The Week That Was, september 23, 2012

china Countdown to a Minimalist Debut

And now, finally, for something completely different: A links-style, rustic-looking golf course on China’s Hainan Island, where the current offerings are more comforting, more traditional layouts.

The course has been co-designed by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and it’ll be the centerpiece of Shanqin Bay, a community (including 2,000 houses and a hotel) emerging near Bo’ao, on the island’s eastern coast. Darius Oliver of Australian Golf Digest has already declared the track to be “the best golf course in China right now,” although he fears that it’ll be “a tough course to swallow” for many of the nation’s golfers.

But if a “minimalist” course is alien to Chinese eyes, that’s the effect its developer, Wang Jun, is trying to achieve. While he was the chairman of CITIC, Wang build a handful of courses on the mainland. For Shanqin Bay, he personally selected a site with more drama and rougher edges. “He’s walked out on a limb with us,” says Coore, who acknowledges that the 6,887-yard layout will serve as “a departure from what thus far has been the norm for golf architecture in China.”

Will the course be too much, too soon for Hainan’s vacationing golfers? The verdict will be rendered in December, when the course opens.

The preceding post originally appeared in the September 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

united states Hawaii Taps Chinese Golfers

For years, Chinese golfers have been vacationing on Hainan Island, which bills itself as the nation’s “Hawaiian island.” Now a Chinese developer wants to send some of those golfers to the real Hawaii.

Pacific Links International has launched a club-type program that it believes will attract as many as 25,000 Chinese golfers annually. The golfers will play on Pacific Links’ four courses on Oahu, along with two on Maui that the company is currently trying to buy. Those who wish to see a little more of the United States will have the option of playing two Pacific Links-owned courses in Las Vegas and one in West Virginia.

Greg Norman, who’s signed on as Pacific Links’ pitch man and occasional course re-designer, recently touted the program’s benefits to a Hawaiian business group.

“Once this thing fully matures, with 25,000 members -- think about 25,000 new golfers coming into Hawaii,” he said in comments recorded by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “It will be a huge economic impact, because they’re not coming for just one day, they’re coming for multiple days.”

One added bonus: Chinese travelers are said to be the biggest spenders in Hawaii. They each spend $407 a day, on average.

Pacific Links is owned by Du Sha, who’s been identified by Forbes as one of China’s richest people. (Estimated net worth: $655 million.) Du began to lay the foundation for his vacation club in the fall of 2010, when he began a buying spree on Oahu. In short order, he bought Kapolei Golf Course, the Makaha Valley and Makaha West tracks, and Olomana Golf Links. Today he’s reportedly negotiating for the Royal Ka’anapali and Ka’anapali Kai tracks on Maui.

The Star-Advertiser says that Du tested his idea with 300 wealthy Chinese prospects. I’m willing to bet that a large number of them are wishing that they’d thought of it first.

talking points A Land Rush in Florida?

A couple of weeks ago, while driving through Las Vegas, I saw something that nearly made me drive off the interstate: new houses under construction.

Yes, the housing market in Las Vegas has bottomed out and has begun to rebound. And while a full recovery may still be years away, residential development has begun to perk up in other cities across the nation as well.

“The rush is on,” proclaims a story in Gulf Coast Business Review, a Sarasota, Florida-based publication.

The housing market is now largely disconnected from golf development, of course, but a resurgence of home building indicates that the fundamentals of the U.S. economy, as John McCain once called them, are getting stronger. It may be that land and houses are selling for a song, but at least they’re selling. This is good news for golf, if only because home building creates many jobs and the purchase of a home is a vote of confidence in the future.

Here’s part of what Gulf Coast Business Review recently said about residential development in Southwest Florida:

It’s little wonder that builders are trying to secure land today. That’s because the new-home supply in the region is dwindling. 

“Southwest Florida is beginning to come back, and the large builders are starting to understand that,” says Michael Rosen, a longtime homebuilding executive. . . . 

According to Metrostudy, which tracks home sales and lot inventory in master-planned communities, the supply of vacant developed lots and homes is dwindling. For example, the supply of finished, vacant new homes in Collier County has fallen 11 percent in the past year and is down to just 159 homes. This compares with nearly 900 homes in 2007. 

“Everybody’s expecting that trend to continue as long as the general economy doesn’t have a double dip,” says Patrick Utter, vice president of real estate and club operations with Collier Enterprises. “Naples is an early indicator of the market.” 

[Ross McIntosh, a land broker in Collier County], says builders started to worry about the decline in inventories last year. 

“Suddenly, there was an awareness that there were no longer any finished lots left,” McIntosh says. “There seemed like a lifetime supply, and then it was gone.”

wild card click Last night, I went to a wedding. This morning, I heard a sermon.