The Week That Was, october 21, 2012

united states In Texas, a Bellwether Debuts

It’s fair to say that golfers in Laredo, Texas can now take their game to the Max.

I refer to the Max. A. Mandel Municipal Golf Course, which made its debut this week. The 7,200-yard track is the first to be owned by the city and one of the precious few that will open in the United States this year.

A decade ago, when U.S. golf construction was still going strong, I almost certainly wouldn’t have reported on the opening of a municipal golf course. Laredo’s course, however, has special significance for me. It’s served as one of my personal touchstones, as the golf project that for me exemplifies exactly how much the design industry has changed as a result of the Great Recession.

Once upon a time, municipal courses were designed by regional architects – by people most golfers have never heard of. But when Laredo opened its design competition, it was contacted not just by unknowns but by virtually every brand-name architect in the business. If I remember correctly, the city collected something like 30 submissions. The city had its pick of the litter.

The contract went to Robert Trent Jones, Jr., who most certainly didn’t achieve international fame by designing municipal tracks. Jones typically rubs shoulders with kings and presidents, not with city councilmen. To me, the fact that he was willing to throw his hat into the municipal ring told me everything I needed to know about how hard things had become for course designers.

Yes, indeed, times have certainly changed for golf course architects. Their world has gone all topsy-turvy. Down is up, and up is down.

Welcome to the brave new world.

australia For Horton Park, the End Is Near

The internal bickering has quieted, more than $43 million (U.S.) has been deposited, and the ordeal of relocation is drawing to a close for Horton Park Golf Club. Any day now, construction is scheduled to begin on the club’s new centerpiece, an 18-hole, Graham Marsh-designed golf course that may eventually be joined by a third nine.

It’s been a long haul. Developers have been beating on Horton Park’s doors since the early 2000s, when they concluded that the club’s 132 acres in Maroochydore, Queensland (the town is 60 miles north of Brisbane) were just begging to be converted into houses and stores. The club took the bait and tried to relocate in partnership with two development groups, but in the end, after being stymied by the Great Recession, it accepted an offer from the government, in the form of Sunshine Coast Council.

Horton Park has operated in Maroochydore for nearly a half-century. Its new home will be less than 10 miles away, on a 300-acre parcel in Bli Bli.

Marsh, a former professional golfer who’s based in Robina, Queensland, has designed golf courses on four continents, including two well-regarded tracks in the United States: Sutton Bay Golf Course in Agar, South Dakota and the Pines course at the Prairie Club in Valentine, Nebraska. The track he’s designed for Horton Park will reportedly be dotted with more than 25 acres’ worth of lakes, to address drainage issues. The course construction will entail moving more than 340,000 cubic yards of soil.

If all goes as planned, the club’s members will move into their new digs in the summer of 2014.

Some information in the preceding post originally appeared in the August 2009 and the April, May, and June 2011 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

canada Notes on the State of the Game

A few notes on golf in Canada, from a study commissioned by the National Allied Golf Associations:

   -- The nation has 2,400 golf courses and 5.7 million golfers.

   -- Over the past year, just over 1 million new players took up the game in Canada. Unfortunately, roughly the same number quit playing.

   -- By and large, Canadians aren’t frequent golfers. Nearly 2.2 million of the nation’s golfers play only once or twice a year, and more than 4.2 million play no more than eight rounds a year.

   -- In Canada, as in most nations, it’s tough to sell women on the merits of the game. Canadian women often feel that golf is “not worth the cost.”

   -- Golf development in Canada isn’t likely to perk up anytime soon. “In almost every market across Canada, the feeling is that there is a slight oversupply,” Jeff Calderwood, the executive director of the National Golf Course Owners’ Association, told the researchers. “It’s not drastic, although a lot of golf course owners, in their own back yards, will say it is.”

   -- Anyone who feels compelled to build a golf course in Canada should probably do it in Calgary. It’s the nation’s only major market that still has a little room for growth.

The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the October 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

wild card click Of all the ways to measure the degrees of separation between St. Andrews and Bandon Dunes, this one involves an architect with an accent.