Memento Mori, march 15, 2013

     In late January, the owners of Country Club at the Legends bid their members adieu. The heirs of Carmelo Natoli, who died late last year, said they were “no longer willing to fund an unprofitable business” or to foot the bill for “needed capital improvements,” according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The 24-year-old club in Eureka, Missouri featured an 18-hole, Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed course and a nine-hole, Gary Kern-designed course. Patti Natoli, the club’s manager, told the Eureka-Wildwood Patch that the club hasn’t been profitable since her father bought it in 1996. But while Carmelo Natoli had been willing to cover the club’s losses, his children weren’t. “This is a sad decision all around,” said Patti Natoli, the club’s manager. “But we have great hopes that something will work out for this club.” Last month, a city official told the Patch that “four or five parties” have expressed an interest in the property and that he hoped to see “a smooth transfer of ownership in the next month or two.” So far, though, there’s been no word of a pending sale.

     The clock is ticking for McCall Lake Golf Course in Calgary, Alberta. The 27-hole municipal complex, which has been in business since 1981, is slated to close at the end of the 2014 golf season. City auditors says that McCall Lake loses more than $200,000 a year -- the number of rounds played there has fallen from 68,713 in 2004 to 58,505 in 2012 -- and the Calgary Herald reports that the city expects to pocket “upwards of $30 million” from a planned sale. “While I’m sad to see the golf course close,” an alderman said, “I’m very excited about the potential re-purposing of this site for industrial and recreational purposes.” The city has promised to spend some of the proceeds from the sale on improvements to its other courses. But those courses may not have much of a future, either. The city’s golf manager told the Herald that Calgary was seeing “an increase in ethnic diversity in our communities, and golf is not necessarily the game of choice anymore.”

     The Craythorne’s days are numbered. The 18-hole layout in Staffordshire, England will close at the end of this month, unless a buyer unexpectedly emerges. “The golf course is simply financially unsustainable,” the Craythorne’s owner said in a letter to members. According to the Burton Mail, Tony Wright blamed the course’s fiscal troubles on rainy weather, tax-related issues, and “government mismanagement of the economy.” The Craythorne’s first nine opened in 1974, its second nine a decade later. Wright plans to continue operating the property’s driving range, pub, restaurant, and hair salon.

     A boondoggle in Pennsylvania is about to meet its predictable demise. Hershey Links, which was established in 2003 as Wren Dale Golf Club, will close at the end of the 2013 season. The 18-hole, Mike Hurdzan-designed layout may be located just outside Hershey, “the sweetest place on earth,” but its short, controversial history has left a sour taste in many local mouths. The Milton Hershey School, which controls the famous candy company, paid $12 million for the still-unfinished course in 2006 -- “an inflated price,” notes the Philadelphia Inquirer -- and then spent $5 million more on amenities. Today, executives of the school, the chocolate maker, and the Hershey Trust Company -- some of them interchangeable parts -- are being investigated by the state’s attorney general. The school, which was established to educate impoverished children, will replace the course with student housing.

     A George Fazio-designed golf course in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania has roughly six more weeks of life. Some local Realtors have purchased Silver Spring Golf Club, reports the Patriot-News, with the intent of converting the 90-acre property to single-family houses. The Realtors reportedly paid $1 million for the club, which opened in 1965.

     A year or so from now, a golf course in Surrey, England will be converted into a training center for a rugby club. “It is a pity to see a much-loved local facility disappear,” the head of a local residents’ association told the Surrey Herald. “The golf club had a lot of members, and it brought pleasure to a lot of people of all age groups.” The center’s nine-hole, Jonathan Gaunt-designed track opened in 1992.

     By a unanimous vote, the village council in Flat Rock, North Carolina has agreed to make an offer for Highland Lake Golf Course. If the offer is accepted, the nine-hole, 2,615-yard track will host its final rounds in September. “The only thing left is to agree on a price,” a course employee told me. The course opened in the early or late 1970s, depending on which source you believe, and its owners -- Jim Sparks and Tom Davis, the principals of Flat Rock-based Course Doctors, Inc. -- have been trying to sell it for two or three years. The city plans to turn the 66-acre property into a park.

     The only par-3 golf course in Racine County, Wisconsin -- and one that was lighted for night play -- has been sold and will likely become the site of a business park. “We have gone out of business,” Raymond Heights Golf Course reports on its Facebook page. The future of the nine-hole, 37-acre course had been “murky,” according to the Racine Journal Times, and Jon Henderson bought it late last year, reportedly for $377,000. A county tourism official told the newspaper that Raymond Heights, which opened in the early 1960s, was “a great course for beginning golfers” but was, unfortunately, located on “a valuable property.”

     A nine-hole, par-3 course in Kentucky’s Kenlake State Resort Park has met its end and won’t operate this season. Bill Hamrick Memorial Golf Course, which opened in 1950, saw just 2,134 rounds last year, a number so low it’s hard to believe. That being said, a spokesman for the state’s park system told the Marshall County Tribune-Courier that his agency spent no more than $50,000 to keep the course open.