The Week That Was, april 14, 2013

     Most people in golf development may still be beating a path to China or India, but our industry’s true emerging hot spot may be Africa. “I actually see near-term and significant activity in many countries throughout Africa,” Gary Player declared in a recent conversation with the National. In particular, Player is cashing checks from clients in Morocco, Gabon, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa.

     Montenegro’s most ambitious golf developer has sold out to one of its minority partners. Boka Group, a Bahamas-based firm led by John Gvozdenovic Kennedy and John James, has acquired the assets of LPGD Company LLC. LPGD, a Dutch entity, had hoped to build 27-hole golf complexes in Kavac, along the Bay of Kotor, and in Danilovgrad, a northwestern suburb of Podgorica, as well as a resort with six courses in of Seljanovo. So far, Boka Group has revealed plans to build just one of the courses, the one in Kavac. (LPGD had named it Tivat National Golf Club.) “This premier region has been crying out for a golf course,” Kennedy said in a press release. The course is scheduled to open in 2016, and Boka Group will use LPGD’s architect, Derbyshire, England-based Steve Marnoch. Depending on how quickly Orascom Development Holding proceeds with its Gary Player-designed course at the Luštica Bay resort community in nearby Tivat, it could be Montenegro’s first golf property.
     Some information in this post first appeared in the April 2013 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report. 

     Killarney Golf & Fishing Club, which hosted the Irish Open in 2010 and 2011, continues to sink deeper into a financial hole. Last fall, Killarney was forced to sell one of its three golf courses. Last week, its lines of credit were cut off, and they “will not be restored,” its lenders say. On top of that, according to the Independent, this year the club has lost 220 members and expects its income from greens fees to fall by 20 percent. Add it all up, and you get a club that’s effectively up the river without a paddle. To stave off a complete collapse, Killarney needs to renegotiate the terms of its agreements with its workers. “We need to act now to secure the long-term future of the club, which, as a top-quality tourist attraction, is a great asset for Killarney and Kerry,” the club’s general manager said recently. But how many concessions is labor willing to make? And will they be enough?

     Four years ago, while the nation was being suffocated by Great Recession, all of golf’s vital signs had gone negative: sales of golf equipment were down, the number of annual rounds played was falling, and some of the PGA Tour’s biggest corporate benefactors were collecting TARP money from the federal government. “The sport’s bubble seemingly had burst,” writes Patrick Rishe of Forbes. But that was then. Now, Rishe says, golf is experiencing “a financial bounce-back.” Its television ratings are up, its talented young stars are becoming marketable, and the PGA Tour, which is pocketing a record $800 million annually from television contracts, has secured title sponsors for all 42 of its tournaments. Rishe’s conclusion: “Today, PGA Tour officials should be buying Frescas for corporate sponsors in jubilation for the relatively swift financial recovery from trying economic times.” The nagging question: How long before the good times return to the development sector?

     The 269 golf properties on Long Island, in New York, are “scrambling for customers,” says Newsday, due to “overbuilding, a weak economy, and shifting leisure pursuits.” The decline is reflected in the number of rounds played at the six state-owned facilities on the island. In 1998, the newspaper says, 576,850 rounds were played at those courses. By 2008, the number had fallen to 466,343, and last year the state rang up just 369,595 rounds. “We’re in the same situation as many places throughout the country,” a real estate appraiser told the newspaper. Given such an unfortunate trend, one might think that Long Island has lost a lot of its golf courses. However, Newsday reports that only 10 golf facilities on the island have closed since 2004, and one of them -- Middle Bay Country Club in Oceanside -- is about to reopen.

     Is Escalante Golf ready to resume its spending spree? The Fort Worth, Texas-based company has agreed to buy four prominent golf properties in metropolitan Houston from Redstone Companies, according to the Houston Chronicle. The group consists of Redstone Golf Club, BlackHorse Golf Club, Shadow Hawk Golf Club, and Houstonian Golf & Country Club. With the Redstone collection, Escalante now owns 14 golf properties in six U.S. states. The company went on a buying binge in 2011, when it acquired three properties in Florida (among them, Black Diamond Ranch in Lecanto) and one in Louisiana. In 2012, it added just one course to its portfolio, Golf Club at Dove Mountain in Marana, Arizona. But it’s started off 2013 with a bang, and it’s worth noting that Redstone also owns Vanderbilt Legends Club, a 36-hole facility in Franklin, Tennessee.

     The city of Columbus, Ohio has pulled the plug on Walnut Hill Golf Course, a nine-hole track that’s been on the critical list for years. Walnut Hill opened in 1955, as an 18-hole course. Its owners, a group of residential developers, later shrunk it in half and then donated it to the city in 1974. In recent years, the track has been among the worst performers in the city’s seven-course portfolio, and in 2012 it lost almost $113,000. By closing it, the city believes it can return its golf operation to profitability, a goal that’s within plain sight. As a group, says the Columbus Dispatch, the city’s courses lost just over $63,000 last year.

     Every day, golf gets a little more popular in India. But Callaway’s salespeople in the world’s second most-populous nation believe that what India really needs is a celebrity endorser who can command attention and instantly turn on millions to the pleasures of golf. “For us, businesswise, two things that could change the face of golf in the country are if it is taken up by a Bollywood star or a cricketer,” the company’s director of marketing told Deutsche Welle. Until that person emerges, Callaway will have to let its products speak for themselves.

     Is something divine happening at a golf course in County Carlow, Ireland? An Irish newspaper reports that “people are flocking” to Carrigleade Golf Course to catch a glimpse of “a vision of the Virgin Mary cradling an infant” that appeared, seemingly overnight, on one of the nearby mountains. “We have never noticed it until now,” the course’s owner told a local newspaper, “It’s very strange.” I’ll say it’s strange. I thought Jesus and Moses were the only heavenly beings who were drawn to golf.