The Week That Was, november 4, 2012

scotland The Angus, No Longer Out to Pasture

At long last, work on the Angus resort community and its Darren Clarke “signature” golf course is scheduled to begin next spring.

MAP Property & Leisure Development Group has assumed control of the Angus, which will also feature a five-star, 187-room hotel, villas in a gated community, 10 lodges for travelers, meeting space, a spa, restaurants, and other attractions.

The Angus will take shape on farmland outside the village of Broughton Ferry, just east of Dundee. The site is less than 10 miles southwest of Carnoustie and less than 20 miles north of St. Andrews, and MAP believes its Wyndham-branded hotel and Clarke’s golf course are ideally positioned to capitalize on the tourist traffic that the world-renowned courses in those towns generate.

“When you first glimpse the landscape where the Angus will take shape,” Clarke has said, “you can’t help but feel you’re somewhere Mother Nature intended for golf.”

The Angus property is adjacent to Forbes of Kingennie Country Resort, a low-key vacation getaway. Forbes of Kingennie is owned by Mike Forbes, a former farmer and fly-fishing champion who put the Angus in motion more than three years ago. Forbes has leukemia, and the Dundee Courier has reported that he views his illness as “a message that he had to hand over the reins of the project.”

Forbes assembled the team that will design the Angus’ 6,937-yard golf course, which can be stretched to 7,500 yards for competition play. The track has been co-designed by Graeme Webster of Niblick Golf Design, who operates out of an office in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Webster also designed the nine-hole track at Kingennie.

MAP hopes to open the course in late 2014 or early 2015.  

Some information in this post originally appeared in the April 2009 and August 2012 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

brazil Dazed & Confused

The land dispute that’s threatening the construction of the golf course for the 2016 Olympics has taken another distressing turn.

As most everyone knows, ground was supposed to have been broken on the Gil Hanse-designed course last month. Construction hasn’t begun, however, because a company called Elmway Participacoes has laid claim to the land and taken its case to court. A story by the Associated Press yet again says that the courts “could take months or years” to decide whether the property belongs to Elmway Participacoes or to Pasquale Mauro, the fellow who’s signed the contracts with the Olympic organizers.

So here’s what happened last week: Elmway Participacoes put the kibosh on the golf course. The company said that if the courts rule in its favor, it’ll build houses instead of the long-planned golf course. Its lawyer said that Elmway Participacoes “does not want to talk about building the golf course anymore.”

I don’t think this is anything more than a negotiating ploy. But what if it isn’t? What if Elmway Participacoes isn’t bluffing?

In that case, it would be imperative that the courts rule in Mauro’s favor. Whenever they feel like getting around to it, of course.

It’s important to note that the Olympic organizers have contracts that appear to be valid and that they are presumably free to begin construction at any time. But it’s hard to imagine them getting started before they have all their ducks in a row. We’re already in a delay. How long will it last?

As I’ve said before, this dispute causes my head to spin every time I think about it. This is no way to build an important golf course, and it reflects badly on our business.

talking points Another Idea for Growing the Game

A couple of weeks ago I had one of those why-didn’t-I-think-of-that moments, courtesy of a post I read at Armen Suny’s blog.

Suny, as I’m sure most of you already know, is the co-designer (with Rod Whitman and Richard Zokol) of the acclaimed minimalist golf course at Sagebrush Golf & Sporting Club in Quilchena, British Columbia. In 2009, Golf Digest named it Canada’s best new golf course. (The track has never made any money, but don’t hold that against it.) Suny is also a long-time golf course superintendent, but what I like about him is that he has the courage to call himself an “anarchist.”

As it turns out, Suny is also worried about golf’s future and has been thinking of ways to promote the game among young people. Here’s one of his ideas, one that I believe has real possibilities:

Let’s face it, kids just aren’t that interested in playing golf, and it appears as if we will lose an entire generation of golfers. 

Most kids, in all probability, think that golf is a game for old men. We, as an industry, need to find ways to make golf appealing to kids. Golf organizations have been spending tens of millions of dollars a year trying to attract kids to golf but have failed. The economy and rehashing the same old ideas for growing the game of golf do not bode well for our sport. We need to find new and innovative ways to make kids want to know more about or even, dare I say, play golf. . . . 

Let me propose a new idea -- product placement, or embedded marketing -- to promote golf. It has worked for everything from soft drinks to automobiles and more. It can and will work for golf. 

Pay the networks, studios, executive producers, or whomever to place golf and golf characters into their youth-oriented sitcoms and movies. Expose tens of millions of children to golf through television shows and movies that they are already watching. This way we won’t need to change kids’ behavior to expose them to golf; they’ll get our message in their own family rooms. And then, of course, since we would be buying this product placement, we would dictate that the golf character be one of the more popular, hip, cool, dope characters on the show. 

If we can create mainstream youth culture characters that are golfers, kids will begin to think of golf as part of the norm for their peer group. 

There are undoubtedly many ways to attract young people to the game of golf. As an industry, we need to constantly reevaluate and better our efforts. If we don’t start thinking about growing the game of golf in new, youth-oriented ways, it won’t grow and it will truly become a game for old men.

wild card click I sit and watch, as tears go by.