The Week That Was, july 1, 2012

china The Eyes Have It

In recent years Mark Hollinger has cultivated a few opinions about China, and he isn’t shy about expressing them.

For starters, the Belmont, California-based architect, one of the principals of JMP Golf Design Group, believes that developers in the People’s Republic typically come down on the wrong side of the debate between art and artifice.

“Chinese developers are extremely keen on achieving some spectacular holes in their courses,” Hollinger told Flying Blue Club China, which appears to be an in-flight magazine, earlier this year. “I sometimes need to put in some extra eye candy, like a spectacular -- and sometimes artificial -- rock feature, a flashy bunker, or a really awesome lake or stream. I need to do this to make a course more memorable.”

It’s not the first time we’ve heard complaints about the Disneyland-style aesthetic that reigns in China. Still to be determined is whether soon-to-open courses by Tom Doak and Coore & Crenshaw will change the prevailing mind-set in favor of the more natural look that now prevails in the rest of the world.

On that score, don’t hold your breath. These days, golf development in China remains pretty much where U.S. golf development was a decade or more ago.

“Right now, golf courses are creating value for other surrounding land uses, like residential and commercial property,” Hollinger notes. “Most of the owners of the new houses do not even play golf. They just like to live next to a golf course.”

Hollinger knows how Chinese golf development is trending as well as any other U.S. architect. He’s designed more than a half-dozen courses in the People’s Republic (among them Jian Lake Blue Bay Golf Club on Hainan Island and the Links Course at Dongzhuang Beach in suburban Shanghai), and he has two others that are scheduled to open this year.

But he sees trouble on the horizon. He doesn’t think that China is going to serve as the golf industry’s sugar daddy for much longer.

“The demand for new courses has slowed down,” he told the magazine. “It has become harder to find financing for big developments. The central government is stricter, hoping to avoid bad investments and to prevent land speculation.”

So, as we wait for the central government to issue new regulations on golf development and end its construction moratorium, I’m left with a question: How long before we put China in our rear-view mirror?

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

worth reading Czechs & Balances

The Czech Republic: It’s not just for beer anymore.

That’s the subtext of a recent story in the Prague Post, which has identified its homeland as “Central and Eastern Europe’s most promising golf market.” There’s precious little in the story to support such a claim -- in fact, at one point the Post acknowledges that “the golf boom is also slowing in the Czech Republic” -- but in journalism it’s often the thought that counts.

Still, the story is worth reading, as it offers some insights into the state of the golf industry in a nation that we used to describe as being “behind the Iron Curtain.” Here’s a brief excerpt:

As consumers pull back on their spending, memberships dwindle. The U.S. golf business has been hit especially hard, with numerous courses going bankrupt during the sub-prime mortgage crisis. 

According to golf consultancy firm Pellucid, private clubs in the United States lost between 5 percent and 15 percent of their members shortly after the sub-prime crisis, costing clubs on average $187,000 in annual fees. Golf courses in Eastern Europe appeared similarly fragile, with only 25 percent recording an operating profit in 2010, according to KPMG figures.

In this type of economic climate, local golf course developers must focus on increasing service quality to keep the market dynamic, says golf course designer Jakub Červenka. . . .

“It’s about selling new property developments and helping to push real estate,” he said. “There is a lack of real high-quality services here, so this offers buyers something special. You give them a beautiful view from their home onto a nicely maintained green landscape. That has a certain value.” . . . 

According to Červenka, the Czech Republic owes its current prominence on the regional golf market to golf course owners’ ability to emphasize the sport itself, thereby drawing more returning consumers.

“Czech owners now understand that investing money in the redesign of their courses instead of the clubhouse is the way to go,” he said. “This creates much more interest and brings in extra income because people want to see the changes. Golf is played on the course, not in the clubhouse.” . . . 

Červenka also shrugged off suggestions that golf is still considered by many to be an elitist sport, claiming it was no more expensive than tennis or skiing.

But there is no denying golf is hugely popular with CEOs and other business leaders. CIJ Editor Robert McLean, whose regional trade journal will host a tournament in Prague in September, said the sport can be used to develop business partnerships in a relaxed setting.

“I think golf is one of the few socially acceptable addictions,” he said. “For just a few hours, everyone is literally playing by the same rules on the same playing field. It’s a great leveler, and it's very humbling.”

united states Jacks of All Trades

What do the following people have in common?

Amber Dempsey, Joe Edley, and Randy Snow.

This is a difficult quiz, because those aren’t household names. If it helps, Dempsey is a beauty-pageant contestant on “The Simpsons,” Edley is a professional Scrabble player, and Snow is the first wheelchair athlete to be inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame.

Maybe you can figure out the connection if I add a few more names to the list: Kathy Whitworth, the LPGA star; John Updike, the famous novelist; Bob Baffert, the horse-racing mogul; and Phil Hellmuth, the champion poker player.

Give up?

Here’s the answer: At one time or another, each person I’ve named has been described as “the Jack Nicklaus” of his or her profession.

And the list can go on. You can put Ken Climo, a disc golfer, on it. Philip Corby, a trial lawyer. Larry Chapman, the founder of a health-care company. Chip Reese, another poker player. Tom Callahan, a golf writer.

You can find comparisons to Nicklaus forever, or at least until your search engine machine runs out of steam.

In the United States, it’s clear, being “the Jack Nicklaus” of most anything is high praise indeed. In fact, it may well be the ultimate compliment.

wild card click I'm in love with illusions, so saw me in half.