The Week That Was, may 1, 2016

     Bob Husband is back to buying and operating golf clubs again. Husband’s new ownership group, Bellagio Road, has agreed to acquire Rancho Murieta Country Club, a venue in suburban Sacramento, California that dates from the early 1970s but has had financial difficulties in recent years. Although the transaction hasn’t yet closed, the sale has been approved by 95 percent of Rancho Murieta’s 1,040 members, and the club’s president believes it’ll provide “the cash infusion and capital improvements we so badly need.” Husband was most recently the president of Heritage Golf Group, whose portfolio has shrunk to nine properties in five states, and before that he was the president of another ownership entity, Cobblestone Golf Group. (Before that, he led a division of ClubCorp.) Husband hasn’t announced a game plan for Bellagio Road, but at this point it appears that he views it as a boutique firm. “I don’t want to run 20 or 25 courses. I want to run one or two,” he told RanchoMurieta.com. “I’m not saying I won’t buy two or three, but my goal is to buy one at a time and run it and see how it goes and maybe buy another. I just don’t know yet.” Rancho Murieta features two 18-hole golf courses, one originally designed by Bert Stamps (it was later redesigned by Arnold Palmer) and one by Ted Robinson. If Husband can complete the purchase, he intends to build a pool and a fitness center, a move that he believes will add nearly 500 new members to the club.

     Peter Nanula’s investment group is poised to acquire its 13th golf property. Concert Golf Partners has agreed to buy Crestview Country Club, a financially troubled venue in Wichita, Kansas that features a pair of 18-hole, Robert Trent Jones-designed golf courses. The club, which admits to being “faced with a number of unpleasant decisions” that need to be made, believes the sale will liberate its leadership from “a very difficult business.” A price hasn’t been announced, but if the transaction is completed Concert Golf will eliminate Crestview’s debt, initiate a series of capital improvements, and, according to the club’s board of directors, “run the club the way a country club should be run in today’s market.” Concert Golf currently owns a dozen golf properties in eight states, and it’s said to have its eyes on a club in Rockville, Maryland. Crestview was founded in 1921 and claims to be the state’s only 36-hole facility.

     If there’s smoke in Beijing, might there be fire in Myrtle Beach? It’s a question people are asking, because the Chinese parent of Founders Group International, the owner of 22 golf courses on the Grand Strand, is being investigated for possible fraudulent business practices involving as much as $1.5 billion. The Myrtle Beach Sun News, citing reports in Chinese publications and other sources, says that Yiqian Funding’s troubles with the law are related to “U.S. golf course purchases” and involve “a Ponzi Scheme, shell companies, and internet fraud.” Not surprisingly, the accusations are worrisome to elected officials in Myrtle Beach. “I need to find out more about what’s going on,” the city’s mayor told the Sun News. “It would be a black eye on what we’re looking at down the road and how people look at a Chinese investor and where all this money is coming from.” Representatives from both Yiqian and Founders Group have professed their innocence.

     Greg Martin has become the new president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. The Batavia, Illinois-based designer hasn’t announced any initiatives that he intends to pursue, but he believes that golf architecture is “an opportunity to establish an exceptional interaction between man and the natural environment while solving cultural, environmental, or engineering requirements.” Martin’s best-known course is probably Rich Harvest Links, an 18-hole track in Sugar Grove, Illinois that hosted the Solheim Cup in 2009 and will host the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s championships in 2017. Martin replaces Steve Smyers, who replaced Lee Schmidt.