Desolation Row, october 30, 2015

     York, Pennsylvania. After operating under a financial cloud for years, Regents’ Glen Country Club has gone dark. “The closing comes as no surprise,” writes the York Dispatch, because the 17-year-old club had stopped paying at least some of its employees and had narrowly avoided a forced sale of the property that was home to its clubhouse. Now people are wondering what will happen to the club’s Arthur Hills-designed golf course. The layout is, according to the Dispatch, “too good a track to simply sit dormant or, heaven forbid, become another housing development or shopping center.”

     Lima, Ohio. Hawthorne Hills Golf Course has reached the end of the line. Paul Scheiwiller, who purchased the 27-hole complex in 2012, told the Lima News that “we just can’t get the course as a business to function.” Scheiwiller is an experienced operator, for he owns or co-owns two other golf properties in Lima, Tamarac Golf Course and Springbrook Golf Club. He blames Hawthorne Hills’ financial problems on the Lima area having “too many golf courses” and “a dwindling number of golfers.” He eventually expects to sell the 52-year-old venue.

     Brownsville, Texas. It took almost a decade, but the 18-foot iron fence that runs along the Mexican border has finally squeezed the life out of Fort Brown Memorial Golf Course. The city opened the 18-hole course in the mid 1950s, in large part to give Mexican-American golfers a place to play, and the Brownsville Herald reports that the track used to ring up close to 40,000 rounds a year. Of course, that was before the Department of Homeland Security effectively cut off the course from the rest of the United States. “It’s been very difficult overcoming some of the negative perceptions that people have about life on the border,” Bob Lucio, the course’s longtime operator, told ESPN in 2011. Lucio and others who were stuck to the no-man’s land south of Brownsville tried to get the fence torn down, but their pleas fell upon deaf ears.

     Ann Arbor, Michigan. Lew Wahley has agreed to sell his struggling Ann Arbor Country Club to a local residential developer. Care to guess what that means? Ann Arbor, which features an 18-hole course, has operated since the late 1920s. Wahley and his West Virginia-based investment group bought it five years ago, in what the Ann Arbor News describes as “a lender-forced sale.” The prospective owner has reportedly enlisted Toll Brothers to build 80 houses on the 200-acre property.

     Fort Mill, South Carolina. Details are sketchy, but it appears that somebody wants to build 250 apartments and 60 townhouses on the 250 acres currently occupied by Regent Park Golf Club. Regent Park features an 18-hole, Ron Garl-designed golf course that opened in 1994. The club is owned by a group called Freshwater Industries, Inc., which appears to have clear sailing because the Fort Mill Times reports that the proposed housing is permitted by current zoning ordinances.

     Seward, Nebraska. The clock is ticking on Seward Country Club, which will cease to exist on New Year’s Eve. The 52-year-old club, which features a nine-hole golf course, “has been in financial trouble for a number of years,” according to the Seward County Independent. Its members have voted to give their 60-acre property to the city if the city is willing to assume their debts, which currently amount to roughly $350,000.

     Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The owners of Rehoboth Golf Park have seen the future, and it looks like a seniors-only community. To get the construction ball rolling, Truitt Homestead LLC has agreed to lease its 24-acre property, currently home to a nine-hole, par-3 course, to a development group and has also asked local officials for a rezoning. “The golf course is not profitable for the current tenant,” Roger Truitt told the Cape Gazette. “It’s time for us to prepare for the next 100 years.” The current tenant, Steven W. Smith, expects the course to remain in operation through the 2016 season and perhaps beyond and notes that this year the golf park had its best year since 2012.

     Augusta, Michigan. Any day now, the final rounds of golf will be played at Yarrow Golf & Conference Resort. Yarrow is scheduled to be sold in late November, to a group that intends to turn the 300-acre property into a mental health and substance abuse rehabilitation center. “I think they were struggling,” a spokesperson for Foundations Recovery Network, the prospective owner, told the Kalamazoo Gazette. “They just weren’t getting the traffic they used to in terms of golfing.” Yarrow’s 18-hole, Ray Hearn-designed golf course opened in 2001.

     Ahwahnee, California. Just weeks after they bought Sierra Meadows Country Club, Charlie Sheldon and Reid Spice have done what most everyone expected them to do: Close the 18-hole, 25-year-old venue. The partners aim to transform the 142-acre property into a conference center, perhaps with a vineyard.