conversation with the Daily Mail, one of them called it “beautifully ironic” -- but a spokesperson for Trump believes the damage will be “easy to correct.” I don’t know whether that’s true or not. What I do know is that the sands on links courses shift constantly, which is why dunes need to be “stabilized” during golf construction. Heck, when the spring storms arrive in northeastern Scotland, such mini-landslides may very well occur on parts of another hole. It goes with the territory. The dunes occasionally slip away. “We’re delighted with how the course stood up to these extreme weather conditions,” the spokesperson said in comments published by the Scotsman. The course, which is currently closed for the winter, is expected to reopen in April, as scheduled.
Officials of some British golf clubs fear that the recent liquidation of Allerthorpe Park Golf Club, in East Yorkshire, England, may be a harbinger of further closings in the immediate future. “I would not be surprised to see one or two more,” said the general manager of Fulford Golf Club. “There’s a lot of problems in the golf industry.” The biggest problem, of course, is an old bugaboo: Supply is greater than demand. In addition, the York Press says, golf clubs in York and North Yorkshire have struggled of late with “the ravages of a depressed economy” and “a summer and winter where the weather has severely blighted vital income.”
Jiro may dream of sushi, but PGM Holdings no longer dreams of becoming Japan’s biggest golf-management company. PGM has abandoned its attempt to acquire a controlling interest in Accordia Golf Company, which currently operates 132 golf properties, as it couldn’t acquire enough of Accordia’s stock. Bloomberg reports that the takeover attempt has been a coup for Accordia’s shareholders, since the price of the company’s stock has increased by more than 50 percent since mid November, when the battle began. What’s more, in an effort to hold onto its stockholders, Accordia has reportedly more than tripled the amount of the dividend it had originally planned to pay.
Superstorm Sandy has claimed one more victim: Middle Bay Golf Club in Oceanside, New York. The club, which features an Alfred Tull-designed course that opened in the mid 1950s, is located along the southern coast of Long Island, in an area that was devastated by the storm. To revive itself, Middle Bay needed to cover an estimated $3.5 million in damages, but it simply couldn’t summon the will to do so, especially after it lost about one-third of its 230 members. “They were as badly hit by the storm as the club was,” the club’s general manager told Newsday. “A lot of our members living in the area haven’t even been able to go back to their own homes yet.”
It’s way too early to call this a trend, but a posh golf club in Florida is bragging about the number of new members it attracted last year. Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, which reportedly has an initiation fee of $125,000 (plus $11,500 in annual dues), signed “about 50” new members in 2012, bringing its total membership to 165. (Reality check: That’s barely half of where the club eventually hopes to be.) The Sarasota Herald-Tribune also notes that Founders Golf Club in Sarasota boosted its membership by 15 percent last year (to a record high of 228), although its memberships cost only $17,500. The newspaper, which believes that “upscale club membership represents a unique barometer of the region’s overall fiscal health,” concludes that the clubs have grown because they “trimmed the cost of dues, expanded the types of memberships, and crafted more social and casual activities.”
An unexpectedly large rent increase may threaten the future of Magdalene Fields, the northernmost golf club in England. Since 1996, the Berwick-based club has paid an annual fee of £8,500 (about $13,500) to Northumberland County, but this year the county wants to boost the amount to £18,000 (about $28,500) -- an increase of 118 percent, according to the Berwick Advertiser. “We’re simply not the sort of golf club which has that sort of money,” the club’s secretary told the newspaper. In fact, the club reportedly lost £19,000 (more than $30,000) in 2012, in part because rainy weather forced it to close 18 times. The club, which was established in 1903, is said to be exploring its legal options.
The Wisconsin section of the PGA has exacted a little revenge on the city of Madison. For the past 22 years, the group’s annual junior championship has been held at Yahara Hills Golf Course in Madison. But this year, in a major departure from tradition, the event will be played at a county-owned golf course in Milwaukee. Why the switch? Because last year Madison decided not to renew the contracts of the four PGA pros who ran its golf courses.
It turns out that Tom Doak may not design the forthcoming 2.5-acre putting course at Bandon Dunes. Bandon Western World says that Doak has been hired to create the course, but the oceanfront golf venue in Oregon is also considering Jim Urbina, one of Doak’s former associates, for the job. “At this point we’re not sure about the designer,” a spokesperson for Bandon Dunes said in a telephone message. “It could be Doak or Urbina. There are still a lot of hoops that need to be jumped through before we start moving dirt.” In either case, Mike Keiser, the resort's owner, still expects construction to begin sometime this year or next.
These days, the members of Royal Sydney Golf Club don’t want anyone to have a blast on their golf course. A recently published military history claims that an unexploded artillery shell is lurking somewhere beneath the eighth fairway of the club’s Centenary course. The book’s author doesn’t think the shell will explode anytime soon -- it was fired by a Japanese submarine during World War II -- but he counseled that “if they ever reclaimed the land and builders started to put in high-density housing, then I wouldn’t want to be around.”
I need to make a correction. Two Sundays ago, I reported that the government of Singapore’s investment arm had agreed to buy four golf properties from Paulson & Company. I correctly identified two of the properties -- PGA West in La Quinta, California and the Great White course at Doral Golf Resort in Miami, Florida -- but was wrong about the others. The sale will include two other properties in La Quinta: La Quinta Resort & Club (two 18-hole courses) and Cirtus Club at La Quinta (one 18-hole course). Yes, Singapore is buying the Arizona Biltmore Resort & Spa in Phoenix and the Grand Wailea Resort Hotel & Spa on Maui in Hawaii, but its purchase doesn’t include the resorts’ golf courses. I apologize for the error.
There are no boa constructors or guillotines, but last week the always entertaining Alice Cooper told the Los Angeles Times why he took up golf (“I had to find an addiction that was not going to kill me”), reveled in the pleasures of playing courses that are usually off-limits to goth-rockers (“They can’t keep me off, because in most cases I’m better than the guy who wants to keep me off”), and made a case for golf being the ultimate democratic sport (“It doesn’t matter if you’re the president of the United States, a gardener, or a garbage man, if you can help a guy hit the ball straight, all bets are off about who you are or what you do”). Cooper admits that his game is on the decline, but he seems to be content with the way his life turned out. When it comes to careers, he noted, “I would much rather be a rock singer than a golfer.”
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