The Week That Was, july 22, 2012

scotland Scenes from the Unveiling

Accompanied by the skirl of bagpipes, “the world’s greatest golf course” was recently unveiled on Scotland’s fabulously wrinkled northeastern coast.

Trump International Golf Links opened officially on July 10, in a celebfest that drew cheers and jeers from all over the planet. No, I wasn’t invited to the opening, but I’ve read all the stories and have collected a few items that you might have missed.

1. The day before the ribbon was cut, an anonymous tipster told police that an unexploded bomb, left over from World War II, was located somewhere on the site of the golf course. An investigation was conducted but turned up nothing. A spokesman for the Trump Organization called the claim “ludicrous” and identified the tipster as “a disgruntled ex-contractor.”

2. Colin Montgomerie, who played in Trump’s celebrity foursome, raved about the Martin Hawtree-designed layout. “I expected good,” he said, “but this has surpassed my expectations. It’s as dramatic as you get. It’s not for me to say this is the world’s greatest golf course. What I can say is that it’s one of, if not the best links course I’ve ever played.”

3. While Trump has boasted that tee times are “selling like hot cakes,” other sources have reported that early morning and late afternoon slots are readily available. “They offered me a tee time for four people at 3.15 PM on the opening day,” a surprised golfer told the Sunday Mail. “I was really taken aback. I was expecting to be told it would be some time after Christmas before I could get a round there.” Trump’s spokespeople explained that they’d made additional tee times available in response to demand and that times between 8:00 AM and 3:00 PM are booked solid through August 5.

4. A week or so after the unveiling, officials from Trump’s club told reporters that they’d processed “a surge of bookings” and that the course is fully booked for the next two months. “The phone hasn’t stopped ringing,” a spokesman for Trump told the Daily Record. “We’ve sold 8,000 rounds already, and we had our 1000th golfer play the course on Thursday.”

5. A professor from Glasgow University has predicted that the coastal holes on Trump’s course will inevitably be reclaimed by the North Sea. “The Trump Organization has gone ahead and protected about 250 meters of foreshore,” Jim Hansom told the Scottish Express, “but if you protect one part of the shore, you automatically create erosion at other parts of the shore. Basically, you’re robbing Peter to pay Paul.” Such prophecies are usually easy to ignore, but consider this: The Express reports that Trump has already had to make “emergency repairs” to the green on hole #3.

6. While the mood at the opening was overwhelmingly festive, a little friction could be found at the edges of the celebration. The troublemaker was a specter on the horizon: the planned off-shore wind farm that’s supposed to take shape within sight of Trump’s property. Trump has vowed not to build the rest of his tony resort community -- the houses, the hotel, the permanent clubhouse, and the second golf course -- until Scottish officials promise to keep the seacoast clear. “As soon as we find out they are not going to destroy Scotland by building windmills all over the place,” Trump said at the debut, “we will start immediately on the hotel.”

7. On opening day, the question on most everyone’s mind was, When will the course host its first professional event? The answer appears to be Sooner rather than later. As George O’Grady, the CEO of the European Tour, put it: “What [Trump] and I have agreed is that, when we are both ready, we would try and persuade someone to come here -- and I don’t think it will be too difficult a task. There’s the Scottish Open to think about, and I’m sure that’s in the mind of our sponsors, but there are other events as well. It’s certainly capable of taking the biggest and best, I would say.” The next question: Is the course a fit venue for the Open Championship itself? The answer: Not without the hotel and the clubhouse.

united states The Perils of Pinehurst

I’m sure you’ve heard that Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw have been tapped to design Course No. 9 at the Pinehurst resort in North Carolina. What you may not know is that the track won’t be built until business picks up at the celebrated resort.

I know, just a couple of months ago I told you that Pinehurst was “ringing up rounds at a pre-Great Recession pace.” I wasn’t lying. I was just quoting Don Padgett, Jr., the resort’s president, who’d told Golf Digest that Coore & Crenshaw’s restoration of Course No. 2 had “driven our business levels beyond what we expected.”

“Our numbers are back to the 2008 levels,” Padgett said at the time. “We haven’t had a spring like this since 2008.”

As it turns out, Pinehurst is having a that-was-then, this-is-now moment. A few weeks ago, in an interview with Cybergolf.com, Padgett acknowledged Pinehurst’s robust spring but admitted that bookings for the fall have fallen way off.

“Over a period of time, as people travel to different resorts and all the different opportunities they have, to add a Coore-Crenshaw ninth golf course would give you another shot in the arm, like the restoration of No. 2,” Padgett said. “Before that happens, though, we have to have greater demand than we have right now, or we would just be shifting revenues. General business levels have to come up quite a bit.”

Pinehurst hasn’t added a course since the mid 1990s, when Tom Fazio produced Course No. 8.

talking points Go East, Young Man

As part of the promotional campaign for its upcoming conference in Brunei, Asian Golf Monthly asked Colin Montgomerie to wax poetic about the future of golf in Asia. Here’s a little of what the former Scottish golf pro had to say:

The future of this game is in Asia, in countries like China and South Korea. . . . 

You will find a major championship being played in Asia one day, definitely. You will see the spread of golf’s majors heading East. We know that the Masters is going nowhere, and the U.S. Open probably isn’t either, but the U.S. PGA Championship could possibly be the one to move. Or what is to stop there being five majors?

Even in 10 years’ time, Asia will be demanding a better say in the world of golf. Asia will have more major winners by then. There will be more great golf courses in Asia. And simply in numbers, there will be more people playing golf in Asia than on any other continent in the world. So why shouldn’t Asia have its own major?

wild card click When Colin Montgomerie talks about “more great golf courses in Asia,” is this what he means?