The Week That Was, november 16, 2014

     It appears that John McConnell’s investment entity will soon add another golf property to its fast-growing portfolio. McConnell Golf, already the owner of eight private clubs in the Carolinas, has submitted the preferred bid on Country Club of Asheville, in part because it’s agreed to invest in overdue improvements at the 120-year-old venue in Asheville, North Carolina. “We were looking for someone willing to make a significant infusion of cash into the clubhouse and golf course to do renovations,” the club’s president told the Asheville Citizen-Times. The club features an 18-hole Donald Ross-designed golf course that originally opened, in 1928, as Beaver Lake Golf Course. According to the newspaper, the club’s members are expected to vote on the proposed purchase later this week.

     In what’s been described as “a mutual parting of the ways,” Phil Mickelson’s proposed acquisition of Fairbanks Ranch Country Club has been scrapped. Had the transaction closed successfully, the club, in Rancho Santa Fe, California, would have been the sixth golf property owned by Mickelson-controlled investment groups. And though he swung and missed with Fairbanks Ranch, Mickelson deserves some credit for having a surprisingly rare diversification strategy. While other current and former performers on the PGA Tour’s stage look to supplement their incomes with easy pickings like wine-making and “signature” architecture, Mickelson is actually demonstrating faith in golf operations. His confidence in our business makes one wonder why the rest of professional golf’s superstars haven’t availed themselves of similar opportunities. As for Fairbanks Ranch, the real estate broker who’s marketing the club told Golf Digest that he has another prospective buyer in the wings and that an agreement is “very close.”

     Yet again, some of golf’s major benefactors have been slapped with huge but ultimately meaningless fines in connection with a banking scandal. HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS, all of which have been in trouble with the law previously, are among five financial-industry conglomerates that have agreed to pay a combined $4.25 billion in fines because they conspired to rig the foreign currency markets. Golf no longer figures into UBS’s marketing program (it formerly sponsored the Players Championship and the Hong Kong Open), but HSBC and RBS are intimately connected to our business. HSBC writes the big checks for the Open Championship, and it underwrites professional events in -- follow the money -- China, Abu Dhabi, and Brazil, while RBS, a former patron of the Open Championship, works close to home, supporting activities organized by the Scottish Golf Union and the U.K.’s First Tee groups. For years, the people in golf who prowl for corporate cash have looked the other way when our most prominent partners are caught doing things they shouldn’t be doing, and because of this negligence, all of us in golf ought to be ashamed of ourselves. If our sport is truly supposed to be scrupulously honest, how can we justify doing business with these people?

     Better late than never, Augusta National Golf Club has offered a membership to the chief executive of IBM, a longtime sponsor of the Masters. Virginia “Ginni” Rometty, who took the helm at the tech giant in 2012, has joined as the club’s third female member, joining former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and Rainwater, Inc.’s Darla Moore. Since Rometty’s male predecessors at IBM had been invited to join Augusta National, her absence on the fabled grounds had become increasingly difficult to explain. Incidentally, the club didn’t accept Rometty for membership because of her golf game. She reportedly carries a handicap of 35.4.

     Two of New Zealand’s oldest, most prominent golf clubs are once again discussing a marriage, one that Golf Club Management says “will comfortably be the biggest golf club merger in history.” Fit to be tied are Grange Golf Club and Royal Auckland Golf Club, which are located on adjacent property in suburban Auckland, on the North Island. Between them, the clubs have hosted every major amateur and professional championship the nation has to offer, including the New Zealand Open on numerous occasions. The wedding was proposed by Grange, which has experienced a sharp decline in membership over the past decade and has desperately been searching for a partner. It tried to hook up with Royal Auckland last year and with another local club prior to that, but both times its advances were rebuffed. If the current negotiations lead to the altar, GCM says that the new, bigger, and better club will feature a 27-hole complex created by Jack Nicklaus’ design firm.

     Some information in the preceding post first appeared in the June 2014 and May 2013 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     For the eighth time, the American Society of Golf Course Architects has chosen to bestow its highest honor upon a journalist. Next year’s Donald Ross Award will go to Bradley S. Klein, who’s published seven books on golf course history and architecture and currently serves as Golfweek’s architecture editor. “His critiques keep architecture in the public eye and start conversations about how design contributes so much to the essence of the game,” the ASGCA said in a press release. “We appreciate his skill in describing what we do and all that golf courses bring to our communities.” The press release notes that Klein, a former college professor, is also a member of the International Caddie Hall of Fame.