Desolation Row, may 23, 2014

     A pair of whiskey producers in Fort Worth, Texas wants to put one of the city’s oldest golf properties out of business. Leonard Firestone and Troy Robertson, the owners of Firestone & Robertson Distilling Company, have agreed to buy Glen Garden Country Club, a 102-year-old venue that once claimed Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson as members. If the sale is consummated, F&R will build a visitors’ center and begin distilling bourbon and its award-winning blended whiskey on the property. “In our business, having land is very important,” Firestone told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. The sellers, Clarence Dowdy and Malcolm Tallmon, had hoped to sell Glen Garden to a group willing to maintain its John Bredemus-designed golf course.

     It appears that Hurricane Katrina will soon claim another victim. Brechtel Park Golf Course, a municipal track in suburban New Orleans, Louisiana, was ravaged by the storms of 2005 and has been abandoned since 2011. The city says it’s “continuing to review options” regarding the 18-hole layout, but the New Orleans Advocate’s reporting indicates that it’ll eventually be “reborn as something different.” The city had hoped to find an operator who’d reopen Brechtel, but the local private sector wasn’t convinced that that nearly 50-year-old track would ever turn a profit.

     In the face of a money crunch, military officials in Anchorage, Alaska have downsized their 54-hole golf complex. The Eagleglen course at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson won’t open this year, and its future is up in the air. The news doesn’t come as a surprise, as it’s been rumored for months, but it’s particularly distressing to those who believe that Eagleglen’s Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed track is the state’s best. JBER’s golf operation has been losing players and money for the better part of a decade. Its courses attracted roughly 75,150 rounds in 2003, according to statistics provided by the base, but only 47,092 last year. The decline in play has cost the base $2.2 million over the past five years. To calm agitated local golfers, the base has promised to improve the Hill and Creek tracks at its Moose Run Golf Course.

     Just days after its lender initiated foreclosure proceedings, a bankrupt country club in Jackson, Mississippi officially kicked the bucket. Colonial Country Club, which had operated since 1946, was trapped between a rock and a hard place: too many competing courses and not enough golfers. “It used to be one of the busiest courses in the state,” one of the club’s employees told WAPT-TV. “I never thought it would come to this.” Before its demise, Colonial managed to sell a golf property it owned in Jackson, Deerfield Golf Club.

     Microsoft plans to build a billion-dollar data center on a part of a golf course in West Des Moines, Iowa. Nine of the 18 holes at Willow Creek Golf Course will be sold to pave the way for what’s known to local insiders as “Project Alluvion.” According to the Des Moines Register, the course’s owner is looking to buy land for nine new holes.

     You can kiss goodbye to Deerfield Country Club. After a 50-year run, the club and its 18-hole, executive-length golf course in Deerfield Beach, Florida will make way for a technology park. Gator Development Group sold the club last year, to a group that believes its business park will attract companies like Google and Amazon to Broward County.

     Was Felicita Golf Course undermined more by its owner’s ambitions or his line of business? The way Richard Angino sees it, both factors contributed to the demise of his 18-hole golf course in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Angino had aimed to bring a little of Augusta National to the state capital, and as a result his course charged more than the market could bear. “If Augusta costs $10 more than the other golf course,” he explained to a local television station, “the central Pennsylvania individuals would rather save that $10.” But Angino readily concedes that his work as a medical malpractice attorney brought more harm to Felicita, as local doctors and their network of friends refused to play there. “I think there are quite a few people who don't like Richard Angino,” he acknowledged. Angino hopes “to do something with the property,” according to WHTM-TV, but he hasn’t figured out what.

     The owners of a layout once described as Indianapolis, Indiana’s “best-kept golfing secret” have filed for bankruptcy protection. Curt Johnson and Gregory Hole, who operate as Hole In One, Inc., reportedly owe $2.5 million to various creditors. Their 18-hole, Ron Kern-designed golf course remains open, but the Indianapolis Star reports that its revenues have fallen by 20 percent since 2011, from $721,000 to $579,000.

     In Elizabethtown, North Carolina, a golf course whose greens had been cooking in the summer sun has met its end. Carolina Sands Golf Club, a 52-year-old venue owned by Don and April Britt, succumbed to the elements last month, after many of its customers departed for greener pastures. A foreclosure sale has taken place, according to the Fayette Observer, and a group of local residents has expressed an interest in the property. One of the course’s former owners described some of the course’s greens as “good,” others as “fair,” and a few as “really bad.”