The Week That Was, october 28, 2012

vietnam World Enough & Time

Bless their greedy little hearts, government officials in Hanoi have approved the construction of five new golf courses. If all five are built, says Thanh Nien News, the city’s stock of courses will grow to eight.

Right now you may be wondering, Does Hanoi need eight golf courses? For years, I’ve been asking the same question. The metropolitan area may be home to a lot of people -- the Vancouver Sun says that the area has a population of 6.5 million -- but hardly any of them play golf. As best I can determine, in all of Vietnam there are still only about 5,000 golfers, about the number you'll find in a seniors-only community in suburban Phoenix.

Of course, what I think really doesn’t matter. All that really matters is what the city’s tourism officials think, because they aim to attract 30 million travelers by 2030, including 4.5 million international travelers. They’re on a mission, and they believe they need eight golf courses to complete it.

Building golf courses for tourists is all well and good, presuming you’re comfortable when a nation builds its golf industry on what amounts to the kindness of strangers. Such an approach is made-to-order for celebrity architects such as Greg Norman, who recently bragged that he’s picked up five commissions in Vietnam. Unfortunately, “signature” architecture is a build-them-and-they-will-come strategy, one created primarily to sell houses and attract vacationers. It doesn’t build an enduring golf industry.

Me, I’d rather see Vietnam develop an industry that can sustain itself by selling tee times to local residents. But that takes time, and as we all know, time is money.

india Get Your Motors Running

While Vietnam’s nascent golf industry places its bets on travelers, India’s well-established industry is hoping to cash in on upwardly mobile suburbanites.

A case in point: The city of Chennai, India’s version of Detroit, is about to witness the opening of its first golf community. The 369-acre spread, called Palace Gardens, will feature a nine-hole golf course that’s been designed by David Hemstock.

“The people who buy our homes have ‘arrived,’ ” the community’s developer, Manzer Hussain, told the Hindu. “We asked ourselves how best we could meet their aspirations, and since golf is still regarded as an aristocrat’s game, we decided to create a facility to add to our residents’ experience.”

Like some of the more aspirational golf communities in the United States, Palace Gardens appears to be a monument to conspicuous consumption. The Hindu describes it as having “a set of über-luxurious homes,” an Olympic-sized pool, and enough “marble, columns, and cupolas to put a Roman to shame.”

The golf course is expected to open next year. Hemstock, who’s based in Derbyshire, England, says it’s being built “in record time,” but the social momentum for its emergence has been building for years. After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

talking points Following the Money in North Dakota

For the past four years, the operative word at many U.S. golf courses has been discount. It’s as if the nation’s golf-course owners have taken a page from Mervis Diamonds’ playbook: Nobody pay full price anymore. Why should you?

Once a course cuts its rates, its competitors are practically obliged to follow suit, and the inevitable downward spiral begins. Prices drop lower and lower until it’s impossible for any course to make a profit.

The mayor of Fargo, North Dakota, like other city officials in municipalities from coast to coast, has been thinking about reducing greens fees at his city’s Pebble Creek Golf Course. But Jim Keegan of Golf Convergence, who was hired to evaluate the course’s financial operations, doesn’t think price-cutting is a wise strategy. Here’s how he addressed the issue at a recent city council meeting, as recounted by the Sherburne County Citizen: 

Keegan’s assessment: Contrary to what most people think, lowering prices to create more rounds of golf does not work. He said in order for the golf course to lower their rates from $55 to $40 (as proposed by a local group) and generate the same revenue as today, they’d have to bring in nearly 9,400 additional rounds of play -- or 38 percent -- which Keegan says is unlikely. 

Keegan said, however, if the course raised their rates -- say, for example, 25 percent -- they could lose 20 percent of rounds currently played, have better course conditions from decreased use, and possibly lower maintenance costs with the same revenue. 

“This is about revenue, not rounds of golf,” Keegan said.

Keep that in mind when you set your greens fees for 2013. 

wild card click Up and down the East Coast this weekend, people are hunkering down for what could be a long siege. Caution: Things are always slippery when they’re wet.