The Week That Was, march 3, 2013

     The future of Golf Park Dubrovnik, Greg Norman’s controversial golf community in Dubrovnik, Croatia, will be decided by a referendum. The action, rare for Croatian politics, is a last-ditch effort to block the venture, which has elicited protests since it was announced in 2007. The community -- it’ll include houses, a hotel, a spa, and a 27-hole golf complex -- will be built atop Srd Hill (a.k.a. Mount Srd), which looms more than 1,300 feet above the city and is said to offer inspiring views of the Adriatic Sea. Norman is developing the community with a group led by Aaron Frankel, a well-connected Israeli arms dealer. Their plan worries many residents of Dubrovnik, the “pearl of the Adriatic,” because it’ll “turn about one-third of Dubrovnik’s existing public space over to private development,” says Croatia Traveller. Inter Press Service says that “illegal construction” along the Adriatic coast has “devastated some of the most beautiful spots, and the people of Dubrovnik feared this might happen to them as well under the cloak of promoting tourism.” Legally speaking, the forces allied against Golf Park Dubrovnik had to gather about 8,500 signatures to put the referendum in motion. At last count, they’d reportedly collected more than 10,000.

     Twelve to one: That’s more or less the ratio of U.S. course closings to course openings in 2012, according to an accounting by the National Golf Foundation. The actual numbers: 154.5 to 13.5. The NGF notes that 68 percent of the courses that disappeared were “lower-priced public facilities,” which, as we all know, are the places where beginners learn to play. Here’s the sad news: If you believe the NGF’s predictions -- and after what the group once told us about the necessity of opening a course a day, who doesn’t? -- the level of construction we’re currently seeing is all we’re going to get for a while. The group believes that a mere “20 or fewer” courses will open annually “for the foreseeable future.” If you’re wondering, the NGF expects the number of annual closings to range between 150 and 180.

     Great Britain’s National Trust has lost its battle against Bushmill Dunes, the much-discussed resort community near Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. The legal ruling opens the door for Alistair Hanna to build the 356-acre spread, which will include 70 “golf lodges,” a 120-room hotel, and an 18-hole, David McLay Kidd-designed golf course. Hanna told the BBC that Bushmill Dunes will be among the “most spectacular golf developments ever seen in Ireland,” and the Telegraph reports that construction is “likely to begin towards the end of the summer and take at least two years, maybe three, to complete.” Many of the news reports about Bushmills Dunes mention a brash comment that Kidd made to Hanna after winning the commission: “If I can’t get your course into the top 50 of the world, you should shoot me.” What the stories don’t say is that Kidd’s statement originally appeared in the World Edition of the Golf Course Report. My guess is that Kidd is going to hear it many, many times between now and the day that the course finally opens.

     Will someone in India please put a gag on Lalit Kumar Jain before it’s too late? Jain, the president of Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India, is hard-selling an idea that will ultimately be the nothing but trouble for India’s promising golf industry: namely, that the best way to grow the game is to hitch it to residential real estate development, particularly to upscale, “signature”-branded golf communities. This is the development model that’s completely flopped in the United States, and I don’t know why the outcome would be any different in India. As I’ve been saying for years, home builders have absolutely no stake in the future of golf. All they really care about is selling houses and villas and time-share condos. As long as golf helps them do these things, they’re the game’s biggest supporters. But when the home buyers disappear, the builders will abandon golf. Their shareholders will rightly demand it. So no matter how rosy a picture Jain draws about the glorious future of golf communities in India, what he’s selling is ultimately bad for golf.

     Okay, if India’s golf industry won’t listen to me, maybe they’ll listen to Ian Andrew. “Corporate golf,” the outspoken Canadian architect contends in a recent blog post, “has damaged the foundations of the game, because the goal is not long-term success but short-term profit.” He’s talking to you, Lalit Kumar Jain, and to people like you in China, Vietnam, Turkey, Montenegro, and other emerging golf markets. You’re all blinded by the dollar signs in your eyes. What you don’t understand, Andrew believes, is that “the core of the game is how it’s played, not how it looks.” If you really want to grow the game, you don’t do it by building long, difficult, high-prestige “signature” courses, because they ultimately “frustrate new players and drive them out of the game.” Instead, he says, you should build “much more rudimentary and fun layouts, where people are unlikely to lose a golf ball.” I’m begging you to take Andrew’s advice, Lalit Kumar Jain. In the long run, you’ll be glad you did.

     Still waiting for the hammer to come down on Vijay Singh for using illegal performance enhancers? Well, Reuters reports that the PGA Tour intends to make a decision about the punishment for Singh’s use of deer-antler spray “relatively soon.” And though this



is a critical decision for professional golf -- it’ll speak volumes about the sport’s position on drug use, not to mention its willingness to police its stars -- the tour’s commissioner seems to have a rather blasé attitude about the matter. “There’s no time urgency here,” Tim Finchem told reporters in Arizona, “because if action is taken, it’ll be reported. If no action is taken, it won’t be reported, and that’ll be the end of that.” Singh, you’ll remember, professed to be “shocked” -- shocked, like Captain Renault in Casablanca -- that the spray contained a banned substance. Unfortunately for him, the tour’s bylaws clearly state that ignorance isn’t a defense.

     For Tower Holdings, the third time really was the charm. Planning officials in Queensland have approved a vastly downsized version of the company’s resort community on Great Keppel Island, including its Greg Norman-designed golf course. The twice-rejected venture -- it’s been kicking around since the mid 2000s -- was originally supposed to occupy 17 percent of the island. Now, on a mere 3.5 percent, Tower will build an “eco-friendly” (or at least an “eco-friendlier”) vacation spot that features 750 villas, 600 apartments, a 250-room hotel, a marina, and lots of places to wine and dine. The project still needs one more stamp of approval, from the federal environment minister, but Tower has never been closer to creating what its owner, Terry Agnew, once said would be “one of Australia’s premier tourist attractions.”

     A court in the state of Washington has ordered Spokane Country Club to pay $500,000 to four female members who successfully argued that they were denied the favorable tee times and access to facilities that their male counterparts received.“The world has moved on,” the plaintiffs’ lawyer reportedly said in her closing remarks. “It’s against the law to establish gender-based practices.” The jury unanimously agreed.

     We’ve all died a little on the golf course, but a private group in Aurora, Ohio is making the connection between golf and death a little too literal for my tastes. Aurora Events LLC wants to turn part of the clubhouse at the soon-to-be-sold-and-closed Aurora Golf Club into a funeral chapel. And if you think this proposal is just a little bit strange, consider this: According to city code, the funeral chapel is a permitted use. No rezoning required.