The Week That Was, july 23, 2017

     Cape Wickham Links, one of the golf industry’s true trophy properties, now belongs to an investor who’s said to be based in Hà Nội, Vietnam. The Australian Financial Review reports that Ekaterina Kolmakova – sounds like a Russian woman, no? – paid “almost” $16 million for Cape Wickham, a 330-acre oceanfront spread on King Island in Tasmania. Duncan Andrews put the course, ranked #24 in the world by Golf Digest and #1 in Australia by Golf Australia, on the market in February. News of the sale was announced earlier this month, but the name of the seller wasn’t revealed until this morning. Kolmakova, who has no discernable presence on the internets, is expected to begin operating the course, a co-design by Mike DeVries and Darius Oliver, next month.

     Steve Smyers has designed one of the world’s toughest golf courses, perhaps the toughest. Maridoe Golf Club, a just-opened 18-hole track in Carrollton, Texas, has a rating of 80.5 and the U.S. Golf Association’s maximum slope, 155, thanks to what the Dallas Morning News describes as “consistently narrow and sloping fairways, deep rough, and water in play on 14 holes.” Maridoe’s gaudy numbers put it ahead of the most difficult course on an ESPN ranking, the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island, which checks in at 79.6 and 155. Smyers, a Lakeland, Florida-based architect, built Maridoe for Albert Huddleston, who’s reportedly looking to host a U.S. Open. But Huddleston may be having second thoughts about having created such a monster, as the newspaper notes that “subtle alterations are likely,” specifically “wider, more accessible fairways.” The club’s president has acknowledged that he wants to “try to make it better.”

     Nicklaus Design’s first golf course in Denmark, a track that’s said to be “very fun and rewarding to play,” has opened after a lengthy and unexplained delay. Great Northern Golf Course, a 27-hole complex in the town of Kerteminde, is the first golf venture for Thomas Kirk Kristiansen, an heir to the Lego fortune who also reportedly breeds Arabian horses. Kristiansen is rich – according to Bloomberg, he’s worth $4.04 billion – and a press release says that he has “great enthusiasm” for golf. Great Northern’s drawing card is an 18-hole, Dirk Bouts-designed layout that was supposed to open in 2015. Years ago, Kristiansen promised it would be “one of Scandinavia best golf courses.”

     Some information in the preceding post first appeared in the April 2015 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     Pipeline Overflow -- A Hong Kong-based company wants to build a horse-racing center, including a hotel and a golf course, outside Can Tho, in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. The city’s people’s committee believes that SIBC International Limited’s to-be-named, 375-acre venue would serve to boost tourism in the area, but it wants to hear what the central government thinks before it commits to the proposal. . . . As part of an effort to popularize golf, the Nigeria Golf Federation has set out to build a half-dozen driving ranges. “We want [a] golf presence in all the states in Nigeria,” a spokesperson for the NGF said. “The gospel of the sport will be spread through the grass roots.” The NGF is currently trying to identify sites for the facilities. . . . Kevin Ramsey, California-based architect, is overseeing the construction of the second nine at what’s said to be Turkey’s first public golf course. The first nine at Samsun Municipal Metropolitan Golf Club opened last summer, on “an artificial island” in Samsun Province. The new nine, a possible collaboration with Jeffrey Danner, is scheduled to open in 2018.

     A Canadian resident who owns two golf courses in China has reportedly put a “degraded” U.S. golf course “on the road to recovery.” Coco Luo, the principal of Bald Eagle Valley Resort Holdings, Ltd., reportedly paid $4.45 million – it was an all-cash transaction – for Point Roberts Golf & Country Club, in Point Roberts, Washington. The seller, Kenji Nose, couldn’t make ends meet and shuttered the club last year. Point Roberts features an 18-hole, Graham Cooke-designed golf course that opened in 2001, and Luo has hired Wayne Carleton to oversee an improvement program that will cost “a substantial amount of money.” Luo, who’s said to be “a passionate and avid golfer,” expects to re-open the course in early 2018. In China, according to her U.S. representative, she owns unnamed courses designed by Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player.

     Surplus Transactions – An unidentified group has agreed to purchase Harker’s Hollow Golf & Country Club, a historic venue in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. At a public auction, the anonymous prospective buyers bid $800,000 for Harker’s Hollow, which features an 18-hole course designed by Robert White, the first president of the PGA of America. Harker’s Hollow opened in 1929 and has apparently seen better days, because the auctioneer who sold the property told a local newspaper that the new owners “remember it in its heyday and are looking to restore it and bring it back to its old glory.” . . . To preserve their property values, the members of the Cape Royal Homeowners Association, in Cape Royal, Florida, have purchased their community’s defunct 27-hole golf complex. The HOA paid an undisclosed price for the former Royal Tee Golf Club, which, upon re-opening, will be open to the public and operate as Cape Royal Golf Club. Royal Tee’s Gordy Lewis-designed courses will be operated by Green Golf Partners. . . . Speaking of Green Golf Partners, the company is likely out as the operator of Belleview Biltmore Golf Club. A group led by Dan Doyle and Dan Doyle, Jr. has reportedly agreed to pay $3.8 million to the city of Belleair for Belleview Biltmore, and the Doyles plan to buy GGP out of its contract. The club, which features an 18-hole, Donald Ross-designed golf course, describes itself as “an American favorite since 1925” and “the best-conditioned golf course anywhere in Florida.”