The Week That Was, november 17, 2013

     Turkey wants to be a major player in international golf circles, and it believes that hosting high-prestige professional tournaments is the way to do it. Although the nation isn’t yet an established golf market -- it had only 19 golf properties in 2011, according to a study by KPMG’s Golf Advisory Practice, and a mere 5,649 players -- it plans to bid on the European Tour’s season-concluding event in 2016 and the Ryder Cup in 2022. “Turkey would have as good a chance as anywhere,” the tour’s CEO said in a comment published by the Telegraph. “This is a country where anything is possible.” To sweeten its proposal, Turkey is willing to build a new course specifically designed for the event it wins.

     Peter Nanula wants to buy a prominent, financially strapped golf club in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, but he may have to fend off a committed group of club members to do so. In August, the Newport Beach, California-based investor acquired the first mortgage on Gaillardia Golf & Country Club, a property currently in receivership. Control of the loan would seem to give Nanula’s deep-pocketed Concert Golf Partners the inside track on a purchase, but a bid from Jeff McDougall, an oil man who owns a 17,500-square-foot mansion in the Gaillardia community, might be favored by a second lender involved in the proceedings. “We’re just a group in the club that would like to see it locally owned,” McDougall told the Oklahoman. “We think it’s the best thing for the community.” Neither suitor intends to spell out his plans for the club until the foreclosure process concludes, and nobody seems to know when that will happen.

     In an effort to drum up business, some of the best-known golf courses in Gujarat, India have become marketing partners. The 12 founding members of the Gujarat Golf Association include Kensville Golf & Country Club in metropolitan Ahmedabad, Gaekwad Baroda Golf Club in Baroda, and Aalloa Hills Resort & Golf Course in suburban Gandhinagar. “Many of us are struggling hard to stay afloat, as golf is picking up very slowly here and the golf properties are expensive to maintain,” the managing director of Gulmohar Greens Golf & Country Club told the Indian Express. “So we decided to come together under one umbrella and promote it in an organized manner.” The golf business has become very competitive in Gujarat, thanks in part to construction related to residential development, and the newspaper reports that “very few golf enthusiasts” are “taking up the game.”

     Eric Trump, who now effectively runs his family’s golf empire, has faith in the future of ultra high-end golf operations, as long as the properties are located in metropolitan areas. “During the boom, everybody was building golf courses and doing them in crazy locations,” he explained to Cybergolf.com. “Some amazing golf courses got built, but they happen to be in the middle of ‘you name the place’ and weren’t near any metropolitan city, not near any highway. You had to take a prop plane and then a helicopter to get there. The notion that those would be successful was a little fictitious.” To review, the Trumps own a close to a dozen U.S., golf properties, all of them near the cities of New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, West Palm Beach, Miami, Charlotte, and Washington, DC.

     Troon Privé has added the oldest golf club in central Ohio to its collection of “private clubs of distinction.” Troon Golf’s private-club division has taken the reins at Columbus Country Club, an old-line property that was established in 1903 and was once a favored retreat for many of the capital city’s most prominent citizens. Today, the club’s initiation fee tops out at $2,500. “Columbus Country Club is an exceptional private facility with an outstanding reputation,” said Jim McLaughlin, one of Troon’s senior vice presidents. One of Troon’s primary tasks will be to restore the club’s membership. In 2011, in an effort to add value, CCC began offering joint memberships with the Athletic Club of Columbus. “We all need to attract a new generation of members and retain our present ones,” the club’s general manager at the time told Columbus Business First. An attraction that prospects will surely notice is a Donald Ross-designed golf course that hosted the 1964 PGA Championship in 1964.

     John Fought, an architect based in Scottsdale, Arizona, has won the commission to oversee a renovation of a golf course owned by the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. Fought will receive $105,000 (plus up to $16,000 in travel expenses) to prepare a master plan for greens-related improvements at Wilmington Municipal Golf Course, an 18-hole, Donald Ross-designed track that dates from the late 1920s. The city expects to rebuild the layout’s greens, greens approaches, and greenside bunkers, and other upgrades may be done as well. “There is little doubt that these improvements will elevate your reputation and enhance the playability of the course,” Fought said in a comment published by the Port City Daily. The work will likely cost about $700,000. It’ll begin next year, but the city hasn’t yet decided to complete it in one phase or two.

     After what’s been described as a “disastrous” and “devastating” golf season, the city of Edina, Minnesota may consider closing or privatizing one or both of its golf courses. The city’s Braemar Golf Course consists of a 27-hole regulation complex and two nine-hole executive-length tracks, one of them operated as Fred Richards Golf Course. Through the end of September, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, net earnings at the courses were down by roughly $325,000 from the same time in 2012. As a result, according to the city’s director of parks and recreation, golf operations will be examined “to make sure we’re doing the best we can to operate as efficiently as possible.” The Fred Richards course, which caters mostly to seniors and beginners, will be scrutinized most closely and may be on the chopping block. The city hopes to make some decisions about its golf operation early next year.

     Municipal golf operations in Minnesota may be experiencing declines, but at least one city in Wisconsin is seeing a slight uptick in rounds and revenues. Despite losing 40 playing days to poor weather, the four golf properties in Madison rang up 81,000 rounds through late October, a 1 percent increase over the full-year performance in 2012. What’s more, the courses have so far generated $287,000 in profits, a better than 40 percent boost over 2012. “It has been a great year for the golf courses,” a spokesperson for the capital city’s parks department told the Wisconsin State Journal. A major operational change accounts for a significant part of the profits: This year, the city ended its relationship with the pros who formerly managed the courses.

     You can add Rees Jones’ name to the list of golf-industry professionals who believe that brown is the new green. “I think we’re going to have to learn to deal with lesser conditions,” the Open Doctor said during a conversation with a reporter in Williamsburg, Virginia. “We’ve gotten spoiled.” Spoiled or not, in many parts of the nation brown still seems to be an acquired taste. How long, realistically, will it take the Powers That Be to change hearts and minds?