The Week That Was, april 17, 2016

     It appears that Jack Nicklaus is about to take control of a valuable golf property on Long Island, and with it a design commission. The North Palm Beach, Florida-based “signature” architect and a residential developer are in the late stages of negotiations to lease Cold Spring Country Club, which features an 18-hole, Seth Raynor-designed golf course. The course dates from 1947, and Newsday says that Nicklaus is going to “completely redesign” it. No specific plans have been outlined, but Nicklaus told the newspaper that he plans to treat the course “like a raw piece of property,” suggesting that little or nothing of Raynor’s work will remain. Cold Spring is in Huntington, New York, on the grounds of the historic Oheka Castle, and it belongs to Gary Melius, a former VIP who’s now virtually broke and desperate to make this deal happen. Melius’ proposal has won the hearts of the club’s equity members, who’ll each reportedly get $150,000 if all goes as planned.

     China’s government appears to be softening its position on golf. Less than a year after Community Party members were unceremoniously banned from golf clubs (according to the prevailing rhetoric, a golf course was “a muddy field” where dishonest government officials and businessmen “trade money for power”), the official voice of the nation’s anti-corruption agency has, according to Time, “revoked the golf ban.” Here’s the declaration from Discipline Inspection & Supervision News: “Since it is only a sport, there is no right or wrong about playing golf.” The agency didn’t explain its change of heart, but the Olympics are looming and it might be difficult to justify sending players to Rio to engage in a form of corruption. But remember: Talk is cheap. It’s nice for China to decree that playing golf “is not a wrongdoing,” but it would be nicer if the nation lifted its ban on golf construction.

     Regarding ClubCorp’s recent purchase of Santa Rosa Golf & Country Club: A sales price still hasn’t been announced, but a club official told the Santa Rosa Press Democrat that “it will look like a $5 to $6 million transaction” on ClubCorp’s books. Some part of that amount, even perhaps all of it, represents club debt that the new owners have agreed to pay. Santa Rosa borrowed $12 million to build a new clubhouse in 2001. Since then, the club has reportedly “struggled with declining membership” and “felt itself in a precarious position,” and more than 90 percent of its members supported ClubCorp’s offer.

     Gifts of Gab: ClubCorp may be our nation’s largest owner and operator of private golf venues, but golf is by no means its raison d'être. “We don’t like to consider ourselves a golf company,” the company’s CEO, Eric Affeldt, told the Dallas Morning News. “We’re in the membership business, and we make money by creating an environment that would be [appealing] to people that aren’t just golfers.” Affeldt didn’t mention that one of ClubCorp’s corollary lines of business is “Building Relationships and Enriching Lives,” a phrase it’s trademarked.

     Okay, so Donald Trump has small hands. Is that why he has such a jones for 80-foot flagpoles? The Candidate has erected them, in defiance of local ordinances, at his golf properties in Palm Beach, Florida and Rancho Palos Verdes, California, each time complaining that the local elected officials who protested were insufficiently patriotic. “The day you need a permit to put up the American flag,” he once lamented, “that will be a sad day for this country.” Sadly, such an argument holds no water, unless you believe that it’s possible to measure a man’s patriotism by the size of his flagpole. Besides, Trump’s great big love for our nation doesn’t explain why he also put up an 80-footer at his resort in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.