italy Gary Player’s Double Play

If the economic and political chips fall the right way, Gary Player’s firm is going to break ground on two golf courses in Italy this year.

One will be built on Sardinia, as part of an established golf resort called Is Molas. The other will be the centerpiece of the Manzano Golf Resort in Tuscany, one of the nation’s premier vacation destinations.

It behooves me to note, however, that when it comes to development in Italy, there are no sure things.

“There’s a fairly cumbersome approval process the projects have to go through,” says Scott Ferrell, the president of Gary Player Design. “And of course, the recent economic news hasn’t helped any.”

Then again, Player has been through this before. His firm has already designed two courses in Italy, a nine-hole layout at Arzaga Golf Club in Brescia and an 18-hole course at Donnafugata Golf Resort & Spa on the island of Sicily.

So, fingers crossed, Player hopes to break ground on its new courses by the end of 2012.

The first is likely to emerge at Is Molas, the first resort on Sardinia to offer golf and the only one with a 27-hole complex. Its 18-hole Old course, designed by Ken Cotton and Frank Pennink with assistance from Piero Mancinelli, is a Mediterranean favorite, as it’s hosted numerous professional and amateur championships since it opened in 1975. It’s complemented by a nine-hole executive-length track that was designed Franco Piras, Player’s representative in Italy.

Unlike the Old course at Is Molas, Player’s 7,100-yard track will be tailored primarily for vacationers, and it’ll take shape on flat, mostly featureless property. “The course will have to be manufactured,” notes Jeff Lawrence, the firm’s staff architect in Travelers Rest, South Carolina.

Player’s other Italian job, an 18-hole championship-length layout at Manzano, will be part of what’s being billed as “the first-ever golf resort in Cortona.” At build-out, the 200-acre property will feature 36 “fractional” villas, a 40-room hotel, meeting space, a wellness center, restaurants, and other attractions.

Farrell tells me that his firm is pursuing several other opportunities in Italy these days, including another prospective course on Sardinia.

A slightly different version of this post originally appeared in the March 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

united states, John Harbottle III, RIP

For the second consecutive Sunday, I must sadly report about the passing of a notable golf course architect.

Last week it was K. D. Bagga. This week it’s John Harbottle III, a Tacoma, Washington-based designer who was just 53. The Olympian reports that Harbottle, one of the busiest and best-known architects in the Pacific Northwest, died last Thursday in Los Angeles International Airport, after complaining of pain in his neck and shoulder.

Harbottle had golf in his blood. His father won the state of Washington’s senior amateur championship five times, and his mother won the U.S. Women’s Amateur championship in 1955. Their son studied landscape architecture at the University of Washington, and, like so many architects that are doing commendable work today, apprenticed with Pete Dye.

Harbottle established his own firm in 1992, and he produced 15 original courses in Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Hands down, his most celebrated work is the Olympic Course at Gold Mountain Golf Club in Bremerton, Washington. The course, part of a municipal complex, has hosted two national events, including the 2006 PubLinks championship, and two NCAA regional championships.

Like Dye, Harbottle learned his craft in part by studying some of Scotland’s most famous links. His goal, he once said, was to produce “natural-looking golf courses with a links touch.” He occasionally produced them with “signature” contributors, among them Johnny Miller, Peter Jacobsen, and Fuzzy Zoeller.

Nearly a decade ago, in an interview with Travel Golf, Harbottle said that he admired the work of Tom Fazio, Jay Morrish, Dana Fry, Bobby Weed, Rick Jacobson, and Keith Foster. He singled out Donald Ross’ No. 2 course at Pinehurst as his favorite place to play but noted that he also enjoyed the classic layouts at Cypress Point Club, San Francisco Golf Club, and Pine Valley Golf Club.

In the interview, Harbottle provided a glimpse of his design philosophy:

These days, when we have a project where we have to move a lot of dirt, we try to move it in a way that looks like we haven’t moved a lot of dirt. So even though we may be moving mountains in some aspects, we’re still trying to do it so it looks like a classical old site. We’re trying to make the site look like it was made for the golf course, even though at times it may not have been.

More recently, in a story in Southland Golf, Harbottle described a great golf course as one that makes golfers “thrilled to just be there.”

I suppose that, in a nutshell, was what Harbottle tried to achieve with his courses. It’s a pity that he didn’t live long enough to design more of them.

brazil Olympics 2016: Still in Limbo

The blunder in Brazil continues, with no end in immediate sight.

The latest: Elmway Participacoes, the company insisting that it owns the property where the golf course for the 2016 Olympics is to take shape, has formally petitioned a Brazilian court to void any contracts that may have been signed and to block any planned construction projects.

The Associated Press reports that a final ruling on the dispute, which is now threatening the start of the course’s construction (it’s scheduled to begin in October), will be made by the nation’s Brazil's Higher Court of Justice -- the highest court in the land, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Such courts aren’t known for quick deliberations, and the AP once again notes that a decision “could take months or even years.”

I don’t know about you, but it feels to me like this snafu is on the verge of becoming a fubar. City officials in Rio de Janeiro have acknowledged that they don’t have a Plan B to replace their faltering Plan A. Is it time for them to start thinking about one?

talking points Feeling the Earth Move

Like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Oprah Winfrey, Tom Fazio now has a vanity publication: Fazio Premier Clubs.

I haven’t yet seen the inaugural issue (and probably never will, if truth be told), but it features an interview with Fazio conducted by the magazine’s editors. In the interview, by happy coincidence, Fazio addresses a topic that I blogged about last month, in my discussion of “minimalist” and “maximalist” courses.

Here’s Fazio’s perspective on the issue:

Variety is good, but I think minimalism got carried away as a theme. Just because it didn’t take that much to create, I don’t think that makes it any better or worse, and I don’t think because you moved a lot of earth that makes it better or worse. The only thing that counts is the end result. No one cares or wonders how much earth was moved at Cypress Point or Pebble Beach.

And in Other News . . .

. . . canada  Greg Norman’s new golf course in Peachland, British Columbia is under construction and on schedule to open next summer. Strictly speaking, the layout is a replacement course, as it’s taking shape on property that once served as the home of Ponderosa Golf Club. But Norman’s 7,100-yard, tournament-worthy track will bear no resemblance to the original Ponderosa track, which occupied just 58 acres. “The current design will stretch over 400 acres from one end of it to the other,” the club’s general manager told the Vancouver Sun. “It’s absolutely enormous, the biggest one I have seen.” The resort community that’s expected to grow up around the course will also be big, as it’s been master-planned to include more than 2,000 houses, a village center, a hotel, an outdoor theater, a winery, and other attractions.

Some information in the above post originally appeared in the September 2009 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

. . . united states Regarding those happier days in the U.S. golf business that I blogged about two weeks ago: My pile of anecdotal evidence is accumulating quickly. The latest morsel of good news has been dished out by Don Padgett, Jr., whose Pinehurst golf resort is ringing up rounds at a pre-Great Recession pace. “It has been a great spring,” Padgett recently told Golf Digest. “Our numbers are back to the 2008 levels. We’ve had an early spring, the weather has been great, [and] the buzz for No. 2 [have] all driven our business levels beyond what we expected. We’re very pleased. . . . We haven’t had a spring like this since 2008.”

. . . wild card click So much for the mistaken belief that men can only talk about sports and sex.

Short Notice, may 25, 2012

John Harbottle, one of the Pacific Northwest’s best-known golf course architects, died yesterday. Details are sketchy, but the Tri-City Herald reports that the Tacoma, Washington-based designer succumbed to a heart attack while in California. Harbottle was 53. His courses, he once said, were “old-fashioned-looking” and had a “links touch.” I’ll have more to say about his life and work in Sunday’s blog.

Now that Bandon Dunes has become one of the world’s premier golf destinations, it seems logical to ask which of its four 18-hole courses gets the most play. The answer: Old Macdonald. “I think that has a lot to do with the fact that Old Mac is fun,” the resort’s owner, Mike Keiser, recently told Golf Digest. “How often is a course designed to be fun? Turns out, that’s a popular concept.” If you’re wondering, the second most-popular course at the resort is Bandon Dunes, followed by Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails.

This summer, Nicklaus Design will oversee a minor makeover of the Mountain course at the Bear Mountain resort community in Victoria, British Columbia. The work will affect three holes on the nine-year-old track, which was co-designed by Jack and Steve Nicklaus and opened in 2003. Bear Mountain’s owners are undertaking the work to create room for more houses and condos.

Speaking of British Columbia, a 500-foot-long replica of the Great Wall of China, a faux Chinese junk, and a Pagoda-style clubhouse are among the attractions at a new golf course in Langley. Pagoda Ridge Golf Course, which is said to be the town’s first new course “in decades,” is scheduled to open sometime this summer. The Langley Times says that the 7,000-yard track, which has been co-designed by Mike Gregg and Scott Woodland, has been in the making for 22 years.

Bob Cupp has officially taken his one-year turn as the president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. Cupp, who’s based in Atlanta, Georgia, was elected by his peers at the group’s recent meeting in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His mission, he said in a press statement, is “to bring attention back to the simple pleasures of walking a well-designed golf course” and “to lead more people -- especially families -- to play more golf more often, for the sheer fun of the game.”

A third event on the European Tour has been called off due to financial problems. It’s the Czech Open, which was scheduled to take place in August at Prosper Golf Resort in Celadna. Money issues have also forced the Tour to cancel events in Bahrain and Spain.

Hindu tradition calls for feeding New Delhi’s monkeys twice a week, and as a result the animals have grown wildly in numbers and become a public scourge. The New York Times reports that the monkeys, roaming the city in packs, routinely rob the city’s residents of food and attack those who don’t cooperate. “They were totally silent, very quick, and highly effective,” said the victim of a mugging.

thailand Days of Heaven

By the end of this year, in an effort to create a “golf heaven,” Siam Country Club plans to break ground on its third golf course.

The New course, as it’s being called, will draw even more attention to Siam, which is already something of a paradise on earth for Asia’s golf business. The club, one of the first private enclaves in Thailand, opened in 1971 and has hosted a Honda-sponsored LPGA event every year since 2007. It currently offers 45 holes of golf.

The New course will take shape on 200 acres dotted with lakes that will come into play on about half of its holes. Its designer, Brit Stenson of Cleveland, Ohio-based IMG, says the layout won’t be as challenging as Siam’s Old and Plantation tracks. “A lot of their clientele is Japanese,” Stenson explains, “and they want something more forgiving.”

To that end, Stenson has designed a course with large greens and shallow bunkers. The track will stretch to 7,489 yards, but he believes the club’s members and vacationers will more often play it at somewhere between 6,000 and 6,500 yards. And while Stenson often collaborates with one of the touring pros managed by IMG, he’s likely flying solo at Siam.

The club is located in a suburb of Pattaya, along the Gulf of Thailand. It was established by Thaworn Phornprapha, the founder of Siam Motors Company. Siam Motors began its existence as a seller of new and used cars, graduated to become the first overseas distributor for Nissan, and then opened an assembly plant in Thailand. Nowadays it’s diversified into manufacturing and trading operations for companies such as Hitachi (elevators), Yamaha (musical and audio products), and Komatsu (heavy equipment).

The club is now run by Phornprapha’s son, Phornthep, who’s taken his father’s dream of creating Thailand’s premier golf destination and run with it. In 2006, Phornprapha hired Scottsdale, Arizona-based Schmidt Curley Golf Design to redesign Siam’s 7,162-yard Old course and to build a new 27-hole complex, the Plantation course. And after the New course opens, he’ll likely hire Stenson to design an “international-standard” golf academy.

“Our objective for the New course,” Phornprapha has said, “is to create something that is beautiful and very unique from our existing courses, providing golfers with an experience that is fun and memorable.”

The New course is expected to open in early 2014. As far as his future plans for Siam go, Phornprapha hasn’t spelled anything out. But he has close to 800 acres of undeveloped property to work with.

The original version of this post appeared in the March 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

The Week That Was, may 20, 2012

india K. D. Bagga, RIP

India’s most prolific and most important golf course architect died last week.

K. D. Bagga -- “Colonel” Bagga, as he liked to call himself -- was hardly known outside India’s golf circles, and his death doesn’t appear to have registered with the nation’s big newspapers. Maybe that’s because he’d dedicated the final 20 or so years of his life to a mostly thankless task: Making golf in India a people’s sport. His work, he told me last year, was the “mad passion” of designing and building “affordable, easily sustainable, and more accessible golf courses for the masses.”

Bagga was 80. An Indian news service reports that he died after “a prolonged illness.” I don’t know what ailed him at the end, but he’d previously undergone a pair of heart bypass surgeries.

I exchanged some e-mails with Bagga a year or so ago, in connection with a story I was writing for Golf, Inc. He intrigued me because he was a blue-collar architect, not unlike the late Geoffrey Cornish. He had no pretensions as a designer, no grand ambitions. He wasn’t in the business for the money or the fame. He was simply a fellow who loved golf and who wanted to share its delights with his countrymen. He truly was someone who “grew the game.”

“The concept of neighborhood golf courses, however small, is my thought,” he said.

Golf design was probably Bagga’s third career. He was first a civil engineer, then a military officer. I don’t know when the golf bug bit him, but he became serious about design in the mid 1990s, when he crossed paths with Ron Fream, a U.S. architect with comparable populist sympathies. Sensing a kindred spirit, Fream taught Bagga the fundamentals of good design and some basic construction techniques and then turned him loose.

The records show that Bagga completed about a dozen golf courses, most of them nine-hole tracks -- Gulmohar Greens Golf & Country Club in Ahmedabad and Jammu Tawi Golf Course in Sidhra among them. His best-known work is almost certainly Kensville Golf & Country Club in Ahmedabad, an 18-hole, championship-length track that carries the “signature” of Jeev Milkha Singh, India’s most successful professional golfer. Kensville is generally regarded to be the best course in the city and one of the best in the country.

When I caught up with Bagga, he was deep into his 70s. I asked if he had any thoughts of retirement, but I knew he didn’t. “I have tried to hang my boots many times,” he told me, but he said he wouldn’t do it if it meant “handing over the baton to anyone not passionate for the game and county.”

It’s too bad that Bagga never found someone he deemed worthy of carrying his baton. If India ever expects to reach its golf-development potential, it could use more people like the Colonel.

And in Other News . . .

. . . mexico Better late than never: The long-delayed Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course at Quivira Los Cabos is under construction and scheduled to open roughly a year from now. The course is one of two “signature” layouts in the master plan for the 1,850-acre oceanfront community, which will eventually sprout luxury houses, a pair of beach clubs, the obligatory spa, a village center, and maybe one of those limited-edition Jack Nicklaus Golf Clubs whose development has been stymied by the Great Recession. It’s been a long haul for Quivira, which has been kicking around since the mid 2000s (if not before), when Ernesto Coppel, its developer, promised that it would soon be “redefining luxury in Los Cabos.” A construction start was set for 2008, then 2009, and then Quivira, like so many of the world’s high-priced golf spreads, made a slow fade to black. But now the tony community is officially back, and that’s encouraging news not just for Coppel, Nicklaus, and Mexico but for developers everywhere who’ve been able to maintain their faith and, perhaps more important, their financial wherewithal.

Some information in the above post originally appeared in the November 2011 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

. . . brazil Regarding the land dispute that’s threatening the development of the 2016 Olympics’ golf course: The plot is thickening. A couple of weeks ago, it was revealed that two local groups have laid claim to the property. This week we learned that the city of Rio doesn’t have any proof of ownership and that a Brazilian court is conducting a search for documents that can settle the quarrel once and for all. Unfortunately, a judicial resolution to this sorry escapade could, in the words of the Associated Press, “take months or even years.” It seems like only yesterday that Gil Hanse, the course’s architect, had a perch on top of the world. Today he must be wondering if his sure-thing $300,000 commission is going to turn into yet another project on indefinite hold. People described as “local Olympic organizers” continue to insist that contracts for course design and construction will soon be signed, but I’m quickly losing confidence. To me, all of the players involved seem like nothing more than spiders who don’t realize what a tangled web they’ve weaved.

. . . united states Is golf one of those “leading economic indicators” that can forecast the future? The National Golf Foundation thinks so, and the Jupiter, Florida-based trade group says that these days the industry’s needles and gauges are all pointing up. In particular, the group says, its surveys of “golfer confidence” have shown increases for three consecutive quarters. “It’s not just the weather,” a spokesman for the NGF told the Newport News Daily Press. “People are feeling a little bit better about their financial situation.” Maybe that’s why the number of rounds played in the United States was up by 22 percent in the first quarter of this year.

. . . wild card click Is this what it means to be in tune with the electorate?

talking points Is Asia a Road to Nowhere?

When it comes to golf development, Japan has run out of gas, South Korea has stalled, and China is, at least for the time being, stuck in neutral.

That’s the verdict from Brian Costello, Mark Hollinger, and Bob Moore, the principals of JMP Golf Design. The JMP “brand” may not register with most U.S. golfers, but for more than a decade Costello, Hollinger, and Moore have been driving through towns and cities all over Asia and Southeast Asia. They’ve created a dozen courses in Japan, at least a dozen in China, and 10 others in Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines. They’re also responsible for four in South Korea, including the recently opened 360˚ Country Club in Yeoju, in Gyeonggi Province.

The partners recently shared some of their expertise with Asian Golf Business. Their comments about the state of golf development came in the form of an “interview” that, unfortunately, doesn’t at all sound authentic or spontaneous. My guess is that the answers were written, not spoken.

I can’t determine which architect is doing the talking, but I suppose it really doesn’t matter. Here’s what they had to say:

On Japan: A combination of market saturation and the state of the economy have certainly resulted in very limited demand for new golf in Japan. In fact, many see a further contraction of existing golf courses as a move in the right direction. . . . However, having said that, we also see a strong emerging market for renovation. Aging golf courses in key metropolitan areas and popular resort areas will be ideal candidates for renovation.

On South Korea: It would seem that opportunities for massive growth are definitely over for the short term. . . . There is certainly a correction in the Korean market, but we would not, at this time, characterize it as Japan-like. The fundamentals of the Korean economy are in place, and that economy should sustain a few smart projects that truly provide value and great golf experiences in the private and public sectors.

On China: The golf market will continue to grow, but not nearly at the breakneck pace of the past few years. The central government’s high-end lending controls are now impacting the market severely. Speculative property buyers who propelled the golf course community real estate industry are no longer available in most regions of China. It is now a new and very different environment for golf development, and this will continue at least for the next couple of years. In addition, many of the popular resort areas have been oversaturated with golf projects. It will require some time for all of this to shake out.

On the Philippines: Golf development in the Philippines has been practically non-existent for many years. The Philippines is too rich in resources, population, and in beautiful landscapes for that trend to continue.

On India: India is anybody’s guess, but it is hard not to envision India as a major golf market in the coming decade, as long as the complex issue of land acquisition is addressed.

On Indonesia: Indonesia is a sleeping giant in many respects. It is the world’s fourth most populous country. Its consumer demand is enormous. It is a rising economic power. Having stated that, we do not expect to see another explosion of golf like the one that occurred there in the 1980s.

france Grape Expectations

China’s fast-growing thirst for prestige wine has made wineries in Bordeaux some of the hottest real estate on the planet. Over the past year or so, Chinese buyers have snapped up more than a dozen wineries, most of them in a region called Entre-deux-Mers, which is known for producing fruity, easy-to-drink wines that suit the Chinese palette.

The latest to turn over is Chateau Grand Moueys, a 425-acre estate along the Garonne River in the village of Capian. The estate, which has been producing wines since before the French Revolution, had previously been owned by a German company.

Chateau Grand Moueys’ new owner, Zhang Jinshan, is the principal of Ningxiahong Zhongning Wolfberry Products Company, which has been described as “the world’s largest producer of alcohol from goji berries.”

Zhang also owns a travel agency, which will come in handy in his effort to help turn his winery into a vacation spot for Chinese tourists. “From 2013, we hope to welcome around 10,000 Chinese visitors a year,” he told Decanter.com at the time of the sale.

Chateau Grand Moueys currently has only about half of its property under cultivation, which means that Zhang has plenty of opportunities for development. He plans to overhaul the property’s 18th-century estate, add an upscale Chinese restaurant, and build a nine-hole golf course. And if his projected tourism numbers pan out, he’ll turn the estate’s guest rooms into a hotel with a spa.

Various reports from France say that more sales are in process. “For some chateaux that struggle to sell their wine,” a winery owner told Decanter in late 2011, “China really is a get-out-of-jail-free card.”

Some information in this post originally appeared in the March 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

The Week That Was, may 13, 2012

united states Back in the Swing of Things?

Slowly but surely, the bad-news stories about our business are disappearing. While the Great Recession isn’t yet completely dead and buried, it appears that happier days are here again for the owners and operators of U.S. golf properties.

The evidence is still mostly anecdotal, and better times haven’t arrived in every U.S. market, but there’s no disputing the essential fact: Courses from coast to coast are ringing up more rounds this year. You can chalk up the increase to an unusually warm winter, to an improving economy, to pent-up demand, or to all of the above. No matter how you slice it, however, things are definitely looking up.

Here are three illustrations:

-- The Fort Myers News-Press reports that Southwest Florida’s golf operators “are hopeful that the local market has stabilized and might even be on the rebound.” The newspaper singles out San Carlos Golf Club in Fort Myers, which recorded “at least a dozen” 300-round days in the first quarter of 2012. “It’s been unbelievable this winter. The traffic has been exceptional,” says the track’s pro. “They’re playing some golf this winter.”

-- The Pittsburgh Tribune reports that “with few exceptions,” public and semi-private golf courses in Western Pennsylvania are seeing increases of “between 20 percent to 50 percent” in rounds and revenues. The newspaper singles out Hickory Heights Golf Course in Bridgeville, which is said to be “busier than it’s been in more than a decade.” One of the course’s owners says, “We are up substantially from last year. . . . It’s like night and day.”

-- The Gainesville Times reports that while “the economy may be depressed” in northeastern Georgia, the golf business “is swinging.” The newspaper singles out Royal Lakes Country Club in Flowery Branch, where rounds are up by 25 percent over 2011. “Is [our business] back to where it was in 2007?” asks the course’s director of golf. “No, it’s not quite there, but it’s certainly improved since it started derailing in 2008 or 2009.”

To be sure, the U.S. golf business isn’t out of the woods yet, and plenty of dark clouds remain on the horizon. Lots of cities still have way more courses than they need. Many courses that were built primarily to sell houses continue to struggle. Courses that have been selling rounds at deep discounts won’t be able to generate significant profits even if they can increase play. The industry isn’t creating new players. And scores of private clubs haven’t been able to replace the members they’ve lost since the economy crashed.

Still, it’s okay to look on the bright side every once in a while. We deserve it. We’ve been through a lot.

And in Other News . . .

 . . . mexico  The race to build the planet’s first Tiger Woods-designed golf course is apparently being contested in Mexico. Just weeks after Golf Vacation Insider claimed that Woods has “signed a contract” to design a course at Diamante Cabo San Lucas in Los Cabos, a press release from Punta Brava says that its Woods-designed course could open “as early as September of 2013.” Clearly, reports of Woods’ demise as a designer were premature. The question now is, Which tony community will be first to cross the finish line?

Some information in the previous post originally appeared in the November 2008 and the April 2012 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

. . . united states How much would you pay for a 10,000-acre resort community that features six golf courses designed by Jack Nicklaus, Tom Fazio, Bob Cupp, Rees Jones, and Jim Engh? The courses, assuming you haven’t already guessed, are the featured attractions of Reynolds Landing, the financially troubled spread on Lake Oconee in Georgia. Sometime this summer, the whole place -- including a Ritz-Carlton hotel, four marinas, plans for a Pete Dye-designed golf course, and, perhaps most important, 5,000 acres of undeveloped land -- will belong to MetLife, the largest insurance company in the United States. MetLife, which reportedly has a real estate portfolio worth $50 million, hasn’t yet revealed the sales price. But if you’re wondering, 3,600 home owners passed on an opportunity to buy Reynolds Plantation for $45 million.

. . . sweden Johan Edfors, a Swedish golf pro, has purchased Hills Golf Club in suburban Gothenburg. The club’s eight-year-old course, co-designed by Arthur Hills and Steve Forrest, has its admirers (among them Bill Clinton and Alice Cooper), but it’s frustrated too many potential customers and, as a result, fell into bankruptcy late last year. A reviewer from CNBC has called it “a basket case of a course -- by turns beautiful, infuriating, impossibly difficult, and enormous fun.” The “impossibly difficult” reputation hangs like a dead weight on the 7,500-yard layout, and Edfors and his partners must change it for the course to become profitable. To that end, two holes will be redesigned, and the course will be made “more compact,” according to Golf Course Architecture. “Hills has been too hard for the average golfer,” says Edfors. “We will change that without making it too easy for Tour players.”

. . . wild card click Where there’s a Will, there’s a way.

talking points Lee Trevino, Design Critic

“The Merry Mex” isn’t very happy about the current state of golf design.

Lee Trevino thinks today’s golf courses are too long, too hard, and too expensive to maintain. He thinks designers and developers have regrettably strayed from traditional values, and now an entire industry is paying the price.

To be sure, Trevino isn’t breaking any new ground here. Still, it’s nice to hear a winner of six majors and a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame stand up for the average golfer.

Here’s some of what Trevino had to say about golf design in a recent interview with the Golf Channel:  

I think [the game] is in trouble. I know that it’s very exciting on [the PGA] Tour, but it’s not exciting for a lot of people to have to play these courses that they’re building for the Tour players. They build these hard golf courses, and now they’re talking about playing the forward tees. They should have never built those back tees in the first place. Why do you want a golf course that's 7,400 yards long? . . .

Guys feel like they’re going to the ladies tees when you push them up forward. They don’t like that. Golfers want to be macho. . . .

We build hundreds and hundreds of golf courses in this country that most people can’t play. They take too long to play because they’re too difficult. And also, it costs too much for maintenance. And that, in return, sends the dues (and green fees) up, and people are dropping out. We’re in a lot of trouble right now.

These new modern courses they’ve built in the last 30 years are all carry. There are a lot of people who can’t get [the ball] in the air, or they get it in the air and it’s low, and they don’t have a chance to run the ball to the green. They’ve got to carry bunkers and false fronts. We’ve really gone the wrong way. . . .

If people wanted some re-dos, I’d go back to traditional. If you hire me to re-do your golf course and you’ve got bunkers in front of your greens, I’m going to take them out. . . . All these forced carries are stupid. . . .

People don’t understand: At a public course, time is money. . . .

china A Moratorium To Dye For

A question regarding China’s moratorium on golf construction: Exactly how meaningless is it?

I ask because Dye Designs Group recently secured permission to start building not just one but two golf courses in the People’s Republic. “Two of our China projects have been green-lighted to break ground as soon as possible,” reports O’Brien McGarey, one of the firm’s principals, in an e-mail.

For the record, China’s moratorium is still in force. But developers are obviously finding ways to circumvent it.

As a result, McGarey’s firm is moving ahead with Guilin Sports, Tourism & Leisure Center in Guilin (in the GuangXi Zhuang Autonomous Region) and Minqi International Golf Club in Ruili, an outpost in western Yunnan Province. The courses will be designed by McGarey’s wife, Cynthia Dye-McGarey, who maintains offices in Englewood, Colorado and Shenzhen, China.

In Guilin, the couple is working for Guilin XinChang Investment Group, which owns a spread near the Karst Mountains that will eventually include 100 villas, a hotel with a conference center, and a hot-spring day spa. The site may not be ideal for golf, but it sure does catch the eye, as it features both karst landforms and natural springs.

“Of all the properties that I have walked in my lifetime,” Dye-McGarey said in a press release, “this is the most surreal setting.”

Construction on Dye-McGarey’s 18-hole, championship-caliber golf course is supposed to begin in July.

The course in Ruili will likely be more of a challenge. Ruili is located along China’s border with Myanmar (formerly Burma), and, like many of the world’s border cities, it’s a hot-bed of criminal activity. Last year, an architect employed by Joe Obringer, an Atlanta, Georgia-based designer, was kidnapped in the area while working on a golf project. His captors held him for four days, until they got the ransom they demanded.

Minqi International, which is being developed by Minqi Estate Company, Ltd., will consist of tourist-friendly attractions including housing, a resort-style hotel, and an 18-hole golf course. With luck, McGarey believes, the developers could break ground on the course before construction commences in Guilin.

These two courses are among nearly a dozen that Dye Designs has in various states of design and construction in the People’s Republic. The group includes Sky Oasis Golf Club in Yunnan Province, Xing Ning Golf Club in Xing Ning in Guandong Province, and two courses in the vicinity of Kunming City: Lin Da Fu Golden Beach Resort and Kunming Caiyunwan Lake.

For the better part of the past year, the moratorium has put most of the firm’s dozen or so Chinese projects on ice. But if every one of them got approved tomorrow, I honestly wouldn’t be surprised.

Some information in this post originally appeared in the October 2011 and March 2012 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

The Week That Was, may 6, 2012

scotland The Verdict on Trump’s “Irish-style” Links

Trump International Golf Links Scotland opens in just two months, and one of golf architecture’s foremost opinion-makers has concluded that it’s “one of the most polarizing courses in all of golf.”

Donald Trump may wince when he reads that phrase. For years, he’s predicted that his much-discussed track in Aberdeenshire would be “the world’s greatest golf course.” Its unveiling was supposed to be a personal triumph, one that cements his golf bona fides.

But that’s not how Darius Oliver sees it. Oliver, the architecture editor of Australian Golf Digest, likes the site -- heck, he gushes over it -- but not the “Irish-style links” that’s been laid upon it.

“While there is obvious quality here and literally dozens of gorgeous vantage points across Trump Scotland,” Oliver reckons, “the big issue purists will have with this layout is the lack of truly outstanding design and the number of awkward architectural features.”

It’s hard to imagine a verdict that would sting an architect worse. What Oliver is saying is that Trump has been let down by the hired help.

In this case, the help is Martin Hawtree, the course’s British designer. The way Oliver sees it, Hawtree hasn’t done the property justice. Oliver manages to muster some faint praise for Hawtree’s layout -- “on a superficial level, at least, he succeeded” -- but he suggests that “pushing some of the golf out onto the flatter surrounding land might have yielded a more playable course.”

Of course, Trump might have rejected such a suggestion. So if Hawtree gets a pass, it’s found in this sentence: Given the client and his early proclamations about this being the world’s best golf course, it might have been difficult for the designer to sacrifice scenery for the sake of routing balance.

Clearly, Oliver was underwhelmed by Trump’s course. But Trump has always had trouble with people who believe that beauty should be more than skin deep.

And in Other News . . .

. . . ireland  Is Mike Keiser looking to invest in a golf resort in Northern Ireland? This summer, the Chicago-based developer recently told Golf Digest, he’s going to size up a pair of potential sites in places where golf began. One of them is on the Inch Peninsula in southwestern Ireland, and the other is “Bushmills Dunes in the north.” I presume Keiser is referring to Bushmills Dunes Golf Resort & Spa in County Antrim, where a New York City-based developer, Alistair Hanna, recently secured permission to build a David McLay Kidd-designed golf course. This is the course about which Kidd famously said to Hanna, “If I can’t get your course into the top 50 of the world, you should shoot me.” If I’m right -- and I’m willing to bet that I am -- this will be the second time that Keiser and Kidd have worked together. Kidd, you’ll remember, designed the first course at Bandon Dunes, the one that put Keiser’s property in remote Oregon on the proverbial map.

Some information in this post originally appeared in the October 2011, November 2011, and December 2011 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

. . . england  Regarding those Asian and Malaysian investors who were ready to pounce on the famed Belfry resort in suburban Birmingham: Much ado about nothing. It turns out that a U.S. company, KSL Capital Partners, is “close” to buying the 550-acre property, which features a luxurious hotel, three Dave Thomas-designed golf courses (two of them in collaboration with Peter Alliss), and a spectacular heritage, as it’s hosted the Ryder Cup matches four times. This is a distress sale, as the Belfry is controlled by the banks and insurance companies to which Sean Quinn’s investor group was beholden. The Belfry will unquestionably be a sweet addition to KSL’s portfolio, which includes ClubCorp and some highly regarded U.S. golf properties, including the Homestead in Hot Springs, Virginia and La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California. And it comes at bargain price: According to the Sunday Independent, KSL will likely pay “less than half” of the $38 million (or so) that the now-bankrupt billionaire once known as “the Mighty Quinn” shelled out in 2005.

. . . talking points  Sad but true: A new driver may impress your friends, but it isn’t likely to improve your game. If you need proof, consider that U.S. golfers spend ungodly amounts of money on golf equipment every year -- nearly $4 billion in 2011 -- and they haven’t lowered their scores a bit. “Despite all of the mind-bending technology that has revolutionized golf in the past decade, golfers aren’t getting any better,” writes the Newark Star-Ledger. “The average golf score still remains at around 100, according to the National Golf Foundation, and that number hasn’t changed since your grandpa was knocking balls around with hickory sticks.” Here’s another noteworthy but distressing stat from the article: The number of rounds played in the United States has fallen from 518 million in 2000 to 475 million in 2010. Do all these facts add up to a story? You tell me.

. . . wild card click  Shall we cut to the chase?

india Unhappy Days Are Here Again

More and more people in India now have money in their pockets, but it isn’t making them happy.

Despite a solid economy, a Gallup poll has determined that Indians have become “much more unhappy about their lives” over the past four years. As a result, they don’t smile and laugh as much as they used to. They feel less financially secure. They get more stressed-out. They’ve lost their optimism about the future. Nearly one-third of them -- 240 million people -- now consider themselves to be “suffering.”

This personal unhappiness has wider ramifications. “The sense that the 21st century belonged to India has begun to evaporate,” says a story in the Washington Post, “replaced by a deepening sense of malaise.”

Reading the Post’s story, I began to worry that a declining happiness quotient could put the squeeze on India’s prospects for golf development. In recent years people have been predicting that India, thanks to its ever more affluent middle class, would be the golf industry’s next big thing. But people who believe that they’ve reached a personal, social, or economic plateau don’t continue to aspire to the good life. They may no longer dream of joining a golf club or moving into a golf community. And when that happens, your golf development dreams disappear.

There are other possible ramifications, too, worse ones. The Post’s story raises the possibility that personal unhappiness might lead to social unrest -- “the sort of upheavals,” the newspaper writes, “that roiled Tunisia and Egypt last year.”

If you think such a suggestion is far-fetched, remember this: One-third of world’s poorest people live in India. Like you and me, they’ve seen pictures of rich Indian businessmen playing golf, eating in expensive restaurants, and driving Mercedes. Don’t you think it’s likely that, at one time or another, the idea of a revolution has crossed their minds?

Here’s a distilled version of the Post’s story:

Indians have become much more unhappy about their lives in the past four years, despite one of the world’s fastest rates of economic growth, a survey by the Gallup polling organization showed Monday.

The deterioration appears to have been driven partly by the expectation, created by politicians and the media, that India’s boom would dramatically improve its citizens’ standard of living. When many Indians realized that the boom was not significantly benefiting them, their sense of well-being and optimism about the future seemed to collapse.

“It is very dangerous to create expectations and not meet them,” said Rajesh Srinivasan, Gallup’s regional research director for Asia and the Middle East.

The number of Indians who rated their lives poorly enough to be considered “suffering” rose this year to 31 percent, equivalent to 240 million people, a dramatic rise from just 7 percent in 2008. . . .

Gallup classifies respondents as “thriving,” “struggling,” or “suffering,” according to how they rate their current and future lives. While 74 percent of Danes said they were “thriving,” the highest percentage anywhere in the world, just 13 percent of Indians said the same thing.

The global average is 24 percent.

India’s self-image has taken a battering in the past few years. Corruption scandals dominate the headlines on a daily basis, the government seems paralyzed and unable to take even simple steps to reform the economy, and growth has been slowing.

The sense that the 21st century belonged to India has begun to evaporate, replaced by a deepening sense of malaise. Business confidence and investment have also declined. 

Massive government welfare and rural employment programs have helped drive down poverty levels, the Gallup survey found. The share of people saying they did not have enough money for food dropped to 13 percent in 2012 from 35 percent in 2006.

But high levels of inflation have helped depress Indians’ sense of financial well-being. Stress levels have risen, and the number of people who can count on social support and help has fallen.

The percentage of those saying they had smiled or laughed the previous day fell to 52 percent in 2012 from 62 percent in 2006. . . .

The findings also raise the possibility of the sort of social unrest that struck Los Angeles 20 years ago, after police officers were filmed beating Rodney King, or the sort of upheavals that roiled Tunisia and Egypt last year, said Jim Clifton, Gallup’s chairman and chief executive.

“All you need is a matchstick event,” he said. . . .

wales A Makeover for Brynhill

In an attempt to shore up its balance sheet, one of the oldest golf clubs in Wales has decided to give itself a dramatic makeover.

Brynhill Golf Club, a fixture in Barry since 1921, plans to sell part of its property to a residential developer intent on building 180 houses. With the proceeds from the sale, the club will redesign its 18-hole golf course and build a modern, multi-purpose clubhouse.

Brynhill’s officials hope the revitalization will attract new, sorely needed members. “As with many traditional members’ clubs across the U.K., Brynhill is experiencing significant financial difficulties,” noted the club’s captain, Stephen Jones, in a statement posted on the club’s website.

The club’s 6,516-yard golf course, which was redesigned by Dave Thomas in the late 1990s, needs what Jones has described as “vital improvements.” A master plan created by Surrey, England-based Weller McEvoy calls for the construction of three new holes and substantial upgrades to all the rest.

Weller McEvoy is a partnership between Bruce Weller and Peter McEvoy. Weller apprenticed with Bernhard Langer’s design firm and has been involved in numerous golf projects all over the United Kingdom. In 2005 he entered into an occasional partnership with McEvoy, one of Great Britain’s most celebrated amateur golfers. Together, the duo has worked on golf projects in the United Kingdom, Thailand, South Africa, France, and Italy.

As an architect, McEvoy is probably best-known as a co-designer (with Christy O’Connor) of the 18-hole track at Fota Island Golf Course in Cork City, Ireland. The course hosted the Irish Open in 2001 and 2002, after some of its holes were redesigned by Jeff Howes. These days McEvoy spends much of his time helping to develop junior golfers, primarily as a promoter for PowerPlay Golf.

If the area’s residents react favorably to Brynhill’s proposal, the club and Flintshire-based Redrow Homes will submit a development application to local officials later this year.

Some information in this post originally appeared in the February 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.