diary (they can be subpoenaed). You can't smoke (the kids are watching). You can't take a stroll through your old neighborhood.
All of this distorts the mind. . . .
You don't have to like golf to recognize that being able to walk in relative freedom and hang out with friends is an obvious pleasure and escape. The more tightly someone is confined, the more necessary it is to escape. One of the great problems for any president is a loss of perspective. A distraction, even for a moment, from the constant and attention-shredding duties of the day is one way to gain perspective. . . .
A president's job is to have a vision, convey that vision to others, and make the hard calls when they come to him. It's about making smart decisions, not how many hours a president spends making a decision. . . .
Sunday, March 27, 2011
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?
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?
Thursday, March 24, 2011
News & Notes from the USA
. . . The Nicklaus empire has launched a slick, glossy promotional vehicle and vanity publication called Nicklaus Premier Clubs. The magazine is mostly packed with fawning profiles of prominent Nicklaus “signature” courses. (In the inaugural issue, you can read about Country Club of the Rockies, Dismal River Golf Club, Shoal Creek Country Club, and Muirfield Village Golf Club.) After perusing volume one, number one, Jack Nicklaus told his publicist, “I look forward to the next edition of Nicklaus Premier Clubs.” . . .
. . . The city of Rockville, Maryland has discovered a doozy of a mistake in a study of its golf course operations. Earlier this year, the National Golf Foundation encouraged the city to outsource the management of RedGate Municipal Golf Course, asserting that the move would net “a positive working capital balance” of $161,257 by 2015. But when the city's auditors crunched the NGF's numbers, they determined that the course would instead tally “an $804,000 deficit in working capital,” even in “a best-case scenario.” Whoops! The NGF blamed the miscalculation on “a flaw in [its] computerized spreadsheet files.” It reportedly charged the city $25,000 for its work. . . .
. . . It appears that Rees Jones may soon break ground on his long-awaited golf course in New Orleans' City Park. Park officials hope that a private-sector group will foot the bill for the tournament-worthy, 7,240-yard track, but they say they'll build it on their own (partly with FEMA money) if a deal can't be struck. The track will reportedly offer “a high-end golf experience” that “will be challenging for every type of golfer” -- or at least those who can afford to play it. The CEO of City Park tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune that he expects to get into the swing of things sometime during the first quarter of 2013. . . .
. . . The legend of Mike Nuzzo continues to grow. In recent years Nuzzo has become golf's most famous unknown architect, a reputation he's established on the strength of a single commission: Wolf Point Golf Club, an 18-hole track located somewhere deep in the heart of Texas. By all accounts, Wolf Point is a terrific golf course. Unfortunately, it's also a personal golf course, one built and maintained for the pleasure of its wealthy owner. Few people have heard of it, let alone played it. Texas Golfer, which profiled “The Curious Case of Mike Nuzzo” in its April issue, asks the question Nuzzo himself has been trying to answer ever since Wolf Point opened: How do you build a following with a property that few golfers are intended to see, let alone play, as your calling card? The answer to that question, it's sad to say, is You don't. Nuzzo will eventually make his mark, but he'll do it by designing a course that people can actually play. It's the currency of our realm. . . .
. . . President Obama has reportedly played 61 rounds of golf since he was elected, which is way too many for his ever-carping political enemies. But at least one Republican VIP -- Dan Quayle, who played second fiddle to George Bush the First -- believes that Obama is perfectly capable of both hitting the links and attending to the nation's problems. “I'm glad he's out playing golf,” the former vice president told the Fox Business Network. “I mean, what do you want him to do, stay in his house and be on the phone with the ambassador to Japan all the time?” . . .
. . . The city of Rockville, Maryland has discovered a doozy of a mistake in a study of its golf course operations. Earlier this year, the National Golf Foundation encouraged the city to outsource the management of RedGate Municipal Golf Course, asserting that the move would net “a positive working capital balance” of $161,257 by 2015. But when the city's auditors crunched the NGF's numbers, they determined that the course would instead tally “an $804,000 deficit in working capital,” even in “a best-case scenario.” Whoops! The NGF blamed the miscalculation on “a flaw in [its] computerized spreadsheet files.” It reportedly charged the city $25,000 for its work. . . .
. . . It appears that Rees Jones may soon break ground on his long-awaited golf course in New Orleans' City Park. Park officials hope that a private-sector group will foot the bill for the tournament-worthy, 7,240-yard track, but they say they'll build it on their own (partly with FEMA money) if a deal can't be struck. The track will reportedly offer “a high-end golf experience” that “will be challenging for every type of golfer” -- or at least those who can afford to play it. The CEO of City Park tells the New Orleans Times-Picayune that he expects to get into the swing of things sometime during the first quarter of 2013. . . .
. . . The legend of Mike Nuzzo continues to grow. In recent years Nuzzo has become golf's most famous unknown architect, a reputation he's established on the strength of a single commission: Wolf Point Golf Club, an 18-hole track located somewhere deep in the heart of Texas. By all accounts, Wolf Point is a terrific golf course. Unfortunately, it's also a personal golf course, one built and maintained for the pleasure of its wealthy owner. Few people have heard of it, let alone played it. Texas Golfer, which profiled “The Curious Case of Mike Nuzzo” in its April issue, asks the question Nuzzo himself has been trying to answer ever since Wolf Point opened: How do you build a following with a property that few golfers are intended to see, let alone play, as your calling card? The answer to that question, it's sad to say, is You don't. Nuzzo will eventually make his mark, but he'll do it by designing a course that people can actually play. It's the currency of our realm. . . .
. . . President Obama has reportedly played 61 rounds of golf since he was elected, which is way too many for his ever-carping political enemies. But at least one Republican VIP -- Dan Quayle, who played second fiddle to George Bush the First -- believes that Obama is perfectly capable of both hitting the links and attending to the nation's problems. “I'm glad he's out playing golf,” the former vice president told the Fox Business Network. “I mean, what do you want him to do, stay in his house and be on the phone with the ambassador to Japan all the time?” . . .
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
argentina Makeovers on Tap
Several years ago Hugo Chavez, the world’s most golf-phobic president, threatened to shut down the two most prominent golf clubs in Caracas and replace them with houses for people stuck in Venezuela’s shantytowns.
But the clubs -- Valle Arriba Golf Club and Caracas Country Club -- have survived, and today their members are thinking about renovations. Valle Arriba, which opened in 1942, wants to rebuild the greens and greenside bunkers on its course, while the nature of the job at Caracas, the city’s oldest club (it was founded in 1918), is to be determined.
Both clubs have hosted the Venezuela Open several times, and both have discussed the work with Randy Thompson of Santiago, Chile-based American Golf Course Design.
Thompson designed the first golf course at Fazenda Boa Vista in Porto Feliz, Brazil as well as Manta Raya Golf Club in Farallón, Panama; Four Seasons Golf Club in Carmelo, Uruguay; and three courses in Chile.
But the clubs -- Valle Arriba Golf Club and Caracas Country Club -- have survived, and today their members are thinking about renovations. Valle Arriba, which opened in 1942, wants to rebuild the greens and greenside bunkers on its course, while the nature of the job at Caracas, the city’s oldest club (it was founded in 1918), is to be determined.
Both clubs have hosted the Venezuela Open several times, and both have discussed the work with Randy Thompson of Santiago, Chile-based American Golf Course Design.
Thompson designed the first golf course at Fazenda Boa Vista in Porto Feliz, Brazil as well as Manta Raya Golf Club in Farallón, Panama; Four Seasons Golf Club in Carmelo, Uruguay; and three courses in Chile.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The Week That Was: March 20, 2011
china Round Two at Xili
Next month, the architects at Golfplan will resume their renovation of Xili Golf Club in Shenzhen Province.
The club, which opened in 1995, has a pair of 18-hole courses that were designed by Robin Nelson and Neil Haworth. It's hired Golfplan, a firm founded by Ron Fream, to regrass the courses' greens and rebuild their bunkers.
Kevin Ramsey, an associate at Fream's Santa Rosa, California-based firm, reports that the greens will be converted to TifEagle bermuda.
“This particular turf was not even available for commercial use in China until recently,” he said in a press release, “and this technical leap forward will provide a significant upgrade in the quality of course conditioning.”
The club is located in the Nam Shan area of Shenzhen, a short drive north of Hong Kong. Work on one of the complex's nines has already been completed, and the club plans to do the three remaining nines over the next three years.
scotland No Bull: The Angus is Primed To Go
Mike Forbes has enlisted Darren Clarke, the Irish golf pro, to put his “signature” on a “championship-standard” golf course to be built on farmland just west of Carnoustie.
The community will be called the Angus, and it'll take shape outside the village of Wellbank. Along with the golf course, Forbes plans to build 160 houses, a “five-star” hotel, a spa, and a golf teaching center designed especially for children.
Elected officials approved the Angus in late 2010, but Forbes isn't yet ready to start construction. He's searching for a hotelier and other developers who can build a foundation for his dreams. He recently told local officials that his project has drawn the interest of investors from China and the United States.
“We want to build a world-class golf course that is supported by world-class facilities,” Forbes said. “To do this, we need experts in golf, hotel, and tourism provision to lead the way forward.”
Forbes, a former farmer and fly-fishing champion, has already built one golf course, a nine-hole track at the Forbes of Kingennie country resort in nearby Dundee. Kingennie's course was designed by Graeme Webster of Niblick Golf Design in Moss, Norway, who'll co-design Clarke's course at the Angus.
pakistan Doing It for the Kids
The Pakistan Golf Federation has endorsed a plan to build a golf course and a teaching center for juniors in Islamabad.
The facility will occupy 150 acres and, according to a report in Dawn, provide training to youngsters “irrespective of their status in society.”
Paraphrasing a spokesman for the PGF, Dawn also said that the facility is “likely to set the pace for development of golf in the country.”
russia Family Fun in Moscow
Any day now, Thomson Perrett & Lobb is expected to break ground on a golf academy at the largest sports center in Europe.
The academy will take shape at the Luzhniki Olympic Complex in Moscow, which is home to some of Russia’s most famous sports stadiums and reportedly attracts 5 million athletes and fans annually. South Melbourne, Australia-based TPL plans to outfit the facility with a nine-hole, par-3 golf course (six of its holes will share two greens), a driving range, practice putting greens, and indoor golf simulators.
“We’ve concentrated on creating a golf facility that will be fun for all the family and enable the people of Moscow to experience and learn to play golf in a relaxed environment that everyone can enjoy,” said Tim Lobb, who designed the academy.
Dimitry Aleshin, Luzhniki’s deputy director of development, has said that TPL got the commission because it has “significant experience taking golf into new markets and understands what it takes to make golf an attractive and complementary choice to the established sports in Russia.”
Assuming that construction stays on schedule, the academy will open next year.
Next month, the architects at Golfplan will resume their renovation of Xili Golf Club in Shenzhen Province.
The club, which opened in 1995, has a pair of 18-hole courses that were designed by Robin Nelson and Neil Haworth. It's hired Golfplan, a firm founded by Ron Fream, to regrass the courses' greens and rebuild their bunkers.
Kevin Ramsey, an associate at Fream's Santa Rosa, California-based firm, reports that the greens will be converted to TifEagle bermuda.
“This particular turf was not even available for commercial use in China until recently,” he said in a press release, “and this technical leap forward will provide a significant upgrade in the quality of course conditioning.”
The club is located in the Nam Shan area of Shenzhen, a short drive north of Hong Kong. Work on one of the complex's nines has already been completed, and the club plans to do the three remaining nines over the next three years.
scotland No Bull: The Angus is Primed To Go
Mike Forbes has enlisted Darren Clarke, the Irish golf pro, to put his “signature” on a “championship-standard” golf course to be built on farmland just west of Carnoustie.
The community will be called the Angus, and it'll take shape outside the village of Wellbank. Along with the golf course, Forbes plans to build 160 houses, a “five-star” hotel, a spa, and a golf teaching center designed especially for children.
Elected officials approved the Angus in late 2010, but Forbes isn't yet ready to start construction. He's searching for a hotelier and other developers who can build a foundation for his dreams. He recently told local officials that his project has drawn the interest of investors from China and the United States.
“We want to build a world-class golf course that is supported by world-class facilities,” Forbes said. “To do this, we need experts in golf, hotel, and tourism provision to lead the way forward.”
Forbes, a former farmer and fly-fishing champion, has already built one golf course, a nine-hole track at the Forbes of Kingennie country resort in nearby Dundee. Kingennie's course was designed by Graeme Webster of Niblick Golf Design in Moss, Norway, who'll co-design Clarke's course at the Angus.
pakistan Doing It for the Kids
The Pakistan Golf Federation has endorsed a plan to build a golf course and a teaching center for juniors in Islamabad.
The facility will occupy 150 acres and, according to a report in Dawn, provide training to youngsters “irrespective of their status in society.”
Paraphrasing a spokesman for the PGF, Dawn also said that the facility is “likely to set the pace for development of golf in the country.”
russia Family Fun in Moscow
Any day now, Thomson Perrett & Lobb is expected to break ground on a golf academy at the largest sports center in Europe.
The academy will take shape at the Luzhniki Olympic Complex in Moscow, which is home to some of Russia’s most famous sports stadiums and reportedly attracts 5 million athletes and fans annually. South Melbourne, Australia-based TPL plans to outfit the facility with a nine-hole, par-3 golf course (six of its holes will share two greens), a driving range, practice putting greens, and indoor golf simulators.
“We’ve concentrated on creating a golf facility that will be fun for all the family and enable the people of Moscow to experience and learn to play golf in a relaxed environment that everyone can enjoy,” said Tim Lobb, who designed the academy.
Dimitry Aleshin, Luzhniki’s deputy director of development, has said that TPL got the commission because it has “significant experience taking golf into new markets and understands what it takes to make golf an attractive and complementary choice to the established sports in Russia.”
Assuming that construction stays on schedule, the academy will open next year.
Friday, March 18, 2011
Shameless Self-Promotion, March 2011
Full disclosure alert: I've come down with a case of March Madness. I've begun to see the world as a series of 16-element brackets.
Inspired by the commercial-filled television coverage of college basketball's championship, here's my breakdown of the top stories in this month's World Edition of the Golf Course Report.
1. Jamaica. Greg Norman was recently spotted on the island's southern coast, where he was scouting locations for a new golf course.
16. China. The makeover of Shenzhen Tycoon Golf Club is all but complete.
8. Ukraine. The nation's first 18-hole, championship-length course is being built in Kharkov.
9. Mexico. The best course to open outside the United States in 2010, according to Golf magazine, was the Davis Love III-designed Dunes course at Diamante Cabo San Lucas. Could the resort break ground on its second course next year?
5. Cyprus. Dolphin Capital Investors and its various affiliates have six golf projects planned in Cyprus, Greece, and Crete. They'll include courses by Tony Jacklin, Graham Marsh, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Hans-Georg Erhardt.
12. Australia. Speaking of Graham Marsh, he's been tapped to design a “no-compromise” course in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.
4. Canada. A small, struggling ski resort near Vancouver aims to super-size itself into one of the premier four-season destinations in British Columbia.
13. Croatia. The developers of the Croatian Dream have hired a designer for their first golf course.
6. Philippines. A “world-class” golf community will take shape at a resort town just a short drive from Manila.
11. Canada. Cabot Links in Nova Scotia has unofficially selected the designers for its second course.
3. Cameroon. A 18-hole course will be the featured attraction of an off-shore banking haven in Limbe that its proponents say will “fundamentally alter the way the rest of the world looks at Africa.”
14. Canada. Ian Andrew has been hired to reinvent a 1950s-era golf course in suburban Toronto.
7. India. A report on why a community called Smile City has an Indian home builder laughing all the way to the bank.
10. Philippines. Golfplan is designing a golf course in Bataan that will “set the standards for green golf courses” and have the potential to be ranked alongside “the best golf courses in the world.”
2. Mexico. A Spanish developer with “an obsession” plans to build the world's first golf course co-designed by Greg Norman and Lorena Ochoa.
15. Canada. Gary Player's first golf course in the Great White North could open this year.
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.
Inspired by the commercial-filled television coverage of college basketball's championship, here's my breakdown of the top stories in this month's World Edition of the Golf Course Report.
1. Jamaica. Greg Norman was recently spotted on the island's southern coast, where he was scouting locations for a new golf course.
16. China. The makeover of Shenzhen Tycoon Golf Club is all but complete.
8. Ukraine. The nation's first 18-hole, championship-length course is being built in Kharkov.
9. Mexico. The best course to open outside the United States in 2010, according to Golf magazine, was the Davis Love III-designed Dunes course at Diamante Cabo San Lucas. Could the resort break ground on its second course next year?
5. Cyprus. Dolphin Capital Investors and its various affiliates have six golf projects planned in Cyprus, Greece, and Crete. They'll include courses by Tony Jacklin, Graham Marsh, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Hans-Georg Erhardt.
12. Australia. Speaking of Graham Marsh, he's been tapped to design a “no-compromise” course in the Hunter Valley region of New South Wales.
4. Canada. A small, struggling ski resort near Vancouver aims to super-size itself into one of the premier four-season destinations in British Columbia.
13. Croatia. The developers of the Croatian Dream have hired a designer for their first golf course.
6. Philippines. A “world-class” golf community will take shape at a resort town just a short drive from Manila.
11. Canada. Cabot Links in Nova Scotia has unofficially selected the designers for its second course.
3. Cameroon. A 18-hole course will be the featured attraction of an off-shore banking haven in Limbe that its proponents say will “fundamentally alter the way the rest of the world looks at Africa.”
14. Canada. Ian Andrew has been hired to reinvent a 1950s-era golf course in suburban Toronto.
7. India. A report on why a community called Smile City has an Indian home builder laughing all the way to the bank.
10. Philippines. Golfplan is designing a golf course in Bataan that will “set the standards for green golf courses” and have the potential to be ranked alongside “the best golf courses in the world.”
2. Mexico. A Spanish developer with “an obsession” plans to build the world's first golf course co-designed by Greg Norman and Lorena Ochoa.
15. Canada. Gary Player's first golf course in the Great White North could open this year.
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, March 15, 2011
talking points Tom Fazio Hits the Road
Last year, Tom Fazio agreed to do something he's never done before: cross an ocean to design a golf course.
This is a major departure for Fazio, who's been designing bona-fide world-class golf venues since the 1960s but has rarely strayed far from his home in Hendersonville, North Carolina. His international portfolio is painfully thin, consisting only of a few courses in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Puerto Rico, and Panama.
Of course, that was then. In the prime of his career, Fazio could afford to spurn the advances of solicitous foreign suitors and take his pick of high-profile opportunities close to home. Now, he has no such luxury. If he wants to work, he has to follow the money.
That's why he's designing his first course in Europe, a 7,867-yard track for a resort community called Herdade da Comporta, on Portugal's Alentejo Coast. It's the first step in what appears to be a sincere effort to establish a global presence and create an international brand. I suppose that's why Fazio has called the commission “a great opportunity for us.”
In a recent story, Fazio explains why he took the job:
I wouldn’t travel far from home while I had my children, but now [that] they have grown up and left home, I’m free to travel the world and to accept some jobs I would have turned down in the past. My family has always come first, and you’d have to say I didn’t have much incentive to travel, either.
I’d have to check the actual figures, but my house in Asheville, North Carolina is about two hours from New York, two hours from Chicago, two hours from Dallas, two hours from Palm Springs. [Note: I think he may have meant (or said) Palm Beach, Florida.] And in that area, I’d guess there has been around 4,000 courses built since I started out in the design business back in the 60s.
I have probably built about 150 courses within two hours of my home. There was no need to travel. But now there’s no reason to stay home, which is why I’m here at Comporta and why we’ll probably do other overseas projects in the future.
We’re going to put our name in Europe, put our name in Portugal. The time is right.
This is a major departure for Fazio, who's been designing bona-fide world-class golf venues since the 1960s but has rarely strayed far from his home in Hendersonville, North Carolina. His international portfolio is painfully thin, consisting only of a few courses in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Barbados, Puerto Rico, and Panama.
Of course, that was then. In the prime of his career, Fazio could afford to spurn the advances of solicitous foreign suitors and take his pick of high-profile opportunities close to home. Now, he has no such luxury. If he wants to work, he has to follow the money.
That's why he's designing his first course in Europe, a 7,867-yard track for a resort community called Herdade da Comporta, on Portugal's Alentejo Coast. It's the first step in what appears to be a sincere effort to establish a global presence and create an international brand. I suppose that's why Fazio has called the commission “a great opportunity for us.”
In a recent story, Fazio explains why he took the job:
I wouldn’t travel far from home while I had my children, but now [that] they have grown up and left home, I’m free to travel the world and to accept some jobs I would have turned down in the past. My family has always come first, and you’d have to say I didn’t have much incentive to travel, either.
I’d have to check the actual figures, but my house in Asheville, North Carolina is about two hours from New York, two hours from Chicago, two hours from Dallas, two hours from Palm Springs. [Note: I think he may have meant (or said) Palm Beach, Florida.] And in that area, I’d guess there has been around 4,000 courses built since I started out in the design business back in the 60s.
I have probably built about 150 courses within two hours of my home. There was no need to travel. But now there’s no reason to stay home, which is why I’m here at Comporta and why we’ll probably do other overseas projects in the future.
We’re going to put our name in Europe, put our name in Portugal. The time is right.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
The Week That Was: March 13, 2011
spain Muammar Gaddafi, a Developer Spurned
You probably already know that Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan despot famously described by Ronald Reagan as the “mad dog of the Middle East,” is fond of bunkers. He routinely builds them under the foundations of his many villas and houses. He does it as a precautionary measure, in case he needs to hunker down for a while during, say, a civil war or national calamity.
You may not know that Gaddafi also wants to build some bunkers, along with an entire 18-hole golf course, on the Costa del Sol. The course would be the centerpiece of a huge resort community that includes more than 1,900 houses, some hotels, meeting and convention space, restaurants, and only he knows what else.
Of course, nobody is going to be playing Gaddafi's golf course anytime soon. Spain has put his development dreams on ice, as part of the world-wide economic sanctions that have been imposed against his corrupt, evil regime.
Libya's oil reserves have made Gaddafi an extremely wealthy man. Besides the riches he's socked away in his own country, his Libyan Investment Authority reportedly has stakes in well-known companies all over the planet -- among them Fiat, the Italian auto manufacturer; Juventus, the Italian soccer team; and Pearson PLC, the company that publishes London's Financial Times.
The authority obviously also has some interest in high-profile real estate, like the 15,000 acres -- roughly 25 square miles -- Gaddafi controls in and around Benahavis, a mountain village in Malaga Province. Various sources say that Brother Leader has owned the property, roughly 10 miles west of Marbella, for 20 years. He reportedly last visited it in late 2007, mere months before the world's economy melted down and the golf business went belly up.
So, like so many other would-be developers, Gaddafi has a golf project on indefinite hold. Of course, it's possible that Spain is actually doing him a favor by putting his project in the deep freeze. Benahavis already has nine golf courses, says Wikipedia, with six more are in planning.
brazil Jack Nicklaus, Dealmaker
A couple of months ago, while doing some research on a golf course that Jack Nicklaus is designing in the Caribbean, I was told that his “signature” layouts still fetch about $2 million apiece, depending on the amount of face time that's required of him.
To be honest, I was surprised to hear it. Given the squeeze that's been put on golf development of late, I thought for sure that a Nicklaus course could be bought at a discount.
As it turns out, I was right. Yes, Nicklaus still charges a veritable king's ransom to put his name on a golf course. But it's become clear that he's also willing to cut a deal, as long as a prospective client offers either a legacy commission or a willingness to buy in bulk.
This week, we learned that Nicklaus normally charges $2.5 million to design a “signature” course. The price was posted by Jim Smith, Nicklaus' lobbyist in Florida.
That's right, I said lobbyist. When a fellow wants to pull some strings in government, he hires a lobbyist. We have a long and sordid history of it here in Washington. And Nicklaus didn't just pick a nobody out of a hat. He went to work with a fellow described by a Florida-based newspaper as “a former attorney general and secretary of state,” which is a measure of bona-fide quality in the lobbying business.
Nicklaus had good reason to seek professional help. This week, it was revealed that he hopes to design golf courses in five of Florida's state parks. Smith is apparently the guy who persuaded a pair of Republican state legislators to propose bills that would have required Florida's division of recreation and parks to build what's been named the Jack Nicklaus Golf Trail.
In the nation's capital, we call such legislation a boondoggle. But I'm sure the politicians in Florida, not to mention the lobbyists, aren't nearly so crass.
Here's the bad news: The trail had a public life of about a week. Newspaper columnists and environmentalists tore the idea to shreds, and even some people in the golf industry had trouble with it. A spokesperson for Arnold Palmer's design company advised the state to explore “alternative options” instead of “using our state parks for 'new' golf course development.”
The legislation has officially died.
But here's the good news: Nicklaus didn't plan to charge $2.5 million for each of the five courses. In fact, he offered the state of Florida a pretty sweet deal. According to his lobbyist, he'd design the first course for free, and he'd do the rest of them for $625,000 each.
In other words, Nicklaus was willing to deliver five “signature” courses for the price of one.
Get 'em while they're hot, folks!
The five-for-one discount wasn't the only can't-beat-our-prices deal that Nicklaus said he'd swing last week. During an interview with NBC, Nicklaus suggested that he and Annika Sorenstam are willing to take on the world's most coveted design project -- the golf course for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil -- at no charge.
“We're not interested in remuneration or anything else,” Nicklaus said.
Talk about a price being right! The notion was so unexpected, so out of the blue, that Geoff Shackelford asked Nicklaus Design for a clarification.
“Neither of them is seeking compensation,” came the reply.
So what happens next? Well, the team of Greg Norman and Lorena Ochoa will have to match Nicklaus' no-fee fee, as will the team of Robert Trent Jones, Jr. and Mario Gonzalez. Then, one by one, the individual applicants -- Palmer, Nick Faldo, Gary Player, Seve Ballesteros -- will fall into line.
They'll take the high road, of course, even though it's no longer paved in gold. They'll say they're giving up the money for the good of the game. And, in the interest of full disclosure, they'll admit that they can afford to work for nothing. After all, they're among the richest people in our business.
You've got to hand it to Nicklaus, though. This week, he leveled the playing field. Too bad it's now at ground zero.
You probably already know that Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan despot famously described by Ronald Reagan as the “mad dog of the Middle East,” is fond of bunkers. He routinely builds them under the foundations of his many villas and houses. He does it as a precautionary measure, in case he needs to hunker down for a while during, say, a civil war or national calamity.
You may not know that Gaddafi also wants to build some bunkers, along with an entire 18-hole golf course, on the Costa del Sol. The course would be the centerpiece of a huge resort community that includes more than 1,900 houses, some hotels, meeting and convention space, restaurants, and only he knows what else.
Of course, nobody is going to be playing Gaddafi's golf course anytime soon. Spain has put his development dreams on ice, as part of the world-wide economic sanctions that have been imposed against his corrupt, evil regime.
Libya's oil reserves have made Gaddafi an extremely wealthy man. Besides the riches he's socked away in his own country, his Libyan Investment Authority reportedly has stakes in well-known companies all over the planet -- among them Fiat, the Italian auto manufacturer; Juventus, the Italian soccer team; and Pearson PLC, the company that publishes London's Financial Times.
The authority obviously also has some interest in high-profile real estate, like the 15,000 acres -- roughly 25 square miles -- Gaddafi controls in and around Benahavis, a mountain village in Malaga Province. Various sources say that Brother Leader has owned the property, roughly 10 miles west of Marbella, for 20 years. He reportedly last visited it in late 2007, mere months before the world's economy melted down and the golf business went belly up.
So, like so many other would-be developers, Gaddafi has a golf project on indefinite hold. Of course, it's possible that Spain is actually doing him a favor by putting his project in the deep freeze. Benahavis already has nine golf courses, says Wikipedia, with six more are in planning.
brazil Jack Nicklaus, Dealmaker
A couple of months ago, while doing some research on a golf course that Jack Nicklaus is designing in the Caribbean, I was told that his “signature” layouts still fetch about $2 million apiece, depending on the amount of face time that's required of him.
To be honest, I was surprised to hear it. Given the squeeze that's been put on golf development of late, I thought for sure that a Nicklaus course could be bought at a discount.
As it turns out, I was right. Yes, Nicklaus still charges a veritable king's ransom to put his name on a golf course. But it's become clear that he's also willing to cut a deal, as long as a prospective client offers either a legacy commission or a willingness to buy in bulk.
This week, we learned that Nicklaus normally charges $2.5 million to design a “signature” course. The price was posted by Jim Smith, Nicklaus' lobbyist in Florida.
That's right, I said lobbyist. When a fellow wants to pull some strings in government, he hires a lobbyist. We have a long and sordid history of it here in Washington. And Nicklaus didn't just pick a nobody out of a hat. He went to work with a fellow described by a Florida-based newspaper as “a former attorney general and secretary of state,” which is a measure of bona-fide quality in the lobbying business.
Nicklaus had good reason to seek professional help. This week, it was revealed that he hopes to design golf courses in five of Florida's state parks. Smith is apparently the guy who persuaded a pair of Republican state legislators to propose bills that would have required Florida's division of recreation and parks to build what's been named the Jack Nicklaus Golf Trail.
In the nation's capital, we call such legislation a boondoggle. But I'm sure the politicians in Florida, not to mention the lobbyists, aren't nearly so crass.
Here's the bad news: The trail had a public life of about a week. Newspaper columnists and environmentalists tore the idea to shreds, and even some people in the golf industry had trouble with it. A spokesperson for Arnold Palmer's design company advised the state to explore “alternative options” instead of “using our state parks for 'new' golf course development.”
The legislation has officially died.
But here's the good news: Nicklaus didn't plan to charge $2.5 million for each of the five courses. In fact, he offered the state of Florida a pretty sweet deal. According to his lobbyist, he'd design the first course for free, and he'd do the rest of them for $625,000 each.
In other words, Nicklaus was willing to deliver five “signature” courses for the price of one.
Get 'em while they're hot, folks!
The five-for-one discount wasn't the only can't-beat-our-prices deal that Nicklaus said he'd swing last week. During an interview with NBC, Nicklaus suggested that he and Annika Sorenstam are willing to take on the world's most coveted design project -- the golf course for the 2016 Olympics in Brazil -- at no charge.
“We're not interested in remuneration or anything else,” Nicklaus said.
Talk about a price being right! The notion was so unexpected, so out of the blue, that Geoff Shackelford asked Nicklaus Design for a clarification.
“Neither of them is seeking compensation,” came the reply.
So what happens next? Well, the team of Greg Norman and Lorena Ochoa will have to match Nicklaus' no-fee fee, as will the team of Robert Trent Jones, Jr. and Mario Gonzalez. Then, one by one, the individual applicants -- Palmer, Nick Faldo, Gary Player, Seve Ballesteros -- will fall into line.
They'll take the high road, of course, even though it's no longer paved in gold. They'll say they're giving up the money for the good of the game. And, in the interest of full disclosure, they'll admit that they can afford to work for nothing. After all, they're among the richest people in our business.
You've got to hand it to Nicklaus, though. This week, he leveled the playing field. Too bad it's now at ground zero.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
caribbean Feeling Woosie on St. Kitts
A development group based in Trinidad & Tobago has broken ground on what it describes as “a world-class, environmentally friendly, and culturally sensitive resort” on the island of St. Kitts.
Now that all of the marketing department's hot buttons have been pushed, I can tell you that the community is called Kittitian Hill and that it's being developed by Terra Forma Developments. At build-out, it'll feature townhouses, cottages, and villas, a boutique hotel, a village center, “artists' studios,” an outdoor theater, a beach club, a spa, and an 18-hole golf course that's been “signed” by Ian Woosnam.
Kittitian Hill is taking shape on a 400-acre beachfront parcel that reportedly offers views of St. Barths, Saba, and St. Maarten.
“The views from the site are quite amazing,” says Gary Johnston of Sunningdale, England-based European Golf Design, who did the architectural heavy lifting. “It's a beautiful development that blends harmoniously with the environment.”
Terra Forma broke ground on Kittitian Hill's 6,825-yard golf course last month. It's expected to open in late 2012 or early 2013.
Now that all of the marketing department's hot buttons have been pushed, I can tell you that the community is called Kittitian Hill and that it's being developed by Terra Forma Developments. At build-out, it'll feature townhouses, cottages, and villas, a boutique hotel, a village center, “artists' studios,” an outdoor theater, a beach club, a spa, and an 18-hole golf course that's been “signed” by Ian Woosnam.
Kittitian Hill is taking shape on a 400-acre beachfront parcel that reportedly offers views of St. Barths, Saba, and St. Maarten.
“The views from the site are quite amazing,” says Gary Johnston of Sunningdale, England-based European Golf Design, who did the architectural heavy lifting. “It's a beautiful development that blends harmoniously with the environment.”
Terra Forma broke ground on Kittitian Hill's 6,825-yard golf course last month. It's expected to open in late 2012 or early 2013.
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
libya Letter from Ron Fream
I was the first U.S. civilian to enter Libya, on the first day our government allowed U.S. citizens to go there.
It was in 2004. I had been in Tunis, working to get a visa so I could go to Libya with some Tunisians. My visa was issued, after numerous bureaucratic delays, on the day the travel embargo was lifted.
I landed in Tripoli later that morning. On arrival, I was detained for a while as the various personnel in the immigration arrival hall took turns examining my passport. They had never before seen a standard, non-diplomatic U.S. passport.
Our Golfplan team was working with a Tunisian businessman who wanted to start developing tourist golf facilities in Libya, as I'd been doing since 1973 in Tunisia. The idea was to build a compact nine- or 18-hole course that would replace the British-inspired Tripoli Golf Club. We were going to turn the club's rolling, all-sand site into green grass. The location was near the Great Man-Made River, which pipes in water from the southern part of the country, so irrigation wasn't going to be a problem.
We did a master plan, but the project never went anywhere. Our Tunisian client got bogged down by trust issues, mostly involving money and transparency, with his prospective Libyan partner, and the deal died.
I ended up making two visits to Libya. On the second one, I showed our concept to one of Colonel Gaddafi's sons, the one who ran the nation's telecommunications industry and its national soccer team. I can't remember his name. My memory isn't what it once was.
What I remember about Libya are beautiful Roman and Carthaginian seaside ruins, many barely uncovered out of the sand. Libya, in fact, has an amazing Mediterranean seafront -- no bad coastal development, like you find in Egypt around Alexandria or overbuilt Sharm el-Sheikh. Some areas around Benghazi remind me of Tabarka, in northern Tunisia -- pine trees, cork oak, sandy areas, mountain settings.
In Tripoli, it was nice to see old English and Italian architecture, and still surviving Roman ruins. The port was one of the few along the Mediterranean that didn't have container facilities. Alcohol was available if you knew someone in the diplomatic corps.
Gaddafi had become wealthy from oil income, but the rewards hadn't trickled down to the average citizen. Donkey and camel were the main sources of protein. As is common in the Third World, preventive maintenance was not a known activity. All was dingy, dirty, boring.
Since there was little public greenery, it was easy to understand the plain, all-green flag of Libya. Most Libyans can only view sand and sea. At least their flag shows the color of nature.
Leadership change in Libya is long overdue. Libya needs tourism to help create jobs and provide hope to the nation's young people. I believe golf tourism in Libya could surpass that of Tunisia, where the seven Golfplan-designed resort courses were generating -- until the world recession and, more lately, the Jasmine Revolution -- 10 percent of the nation's foreign exchange earnings.
I'm writing to you from India, from a town called Mechuka in the very primitive northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. Mechuka is in a beautiful valley, 6,500 feet high, surrounded by 20,000-foot, snow-capped Himalayan peaks and ridges. Tibet is 30 miles to the north.
To get here, I made a 14-hour drive over two days, on roads that, for the last seven hours, were one lane or so wide. Slow going. There's no electricity after eight o'clock, and the only way to get hot water is to warm up a pot on a wood stove. On my last visit, in November, we carried pails of water up to our rooms at the guest house so we could flush the toilets.
All in all, though, this is a nice place for natural, Scottish-style golf -- fescues, cattle to mow the roughs and fairways. But there's a slight problem with access.
Cheers!
Ron Fream
Ron Fream is the founder of GolfPlan, a Santa Rosa, California-based design firm. He's designed about 75 new courses, including one for the Sultan of Brunei, and he currently has projects in Mongolia, Uganda, and other countries. He lives in Malaysia.
It was in 2004. I had been in Tunis, working to get a visa so I could go to Libya with some Tunisians. My visa was issued, after numerous bureaucratic delays, on the day the travel embargo was lifted.
I landed in Tripoli later that morning. On arrival, I was detained for a while as the various personnel in the immigration arrival hall took turns examining my passport. They had never before seen a standard, non-diplomatic U.S. passport.
Our Golfplan team was working with a Tunisian businessman who wanted to start developing tourist golf facilities in Libya, as I'd been doing since 1973 in Tunisia. The idea was to build a compact nine- or 18-hole course that would replace the British-inspired Tripoli Golf Club. We were going to turn the club's rolling, all-sand site into green grass. The location was near the Great Man-Made River, which pipes in water from the southern part of the country, so irrigation wasn't going to be a problem.
We did a master plan, but the project never went anywhere. Our Tunisian client got bogged down by trust issues, mostly involving money and transparency, with his prospective Libyan partner, and the deal died.
I ended up making two visits to Libya. On the second one, I showed our concept to one of Colonel Gaddafi's sons, the one who ran the nation's telecommunications industry and its national soccer team. I can't remember his name. My memory isn't what it once was.
What I remember about Libya are beautiful Roman and Carthaginian seaside ruins, many barely uncovered out of the sand. Libya, in fact, has an amazing Mediterranean seafront -- no bad coastal development, like you find in Egypt around Alexandria or overbuilt Sharm el-Sheikh. Some areas around Benghazi remind me of Tabarka, in northern Tunisia -- pine trees, cork oak, sandy areas, mountain settings.
In Tripoli, it was nice to see old English and Italian architecture, and still surviving Roman ruins. The port was one of the few along the Mediterranean that didn't have container facilities. Alcohol was available if you knew someone in the diplomatic corps.
Gaddafi had become wealthy from oil income, but the rewards hadn't trickled down to the average citizen. Donkey and camel were the main sources of protein. As is common in the Third World, preventive maintenance was not a known activity. All was dingy, dirty, boring.
Since there was little public greenery, it was easy to understand the plain, all-green flag of Libya. Most Libyans can only view sand and sea. At least their flag shows the color of nature.
Leadership change in Libya is long overdue. Libya needs tourism to help create jobs and provide hope to the nation's young people. I believe golf tourism in Libya could surpass that of Tunisia, where the seven Golfplan-designed resort courses were generating -- until the world recession and, more lately, the Jasmine Revolution -- 10 percent of the nation's foreign exchange earnings.
I'm writing to you from India, from a town called Mechuka in the very primitive northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh. Mechuka is in a beautiful valley, 6,500 feet high, surrounded by 20,000-foot, snow-capped Himalayan peaks and ridges. Tibet is 30 miles to the north.
To get here, I made a 14-hour drive over two days, on roads that, for the last seven hours, were one lane or so wide. Slow going. There's no electricity after eight o'clock, and the only way to get hot water is to warm up a pot on a wood stove. On my last visit, in November, we carried pails of water up to our rooms at the guest house so we could flush the toilets.
All in all, though, this is a nice place for natural, Scottish-style golf -- fescues, cattle to mow the roughs and fairways. But there's a slight problem with access.
Cheers!
Ron Fream
Ron Fream is the founder of GolfPlan, a Santa Rosa, California-based design firm. He's designed about 75 new courses, including one for the Sultan of Brunei, and he currently has projects in Mongolia, Uganda, and other countries. He lives in Malaysia.
Sunday, March 6, 2011
The Week That Was: March 6, 2011
brazil Jones, Jr. Gets on the Road To Rio
It takes two to tango, and it may also take two to design the golf course that hosts the Olympic games in 2016.
I'm sure you've heard that Jack Nicklaus and Annika Sorenstam have formed a partnership to win the coveted commission. Late last year, they were jointed by another high-profile, opposite-sex team: Greg Norman and Lorena Ochoa.
Now meet the latest dynamic duo to throw their proverbial hats into the ring: Robert Trent Jones, Jr. and -- drum roll, please -- Mario Gonzalez.
Who?
No, I never heard of him, either. The Associated Press simply describes Gonzalez as a “retired Brazilian golf great.” I've learned that he won the Brazilian Open eight times and played in the Masters three times. His main claim to fame: He won the Argentine Open as an amateur in 1940, when he was 17 years old.
That's right, Gonzalez was born in 1923. He's 88.
So much for golf evolving into a younger, hipper sport.
The AP reports that Jones, who's 71, was in Brazil last week, checking out potential sites -- the leading candidate is said to be in the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro -- and buttering up potential decision-makers. A designer will likely be selected later this year.
“I've been a long-time Olympic activist, and obviously was very happy golf rejoined the games,” Jones said during his visit. “We want to be part of it. It would be a wonderful thing.”
Jones and Gonzalez are competing against a parade of celebrity architects, including Nick Faldo, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Seve Ballesteros.
“We have dozens of designers interested in this course,” an official from the Brazilian Golf Federation told the AP. “I think it's even possible that one of these designers will offer their work free of charge just because of the importance of having their name associated with this historic tournament.”
I wouldn't bet on it. These days, the Olympics is all about getting paid.
spain New Course in Andalusia
A Spanish development group aims to build a 36-hole golf complex in Andalusia.
The complex will be the centerpiece of Los Velez Golf Club, a resort community in the village of Vélez-Rubio. As best I can determine, the 346-acre community will include more than 1,000 villas and apartments, a 180-room hotel, a spa, a wellness center, a shopping area, and a couple of schools.
Los Velez is being developed by Valle de Mahimón Urbanizadora SL Valley. The information I've found on the project is sketchy, but I believe the developers plan to build one 18 for local golfers, the other 18 for professional events. They hope to attract 500 members to their club.
Velez-Rubio is roughly 15 miles west of Lorca, in Almería Province.
qatar Follow the Bouncing Ball
Over the next year, a government-controlled development group in Qatar plans to begin awarding $3 billion worth of contracts for the construction of the Lusail mega-city.
Qatar needs to build Lusail in time for soccer's World Cup in 2022. The championship game will be played in a to-be-built stadium just north of the city.
Lusail is supposed to be complete in 2019. It's been planned to include thousands of houses -- enough to accommodate a population of 200,000 -- hotels, office space, an entertainment district, retail and commercial areas, five sports stadiums, and an 18-hole golf course.
The initial contracts will be issued for various infrastructure projects, notably a highway that will run along Lusail's western border. About three-quarters of the city's land has reportedly been sold to private developers. They are obligated to complete their projects within four years of the date when they take possession of the property.
Lusail's developer, Lusail Real Estate Development Company, is an affiliate of Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company. Qatari Diar is the development arm of the Qatar Investment Authority, which is led by the emirate's prime minister. He reports to Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, Qatar's emir.
All in all, Qatar expects to spend about $65 billion to dress itself up for the World Cup. Among other things, the emirate needs to double its hotel capacity, build nine new soccer stadiums, and refurbish three existing soccer stadiums.
cyprus A Pair of Kings
It appears that the Jack Nicklaus- and Gary Player-designed golf courses at Limni Golf Resort could open sometime next year.
According to a poorly prepared and horribly translated press release, “one of the finest golf course developments in the world today is officially underway in Polis, Cyprus.” The release never names the resort, but Limni is the only golf development in the world that anchored by Nicklaus- and Player-designed courses.
The resort is taking shape on 690 acres in Polis, a small town on the northwestern coast of Cyprus. Player's course is taking shape on a former copper quarry in the hills overlooking the Nicklaus course, part of which buts up to the beach.
“Having seen the intimate details of the courses and the site itself,” says the press release, “there is no doubt as a golf lover that this is the best site in the whole of Europe, bar none.”
It's prudent to assume that the resort's press agents may be exaggerating.
Besides the “signature” golf courses, Limni will have high-end villas, townhouses, and apartments, a village center, a boutique hotel, a spa, a beach club, entertainment venues, and hiking trails.
It’ll also have a desalination plant to convert sea water to fresh water, a vital process in a place as dry as Cyprus.
Limni is being developed by Shacolas Group, a firm based in Nicosia, Cyprus. The press release says that “the master project is due for completion in mid to late 2012.”
It takes two to tango, and it may also take two to design the golf course that hosts the Olympic games in 2016.
I'm sure you've heard that Jack Nicklaus and Annika Sorenstam have formed a partnership to win the coveted commission. Late last year, they were jointed by another high-profile, opposite-sex team: Greg Norman and Lorena Ochoa.
Now meet the latest dynamic duo to throw their proverbial hats into the ring: Robert Trent Jones, Jr. and -- drum roll, please -- Mario Gonzalez.
Who?
No, I never heard of him, either. The Associated Press simply describes Gonzalez as a “retired Brazilian golf great.” I've learned that he won the Brazilian Open eight times and played in the Masters three times. His main claim to fame: He won the Argentine Open as an amateur in 1940, when he was 17 years old.
That's right, Gonzalez was born in 1923. He's 88.
So much for golf evolving into a younger, hipper sport.
The AP reports that Jones, who's 71, was in Brazil last week, checking out potential sites -- the leading candidate is said to be in the Barra da Tijuca neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro -- and buttering up potential decision-makers. A designer will likely be selected later this year.
“I've been a long-time Olympic activist, and obviously was very happy golf rejoined the games,” Jones said during his visit. “We want to be part of it. It would be a wonderful thing.”
Jones and Gonzalez are competing against a parade of celebrity architects, including Nick Faldo, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, and Seve Ballesteros.
“We have dozens of designers interested in this course,” an official from the Brazilian Golf Federation told the AP. “I think it's even possible that one of these designers will offer their work free of charge just because of the importance of having their name associated with this historic tournament.”
I wouldn't bet on it. These days, the Olympics is all about getting paid.
spain New Course in Andalusia
A Spanish development group aims to build a 36-hole golf complex in Andalusia.
The complex will be the centerpiece of Los Velez Golf Club, a resort community in the village of Vélez-Rubio. As best I can determine, the 346-acre community will include more than 1,000 villas and apartments, a 180-room hotel, a spa, a wellness center, a shopping area, and a couple of schools.
Los Velez is being developed by Valle de Mahimón Urbanizadora SL Valley. The information I've found on the project is sketchy, but I believe the developers plan to build one 18 for local golfers, the other 18 for professional events. They hope to attract 500 members to their club.
Velez-Rubio is roughly 15 miles west of Lorca, in Almería Province.
qatar Follow the Bouncing Ball
Over the next year, a government-controlled development group in Qatar plans to begin awarding $3 billion worth of contracts for the construction of the Lusail mega-city.
Qatar needs to build Lusail in time for soccer's World Cup in 2022. The championship game will be played in a to-be-built stadium just north of the city.
Lusail is supposed to be complete in 2019. It's been planned to include thousands of houses -- enough to accommodate a population of 200,000 -- hotels, office space, an entertainment district, retail and commercial areas, five sports stadiums, and an 18-hole golf course.
The initial contracts will be issued for various infrastructure projects, notably a highway that will run along Lusail's western border. About three-quarters of the city's land has reportedly been sold to private developers. They are obligated to complete their projects within four years of the date when they take possession of the property.
Lusail's developer, Lusail Real Estate Development Company, is an affiliate of Qatari Diar Real Estate Investment Company. Qatari Diar is the development arm of the Qatar Investment Authority, which is led by the emirate's prime minister. He reports to Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, Qatar's emir.
All in all, Qatar expects to spend about $65 billion to dress itself up for the World Cup. Among other things, the emirate needs to double its hotel capacity, build nine new soccer stadiums, and refurbish three existing soccer stadiums.
cyprus A Pair of Kings
It appears that the Jack Nicklaus- and Gary Player-designed golf courses at Limni Golf Resort could open sometime next year.
According to a poorly prepared and horribly translated press release, “one of the finest golf course developments in the world today is officially underway in Polis, Cyprus.” The release never names the resort, but Limni is the only golf development in the world that anchored by Nicklaus- and Player-designed courses.
The resort is taking shape on 690 acres in Polis, a small town on the northwestern coast of Cyprus. Player's course is taking shape on a former copper quarry in the hills overlooking the Nicklaus course, part of which buts up to the beach.
“Having seen the intimate details of the courses and the site itself,” says the press release, “there is no doubt as a golf lover that this is the best site in the whole of Europe, bar none.”
It's prudent to assume that the resort's press agents may be exaggerating.
Besides the “signature” golf courses, Limni will have high-end villas, townhouses, and apartments, a village center, a boutique hotel, a spa, a beach club, entertainment venues, and hiking trails.
It’ll also have a desalination plant to convert sea water to fresh water, a vital process in a place as dry as Cyprus.
Limni is being developed by Shacolas Group, a firm based in Nicosia, Cyprus. The press release says that “the master project is due for completion in mid to late 2012.”
Friday, March 4, 2011
talking points More Is Less
USA Today recently interviewed Gary Player. Here's Player's response to the question, "What's your take on the state of the game?"
It's healthy, but we've got to stop making golf courses longer, because it means you've got to use more water, more oil, more labor, more fertilizer -- and these are all hurting the game. . . .
The whole economic problem we're facing now is because of greed, and golf is no different. From Timbuktu to Washington, D.C. to Augusta, everyone made their golf courses longer. Why? We wasted hundreds of millions of dollars. . . .
We need our leaders in golf to make the right decisions. We haven't started to see all the problems we're going to have with water. Nobody should be getting a permit to build a golf course unless they are using effluent water. Nobody should be using potable water. I designed a golf course on my ranch which is 80 percent water free, with no fertilizer. That's the wave of the future, and it's going to take a new generation of leaders to figure that out.
It's healthy, but we've got to stop making golf courses longer, because it means you've got to use more water, more oil, more labor, more fertilizer -- and these are all hurting the game. . . .
The whole economic problem we're facing now is because of greed, and golf is no different. From Timbuktu to Washington, D.C. to Augusta, everyone made their golf courses longer. Why? We wasted hundreds of millions of dollars. . . .
We need our leaders in golf to make the right decisions. We haven't started to see all the problems we're going to have with water. Nobody should be getting a permit to build a golf course unless they are using effluent water. Nobody should be using potable water. I designed a golf course on my ranch which is 80 percent water free, with no fertilizer. That's the wave of the future, and it's going to take a new generation of leaders to figure that out.
Thursday, March 3, 2011
worth reading China: The Pending Collapse
Lawrence Solomon, the executive director of a group called the Urban Renaissance Institute, has been a contributor to the Wall Street Journal and the Toronto Globe & Mail, and he's currently a columnist for the National Post.
Here's his view of China in 2011, as excerpted from a recent column in the Post:
The Chinese economy today parallels that of the latter-day Soviet Union: immense accomplishments co-existing with immense failures.
In some ways, China's stability today is more precarious than was the Soviet Union's before its fall. China's poor are poorer than the Soviet Union's poor, and they are much more numerous -- about one billion in a country of 1.3 billion.
Moreover, in the Soviet Union there was no sizeable middle class. Just about everyone was poor and shared in the same hardships, avoiding resentments that might otherwise have arisen.
In China, the resentments are palpable. Many of the 300 million people who have risen out of poverty flaunt their new wealth, often egregiously so. This is especially so with the new class of rich, all but non-existent just a few years ago, which now includes some 500,000 millionaires and 200 billionaires.
Worse, the gap between rich and poor has been increasing. Ominously, the bottom billion views as illegitimate the wealth of the top 300 million.
How did so many become so rich so quickly?
For the most part, through corruption.
Twenty years ago, the Communist Party decided that “getting rich is glorious,” giving the green light to lawless capitalism. The rulers in China started by awarding themselves and their families the lion's share of the state's resources in the guise of privatization, and by selling licences and other access to the economy to cronies in exchange for bribes. The system of corruption, and the public acceptance of corruption, is now pervasive. Even minor officials in government backwaters are now able to enrich themselves handsomely. . . .
If the corruption were limited to awarding contracts to friends and giving mines, power plants, and other public assets to relatives, the upset among the poor, who would realize some trickle-down benefits, would be constrained. In fact, the corruption deprives the poor of their homes, livelihoods, health, and lives.
Take golf courses, a status symbol among China's new rich. To obtain the immense tracts of land needed near urban markets, developers have been cooking up deals with local officials that see land expropriated and typically tens of thousands of residents and businesses evicted per golf course, generally with unfair compensation. Although the construction of new golf courses is officially banned, thousands more are expected to be built in the next few years.
Golf courses aside, countless other real estate developments abetted by officialdom likewise wipe out entire communities. Then there are resource projects such as hydro dams that can displace numerous people and businesses. The Three Gorges Dam alone displaced several million people.
The corruption extends to the enforcement of regulatory standards for health and safety, which few in China trust. In recent years, China has endured a tainted milk scandal and a tainted blood scandal, each of which implicated corrupt officials in widespread death and debilitation. In a devastating 2008 earthquake, some 90,000 perished, one-third of them children buried alive in 7,000 shoddily built “tofu schools” that skimped on materials. Nearby buildings for the elites that met building standards, including a school for the children of the rich, were largely unscathed.
The government tries to tamp down the outrage over the abuses inflicted on the public by banning demonstrations and censoring the Internet. But it is failing. Year by year, the number of demonstrations increases. Last year alone saw 100,000 such protests across the county, directly involving tens and indirectly perhaps hundreds of millions of protesters.
China is a powder keg that could explode at any moment. And if it does explode, chaos could ensue. As the Chinese are only too well aware, the country has a brutal history of carnage at the hands of unruly mobs.
For this reason, corrupt officials inside China, likely by the tens of thousands, have made contingency plans, obtaining foreign passports, buying second homes abroad, establishing their families and businesses abroad, or otherwise planning their escapes. Also for this reason, much of the middle class supports the government's increasingly repressive efforts.
What might set off that spark?
It could be high unemployment, should China be unable to control inflation or the housing bubble that now looms. It could be another natural disaster, such as the 2008 earthquake which spawned outrage -- rapidly organized via cellphones and the Internet -- that the government had difficulty containing. It could be a man-made disaster. Many fear that a “tofu dam” might fail, leading to hundreds of thousands of downstream victims.
Whatever might set off that spark, it is only a matter of time. The government shows no interest in relaxing its grip on power. If it did so, the officials in power might face retribution.
Meanwhile, we in the West see a China that by all measures is becoming stronger and stronger, not realizing that it is also becoming more and more brittle. The Soviet regime, when it fell, went out with a whimper. China's will more likely go out with a bang.
No regime can contain the grievances of a billion people for long.
Here's his view of China in 2011, as excerpted from a recent column in the Post:
The Chinese economy today parallels that of the latter-day Soviet Union: immense accomplishments co-existing with immense failures.
In some ways, China's stability today is more precarious than was the Soviet Union's before its fall. China's poor are poorer than the Soviet Union's poor, and they are much more numerous -- about one billion in a country of 1.3 billion.
Moreover, in the Soviet Union there was no sizeable middle class. Just about everyone was poor and shared in the same hardships, avoiding resentments that might otherwise have arisen.
In China, the resentments are palpable. Many of the 300 million people who have risen out of poverty flaunt their new wealth, often egregiously so. This is especially so with the new class of rich, all but non-existent just a few years ago, which now includes some 500,000 millionaires and 200 billionaires.
Worse, the gap between rich and poor has been increasing. Ominously, the bottom billion views as illegitimate the wealth of the top 300 million.
How did so many become so rich so quickly?
For the most part, through corruption.
Twenty years ago, the Communist Party decided that “getting rich is glorious,” giving the green light to lawless capitalism. The rulers in China started by awarding themselves and their families the lion's share of the state's resources in the guise of privatization, and by selling licences and other access to the economy to cronies in exchange for bribes. The system of corruption, and the public acceptance of corruption, is now pervasive. Even minor officials in government backwaters are now able to enrich themselves handsomely. . . .
If the corruption were limited to awarding contracts to friends and giving mines, power plants, and other public assets to relatives, the upset among the poor, who would realize some trickle-down benefits, would be constrained. In fact, the corruption deprives the poor of their homes, livelihoods, health, and lives.
Take golf courses, a status symbol among China's new rich. To obtain the immense tracts of land needed near urban markets, developers have been cooking up deals with local officials that see land expropriated and typically tens of thousands of residents and businesses evicted per golf course, generally with unfair compensation. Although the construction of new golf courses is officially banned, thousands more are expected to be built in the next few years.
Golf courses aside, countless other real estate developments abetted by officialdom likewise wipe out entire communities. Then there are resource projects such as hydro dams that can displace numerous people and businesses. The Three Gorges Dam alone displaced several million people.
The corruption extends to the enforcement of regulatory standards for health and safety, which few in China trust. In recent years, China has endured a tainted milk scandal and a tainted blood scandal, each of which implicated corrupt officials in widespread death and debilitation. In a devastating 2008 earthquake, some 90,000 perished, one-third of them children buried alive in 7,000 shoddily built “tofu schools” that skimped on materials. Nearby buildings for the elites that met building standards, including a school for the children of the rich, were largely unscathed.
The government tries to tamp down the outrage over the abuses inflicted on the public by banning demonstrations and censoring the Internet. But it is failing. Year by year, the number of demonstrations increases. Last year alone saw 100,000 such protests across the county, directly involving tens and indirectly perhaps hundreds of millions of protesters.
China is a powder keg that could explode at any moment. And if it does explode, chaos could ensue. As the Chinese are only too well aware, the country has a brutal history of carnage at the hands of unruly mobs.
For this reason, corrupt officials inside China, likely by the tens of thousands, have made contingency plans, obtaining foreign passports, buying second homes abroad, establishing their families and businesses abroad, or otherwise planning their escapes. Also for this reason, much of the middle class supports the government's increasingly repressive efforts.
What might set off that spark?
It could be high unemployment, should China be unable to control inflation or the housing bubble that now looms. It could be another natural disaster, such as the 2008 earthquake which spawned outrage -- rapidly organized via cellphones and the Internet -- that the government had difficulty containing. It could be a man-made disaster. Many fear that a “tofu dam” might fail, leading to hundreds of thousands of downstream victims.
Whatever might set off that spark, it is only a matter of time. The government shows no interest in relaxing its grip on power. If it did so, the officials in power might face retribution.
Meanwhile, we in the West see a China that by all measures is becoming stronger and stronger, not realizing that it is also becoming more and more brittle. The Soviet regime, when it fell, went out with a whimper. China's will more likely go out with a bang.
No regime can contain the grievances of a billion people for long.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
malaysia IMG's First-Time Designers
Padraig Harrington and K. J. Choi, whose careers are managed by IMG, have been tapped to design 18-hole “signature” golf courses for a resort community in Malaysia.
So far, not much is known about the community, except that it’ll include houses and a hotel and take shape on a former palm oil plantation near Kuala Lumpur.
I got wind of the project last fall, when Harrington told the Irish Independent, “It has not been officially announced, nor does the course I’m designing have a name, but it’s just outside KL.”
I've since learned that the courses are expected to be championship-caliber tracks that will stretch to 7,000 yards or more. The community’s unnamed developers could break ground on them this year, but it hasn’t yet been determined whether the courses will be built at once or one at a time.
Neither golfer has yet designed a golf course, although they each designed a hole for Legend Golf & Safari Resort in Limpopo Province, South Africa. They'll receive design assistance from Brit Stenson, the head architect in IMG’s office in Cleveland, Ohio.
So far, not much is known about the community, except that it’ll include houses and a hotel and take shape on a former palm oil plantation near Kuala Lumpur.
I got wind of the project last fall, when Harrington told the Irish Independent, “It has not been officially announced, nor does the course I’m designing have a name, but it’s just outside KL.”
I've since learned that the courses are expected to be championship-caliber tracks that will stretch to 7,000 yards or more. The community’s unnamed developers could break ground on them this year, but it hasn’t yet been determined whether the courses will be built at once or one at a time.
Neither golfer has yet designed a golf course, although they each designed a hole for Legend Golf & Safari Resort in Limpopo Province, South Africa. They'll receive design assistance from Brit Stenson, the head architect in IMG’s office in Cleveland, Ohio.
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