The Week That Was, january 19, 2014

     To absolutely nobody’s surprise, the financially challenged Doonbeg Golf Club has been turned over to receivers. The club, which features a Greg Norman-designed golf course, is often said to be among the top golf destinations in Ireland, but it also hasn’t had a profitable year of operation since it opened in the early 2000s. Through 2011, it had lost more than $70 million. Doonbeg’s financial performance helped to strain relations between the principals of Kiawah Partners, Charles “Buddy” Darby and Leonard Long, who last year sold the club and other golf holdings to South Street Partners, a North Carolina-based investment firm. South Street never once expressed a desire to hang onto Doonbeg. The receivers have said that they’ve already received several offers for the property, the majority of them from foreign prospects.

     What’s missing from Golf Digest’s inaugural compilation of the World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses? The answer is intriguing, especially when one considers all the attention our industry pays nowadays to the growth of international golf: Golf Digest’s evaluators didn’t identify even one truly elite golf property in South America, the Middle East, or India, and they found precious few in Europe (two), Africa (two), the Caribbean (one), and Mexico (one) -- all places that are supposedly teeming with high-quality golf venues. Instead, the magazine’s freshly minted World 100 is packed solid with courses located in the United States (40) and Great Britain & Ireland (32), as such lists always seem to be. Golf Digest predicts that its rankings will “change dramatically” in the future, as emerging golf markets begin to produce world-class tracks, but these days there’s no reason to believe that its evaluators will ever be inclined to trade the classic old courses they’ve long revered for recently opened upstarts.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the January 2014 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     Has yet another scheduling snafu engulfed the 2016 Olympics? Within a month or so, the Guardian reports, all 18 holes at Venue Reserva de Marapendi in Rio de Janeiro will be shaped and ready to be grassed. But the grassing can’t begin until the course’s irrigation system is installed. And nobody seems to know when that will happen. Which is surprising, because just last November, Tim Finchem himself announced that the irrigation unit had “boarded a ship in Los Angeles and was headed for the Panama Canal.” So where is it now?

     The golfers of metropolitan San Francisco, California won an important battle last week, as the city’s planning commission implicitly endorsed the bitterly debated restoration of Sharp Park Golf Course. The 18-hole, municipal layout, an Alister MacKenzie design that dates from the early 1930s, has been in need of a total overhaul for well over a decade. Because the course is home to some endangered species, however, environmentalists have been fighting the improvement plans for years, both in and out of court, their goal being to return the property to something resembling its natural state. “It’s inevitable that this project is going to be stopped,” an opponent proclaimed to the San Francisco Chronicle. “The only question is how soon it will happen.” In the most recent round of hostilities, opponents demanded a full environmental impact report on the restoration proposal, a request that the commission unanimously rejected. The course’s fate is now in the hands of the city/county recreation and park commission. If it rules in favor of the restoration, an appeal will be filed with the board of supervisors.

     In a deal that must sound like music to his ears, Darren Clarke has agreed to serve as a “global ambassador” for a famous rock-’n’-roller’s golf club in Shropshire, England. For the next three years, the winner of the Open Championship in 2011 will be promoting The Astbury, an increasingly popular golf venue created just four years ago by K. K. Downing, the lead guitarist for Judas Priest. Downing says that his arrangement with Clarke will be “crucial in helping The Astbury become the international destination it deserves to be.” The club, which opened as Astbury Hall, features a 6,500-yard course designed by Downing, who had an opportunity to play most of the world’s greatest golf courses during decades of touring. The track was the butt of many jokes when it opened, but today it usually gets the last laugh. Next, Downing plans to build “a Darren Clarke village” on his 300-acre property, along with “the biggest, best, and most futuristic spa in Britain.” In the future, he may also add a third nine.

     KemperSports has added a 13th property to its portfolio of private clubs. The Northbrook, Illinois-based firm has assumed management of Greeley Country Club, one of Colorado’s oldest golf properties. It expects to sharpen the club’s marketing programs and make the club more attractive to prospective members. “As the private club business has gotten more difficult to manage and our marketing needs have become more apparent,” Greeley’s president said in a press release, “the club’s board of directors decided it was in the best interest of the club to get a professional club management company to help us manage and market the club.” Greeley is KemperSports’ first golf property in Colorado. The club dates from 1920, when it unveiled a nine-hole, Tom Bendelow-designed golf course. In 1962, Press Maxwell redesigned Bendelow’s holes and added nine of his own.

     One of Wisconsin’s oldest golf clubs didn’t waste a lot of time finding its new owner. Mark Bergman, a PGA pro, purchased Old Hickory Golf Club, in Beaver Dam, earlier this month, reportedly for $1.1 million. The club opened in 1920, with a nine-hole, Tom Bendelow-designed course. In the late 1960s, Billy Sixty, Jr. integrated Bendelow’s holes into a new 18-hole track. Old Hickory officially went on the market in mid November 2013. It’s been struggling in recent years, as its membership has fallen from nearly 400 in 1991 to about 150 today. “Golf clubs are struggling everywhere,” Old Hickory’s president told the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen, “and we feel it’s best for us to transition at this point.” Berman bought Beaver Dam with his cousin, Tim Kumbier.

     The National Club Association has elected two women to its board of directors. Joining the association’s mostly male board are Christine Pooler, the general manager of Merion Golf Club in Pennsylvania, and Terra Waldron, the COO of Desert Highlands Association in Scottsdale, Arizona. Both women have lots of experience in the golf industry, and both previously served on the board of the association’s foundation. Curiously, though, a press release announcing the appointments fails to include any congratulations for Pooler and Waldron and not a single comment from an NCA officer about their professional expertise. Can anyone explain why not?

     Pace-of-play police are about to crack down on the geriatric golfers in Sun City, Arizona. You heard right: Teams of volunteer “golf rangers” have been enlisted to patrol the seniors-only community’s seven golf courses and issue citations to fellow retirees who might be having a “while we’re young” moment during their rounds. Which begs a question: Does such a program attract or repel golfers advancing toward old age?