The Week That Was, june 4, 2017

   Not long ago, Greg “the Living Brand” Norman announced a partnership with a division of Verizon Communications and promised to soon unveil an initiative that would use “innovative and disruptive technology” to “change the way people play and view” the game of golf. Last week, we learned what he was talking about. The LB and some partners plan to invest $11 million into Playsight, a U.S. company with an array of high-tech equipment that “transforms every sports field, court, and gym into a smart, connected space and helps athletes of all levels train smarter.” Geez, is this the game-changer that the LB suggested he’d deliver? Obviously, he believes that Playsight’s technologies – “cutting-edge,” he calls them – can spark renewed interest in golf and, ultimately, revive a moribund sport. But that’s asking a lot of a training system.

     Canada’s golf industry has lost what may be its final link to Stanley Thompson, its most renowned architect. Robert Moote, who apprenticed with Thompson for several years, died in late May. He was 92. After Thompson’s death, in 1953, Moote established his own firm, Brampton, Ontario-based Moote Golf Architects, and went on to produce venues including Silver Lakes Golf Club in Newmarket, Ontario; North Halton Golf & Country Club in Georgetown, Ontario; Dundee Resort Golf Course in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia; and Ironshore Golf & Country Club in Montego Bay, Jamaica. Moote is the last of the well-known architects who worked with Thompson. Robert Trent Jones, C. E. “Robbie” Robinson, Howard Watson, and Geoffrey Cornish all died years ago. Moote’s son, David, is also a course designer, and he’ll presumably continue to run the firm his father established.

     Robert Trent Jones, Jr., arguably the grandest of the grand old men in U.S. golf architecture, has been hired to design an 18-hole golf course for Hoiana, a waterfront community that will take shape on 650 acres roughly 25 miles south of Đà Nẵng, on Vietnam’s Central Coast. Hoiana has been master-planned to set “a new benchmark for high-end tourism in Vietnam” and become one of “Asia’s most renowned resort destinations.” VinaCapital, a Hồ Chí Minh City-based developer, expects to build Jones’ course in the first phase of Hoiana’s construction, along with a casino, a 445-room hotel complex, 200 condos, a “spa resort” with 100 houses and villas, a beach club, entertainment venues, a waterfront promenade, shopping areas, and places to eat and drink. The course will be Jones’ first in Vietnam, but his Palo Alto, California-based firm has worked all over Asia and Southeast Asia. It’s produced about 20 courses in Japan, eight in Philippines, seven in China, five in Thailand, four in Malaysia, and others in Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Singapore, and Taiwan. If all goes as planned, the course at Hoiana will debut in early 2019.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the January 2017 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.  

     Pipeline Overflow – Speaking of Vietnam, later this year or possibly early next year Jim Engh expects to open his first golf course in the golf-mad socialist republic. Engh has designed an 18-hole layout for Harmonie Golf Park, which is taking shape outside Hồ Chí Minh City, in Bình Dương Province. IMG, which will manage the course, expects the track to be “one of the best in Vietnam,” while Golfasian believes it’ll merely be “a nice addition” to the area’s golf scene. . . . In September, Muriya Tourism Development Company expects to open the “unforgettable” first nine holes of a planned 18-hole layout at Jebel Sifah, a waterfront community in metropolitan Muscat, Oman. Troon Golf, which has been retained to manage the property, says the Peter Harradine-designed track will be “a must-play course in the Middle East” and “rival the very best exclusive golf destinations.” Harradine, a Swiss architect, thinks the course will be “fun for average players” and notes that it’ll serve to collect “torrential water during the few but violent rain-falls” that affect the area. . . . Jordan’s first 18-hole golf course, a Greg Norman design, is the centerpiece of a resort community in Aqaba, the nation’s only port city. In 2012, during his first site visit to the property, “the Living Brand” said Ayla Golf Club had “the potential to put Jordan on the world’s golf map.” Within a year or so, we’ll know if he delivered on the property’s promise.

     Cuba attracted 2 million international travelers through the first four months of 2017, which means it’s comfortably on pace to shatter the record it set last year, when 4 million international travelers visited the island nation. U.S. travelers already make up a significant share of Cuba’s inbound traffic – 614,433 people last year – and Boston Consulting Group estimates that as many as 2 million U.S. travelers could be heading to Fidel Castro’s socialist paradise by 2025, even if the U.S. travel ban remains in place. Cuba has some infrastructure issues to address, of course, because BCG says that the nation has “an insufficient supply of [hotel] accommodations” and its main international airport, in Havana, is “bursting at the seams.” And while it’s difficult to predict how big an impact golf resorts will have on the tourism industry, groups from China, England, Spain, and Germany are betting on Cuba’s golf development potential.

     Marriott International, which currently operates 550 hotels in the Asia-Pacific, expects to open at least 500 more by the end of 2021 – basically, 100 a year. None of new properties are likely to have golf courses, but Marriott’s expansion in the region is noteworthy because big hotel companies always reveal where growth is occurring in the travel industry. Marriott will never open the first hotel in a market, but its presence indicates that a market’s time has come.