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Sunday, September 30, 2012

The Week That Was, september 30, 2012

mauritius TPL’s Next Confection

A sugar company in Mauritius has inked Thomson Perrett & Lobb to what may eventually be a sweet design commission.

Andrew Goosen, who works out of TPL’s office in Cape Town, South Africa, is drawing plans for an 18-hole, daily-fee course in Rivière du Rempart, a town in the northeastern part of the island nation. After a site visit in May, Goosen posted an online report saying that the course will likely be flanked by houses, a shopping village, and a golf academy.

The property, a former dairy farm, has an air strip that serves as a base of operations for Skydive Austral, a skydiving center that will continue to operate while the community takes shape. The site is just a short drive from Belle Mare Plage Golf Club, one of more than a dozen golf properties in Mauritius.

TPL hasn’t yet identified its client, but I believe it’s Mon Loisir Sugar.

Sugar production once represented as much as 25 percent of Mauritius’ gross national product, but the business is declining and many sugar companies are trying to diversify.

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

wales Enjoying the Ryder

The Ryder Cup isn’t just boffo box office and an eyeball-grabber in Televisionland. It can also give a shot in the arm to a nation’s tourism business.

Take Wales, which hosted the Ryder Cup matches in 2010. According to a tourism group, in 2002 Wales attracted 30,000 foreign golfers who opened their wallets to the tune of $8.97 million. Last year, however, Wales attracted 200,000 foreign golfers who pumped almost $51.3 million into its economy.

Wales may not be a foreign golfer’s first choice in golf destinations -- in the United Kingdom alone, Scotland and Ireland rank higher -- but the Ryder Cup has clearly paid welcome dividends.

Here’s the curious part: While golf tourism in Wales may be up, the nation’s overall tourism is down. Earlier this year, tourism officials reported that the number of nights spent in Wales by international travelers fell from 989,000 in 2009 to 878,000 in 2011.

When it comes to tourism, at least, the Ryder Cup’s impact is limited.

canada Tsawwassen Springs: Locked & Loaded

Ted Locke’s makeover of Tsawwassen Springs Golf Club is complete, and a reviewer in British Columbia has deemed it “light years ahead of its predecessor in both length and course condition.”

Ron Toigo's Shato Holdings bought the 46-year-old course three years ago, with an eye toward making it the centerpiece of a community in suburban Vancouver called Tsawwassen Springs. The original, 4,276-yard track, says Mark Hood of the North Shore News, was “short, mosquito-infested, and fairly easy.” Locke has stretched the course to 5,439 yards, and Hood believes it’s “a vast improvement over what existed before and has some serious game.”

Toigo is a celebrity in Vancouver, and not just because he owns a chain of donut shops. He owns the Vancouver Giants, the city’s most prominent junior hockey team, in partnership with hockey legend Gordie Howe, long-time NHL coach Pat Quinn, and crooner Michael Bublé, who was born in British Columbia. Bublé and Quinn are also minority partners in the Tsawwassen Springs venture, along with Ross Clouston, the president of the home-building group that’s putting 496 houses and condos next to the course.

Locke, who apprenticed with Graham Cooke, has designed several golf courses in British Columbia (including Redwoods Golf Course in Langley) and in the United States (Willows Run Golf Course in Redmond, Washington). Hood says that he “has a knack for updating existing courses and bringing them in line with playing experiences demanded by today's golfers.”

The developers have broken ground on a 32,000-square-foot clubhouse that could open next year. My guess is that it’ll likewise be a far cry from the 1,500-square-foot building it replaces.

Some information in the preceding post originally appeared in the September 2010 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

talking points Jack Nicklaus: Where’s the Fun?

Do you know why Jack Nicklaus has time to campaign for change in the White House? Because nowadays he hardly plays the game that made him rich and famous.

“I play it once a month, if I have to,” Nicklaus told an audience in Southern Pines, North Carolina. “I stopped climbing the mountain. I love the game of golf, but golf was my vehicle to competition. When I lost my vehicle to competition and lost my golf game and my ability to play, I didn’t really miss golf.”

I can’t decide what’s worse, Nicklaus acknowledging that he doesn’t “miss” golf or the gratuitous “if I have to.” How are we supposed to grow the game if our biggest stars aren’t willing to play purely for the fun of it?

wild card click Lately I've been looking for a reason to move to Baltimore. This may be it.

Friday, September 28, 2012

The Pulse, september 28, 2012

Jack Nicklaus hit the campaign trail in Ohio this week, lending his considerable clout to Mitt Romney’s rapidly fading presidential prospects. “We are too late to change recent history,” the Ohio-born golf legend told a group of likely Republican voters, “but we can write a better future for ourselves, for our children and for their


children, beginning by putting Mitt Romney in the White House.” It’s hard to measure the value of such endorsements, but this much is certain: With the election looming ever larger on the horizon, Romney can use all the help he can get. Lee Schmidt has been changing history of late, as he’s completed what a press release calls a “complete course transformation” of Nanlihu International Golf Club on Hainan Island in China. The club’s original layout, soon to be a distant memory, was designed by Wang Zong Qian, a Taiwanese architect. The freshly created 7,000-plus yard track, Schmidt told his press agent, is now “a stern, picturesque test for all to enjoy.” Funny, but those are the words I was going to use to describe this year’s presidential campaign. One of Romney’s most vocal supporters is scaring the bejesus out of some residents of the Bronx. The New York Daily News reports that “high levels of explosive methane gas” are routinely detected in the working-class neighborhoods adjacent to the golf course that Donald Trump is building in Ferry Point Park. The fear, of course, is that someone will light a cigarette and blow up a house. And here’s my favorite part of the story: The state, according to the Daily News, “has decided not to shut down construction but to increase the frequency of monitoring.” Your government at work. Andrew Yau is also campaigning these days, but his prize is the Fota Island golf resort outside Cork, in southern Ireland. Yau may not be a household name in the United States, but he’s a heavyweight in international golf circles, with an investment portfolio nearly as big as Romney’s. Unlike Romney, however, Yau loves golf, and he has a trio of high-profile venues to prove it: Spring City Golf & Lake Resort in Kunming, China, which features courses designed by Nicklaus and Robert Trent Jones, Jr.; Amata Spring Country Club in suburban Bangkok, the home of the Thailand Golf Championship; and Ria Bintan Golf Club, which features one of the top tracks in Indonesia. If Yau can close on the deal for Fota Island -- he’s said to have challengers -- his collection of golf properties would grow to include one that hosted the Irish Open in 2001 and 2002. In what might serve as a preview of a Romney presidency, 17 union workers on the grounds crew at Calabasas Country Club in California have been replaced by non-union employees. “This whole situation is about the quality of the workforce,” the club’s general manager told a local newspaper. The GM also pointed out that the majority of the country club’s members support this change in the course’s history. But that really isn’t a surprise, is it?

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

china Tianjin’s Piece of the Rose Rock

A U.S. company with investment funds potentially worth $2 billion is looking to build at least three golf courses in China.

Rose Rock Capital, a firm controlled by Stephen Rockefeller, is already involved in two projects in Tianjin, the nation’s sixth-largest city: a golf course to be designed by Gil Hanse and a 150-story skyscraper whose design was reportedly inspired by Rockefeller Center in New York City. These days the firm is working with a Chinese entity, Tianjin Finance Investment Company, to raise as much as $2 billion that would be used for real estate development in Tianjin and other cities in the People’s Republic.

Rose Rock’s first golf course, an 18-hole track capable of hosting professional tournaments, will be the centerpiece of a 100-house community at East Port, on Tianjin’s rapidly growing waterfront. The community will occupy just a small sliver of East Port, which is emerging on more than 7,400 acres of reclaimed land around China’s largest port. Sometime in the not too distant future, the place will be full of houses, hotels, shopping and entertainment areas, a marina, and many other attractions, including a performing arts center that will be built with design assistance from New York’s Lincoln Center. The area currently has what’s been called “a marginal population,” but within 10 years it’s expected to swell to 150,000.

Rose Rock is developing its course with the property’s owner, Binhai Landmark. The partners hope to break ground on the golf course this year, but the moratorium on golf construction in China, for which there seems to be no end in sight, will likely delay construction.

While Rose Rock awaits the green light at East Port, it’s exploring other options. The firm hopes to develop at least two more golf properties in China, and Wayne Morrison, the head of the firm’s sports and leisure group, says a site in Dalian (in Liaoning Province) has already been eye-balled.

“We’d like to do more in Tianjin,” says Morrison, “but we also want to diversify into other areas, maybe with other development groups.”

It’s possible that Hanse will be involved in the design of the other courses, although Rose Rock may work with other architects as well.

Hanse’s to-do list includes one other course in China, an 18-hole layout for TPC Beijing. Of course, these days most of his attention is focused on Rio de Janeiro, where next month he starts construction on the golf course that will serve as the venue for the golf competition at the 2016 Olympics.

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

Sunday, September 23, 2012

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.

Friday, September 21, 2012

The Pipeline, september 2012

china Last month, Ross Perrett took a two-week swing through Thailand and China, checking on the progress of at least seven projects in various stages of construction. The Melbourne, Australia-based architect is especially busy in China, despite the nation’s increasingly phony-looking moratorium, where he has courses under construction or about to open in five cities: Hong Kong, Nanning, Xian, Shanghai, and Dalian. And there may be more where that came from, because Perrett also met with prospects in Beijing and Singapore. “We have a good book of active projects and a strong pipeline of future work,” he noted in a news post at his firm’s website, “so there is still plenty of work to do.”

england David McLay Kidd is used to doing things his way, so I was surprised to learn that he’ll be co-designing his forthcoming golf course in suburban London with Tom Watson. These days the partners are


drawing up plans for an 18-hole track that Longshot, Ltd. aims to build at Cherkley Court in Surrey, and Kidd reports that things are proceeding without friction. “My passion is for golf that’s played through nature and its idiosyncrasies,” he explains, “and Tom approaches and understands those idiosyncrasies better than most.”

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

kazakhstan Sometime next year, Kazakhstan’s oil barons will finally begin moving into pricey second homes around a Colin Montgomerie “signature” golf course at Ak-bulak Golf & Country Club. The course, which has been under construction for four years, will be outrageously long -- it’s expected to stretch to 8,000 yards or more -- and it’s going to perplex even accomplished players. “It’s the most deceptive site I’ve ever been on,” says Brit Stenson of IMG, the course’s “ghost” architect. “There are shots that appear to be downhill but are really uphill, and vice versa. People are going to have the wrong club in their hands on half of the holes.”

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

malaysia The full 18 at 99 East Golf Club was supposed to debut this spring, but Asian Golf Travel Nation reports that construction of the course’s second nine won’t begin until the middle of 2013. The club is the centerpiece of a resort community (it’s in Jalan Bukit Malut, on Pulau Langkawi) that will eventually be surrounded by villas and bungalows, boutique hotels, restaurants, and a residence for Malaysia’s head of state. The course’s designer, Ross Watson, has previously designed three courses in suburban Kuala Lumpur (including one of Malaysia’a premier courses, at Kota Permai Golf & Country Club) and another in suburban Johor Baharu (Horizon Hills Golf Club).

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

united states Construction has wrapped up on Tom Doak’s course at Dismal River Club in Mullen, Nebraska. The question on many minds today is how the recently seeded track will compare with the club’s Jack Nicklaus “signature” course, a layout that Bradley S. Klein believes is “close to a top-100” layout and “certainly a top-200 Modern course.” A verdict will likely be rendered sometime next year. “I am sure there will be plenty of opportunity to hit balls around next summer and fall,” Doak wrote in a post at Golf Club Atlas, “but my guess on when the course is really in top condition for opening would be pretty conservative ... because you can’t push fescue too hard, and because the weather in the Sand Hills is so capricious.”

Sunday, September 16, 2012

The Week That Was, september 16, 2012

iran What’s That You’re Building?

These days, Iran isn’t just building a nuclear bomb. It’s also building a golf community.

What’s said to be the first golf course to be built in Iran in more than three decades is taking shape in Parand, a planned community about 25 miles southwest of Tehran. The 18-hole track, called Tehran International Golf Club, will be the centerpiece of an 850-acre community that will eventually include houses, a hotel, a school, and other attractions.

A development group called TSI/Iranian Land hired Phil Ryan, an Australian architect, to design the golf course. Ryan’s “international-standard,” 7,185-yard layout will be accompanied by a nine-hole, 746-yard course for beginners and a golf practice center.

Iran has just one existing golf course, a 12- or 13-hole layout at the Enghelab sports center in Tehran. I presume it’s the one that Golf Course Architecture says was built 33 years ago. If I’m assembling various historical records accurately, the course originally had 18 holes, when it was known as Imperial Country Club. According to a 2006 story by the Associated Press, five holes (maybe six) were later “expropriated by the Revolutionary Guards.” A source that I’m not comfortable with says that the holes were taken in 1992. Top 100 Golf Courses reports that the guards needed the space for “tank parking.”

Top 100 Golf Courses also says that golf is “rather popular with Tehran’s young women.” I can’t vouch for the veracity of that statement, but if construction schedules remain on track the nation’s men and women will have a chance to play at Tehran International in 2014 or 2015.

While TSI/Iranian Land has managed to break ground on a golf course, it isn’t the only entity that’s taken a crack at golf development in Iran in recent years.

In the mid 2000s, a golf complex was to be built on the northeastern coast of Kish Island, which is located in the Persian Gulf, off the nation’s southern coast. The complex, which was to be part of a resort community called Flower of the East, was supposed to include an 18-hole, championship-length golf course and a nine-hole practice course. Peter Harradine, an architect with offices in Switzerland and Dubai, had been commissioned to design the golf facilities.

Kish Island seems to be a likely location for future golf development in Iran. The place began attracting vacationers in large numbers in the 1970s, when the shah built a casino there. After the Islamic revolution, in 1979, it began evolving into what it is today, the home of beaches, malls and shopping centers, more than three dozen hotels, and an airport that’s a destination for several dozen daily flights from Tehran.

The Swiss developers who floated the idea for Flower of the East couldn’t get their venture off the ground. One of these days, though, somebody will.

middle east Here We Go Again

Thanks to old-fashioned stimulus spending, some of those oil-fueled development dreams in the Persian Gulf may soon be revived.

“The gulf is on the cusp of another construction boom,” writes Banker Middle East, a boom that will be led by “ambitious infrastructure development drives.”

Citing a study by the Kuwait Financial Centre, the BME reports that the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council -- Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates -- plan to spend more than $968 billion over the next decade on large-scale, government-sponsored construction projects. The bulk of the money will be spent on roads, airports, railways, seaports, schools, hospitals, and similar big-ticket items.

Partly as a result of this spending, the KFC predicts that the gross national product of the FCC nations will hit 4.6 percent in 2012-13, a full percentage point above the 3.6 percent that the world as a whole is expected to reach.

It’s safe to assume that this financial stimulus will eventually give a boost to golf development in the FCC nations, although it’s hard to predict how long it’ll take for the trickle-down to arrive. But if you wake up tomorrow morning and hear a distant huffing and puffing, it may be the sound of Middle Eastern developers blowing the dust off their abandoned golf projects.

slovakia One Down, One To Go at Penati

The Nicklaus empire has opened its first golf course in Slovakia.

The 18-hole, Nicklaus Design track is the first of two courses scheduled to be built at Penati Golf Resort, which is emerging on 300 acres in Senica, a town roughly 60 miles north of Bratislava, the nation’s capital. A press release from Nicklaus’ North Palm Beach, Florida-based firm says that the Legend Course, as it’s known, is “spacious enough to host thousands of spectators and serve as a venue for any international tournament.”

Nicklaus’ 6,536-yard layout will serve as a counterpoint to Penati’s forthcoming course, the first solo effort by Jonathan Davison of Create Golf. A year or so ago, Davison told me that his course, to be called the Heritage, would take shape on property that reminded him of the heathlands around Surrey, England and be “more rustic, natural, and have a more traditional feel” than Nicklaus’ course.

Davison was formerly an associate at a British firm, Ford Golf Group. Nowadays, his website indicates that he’s set up shop in Slovakia.

Davison’s course, which is being shaped by Mick McShane, is scheduled to open next summer.

wild card click Never try to pick up a girl in an art museum.

Friday, September 14, 2012

The Critical List, september 2012

canada. Any day now, Parks Canada expects to issue an RFP seeking a private operator for Highland Links, the Stanley Thompson-designed golf course on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. The course has long been acclaimed as one of the nation’s best, but it’s been losing money for years. My question: Can Cabot Links, the island’s answer to Bandon Dunes, help to make Highland Links profitable again?

united states. The city of Phoenix, Arizona needs to dig its six golf courses out of a $14.8 million hole. “We have to pay back the general fund,” the city’s finance director has concluded. To reduce the financial weight, the city is thinking about selling its courses, closing them during the sweltering summer months, outsourcing management, and converting some into parks.

ireland. A financial consultant is trying to stave off a cash-flow crisis and keep the doors open at Killarney Golf & Fishing Club in County Kerry. “Very deep and significant change will be required if we are to continue playing golf here,” the club has announced. Killarney, which has hosted the Irish Open four times, has already agreed to sell one of its three 18-hole layouts.

united states. A Fort Collins, Colorado-based company believes the Link-N-Greens golf course would be an ideal site for its new corporate headquarters. “This is absolutely the best use of this property,” argues a local developer. The flat, easy-to-walk property has served as the nine-hole course’s home since 1986.

canada. The mayor of Prince Rupert, in British Columbia, has proposed to sell the city’s golf course to generate money for a new emergency services building. “This will make it easier on the taxpayers,” notes Jack Mussallem. His secret hope is that a private group will “inject some cash” into the golf course.

united states. The last rounds at Four Willows Golf Course in Mason City, Illinois will be played this season. Roger Tucker has decided to sell his nine-hole, 50-year-old track, and not because it’s losing money. Tucker’s 40-acre property is worth more as farm land.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

morocco Monty Hits the Beach

For the second time, Morocco’s premier residential developer has tapped Colin Montgomerie to put his “signature” on the centerpiece of a big golf community, this one just a short walk from what’s said to be one of the nation’s finest beaches.

Prestigia Group, an affiliate of Groupe Addoha, first hired Montgomerie and his colleagues from European Golf Design to produce the recently completed 18-hole course at Marrakech Golf


City in Marrakech. Now the company is sending Montgomerie’s team to suburban Rabat, to create an 18-hole course for a 1,234-acre waterfront community called Plage des Nations.

“Our objective is to make the Plage des Nations Golf Resort an iconic venue in North Africa,” Prestigia’s managing director, Jawad Ziyat, said in a press release, “and we know Colin and EGD will help us deliver this.”

Montgomerie co-designed the golf course at Marrakech Golf City with Gary Johnson, and he’s co-designing the one at Plage des Nations with Robin Hiseman. In all, Montgomerie and architects from Berkshire, England-based EGD have collaborated at least a half-dozen times, opening tracks in Bahrain (Riffa Views), Dubai (the Montgomerie), the Netherlands (the Dutch), and Wales (the Montgomerie course at Celtic Manor). Montgomerie has also worked with Cleveland, Ohio-based IMG, EGD’s sister company, on several courses in Vietnam, China, and Malaysia.

These days Groupe Addoha and its affiliates are developing two other golf communities in Morocco, Bouskoura Golf City outside Casablanca and Argan Golf Resort in Marrakech, both of which will feature Tony Jacklin-designed courses.

At build-out, Plage des Nations will include up to 10,000 houses, a hotel, a shopping center, and a beach club. It doesn’t sound as if the Plage des Nations property is ideal for golf -- “We will be having some fun with the contouring,” Montgomerie said in publicity materials -- but he nonetheless believes that “a lively and intricate, strategic design” will sprout on the inland site.

Groupe Addoha is controlled by Anas Sefioui, one of Morocco’s richest people. Bloomberg estimates that he’s worth $2.7 billion.

The original version of this post appeared in the June 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report. The World Edition profiled Bouskoura Golf City and Argan Golf Resort in August 2011.

Sunday, September 9, 2012

The Week That Was, september 9, 2012

scotland It’s Still a Man’s World

Now that Augusta National Golf Club has gone co-ed, are some of the world’s other high-prestige all-men’s clubs planning to follow suit?

I wouldn’t bet on it happening anytime soon.

At least three world-famous golf clubs in Scotland don’t admit women, including two legendary venues for the Open Championship: Muirfield in East Lothian, the host of next year’s Open, and Royal Troon Golf Club in South Ayrshire, which is scheduled to host the event in 2016.

Muirfield has taken some heat about its policy from various sources, most prominently the Scottish government.

“Augusta National’s decision to admit women members for the first time is a positive move forward for women’s sport,” a government spokesperson said in a comment reported by the Daily Record. “The Scottish government is committed to promoting equality of opportunity for all people living in Scotland, and ministers believe that all golf clubs should be open to men and to women.”

It’s a comforting sentiment. But Muirfield is standing its ground.

“Single-gender clubs cannot be classed as discriminatory,” the club’s secretary answered. “It is simply the freedom of people to keep their own company -- men or women.”

He added: “There will be no imminent change here at Muirfield. To the best of my knowledge, it is not even on the agenda.”

One of the nation’s former prime ministers has chastised another prominent Scottish club, Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, for having a restricted membership.

“If the golf club in Augusta can start to admit women, then shouldn’t St. Andrews?” Gordon Brown asked pointedly. “If they can do it in South Carolina and we can’t do it in Scotland, then I think we’ve got to think hard and long about issues of discrimination in our own country, where we’ve got to tackle that inequality and that injustice.”

Another soothing sentiment. But Royal & Ancient, like Muirfield, has its own row to hoe.

“The rules of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews specify a male membership,” one of its spokespeople commented dryly, “and this policy remains a matter for our members to determine.”

If you’re wondering, yes, I’m aware that Augusta National is in Georgia. But we don’t need to quibble.

As long as we’re talking about the United States, I might as well mention that our nation reportedly has 25 clubs that are closed to women, and I haven’t been able to find any suggestion that any of them will soon be making changes.

The owner of Black Sheep Golf Club in suburban Chicago, Illinois, summed up the American attitude this way: “Why is it not politically correct to have a place where men can gather and enjoy themselves, playing a sport? It really isn’t about women. It’s simply about golf.”

india The Bear Market

For years, Jack Nicklaus has been trying to cash in on design opportunities in India. To date, however, his firm has produced just two golf courses in the nation (Classic Golf Resort in the state of Gurgaon and Kalhaar Blues & Greens in the state of Gujarat), and his website lists only one other project in planning.

This is a surprise, and not just because Nicklaus is one of the world’s most famous architects. Nicklaus is responsible for five courses in the Philippines, six in South Korea, and seven in Thailand -- all nations with far less golf tradition than India. What is it about India that’s prevented him from producing more than one golf course?

Nicklaus recently shared some of his thoughts about golf in India with Golf Digest India. Here’s a little of what he had to say:

Golf has been played in India for decades, but there has not been a great amount of play relative to the incredible population of the country. While cricket and soccer continue to be popular in India, golf has been a bit slow to catch on with the masses. 

With golf becoming an Olympic sport, combined with the population in India and a large middle class, there’s a real opportunity that exists to introduce and grow a game that really fits the demographics and also the collective talents of an athletic nation. The opportunity truly exists, and it’s an exciting one. I think you’re going to see the game of golf grow in India because of golf’s inclusion as an Olympic sport. My hope is that this heightened global awareness will help promote the game. . . . 

There is a certain lifestyle that surrounds the game of golf, and I think that lifestyle appeals to many potential consumers in emerging markets such as India. I also think there is a greater understanding in these markets about the increased value associated with residential tied into golf. There is a growing market in India of aspirational, second-home buyers, and golf-related real estate helps respond to that demand. . . . 

We have been working hard to contribute to the development of golf in India. But like many emerging markets, India has its own challenges. It can be very difficult to acquire land and assemble people to put it together and commit to it. We’ve done a couple of projects in India, but it’s been relatively slow. I can understand that because of the world economy and because of the lack of available land and water. 

Having said that, I have challenged everyone in our design firm to make certain that if someone comes to us with the desire to create a golf course, no matter how much land they have, we should do everything in our power to provide them a golf experience. Nowhere does it mandate that we have to create for the client an 18-hole golf course of championship length. The best thing we can do for India and the development of the game is to provide every interested owner or developer a “golf experience.” This can be anything from 12 holes to nine to six to just three. It can be a golf academy or even a learning center that has practice holes and greens. 

The game of golf has always been controlled by how far a golf ball goes. But I think it should be the other way round. We have a lot of people coming to us with 40 acres, 60 acres, and 80 acres of land and an intent to do a golf course. I think we owe it to the game of golf to introduce them to the game, retain them, and design a course on that piece of property. We need to develop a golf ball to fit the property, and not the other way round. If we can do that, the game of golf will grow in India, and golf will be a far more affordable and accessible sport.

united states Minimalist Fanfare

So far this year, we’ve checked off three much-anticipated golf courses: Coore & Crenshaw’s 13-hole course at Bandon Dunes, Rod Whitman’s Cabot Links in Nova Scotia, and Martin Hawtree’s layout at Trump International Golf Club Scotland.

By the end of the year, we’ll likely check off three more: the complimentary 18s designed by Coore & Crenshaw and Tom Doak at the Streamsong resort in Florida, along with a Coore & Crenshaw track on Hainan Island in China.

So what can we look forward to in 2013?

As best I can determine, so far just one forthcoming course is making significant noise: the Doak-designed second course at Dismal River Club in Mullen, Nebraska. Golfweek reports that the $2 million layout -- the price certainly appears to be right, doesn’t it? -- is expected to open late next year.

wild card click Back in the day, my favorite political button simply said RESIST.

Friday, September 7, 2012

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.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

iceland Huang Nubo: The Lease He Could Do

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. And while Huang Nubo may be prohibited from buying property in Iceland, there’s apparently nothing to prevent him from leasing some.

Iceland’s government has agreed to lease property in the Grímsstadir á Fjöllum region to Huang, opening the door for construction of the “eco-tourism” resort that the Beijing-based developer has been itching for build for nearly a year. Huang recently told China National Radio that he plans to sign a 99-year lease and to build a hotel, a horse race track, several parks, and a golf course.

“Our negotiation is going on smoothly,” a spokesman for Huang’s Zhongkun Investment Group, Ltd. said earlier this year.

Huang originally planned to buy 74,130 acres, an expanse so large that many Icelanders feared he couldn’t possibly be up to anything good. The site he aims to lease will be smaller, but its size appears to be a matter of speculation. China Daily says it’s 750 acres, while other Chinese sources say 52,000.

The resort in northeastern Iceland is one of two golf ventures currently on Zhongkun’s plate. As I’ve previously noted, the company controls 14,825 acres west of Pu’er, in China’s Yunnan Province, where it aims to build a large resort community with multiple golf courses.

And lest I forget, Zhongkun is also thinking about building resort communities like the one in Iceland in two other Scandinavian nations, Finland and Denmark.

Huang has his eyes, at least in part, on Chinese vacationers, 80 million of whom are expected to travel abroad this year. The number of Chinese tourists visiting Iceland reportedly grew by 70 percent between 2010 and 2011, and a golf resort that specifically caters to their needs and desires could bring Iceland an even larger piece of the action.

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

Sunday, September 2, 2012

The Week That Was, september 2, 2012

The Top 100: How Many Are Really Great?

Earlier this summer, while doing some research about a golf course in Asia, I stumbled across Darius Oliver’s appraisal of Phoenix Country Club in suburban Tokyo, Japan. Oliver, one of Golf Digest’s course raters, says that Phoenix is “both monotonous to play and lacking in challenge for accomplished players.” He calls the course “almost completely devoid of feature and outstanding design” and concludes that “it’s not a great course.”

Mind you, this is the #67 course on Golf Digest’s 100 Best Courses Outside the United States.

I’ll confess that I was surprised to read so many discouraging words about what by all accounts should be a world-class venue. So I decided to read all of Oliver’s top-100 profiles (or at least the 90 or so that he’s posted at his website). I’m probably one of a handful of people on the planet who’s done it.

As you’d expect, Oliver offers glowing reviews of the most elite courses on the list, which is topped by Royal County Down Golf Club in Northern Ireland (#1), the West course at Royal Melbourne Golf Club in Australia (#2), and the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland (#3).

But it doesn’t take long for trouble to appear.

In his profile of the Dunluce track at Royal Portrush Golf Club in Northern Ireland (#13), for example, Oliver uses the words disappointment and disappointing. What hurts Kauri Cliffs Golf Course (#19) in New Zealand, he says, is “the lack of genuine world-class golf holes to match its astonishing setting.” Pete Dye’s Teeth of the Dog course (#22) at Casa de Campo Resort in the Dominican Republic has several holes that “do feel a little underwhelming,” and Kingsbarns Golf Links (#34) in Scotland is “a triumph of vision and construction rather than design.”

As one travels further down the list, the judgments become harsher. Woo Jeong Hills Country Club (#81) in South Korea is “a course with potential but serious design shortcomings.” Noordwijkse Golf Club (#87) in Holland features a course that’s “a notch below the best in Europe and a long way from fulfilling its true potential.” Redtail Golf Course (#97) in Canada is “a good course but not exactly a world-beater.”

The experience of reading these profiles left me with two questions: Are there really only 10 or 20 impeccable golf courses outside the United States?

And if the world-wide pickings are so slim, then how many impeccable courses are in the United States? Fewer than 10, I’d guess.

A couple of months ago, Mike Keiser told me, “There are maybe 30,000 courses in the world, but the only ones that really matter are the top 50.”

I’m beginning to think he’s right.

worth reading Putting “Golf’s 2020 Vision” into Focus

Are the money launderers and interest-rate fixers at HSBC trying to peddle half-truths about the future of golf?

By 2020, the British banking colossus contends in “Golf’s 2020 Vision,” our business will be “revolutionized” by innovative concepts such as time-saving six- and nine-hole courses, low-priced urban tracks designed to introduce the game to residents of inner cities, and family-friendly facilities that will enable men and women (and their children, presumably) to spend more leisure time together.

HSBC bases its predictions on what it calls “a major new piece of research” -- a comical phrase if I ever heard one, given that its “research” is nothing more than a series of interviews with famous professional golfers.

I’m an enthusiastic supporter of any and all initiatives that can increase golf’s popularity, but growing our game requires action, not talk. The year 2020 really isn’t so far away. I understand that France’s golf federation has promised to build 100 golf practice centers by then, but who’s going to build similar centers in other countries? Who’s going to foot the bill for those urban facilities and those family-oriented venues?

Until these questions are answered, predictions about the future of golf are nothing but wishful thinking.

HSBC’s report isn’t research. It’s a publicity stunt.

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

talking points A Man of the People?

Greg Norman may be one of golf’s most unabashed One Percenters, but he recently made a plea for growth and development from the bottom up.

Speaking with a Middle Eastern news agency, Norman advised the nations of the United Arab Emirates to embrace “grass-roots access” as a means to create a sustainable golf industry. This is a model I’ve long endorsed, and I compliment Norman for making the case publicly. (Of course, now he needs to put his money where his mouth is.)

Here’s what Norman told Gulf News:

I think that [the UAE] is really embracing the game. But in order for it to trickle down to the mainstream and make it accessible to everybody, one needs to take a look at what happened in Sweden in the late 1970s and early 80s. There was a gentleman called Sven Tumba who loved the game of golf, and he went about creating golf courses and promoting the game at [the] grass-roots level. Now that was way back. But take a look at Swedish golf today. It is in a pretty healthy state and producing champions. 

As far as the UAE is concerned, golf is pretty much in its infancy as far as growth is concerned. But they have to think about the future right now. This is the same with China and India. It takes a period of time, at least a generation, before things begin to kick in. The UAE has the climate, the sporting prowess, and the financial ability to grant grass-roots access for people to play the game.

wild card click A car. Las Vegas. My daughter. Me. The radio. A duet.