Short Notice, september 7, 2012

The new owners of the Cliffs communities have, as expected, decided to complete their seventh golf course, a mostly finished Gary Player-designed layout at the Cliffs at Mountain Park in Travelers Rest, South Carolina. This is welcome news (not to mention a welcome relief) for Player, who relocated his corporate headquarters to Mountain Park and soon thereafter witnessed Jim Anthony’s collection of luxurious golf communities in North and South Carolina tumble into bankruptcy. One of the big questions looming before Silver Sun Partners LLC now has to do with the Cliffs’ most talked-about community, Cliffs at High Carolina in suburban Asheville, North Carolina, which is supposed to feature a Tiger Woods-designed golf course. It’s easy to commit to a course that’s more than 60 percent complete. It’s harder to commit to one that will almost certainly never pencil out.

Slowly but surely, the planned Jack Nicklaus “signature” course at the Ury Estate in Aberdeenshire, Scotland is regaining its pulse. John Forbes, the wealthy farmer who owns

the 1,600-acre estate, has filed a development application that signals a fresh start for Ury, which once upon a time was supposed to feature 230 luxury homes, a five-star hotel, a world-class spa, and the only Jack Nicklaus Golf Club in the United Kingdom. Forbes has down-scaled the original plans and relocated the golf course to another area of his property, but last year a spokesman for Nicklaus said that “an extraordinary golf course” could still be produced. If Nicklaus delivers on this promise, Donald Trump’s new coastal links will have a little more competition.

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

Is one of the premier resorts in the United States about to shutter one of its three golf courses? The Homestead, a historic getaway in Hot Springs, Virginia, has announced that its Robert Trent Jones-designed Lower Cascades course will close early this year due to a lack of play, and a local television station reports that “it’s unclear at this point” whether “it will open next season.” If you’re looking for clues regarding the course’s fate, consider this: The resort’s website doesn’t specifically discuss the Lower Cascades, even though it refers to the property’s “three championship golf courses.” As for the other courses, they’re safe. The Homestead, which is owned by an affiliate of KSL Resorts, told WSLS that its Cascades and Old tracks are “still very popular” and “will remain open.”

Greg Norman still appears to be bitter about losing the commission for the Olympics’ golf course in Rio de Janeiro. Norman’s disappointment doesn’t have anything to do with money -- the $300,000 design fee that Gil Hanse will receive is chump change to a Bain Capital investor -- but rather with his belief that the games’ organizers didn’t fully appreciate his unique ability to promote golf not just in Brazil but in under-served golf markets all over the world. “We were surprised by the guy who got it,” Norman said derisively during a recent visit to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, “because I think there’s a lot more to it than just designing a golf course. We can all design a great golf course, but with golf in the Olympics just for one year, a big responsibility on the designer -- or some name designer -- would have been to promote the game of golf.” This comment is full of cheap swipes at Hanse and makes Norman, a towering figure in golf, look small and petty. He needs to turn the page on the Olympics, the way Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Peter Thomson, and the other finalists have done.