The Week That Was, august 31, 2014

     It’s time for all of us who have a stake in amateur golf to wash our hands of professional golf.
     For decades, the world’s professional golf tours have asked much of amateur golf. They want us to buy tickets to their overpriced events, so they can tout their attendance figures. They want us to tune into their television broadcasts, so they can squeeze more money out of the networks at contract time. They want us to support their advertisers, so they can persuade corporations on the sidelines to get in on the action. And most of all, they want us to genuflect before their power, to certify their importance in the wide world of sports.
     Today, as amateur golf -- the largest part of the golf industry -- shows the big love to the upper crust, what do we get in return?
     In a word: Disdain.
     Professional golf doesn’t really give a damn about amateur golf. To be sure, the leaders of the tours may occasionally pay lip service to our needs, in particular the need to grow the game. They may even throw a little money our way every once in a while, although nowadays they prefer do it in foreign nations -- China and India, for instance -- that they view as markets ripe for commercial exploitation.
     In a recent story about the economic health of the golf industry, the Financial Times concluded that the professional golf tours are, ultimately, “more interested in amateurs watching the game on TV rather than playing it.”
     The Times even got an official from one of the golf tours to make a brutally honest appraisal of amateur golf’s importance in the grand scheme of things. “Is participation critical?” the official asked rhetorically, answering the question this way: “To manufacturers and golf courses, but not to us.”
     The statement is as pure a distillation of professional golf’s disregard for amateur golf as one could ever find. Those who believe that amateur and professional golf share the same goals and values are sadly mistaken. They feed off us. We get the scraps off their table.
     Through the hardest times of the Great Recession, the most powerful institutions in our industry carefully tended to the needs of professional golf, which today thrives as it never did before. As for amateur golf, it was allowed to wither.
     Golf’s participation rates aren’t falling in a vacuum. We’re all seeing and feeling numerous ripple effects and consequences: An exodus of club members, an endless parade of courses going out of business, the end of golf development, architects and construction companies suffering, a decline in sales of apparel and equipment, and other discouraging news.
     When a tour official acknowledges that participation -- the lifeblood of the golf industry -- doesn’t concern him, it should be evident that the two worlds of golf have begun to work at cross-purposes. The one hand no longer washes the other. And that means our business is a lot dirtier than it used to be.

     A group led by Phil Mickelson and Doug Manchester, the publisher of the San Diego Union-Tribune, is looking to buy Fairbanks Ranch Country Club in Rancho Santa Fe, California. The 30-year-old club, located on city-owned property, features a 27-hole, Ted Robinson-designed golf complex and serves as the centerpiece of a private community that’s reportedly home to “the most prominent business, professional, and social personalities” in the San Diego area. The club’s roughly 400 members had considered selling their property to ClubCorp but felt that Mickelson and Manchester would invest more into club improvements. In recent years Mickelson has become an active purchaser of golf properties, but Fairbanks Ranch would be his first purchase in California. He and Steve Loy, his business partner and agent, own five courses in Arizona, among them McDowell Mountain Golf Club in Scottsdale, Palm Valley Golf Club in Goodyear, and The Golf Club at Chaparral Pines in Payson. One last thing: Earlier this year, Fairbanks Ranch was reportedly having problems with coots, and not just the old ones in the clubhouse.

     An accident has claimed the life of Mark Amundson, who leaves a legacy that will enrich American golf for generations: Sutton Bay Club in Agar, South Dakota. The club’s Graham Marsh-designed track, a minimalist fantasy come to life, was recognized by Golf Digest as the nation’s best private course in 2004. “Many of us have dreams, and he’s one of the few who made his dream happen,” one of Amundson’s fellow investors at Sutton Bay told the Argus Leader. “Because of him, we have something that’s a national treasure, in my opinion.” Amundson died late last Sunday night, after the ATV he was driving rolled over. He was 55.

     KemperSports has assumed management of a golf club famous for its strict, rigorously enforced dress code. The Northbrook, Illinois-based firm now has an opportunity to effect policy at La Gorce Country Club, a member-owned venue in Miami Beach, Florida that dates to the late 1920s. La Gorce likes to brag about the famous athletes who used to be members -- Joe DiMaggio, Jack Dempsey, Babe Zaharias -- but it made an international spectacle of itself in late 2012, when it booted another sports star, Michael Jordan, off of its Jack Nicklaus-designed golf course. Jordan’s offense: He was wearing cargo pants. When he refused to change into slacks acceptable to the membership, he was reportedly told to get out and stay out. “We look forward to developing programs with the membership to enhance the experience for members and their guests as the club writes the next chapter in its remarkable history,” KemperSports said in a press release. Is there a chance of the next chapter including a few concessions to modernity?

Transactions, august 29, 2014

     Fresh off its blockbuster purchase of CNL Lifestyle Properties’ golf portfolio, Arcis Equity Partners has taken over one of Billy Walters’ golf properties. Arcis, an entity funded by New York City-based Fortress Investment Group, paid an undisclosed amount for the right to operate Desert Pines Golf Club, a 17-year-old layout owned by the city of Las Vegas, Nevada. The 18-hole, Perry Dye-designed track is Arcis’ third golf property in Sin City, joining Las Vegas Golf Club and Painted Desert Golf Club. If Walters’ name rings a bell, it’s probably because he’s being (or was being) investigated by the FBI and the SEC as a result of unusually profitable investments that he and Phil Mickelson made in 2012. Walters hasn’t said why he led Desert Pines go, but, being an expert gambler, he knows how to play the odds.

     Some deep-pocketed investors in Greenwich, Connecticut have given the green light to Heritage Golf Group’s next acquisition. Heritage has agreed to buy Dominion Club, a private venue in suburban Richmond, Virginia that spent parts of 2011 and 2012 operating under bankruptcy protection. The 22-year-old club, the centerpiece of a community of McMansions, features a Curtis Strange “signature” golf course. HHHunt Corporation, the residential developer that owns Dominion and the accompanying community, had originally planned to turn over the club to its members, but Heritage stepped up with a better offer. The acquisition is the first that Heritage has made since Tower Three Partners, an equity investment firm, became its majority owner. “We see multiple characteristics in our read of the industry that now is a good time to be a buyer,” a Heritage official told Richmond BizSense. “We think [Dominion Club] represents an outstanding addition to our portfolio.” Heritage’s portfolio currently consists of two golf properties in Florida, four in South Carolina, and one in Texas. The company expects to close on its purchase of Dominion Club this fall.

     Time is running out on Los Rios Country Club, a 40-year-old venue in Plano, Texas. City officials recently voted to buy the 194-acre property (price: $3.5 million), but not because they believe in the future of golf. Instead, the city aims to transform the Don January-designed track into a park. The city has given Los Rios a temporary stay of execution, however, as it’s leased the course to its current owner, Lyle Addicks of Golf Addicks LLC, for five years.

     After operating for months under the threat of foreclosure, the premier private golf club in Huntsville, Alabama appears to have found its white knight. Riding to the rescue is an LLC consisting of six members who’ve pledged to pay off Huntsville Country Club’s more than $2 million in debt and invest in improvements designed to replenish its membership rolls. “Huntsville Country Club is open, and we are now alive and well,” the club’s new majority shareholder told WHNT-TV. The club, which was founded in 1925, once had more than 500 members, but today it reportedly has just 170. Although dwindling revenues forced it to open its doors to the public earlier this year, it hopes to go private again in the future.

     The financial problems appear to have ended for the oldest golf property in Beloit, Wisconsin. Hendricks Commercial Properties has agreed to purchase and make overdue capital investments at Country Club of Beloit, a venue that can trace its history to 1900. Diane Hendricks, the new owner, hasn’t revealed the sales price, but she believes the club plays a vital role in stitching together the city’s social fabric. “This is a community that has a lot of headquarters and executives who live here,” she told the Beloit Daily News. “You have to take care of the management level and executives as well as everyone and everything else in the community.” Hendricks plans to break ground on a new clubhouse this fall and to eventually turn the club into “a showplace.”

     The future of Calverton Links, a 126-acre spread on New York’s Long Island, is in jeopardy. In May, an investment group led by Parviz Farahzad, a local developer, paid $3.5 million for the property and its 18-hole, Kelly Blake Moran-designed golf course. The 20-year-old track had been owned by Bill Schulman, who closed it in the fall of 2013 and didn’t promise that it would reopen. Farahzad hasn’t announced his intentions, but the handwriting is on the wall.

     The city of Bay Minette, Alabama has decided to get into the golf business. In late February, the city purchased the assets of Holly Hills Country Club, in particular its nearly 50-year-old, nine-hole golf course. “It is a real gem in the rough,” the city’s mayor, a longtime club member, told a local newspaper. “I think we can make it a viable golf and social focal point -- something everyone can be proud of.” The mayor believes the financially struggling course will be close to self-sustaining by the end of the year.

     Before another month passes and the transaction slips completely off the radar, let’s note that Prince George Golf Course, an 18-hole track in suburban Petersburg, Virginia, was sold out of foreclosure during the final days of 2013. The property’s new owner, George Emerson, also owns Highland Country Club in suburban Richmond. A price for Prince George wasn’t announced, but the club’s general manager told the Petersburg Progress-Index that Emerson picked it up “for a very fair market value.” The property had reportedly been assessed at $1.14 million. Before it was claimed by its lender, Prince George had been owned by an LLC led by Ronnie Kelley.

The Week That Was, august 24, 2014

     An influential British newspaper has taken the pulse of the golf industry, and -- no surprise here -- it believes that the patient is in extremely poor health. The sport is looking “increasingly old-fashioned and out of touch,” writes the Financial Times, “stuck in a rut,” and “struggling to adapt to the modern world.” The Times breaks no new ground when it explains the causes of golf’s miseries, but at least it understands the central dilemma at the heart of our business. Golf is “crying out for innovation,” it concludes, but “innovation is regarded with suspicion in golf’s establishment.” In other words, we have met the enemy, and it is us.

     Donald Trump isn’t the only U.S. investor with a jones for high-profile Scottish golf resorts. Beverly Hills, California-based Kennedy Wilson has reportedly paid £32.4 million ($53.5 million) for Fairmont St. Andrews, a 13-year-old, financially ailing spread in St. Andrews. The 520-acre property, in recent years the host of the Scottish Senior Open, features a pair of 18-hole golf courses, one designed by Sam Torrance (with Gary Stephenson), the other by Bruce Devlin. For its money, Kennedy Wilson also gets a hotel, a spa, and the opportunity to build close to 80 vacation houses. Fairmont St. Andrews was developed by Donald Panoz, the inventor of the nicotine patch and the majority owner of the Château Élan golf resort in Braselton, Georgia. In 2006, he sold Fairmont St. Andrews to an investment group controlled by Apollo Real Estate Advisors, which presumably viewed the sale to Kennedy Wilson as a way to cut its losses. Kennedy Wilson may be in the market for bargain-priced British golf venues, as it acquired Portmarnock Hotel & Golf Links in suburban Dublin, Ireland, just a few weeks ago.

     Arnold Palmer’s design firm, which has precious little on its plate these days, has engaged a marketing consultant in India. The consultant is Liam Timms, a graduate of the University of Colorado’s PGA Golf Management program, and his mission will be to find work for Palmer not only in the world’s largest republic but also in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. “We want to be a part of golf’s growth in India and its neighbors,” said Thad Layton, Palmer’s senior architect. “Through our new office in India and our collaboration with Liam Timms, we will help the region grow golf in an intelligent and sustainable way.” Palmer opened its one and only course in India, at DLF Golf & Country Club in suburban Delhi, in 1999. The venue was once ranked as the nation’s top track but was recently reduced from 18 to nine holes. Like other “signature” architects, he’s discovered that India is an extremely tough nut to crack.

     Just weeks after he fired nearly 500 PGA pros who worked in his stores, the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods isn’t worried about any potential economic repercussions. “We don’t think it’s going to have any impact on the business,” Ed Stack said in a comment published by the Pittsburgh Business Times. Stack is upbeat because he’s set extremely low expectations for Dick’s golf division, which once accounted for 20 percent of the company’s sales but will see that amount fall by half in years to come. “I think golf, from a participation standpoint and how it translates to retail, is in a structural decline,” Stack explained. “And we don’t see that changing.” At least in the near future, Stack’s forecast is going to be right on the money. When an industry loses nearly 20 percent of its customers in a decade, it’s easy to read the handwriting on the wall.

     A wealthy, Chicago-based options trader has become the new owner of Lough Erne, the glittery golf resort in County Fermanagh, Ireland. Tony Saliba reportedly paid $10 million for the 345-acre property, which has been in the hands of receivers since 2011. As luck would have it, Lough Erne’s financial woes didn’t prevent it from hosting last year’s G-8 Summit, the annual economic meeting of the world’s most powerful nations. Saliba, who was once described as “completely obsessed with and addicted to trading,” is said to be “an avid golf fan.” He can now play as much as he likes on Lough Erne’s 36-hole golf complex, which is accented by vacation houses, a 120-room hotel, a spa, and a golf academy. As a bonus, Saliba also receives a high-profile golf event, as the resort’s Nick Faldo-designed championship track will host the Irish Open in 2017.

     Tony Jacklin has signed on as the president of the Campaign for Real Golf, a recently established group that aims “to restore the game of golf to its roots,” by which it means a sport that’s “recreational, enjoyable, affordable, and less time-consuming.” Jacklin, a legend in international golf, has long advocated on behalf of sensible course lengths and against balls that fly too far for a golfer’s own good. “What the Campaign for Real Golf stands for,” he said in a press release, “is all the key fundamental elements of the game which at times are being neglected and in some cases eradicated.” The group was created by five British golfers, all of whom are (or were) affiliated in some way with the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews. The founders haven’t outlined an agenda, per se, but their collective heart seems to be in the right place.

     Arnold Palmer, who turns 85 next month, has received a pacemaker, reportedly to correct an abnormal heartbeat. “It should be a quick recovery,” one of the King’s spokesmen told Golfweek. “He likely will be limited to swinging the club for a little while, but he hasn’t been doing a lot of that of late anyhow.”

The Week That Was, august 17, 2014

     The consolidation of the U.S. golf industry continues, as ClubCorp has agreed to buy Sequoia Golf, a mid-level course owner and operator owned in part by Parthenon Capital Partners. The price: $265 million. “Sequoia Golf aligns perfectly with our business model,” Eric Affeldt of ClubCorp said in a prepared statement. “It is a strong membership business that, like ours, generates nearly 50 percent of its revenue from membership dues.” The transaction is expected to close during the fourth quarter of ClubCorp’s fiscal year, and Joe Guerra, Sequoia’s founder, will serve as a senior adviser to ClubCorp, at least temporarily. Sequoia owns 30 private clubs, leases three, and manages 17. During the 12 months that ended on June 30, it posted a loss of $531,000. With Sequoia’s properties, ClubCorp will have 157 golf and country clubs in its portfolio, along with more than 370,000 members. According to its promotional materials, ClubCorp’s central purpose is “Building Relationships and Enriching Lives.”

     England thinks it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves as a major golf destination, so it’s created an entity to polish its image and coordinate its marketing efforts. “The quality, history, and variety of the truly magnificent golf courses available in England have remained a well-kept secret internationally for far too long,” said Andrew Cooke, the founder of Golf Tourism England, “and this needs to be addressed.” To be sure, England’s golf industry also has economic issues that need to be addressed, as it suffers from the same imbalance in supply and demand that we see in the United States. That being said, England can make a persuasive case to itinerant golfers, as it’s home to 11 of the Golf Digest World Top 100. Among its immediate competition -- Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland -- only Scotland, with 14 courses on the list, has more. The United States, with 40 courses, is the competition’s hands-down winner.

     When we last heard from the owners of Hampshire Country Club, on Long Island, they were holding a knife to the throat of their Devereux Emmet-designed golf course, threatening to end its existence unless they were allowed to build condos on part of it. Now the owners, a group controlled by Westport Capital Partners and New World Realty Advisors, have filed a $55 million lawsuit against the village of Mamaroneck, alleging that their rights have been violated because local officials won’t consider a change to their property’s zoning. “The Village Board has allowed itself to be improperly influenced by a small group of club neighbors who have threatened a protracted and expensive lawsuit if the Board even considered our plans,” one of the owners complained to the Journal News. If they can’t settle their dispute amicably, the parties’ lawyers will duel it out in court in October.

     The new owners of a distressed lakefront community outside Knoxville, Tennessee have hired Troon Golf to manage their Greg Norman-designed golf course. The PNL Companies, a Dallas, Texas-based group that invests in troubled real estate, wants Troon to polish the image of Tennessee National Golf Club, which will be easier to do once PNL builds the community’s long-promised marina and wellness center. Tennessee National, which occupies 1,450 acres along Watts Bar Lake, was initiated by John “Thunder” Thornton, a Chattanooga-based developer, and Medallist Development, a firm created by Norman and Macquarie Bank. A press release announcing Troon’s contract claims that Tennessee National’s Greg Norman-designed golf course -- which features 13 water features, “numerous stacked sod bunkers,” and McMansions along its “perfectly manicured fairways”-- is “reminiscent of Scottish golf course architecture.”

     As much as management companies would have you believe that they can cure all that ills municipal golf, relationships between the public and private sectors sometimes end in unpleasant divorces. The most recent example: The city of Hartford, Connecticut has sued the company that’s managed its golf courses since 2009. In a nutshell, the city alleges that MDM Golf Enterprises neglected the Keney Park and Goodwin Park courses and failed to live up to the terms of its contract. The Hartford Courant reports that the telephone number listed on MDM’s website has been disconnected.

     Billionaire.com, which fancies itself as “the indispensable lifestyle resource for high and ultra-high net-worth individuals who think and act globally,” has identified the 10 most exclusive golf courses in the world. Four U.S. properties made the grade, including the top three: Cypress Point Golf Club (“the world’s most desirable club”), National Golf Links of America (“notoriously full of blue bloods and Wall Street tycoons”), and Augusta National Golf Club (“the course that everyone knows but few have played”). The rest of the list includes another U.S. course (Los Angeles Country Club), two from Scotland, and one each from England, France, Australia, and Japan. The website, which is based in Singapore, took nominations from a group that included Tenniel Chu, the vice chairman of Mission Hills Group.

Vital Signs, august 15, 2014

     Perhaps not surprisingly, the National Golf Foundation counts more U.S. golfers than Pellucid Corporation does. The United States currently has 24.7 million golfers, according to the NGF’s Golf Participation Report for 2013, down from 25.3 million in 2012. The NGF considers the loss of 600,000 players as being “within the range of sampling error,” so for public consumption it rounds up the number to 25 million. Overall, the group says, our nation’s participation rate is 8.5 percent. Pellucid believes that the United States now has fewer than 23 million golfers, a number last seen a quarter-century ago.

     The golf market in metropolitan Melbourne, Australia is over-saturated, and the editor of Inside Golf expects the herd to be thinned out dramatically over the next decade. Richard Fellner thinks that 20 percent of the city’s private clubs, mainly those in the southern and southeastern suburbs, will either close or merge with other clubs. “Golfers in general don’t want the private membership model anymore,” he told the Brisbane Times. The area’s “second-tier” private clubs are being squeezed the hardest by declines in play and participation, and Fellner believes that many of them are already on the endangered list. Australia currently has 1.2 million golfers, according to a recent study, 1.6 percent fewer than it had last year.

     All over the world, more people are traveling than ever before. “No matter what area on earth,” says Hotel Interactive, “tourism between countries is on the rise. And it’s climbing so much, it looks to be at record levels.” Most importantly, the boom in international travel isn’t expected to let up for decades. Citing data from the United Nations’ World Tourism Organization, the website predicts that global tourism will increase at an annual rate of at least 3.8 percent through 2030. “The tourism sector has shown a remarkable capacity to adjust to the changing market conditions,” a spokesman for the UNWTO said. “Indeed, tourism has been among the few sectors generating positive news for many economies.” Hotel Interactive doesn’t single out golf’s slice of the travel market, but it appears that the world’s “destination” venues will have plenty of opportunities to cash in.

     Amid all the black holes in the golf industry’s financial picture, there are a few bright spots. Here’s one: The number of female golfers in the United States grew by 260,000 last year. And here’s why that’s important: Although women make up only about one-quarter of the nation’s total golf population, the National Golf Foundation says that they out-spend men, on a per-capita basis, on purchases of equipment, apparel, and training aids. “Power, income, education -- everything is rising among the female demographic,” a spokesman for the PGA of American told the Findlay Courier. Now you know why savvy course operators are doing whatever they can to lure women, and why Billy Casper Golf bought a golf-networking group for women.

     Canadians may not be playing as much golf as they used to, but they’ve built a surprisingly large number of courses. Citing figures provided by Statistics Canada, Maclean’s reports that the nation has 2,400 courses that cater to an estimated 1.5 million golfers. Conveniently, the magazine notes that this is one golf course for every 625 golfers, a ratio that it says is “among the highest number per capita in the world.”

     Wang Jun’s Forward Management Group, which publishes trustworthy information about the Chinese golf industry, has updated its count of the nation’s courses. Through the end of 2013, the number stood at 639. According to Reuters, the number of courses in the People’s Republic has tripled since 2004, which just happens to be the year in which the nation’s ban on golf construction went into effect.

The Week That Was, august 10, 2014

     Just months after a pair of so-called illegal golf courses in Beijing were unceremoniously razed, China Daily reports that the city intends to “intensify its crackdown on illegal golf course construction.” No details have been provided. The campaign against golf is part of a larger initiative that aims to limit the construction of hotels, office buildings, exhibition centers, and other structures that consume excessive amounts of water and energy. According to the newspaper, metropolitan Beijing has more than 200 illegal golf properties.

     Though he continues to tilt at Scottish windmills, Donald Trump has revived at least part of the master plan for his golf resort in Aberdeenshire. A little more than a year ago, Trump vowed that he wouldn’t invest another penny in his highly regarded golf course as long as a proposed wind farm in Aberdeen Bay remained a viable possibility. Nothing has changed on the government’s end, but last week Trump nonetheless filed a proposal to add an essential amenity: the resort’s long-awaited clubhouse. “I felt it was only fair to this great course that I build a beautiful new clubhouse,” he told the Aberdeen Press & Journal. “It would be disrespectful not to have done so.” Disrespect aside, Trump is angling to bring the Scottish Open to Trump International Golf Links Scotland, and he knows that he doesn’t have a chance to succeed without a first-class building.

     At Big Cedar Lodge in Missouri, the senior celebrity architects just keep on coming. The latest to arrive is Gary Player, who’s agreed to design a 12-hole golf course especially for juniors and beginners. The layout will use “creative, unique, and untraditional concepts to help all members of the family enjoy the game,” says a press release. Big Cedar, which this year hosted an event on the Champion’s Tour, already features a Jack Nicklaus-designed par-3 track, an Arnold Palmer-designed practice center, and a Tom Watson-designed putting course. Player believes that his course, which is scheduled to open next year, will be “something truly spectacular and innovative.”

     Jack Nicklaus’ design firm will produce the first golf course in Vietnam’s Thanh Hóa Province. FLC Samson Golf Links will be the centerpiece of a 230-acre resort community in Sầm Sơn that will feature villas and bungalows and a high-end hotel. Its developer, FLC Group JSC, expects it to be “one of the most beautiful golf courses in not only Vietnam but also in the region and the world.” Sầm Sơn, which is roughly 90 miles south of Hanoi, has been a vacation getaway since 1906, when French colonists began flocking there. It’s located directly west of China’s Hainan Island. The Nicklaus Design layout is scheduled to open sometime next year.

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

     Escalante Golf has purchased its 18th golf property, this one a 36-hole complex in Sanford, North Carolina. Carolina Trace Country Club, which had been owned by its members, features a pair of Robert Trent Jones-designed golf courses that date from the 1970s. “The golf courses are terrific,” a spokesman for Escalante told the Sanford Herald. “The clubhouse is great. The community is world class.” Carolina Trace anchors a community with 1,600 houses, but it only a quarter of the property owners are club members. According to the newspaper, Escalante hopes the club can “reconnect” with the local community. Carolina Trace is Escalante’s first acquisition in North Carolina. The company now owns golf properties in eight states.

     A homeowners’ group in Dublin, California has hired KemperSports to manage its 18-hole, Robert Trent Jones, Jr.-designed golf course. The par-63, 5,079-yard layout is the centerpiece of Dublin Ranch, a community that’s been around since 2004. It appears that KemperSports’ marketers will target time-pressed golfers, for a press release notes that the track’s “intimate and walkable routing lends itself to rounds under four hours.” As it does at its other facilities, including well over a dozen in California, KemperSports promises to provide “the best experience possible for guests.”

The Pipeline, august 8, 2014

     It appears that Rolling Hills Country Club, on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Southern California, is finally ready to break ground on its new golf course. For years, Rolling Hill had been planning to give up its Ted Robinson-designed track and build an Arnold Palmer “signature” layout on what remains of an adjacent sand-and-gravel quarry. Now the nearly 50-year-old club is working with David McLay Kidd, who intends to create what he calls “a firm, fast golf course that’s incredibly natural.” In publicity materials, Kidd admitted that building the new track “will require some fairly major engineering” but said that, when he’s done, “you’ll think it’s natural.” The club hopes to break ground on the new course early next year. Eventually, more than 100 single-family houses will be tucked inside it.

     A developer in Edmonton, Alberta is trying to secure approvals for an “ecological village” that will feature a 12-hole golf course designed by Rod Whitman. Todd Oeming wants to build his Wild Splendor Resort & Wildlife Sanctuary on an 867-acre tract where his family once operated a zoo. In addition to the golf course, Oeming believes the property can accommodate 510 cabins, condos, and apartments, a hotel, a competition-quality equestrian center, an outdoor theater, an RV park, and a spa. Whitman, an Alberta-based architect, has designed or co-designed a trio of highly ranked Canadian tracks: Blackhawk Golf Club in Edmonton, Sagebrush Golf Club outside Merritt, British Columbia, and Cabot Links in Inverness, Nova Scotia.

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

     Mike Keiser, who made a name for himself by creating a sublime golf resort in Bandon, Oregon, is considering an attractive opportunity in Mexico. In an interview with Global Golf Post, the Chicago, Illinois-based developer acknowledged that he may develop a third golf course at Diamante Cabo San Lucas, a 1,500-acre resort community on Baja California Sur. “I’d call that a one-in-50 chance,” he said, “but it is out there.” Diamante has an acclaimed Davis Love III-designed golf course, and this year it’s expected to debut the world’s first Tiger Woods-designed layout. With a Keiser-produced track, it would immediately become Mexico’s premier golf destination.

     A big Japanese home builder has hired Greg Norman to direct a pair of projects at its first master-planned community in Australia. Norman will be the architect of record for forthcoming courses at the Hermitage, a golf community that Sekisui House is developing in a southwestern suburb of Sydney, New South Wales. The West Palm Beach, Florida-based architect has agreed to create a new nine-hole course for the 760-acre spread, and he’ll give the existing 18-hole track at the adjacent Camden Lakeside Golf Course a fresh look and feel, so it better reflects Sekisui House’s motto: “Love of Humanity.” In a press statement, Norman promised that the courses would offer “a wonderfully unique golfing experience in a growth corridor of NSW.”

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

     The Dutch owners of Thailand’s ritziest resort are laying plans to build a second golf course. The addition will complement the existing 18-hole layout at the Banyan Resort, an upscale getaway outside Hua Hin. The golf club is the centerpiece of the Banyan Resort, which likes to brag that its existing course, a Pirapon Namatra design that opened in 2008, is “one of the best layouts in the country.” Namatra, a Thai architect who’s also known as Khun Ope, has also been commissioned to design the second course. He cites C. B. MacDonald, Harry Colt, George Thomas, and Bill Coore as inspirations and says his aim is to create courses that are “full of character and fun,” with “diversity” and “even quirkiness.”

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

     Young Tom Morris, Old Tom Morris, Willie Fernie, James Braid, and Henry Cotton -- that’s been the architectural progression thus far at Stirling Golf Club. The next in line: Howard and William Swan, who’ve been appointed to refresh the ancient track in Stirling, Scotland. Golf has been played at Stirling since 1869, and maybe for a century or more before that. The Swans, a father-and-son team, intend to retain the course’s historic features but add the up-to-date character that today’s golfers expect. The club’s general manager expects them to “point us in the best direction” for “long-term sustainability.”

     Sometime this fall, a nine-hole, executive-length layout is expected to debut at Woodland Hills Golf Course, in Des Moines, Iowa. Its target market: Baby Boomers, a generation that’s so far golfed in disappointing numbers. Nonetheless, an official of Hubbell Realty, the course’s owner, told the Des Moines Register, “I see demand growing in the next five years, as this current generation starts to retire and plays more golf.” Of course, Hubbell is covering its bases by selling 130 single-family houses around the new nine.

The Week That Was, august 3, 2014

     Beijing, one of the most parched cities on the planet, is making an overdue effort to conserve water, and the Asia Pacific Golf Group has gotten all bent out of shape as a result. In particular, the APGG is complaining about a tax that’s been imposed on water use in the capital city, one that it claims will raise the price of water for a typical golf course to $10 million a year. On its website, the APGG calls the tax “a massive blow to the golf industry in the Middle Kingdom” and speculates that it might be “the final fatal blow to knock out the golf industry.” Clearly, the folks at the APGG need to be sedated. For one thing, the tax only affects courses in and around Beijing, not the entire nation. For another, metropolitan Bejing already has something like 200 courses, which ought to be more than enough to satisfy demand over the near term. Besides, as the APGG itself noted just weeks ago, the real threat to the future of golf in China is reckless over-development by greedy home builders.

     Pulte Homes has come up with novel tactic to win friends and influence golf people in Arizona. The big home builder wants to build a slew of houses on the former Ahwatukee Lakes Golf Club, outside Phoenix, but it’s met with resistance from home owners in the accompanying community. To sway voters, Pulte has proposed to foot the bill for $1 million worth of improvements to the nearby Ahwatukee Country Club, to make it an attractive alternative for those who used to play at the Lakes. The trouble is, the country club is owned by the same fellow closed the Lakes, and the community’s golfers may not be inclined to give him any more of their money.

     A Singapore-based developer wants to build a high-end resort on an island so far off the beaten path that it’s been called “the Lost World.” Zochwell Group intends to transform Salon Island, off the southern tip of Myanmar, into a destination for wealthy Asians who’ve already vacationed in more accessible places. Salon Island is a true rarity -- a place largely untouched by human hands -- but Zochwell believes it’s ripe to become “the next Phuket,” a reference to the famously over-developed vacation spot in Thailand. According to the Prince George Citizen, Zochwell has agreed to lease the 697-acre outcropping from Myanmar’s government and create Luxdream Island, which will feature a casino, hotels, vacation villas, a marina, a beach club, and an 18-hole, Nicklaus Design golf course. It appears that Luxdream Island is good to go except for one major hang-up: Zochwell hasn’t yet secured financing. It says it’s looking for “like-minded individuals or organizations” that share “the vision to create Asia’s next big thing with us.”

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

     An investment group appears to have submitted a purchase offer on Sotogrande, the ultra-luxurious golf community on Spain’s Costa del Sol. The group hasn’t been identified, but it’s believed to be Cerberus Capital Management, a New York City-based entity. The news reports don’t specify exactly what’s being sold, but Sotogrande, which occupies 6,200 acres, features five golf courses, including Valderrama Golf Club, as well as some of the priciest real estate in Europe, a marina, and several polo fields. Bloomberg says that the entire portfolio of Sotogrande SA is in play, which, if true, means that the buyer would acquire not just golf properties in Spain but also the Donnafugata Golf Resort in Italy.

     KemperSports has taken a second bite out of Portland, Oregon’s golf operation. The Northbrook, Illinois-based company, the manager of the city’s 36-hole Heron Lakes complex, has been hired to manage the forthcoming Colwood Golf Course. Colwood, a nine-hole, par-3 track that’s being tailored especially for children and beginners, is scheduled to open in the spring of next year. It’s taking shape on what remains of the late Colwood National Golf Course, an 18-hole, Vernon Macan design that opened in 1929. Portland owns three other golf properties, all of them 18-hole tracks that are desperate to attract younger players. If Kemper can find and deliver them, the rest of the city’s portfolio may be ripe for the picking.

     Like their counterparts in other nations, the people who oversee amateur golf in England have set out to generate traffic for the nation’s clubs. Without question, the game is feeling a financial pinch: Weekly participation has fallen by 12 percent since 2005, according to a report in Golf Club Management, and memberships in the nation’s more than 1,900 clubs have declined from 882,640 in 2004 to 675,000 in 2014. England Golf has outlined its latest revive-the-game ideas in “Raising Our Game: The Strategic Plan for England Golf 2014-2017,” but they sound pretty much like things that have been tried before: Engaging women, taking golf to schools, offering more flexible membership options. “We all need to work together to raise our game and make the most of the opportunities which exist for golf,” says the group’s CEO. By doing so, the group believes, weekly participation can jump from 750,000 to 910,000.

     Several weeks ago, Apple Ridge Country Club, in New Jersey, hired new management. And now we know why: The club has been sold to an undisclosed buyer.

Desolation Row, august 1, 2014

     The town of Marfa, Texas, the hippest place in the state (you heard right, Austin), may lose its golf course. The nine-hole layout, built by the city on land owned by Presidio County, has been scraping by since the early 1960s. But today it needs serious capital improvements, and nobody wants to pay for them. “That thing is never going to produce income to us,” a county commissioner griped to Big Bend Now. However, another commissioner warned, “I guarantee that if we lose the golf course, there’s going to be a lot of uproar.” While the elected officials try to figure what to do, most everyone in town is getting high and watching the Marfa lights.

     The future of Bonnie Dundee Golf Course, a financially challenged venue in Carpentersville, Illinois, is up in the air. The Dundee Township Park District is considering various alternative uses for the 18-hole layout, including soccer fields and picnic areas. But here’s the alternative use that stands out: The 90-year-old course might become a full-time footgolf facility. Is this what Sports Illustrated would call a sign of the apocalypse?

     Rio Salado Golf Course, a nine-hole municipal track in Tempe, Arizona, is pushing up daisies. The 63-acre course, which had operated for more than 20 years, will become an urban farm with a community garden and a plant nursery.

     Just months after agreeing to buy an ailing golf club in Fairborn, Ohio, Zachary Fink has changed his mind. “This is a tough market,” he confessed to the Dayton Daily News. Fink settled on a price for Greene Country Club in March and began operating the property as Gem City Golf Club. But the transaction never closed, and Fink is getting out while the getting is good. “I feel bad for the employees and the membership,” he said, “but the revenue was not coming in.” The club has closed, and its fate is to be determined.

     Elected officials in Bryan, Texas are thinking about turning the city’s 95-year-old golf course into a sports-focused recreation area. The 18-hole, affordably priced track is vulnerable because it loses money -- more than $300,000 this year, it’s feared -- and needs as much as $5 million worth of long-deferred capital improvements. The city’s mayor views investments in the golf course as throwing good money after bad. He thinks there’s more money to be made in building a new “super park” with baseball and soccer fields, a skate park, and hiking trails, and he’s hired a consultant to prove it.

     Woodmont Country Club, outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida, may soon lose nine of its 36 holes. Mark Schmidt, the club’s owner, has seen membership levels fall from four digits to the low threes and claims that the cost of maintenance and insurance makes it nearly impossible for a single-course operator to make a living in the golf business nowadays. He told Bloomberg that buying the club “wasn’t the most intelligent business decision” he ever made, but he has a chance to make amends by putting more than 150 single-family houses, a new clubhouse, a pool, tennis courts, and maybe a hotel on the vacated nine.

     In Riverside, California, Paradise Knolls may soon become Paradise Lost. A developer has contracted to buy the nearly 50-year-old golf course, in the hope of converting its 112 acres into a subdivision with a business park, a shopping area, and horse trails. “It will be a little sanctuary for residents,” the developer told the Riverside Press Enterprise. “A real community benefit.” If local elected officials approve the proposal, those who felt that the golf course was already a sanctuary and a community benefit will have to find their pleasures elsewhere.

     First, the transaction: In April, officials in Jackson Township, Pennsylvania paid $850,000 for Little Creek Golf Course, an 18-hole, executive-length track. And now, the reason for the purchase: The township believes the property, in the town of Spring Grove, is an ideal site for ball fields and hiking trails.

     A bank in Colorado wants $1.9 million for Pagosa Springs Golf Course, and if someone doesn’t put the money on the table quickly, it may shut the place down. The 27-hole complex, part of a large resort community, has had financial problems in the past but reportedly turned a $178,000 profit in 2013. A representative of Northstar Bank of Colorado has asked the town of Pagosa Springs if it might be willing to buy the venue, but the city’s interest in the property is said to be “tepid.”

     For the time being, at least, a municipal golf course in Rochester, Minnesota has gotten off Desolation Row. Soldiers Field Golf Course could have lost nine holes or been closed altogether, but its overseers had a change of heart in response to public pressure. “The overwhelming response from the golfing community certainly swayed me,” the park board’s president told the Rochester Post-Bulletin. The board expects to review the course’s financial viability again in a decade or so.