The Week That Was, october 13, 2013

     The number of golfers in the United Kingdom could double if golf course owners did a few simple things, like maybe act friendlier, relax their dress codes, make their venues easier to play, try harder to attract women and children, and let people play for free. Okay, those free rounds wouldn’t last forever. But still, it’s no mean feat to persuade hard-up course owners to give their product away for nothing. Nonetheless, free golf is among the recommendations in a new survey, “Growing Golf in the U.K,” that measured the opinions of 3,500 British residents, fewer than 1,500 of them golfers. The survey has determined that an estimated 8.5 million people in the U.K. -- nearly half of them between the ages of 15 and 39 -- are interested in playing golf, but for various reasons, intimidation being chief among them, can’t quite manage to find their way to a golf course. “What we’ve found,” said Eric Brown of Syngenta, which commissioned the survey, “is that there is very significant latent demand for golf that could be realized if clubs and courses were able to promote themselves in a more friendly, flexible, and family-orientated way.” One noteworthy factoid from the survey: 55 percent of the respondents said that a lack of time didn’t prevent them from playing golf.

     Mike Keiser may not exactly be singing “On Wisconsin,” but he’s pulling out all the stops to find investors willing to fund the construction of his next development venture. Last week, the majority owner of Bandon Dunes did a song-and-dance at the University Club in Milwaukee, where he told an audience of 40 that he’s settled on the architects for the first two courses at Sand Valley, the 1,500-acre golf complex he aims to build near Wisconsin Rapids. The commissions have been won by Tom Doak and Coore & Crenshaw, although Keiser hasn’t decided whose course will be built first. “They both are, I think, geniuses,” he said in a comment published by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. If Keiser can come up the money, he’ll break ground on course number one next spring or summer. David McLay Kidd and Jim Urbina, the other architects who were considered, can keep hope alive by reminding themselves that the property Keiser aims to buy can accommodate five golf courses.

     With a $50 million acquisition fund burning a hole in its pocket, Concert Golf Partners has taken possession of its fourth golf property in Florida and its fifth overall. The Newport Beach, California-based company has purchased Legacy Club at Alaqua Lakes, which had been under threat of foreclosure by the bank that controlled its mortgage. The property features a 15-year-old golf course designed by Tom Fazio. It’s in suburban Orlando, Florida, just a short drive from Concert’s Heathrow Country Club, so a dual-access membership plan will be offered. Legacy Club had been owned and operated by Heritage Golf Group. The terms of the transaction haven’t been disclosed, but a press release says that it includes “a novel approach to the club membership refund liability.” The purchase is Concert’s third in less than a year. Elsewhere in Florida, it also owns Carrollwood Country Club in suburban Tampa and Golf Club of Amelia Island in metropolitan Jacksonville.

     By this time next week, Billy Casper Golf may have a five-year contract to operate the town of East Hartford, Connecticut’s golf course. East Hartford Golf Club has been losing customers and money for years -- it generated 60,000 rounds a year in the 1970s but reportedly gets only 20,000 today -- and it needs lots of improvements, including a new irrigation system. Worse, the course doesn’t figure to become profitable anytime soon, as its public image has been corroded. That being said, East Hartford officials are wary of the deal BCG has proposed, for it requires a $1 million investment from the town (for new equipment and other expenses) and a promise to cover all future losses at the course. “At the end of the day,” Council Chairman Richard Kehoe told the Hartford Courant, “we’re employing someone that doesn’t have any skin in the game.” The city has been seeking a new operator for months, but it received only two offers, the one from BCG and one from a local group that had no experience in golf management. If an agreement is reached, BCG will take over the course on November 1.

     It sounds as if Gary Player’s design group may be having second thoughts about operating out of suburban Greenville, South Carolina. These days, 90 percent of the firm’s work is being done outside the United States, and airline connections would be easier to make if the staff was still in Florida. “I should be moving everyone to Shanghai,” Marc Player told the Greenville News. “But we prefer Greenville to Shanghai.” What’s more, the firm agreed to relocate to the Cliffs at Mountain Park years ago, before the community went bankrupt and was sold. Today, it has no marketing agreements with the Cliffs’ new owners. It’s merely a tenant, not a business partner. The firm uses its recently opened course at Mountain Park as a showcase for its design talents, but if prospective international clients balk at the travel involved in getting there, things may change. “If my clients say, ‘Well, we’re not flying to America to come and look at how you live, work, and play,’” Player said, “then I have to regroup and reconsider.”

     After long, drawn-out flirtations with bankruptcy, foreclosure, and a public auction, the deeply troubled Woodlake Golf Club has found a new owner. Anonymous investors operating as Woodlake Acquisition LLC have taken possession of the 186-acre property in San Antonio, Texas, reportedly by agreeing to purchase a lien held by the local water authority. The price: $939,130. The club, once one of the area’s top golf properties, features a Desmond Muirhead-designed course that opened in 1972. A spokesman for the new owners told the San Antonio Express-News that long-overdue course improvements are on the horizon, and perhaps residential development on adjacent property as well.

     Gábor Széles, the wealthy industrialist with a bent for “royal indulgence,” wasn’t just blowing smoke when he said he’d build a golf course in Zalacsány, Hungary. Széles has turned the formerly abandoned Batthyány Castle into a hotel, as he promised he would, and the Zalai Hírlap reports that the Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed golf course that’s under construction on his 400-acre property is expected to open next year. “If this comes through,” Széles told the newspaper, “Hungary will finally step on a growth path it has not been on for about 500 years!” The course will anchor a community called Zala Springs, which at build-out will also have 400 villas, more hotel rooms, and a spa. Széles thinks he can complete the whole shebang by 2016.

     Don Padgett II is hanging up his SoftSpikes. The president of Pinehurst Resort & Country Club will retire next October, after the 2014 men’s and women’s U.S. Open championships are played on Course No. 2 at the famed golf destination in North Carolina. “With the upcoming U.S. Opens and exciting plans for the growth of our membership,” he said in a press release, “I felt this was the right time to begin the transition for the future leadership of Pinehurst.” Padgett worked for ClubCorp for a quarter-century, mostly as the general manager of Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, and he knew Pinehurst well before he arrived in 2004, as his father had worked there as a director of golf. He’ll be succeeded by the resort’s current executive vice president, Tom Pashley.

     Greg Norman, a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, the CEO of a multinational corporation, and a guy who’s said to be worth

$300 million, has agreed to become a distributor and “global spokesman” for Organo Gold, a five-year-old company that sells herbal-infused coffees and teas through a network of “independent distributors,” like the people who sell Amway products. Is this an offer Norman really needed to accept? Why would one of the biggest people in golf allow himself to look so small?