The Week That Was, july 17, 2016

     Three years after it was foreclosed upon and sold, Ballyneal Golf Club is showing signs of life. The no-frills private club, now principally owned by Boulder, Colorado-based investor John C. Curlander, expects to open an elaborate putting course sometime this month, and it’s commissioned Tom Doak’s firm to create a 13-hole “short” course that’s scheduled to open a year from now. Doak is, of course, intimately familiar with the Ballyneal property, because he designed the club’s existing course, a 10-year-old, neo-classic track that checks in at #54 on Golf Digest’s list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses. In a press release, the Traverse City, Michigan-based architect extolled the “dramatic possibilities” available to him and suggested that his new layout would feature “three or four holes that rival certain ones on the original 18.” To be sure, Curlander is hoping the investments he’s making will help to put Ballyneal firmly in the black. Presumably due to its location, in remote northeastern Colorado, the club has had trouble attracting members, and Curlander, who’d provided the original owner with a $1.7 million loan, took possession of the property in 2013. And who was Ballyneal’s deadbeat original owner? Curlander’s brother-in-law, Rupert O’Neal.

     The primary golf market in Australia, according to the Australian Golf Industry Council, consists of 1.37 million people who played at least one round of golf during the past year and nearly 750,000 others who’d rather play miniature golf and are “at increasing risk of disengaging completely.” If you’re wondering why the AGIC even bothered to count people who admit to having “little interest in the traditional form of the game,” well, you aren’t alone. The AGIC doesn’t say. In fact, it doesn’t even say how many Australian men and women aged 18 and older it surveyed to create what it calls “the most in-depth analysis of the Australian golf industry since 2005,” although it does note that the respondents were overwhelmingly male (81 percent), metropolitan (76 percent), and over 40 (56 percent). Cynics might conclude that the AGIC is simply trying to puff up the golf industry’s numbers and spread hope among its members. If you’re one of them, it won’t surprise you to learn that the AGIC believes there are 3.87 million Australian who “have not played golf but would not reject playing in the future.”

     A South Korean private equity firm wants to buy Japan’s best-known golf operator. MBK Partners has reportedly offered ¥160 billion ($1.5 billion) for Tokyo-based Accordia Golf Company, which owns 43 Japanese golf properties and manages 93 others. If the sale price is accurate, MBK will be paying a hefty premium for Accordia, which Reuters says has a market value of just ¥91 billion ($860 million). The price seems especially high when one considers that Japan’s golf business is struggling these days, with courses closing at the rate of one per week.