The Week That Was, june 23, 2013

     It didn’t take the new owners of Kiawah Partners long to flip their resort property in the Caribbean, and it appears likely that Doonbeg Golf Club in Ireland will soon have new owners as well. South Street Partners has sold Christophe Harbour, which occupies 2,500 acres on St. Kitts, to a partnership led by Charles “Buddy” Darby, who just happens to be one of the principals of Kiawah Partners. Clearly, it was a marriage of convenience. The forthcoming resort will feature Park Hyatt hotel (it’s currently under construction) and, eventually, a Tom Fazio-designed golf course. South Street may need to work a little harder to sell Doonbeg, which hasn’t turned an annual profit even once since it opened in 2002. Red ink aside, however, Doonbeg has a nice location on the southwestern coast of County Clare, a well-appointed lodge, and a Greg Norman-designed links that’s received many favorable notices. Even Darius Oliver, a tough critic, has conceded that “there have been few more impressive virgin courses built in this region during the last half century.”

     Don’t hold your breath waiting for a Tiger Woods-designed layout to emerge at the Cliffs at High Carolina. Silver Sun Partners, the new owner of the seven Cliffs Communities, doesn’t have any immediate plans to build more golf courses, most certainly not one that might cost $25 million or more. “Does America need another golf course right now?” asked the firm’s CEO, Brett Johnson, in a comment reported by the Asheville Citizen-Times. And then he answered his rhetorical question: “Probably not.” Johnson hasn’t ruled out developing High Carolina, the Cliffs’ 3,000-acre property outside Asheville, North Carolina, but it appears that Woods’ inaugural U.S. track will need to find a home elsewhere.

     A suburb of Indianapolis, Indiana is hoping to attract an LPGA event. “We’ve put our toe in the water,” a city official in Lawrence told the Indianapolis Star. The event would be played at the state-owned Fort Golf Course, a former military track that was redesigned by Pete Dye and Tim Liddy in the late 1990s. The LPGA Tour, which is eager to expand its presence in the Midwest, appears to be intrigued. “It certainly is an attractive market for us,” acknowledged a tour administrator. Before negotiations can get serious, however, the city needs to line up a title sponsor willing to make a three-year commitment, most likely at $3 million a year.

     It may be time to start taking golf in Iceland more seriously. Paul Ingrassia, a reporter for Reuters, claims that Iceland is “one of the most golf-obsessed places on earth,” with a participation rate (10 percent) higher than you’ll find in the United States, Great Britain, and other “mature” golf markets. The nation has just 65 courses, but that number translates as one for every 5,000 residents -- a ratio that isn’t exceeded elsewhere. (Golf Digest says that Scotland has more courses per capita, but it only considers more populated nations.) The big negative on Iceland, of course, is its short season. But look on the bright side: The summer allows for play virtually 24 hours a day.

     A glaring void in ClubCorp’s portfolio has been filled. The Dallas, Texas-based management company has picked up its first property in New Jersey, Cherry Valley Country Club outside Princeton. “In these economic times of up and down,” the president of the accompanying homeowners’ association told the Princeton Packet, “the club and the membership decided it’s a better opportunity to have it run by a professional organization than to try and go it alone.” The 22-year-old club features a Rees Jones-designed golf course, two pools, a clubhouse slated for an immediate renovation, and the stuffiness associated with a published dress code. With the contract, ClubCorp has established a golf presence in 23 states.

     Sea Trail, the bankrupt golf community in Sunset Beach, North Carolina, has found its new owner. It’s a Chinese investment group led by “a man known as Mr. Pan,” according to the Myrtle Beach Sun News. Pan’s Wealth Spring Industry LLC has reportedly agreed to pay $8.5 million for Sea Trail, a 2,000-acre spread that includes three 18-hole golf courses (designed by Rees Jones, Dan Maples, and Willard Byrd), 1,300 houses, meeting space, 600 units of rental housing, a pair of clubhouses, an undisclosed number of unsold lots, and roughly 190 acres’ worth of developable property. “It’s Mr. Pan’s objective to create a first-class facility,” the property’s new CEO told the newspaper. “We sort of know where we want to take it. We’re going to come in and do some immediate upgrades, but nothing substantive until we go through a master-planning effort.” The sale is expected to close next month.

     Those neo-classic and links courses that are popping up everywhere are having an unforeseen and welcome effect on our nation’s golf operations: As walking becomes the preferred manner of play, caddies are making a comeback. Lawrence Yacht & Country Club, on Long Island, is among the U.S. golf properties that are trying to establish caddie programs, in an effort to promote the health benefits of golf, create a few jobs, and develop a pipeline for new players. “Few innovations have done more damage to a game than the motorized cart has done to golf,” Bill Morris writes in the New York Times. Clearly, this is one in a series of back-to-the-future moments that golf has experienced in recent years. My question: How big a niche can caddying carve out in a business that relies so much on income from cart rentals?

     Lake Region Yacht & Country Club, now a receding memory in suburban Orlando, Florida, has hired Billy Casper Golf to orchestrate its future. The club, which was going broke and is now owned by a group of founding members, is closed this summer for an overhaul of its 18-hole golf course. When it reopens, in late 2013, it’ll assume a new identity: Country Club of Winter Haven. BCG has been directed to make Winter Haven “a best-in-class” club, which will eventually entail building a new clubhouse and selling equity memberships for $50,000. “The Country Club of Winter Haven will once again be one of the finest private clubs in central Florida,” promises Peter Hill, the CEO of BCG. The contract gives BCG 13 properties in Florida.

     What do Donald Trump, Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, and Marc Anthony have in common? They play with custom-made, hand-crafted, gold- and platinum-plated Japanese clubs that cost $75,000 a set. They’re supposed to improve performance. But if they’re all they’re cracked up to be, why don’t the pros use them?