The Week That Was, february 16, 2014

     The European wing of Donald Trump’s golf empire now extends beyond Scotland. An entity controlled by the New York City-based golf mogul has acquired the financially beleaguered Lodge at Doonbeg in County Clare, Ireland, a 400-acre oceanfront property that will henceforth be called Trump International Golf Links Ireland. In a comment published by the Belfast Telegraph, Trump called Doonbeg an “incredible golf resort” that he intends to transform into “an unparalleled resort destination with the highest standards of luxury.” Doonbeg, which was created by the people who developed Kiawah Island, features a 218-room hotel, a spa, restaurants, and a well-regarded Greg Norman-designed golf course. It had been handed over to receivers earlier this year. The sales price hasn’t been announced, but the receivers were reportedly asking for £12.4 million (almost $20.8 million).

     Just hours before he announced his purchase of the Lodge at Doonbeg, in Ireland, Donald Trump lost the legal challenge he’d made against the off-shore wind farm that’s planned to take shape within view of his golf resort in Scotland. With the wind farm’s construction now a veritable sure thing, Trump has terminated his remaining development efforts in Aberdeenshire -- no vacation houses, no five-star hotel, and especially no second golf course, the one that was named in honor of his late mother. “Wind farms are a disaster for Scotland, like Pan Am 103,” Trump groused to the Irish Times, regrettably conflating a legal decision that went against him to the loss of 270 human lives. Partly as a result of the legal proceedings, however, Trump can claim a small victory: Late last year, the wind farm’s developers were forced to delay the construction by two years. At the earliest, the turbines will begin operation in 2017.

     The drive to provide free golf for children appears to be gathering momentum. Just months after Tiger Woods recommended that golf properties offer complimentary rounds to kids under 16, Crown Golf Group has decided to give free memberships and lessons to juniors at St. Mellion International Resort in Cornwall, England. “This is our chance to create a golf club for the future,” said an official at St. Mellion’s, one of the top golf destinations in the United Kingdom. The program “sets a superb example to the rest of the British golf industry,” said the head of a local group, and establishes St. Mellion as “one of the southwest’s most progressive golf clubs.” Crown Golf intends to offer the memberships to 25 juniors for as long as six years.

     The owners of Hampshire Country Club, on New York’s Long Island, are threatening to raze their 18-hole golf course unless they’re given permission to build 121 condos. “The best way to stay in business as a golf club is to allow the condominium housing,” the project manager for the owners, a group controlled by Westport Capital Partners and New World Realty Advisors, told the Westchester Journal News. If the village of Mamaroneck nixes the condos, the owners say, they’ll cover the property’s Devereux Emmet-designed layout course with 106 single-family houses. The houses are allowed under the current zoning. The club, which has had financial difficulties for years, reportedly has 275 members.

     As he promised he would someday do, Richard Mandell is taking his Symposium on Affordable Golf out West. The fifth installment of the golf industry’s most thought-provoking annual get-together will be held at Dairy Creek Golf Course in San Luis Obispo, California. The dates: March 31 and April 1. “The goal,” Mandel has said, “is to generate healthy discussion on how to return the game of golf to a state of stability, prosperity, and affordable simplicity.” Among the topics and questions to be addressed at this year’s event: “The Folly of Replicating Tournament Conditions,” “Zero Waste Golf,” “What Does the Golfer Really Want?” and “If the Demand Isn’t There, Is Anything Affordable?” As in years past, the symposium is free, but registration would be helpful.

     Keith A. Ihms has been elected as the president of the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America. Ihms, a member of the GCSAA for the past 33 years, is currently the director of grounds maintenance at Country Club of Little Rock, in Arkansas. Previously, he was a superintendent at four clubs in Texas, including Bent Tree Country Club in Dallas, Pine Forest Country Club in Houston, and Golf Crest Country Club in Pearland.

     Call it irony, poetic justice, or simply a case of truth being stranger than fiction, but Donald Trump may soon be fighting against another proposed wind farm, this one near his recently acquired property in Ireland. A Clare-based group has submitted plans to build nine wind turbines, each more than 400 feet high, on a site a little more than a mile south of the village of Doonbeg. Trump hasn’t yet commented on the proposal. Local officials are expected to vote on it next month.