The Week That Was, november 23, 2014

     China is still Asia’s (and most likely the world’s) number-one hot spot for golf development, according to a survey of architects commissioned by the Club Managers Association of Asia. The architects ranked Vietnam as the next-best land of opportunity, followed by Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. It’s worth noting, however, that many respondents have cooled on Asia, as they expressed worries about a range of issues including tougher water restrictions, the lack of growth among “native” golfers, China’s moratorium on construction, and an absence of financing. “Our research indicates that both present actions and the current wider sentiment held are signs of softening in the pace of new supply,” the report states. Spots six through 10 on the hot list are occupied by Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Mongolia, and the Philippines.

     A pair of U.S. investment groups has agreed to purchase a half-dozen golf properties owned by a financially beleaguered British hotelier. Boston-based Sankaty Advisors LLC (an affiliate of Bain Capital) and Los Angeles-based Canyon Capital Advisors LLC will acquire five resort-style hotels with golf courses in England (among them Mottram Hall Club & Spa outside Manchester and Slaley Hall in Northumberland) and one in Scotland (Cameron House in Loch Lomond). A price hasn’t been announced, but so-called experts suggest that the sellers, De Vere Hotels and De Vere Luxury Lodges, will get something like £160 million ($250 million). De Vere had accumulated more than $1 billion in debt before it was taken over by Lloyds Banking Group, which has insisted that De Vere’s assets be liquidated. Seeing as how the new owners are investors and not operators, they’re unlikely to be in the golf business for long. Until they depart, QHotels, which had operated the properties for De Vere, will manage the properties.

     The world’s most over-hyped chain of golf properties now has a presence in the Bahamas. The soon-to-open Jack Nicklaus “signature” course at Baha Mar, a casino-focused resort in Nassau, will become the 35th link in the PGA Tour’s network of Tournament Players Clubs. “The PGA Tour is thrilled to expand the TPC Network’s brand presence into the Caribbean for the first time,” the tour said in a press release. “TPC at Baha Mar truly epitomizes the standard of excellence and tournament-hosting capabilities for which TPC courses are recognized worldwide.” Baha Mar, which is controlled by Chinese investors, is the second property to join the TPC network in recent weeks. It’s surely just a coincidence, but the chain’s recently acquired property in Cartagena, Colombia features a Nicklaus Design course.

     To secure their futures, a trio of golf clubs in suburban Melbourne, Australia may merge into a giant “super club.” All three are well-known, well-regarded, long-established Sandbelt venues with 18-hole courses: Rossdale Golf Club, which calls itself “Melbourne’s friendliest golf club”; Patterson River Golf Club, self-described as “by far the best value-for-money golf club in the area”; and Woodlands Golf Club, whose golf course is ranked by Golf Digest in Australia’s top 20. A recent study has determined that half of the golf clubs in Australia are under “financial duress,” and Inside Golf has predicted that 20 percent of metropolitan Melbourne’s clubs will either close or merge during the next decade. “It’s no secret that the slice of the pie for private membership is decreasing and the market is getting more competitive,” the general manager of a Melbourne-area club told the magazine last year. The merger won’t happen unless it’s approved by the members of all three clubs, and the negotiations could take a year or more to conclude.

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

     As they looked down the barrel of a $389,000 bill that they can’t pay, the members of Asheville Golf & Country Club voted to sell their property to McConnell Golf. The margin was 222 to 96. Over the next three years, John McConnell’s golf ownership and management entity will sink $4 million into the oldest private club in North Carolina, with a top-of-the-list project being a conversion to USGA-spec greens. “The overall plan is to protect the integrity of the golf course as Donald Ross first designed it,” McConnell told the Asheville Citizen-Times. A price wasn’t announced, but the newspaper reports that McConnell Golf will assume up to $2.3 million worth of the club’s debt. Presumably, the company will cover the $389,000 balloon payment that the club is obligated to make in February 2015.

     What are those adages about chickens coming home to roost and letting sleeping dogs lie? I don’t remember them right now, but I’m sure they apply to the increasingly irrelevant Tiger Woods, who’s needlessly picked a public fight with Dan Jenkins of Golf Digest. Jenkins landed the first punch by writing a fabricated interview with the notoriously close-mouthed mega-star and serial adulterer, but his piece was flying largely under the radar until Woods published a far more publicized response and then dispatched his highly paid public-relations team to extract an apology from the magazine’s editors. Obviously, Jenkins touched some raw nerves, but it was Woods who, in the aftermath of Thanksgiving Day five years ago, reminded us of the often stark difference between image and reality. If Woods wants to know why people don’t like him anymore, maybe it’s because they’ve read and remembered what are allegedly his actual words.