The Week That Was, october 22, 2017

     Further proof that golf and rock-’n’-roll don’t mix: Astbury Hall, a well-regarded British golf resort created by former Judas Priest lead guitarist Ken “KK” Downing, has been taken over by administrators and is for sale. Downing designed Astbury Hall’s 18-hole golf course, bought out his original financial partners, hired Darren Clarke, a former captain of Europe’s Ryder Cup team, to serve as the property’s “global ambassador,” and won permission to add a boutique hotel, a spa, a restaurant, and another nine-hole layout to his 320 acres in suburban Birmingham, England. But the financing he secured to help pay for the construction has come back to haunt him. His lender has called the loan, leaving Downing, to borrow a phrase once used by Radiohead, high and dry. “We were taken aback that the funder was not more flexible with us as partners,” he told the Shropshire Star. Downing is trying to refinance the loan, and he hopes to continue to build “a top-class golf center with no snobbery” that will “put Shropshire on the golfing map.” But if someone comes along and drops £10 million ($13.2 million) on the table, he’ll be stranded on what Green Day called “the boulevard of broken dreams.”

     In recent years, Dan Hixson has produced a series of well-regarded courses in the Pacific Northwest – Wine Valley Golf Club in Washington and the reversible course at Silvies Valley Ranch in Oregon prominent among them – but the Vancouver, Washington-based architect appears to be hoping for a change of scenery. While acknowledging that he’s “getting great sites in the Northwest,” he told the Eugene Register-Guard that he’d “love to see some of the great sites around the country, and have a chance to build on something like that.” While he waits for a developer to offer one to him, Hixson will design an 18-hole track on a site near Roseburg, Oregon.

     Pipeline Overflow – Australian Golf Digest thinks Cathedral Lodge Golf Club’s just-opened 18-hole course “could be Greg Norman’s finest achievement in golf course design,” and “the Living Brand” isn’t putting up an argument. “There is nothing else like it in Australia – or the world, for that matter," Norman said earlier this year. Norman has also described the site, near Alexandra, Victoria, as “magnificent” and compared his track favorably to those at Ellerston and Augusta National. Cathedral Lodge is said to be Australia’s most expensive golf club (initiation fee: $50,000), and at the unveiling its developer, David Evans, said he’s already signed 70 members. . . . Charles “Buddy” Darby, the developer of the 2,500-acre Christophe Harbour resort community on St. Kitts, expects to resume construction on his long-overdue, Tom Fazio-designed golf course “at the end of the year.” Christophe Harbour has a marina and a soon-to-open hotel, and Darby’s master plan calls for a slew of vacation houses, places to eat, drink, and shop, and other attractions for the well-heeled. Years ago, Fazio promised that his 18-hole track would be among “the best of the best” in the Caribbean. . . . Roughly a year from now, Dale Beddo and Bruce Summerhays hope to debut an “affordable” 18-hole track in Hurricane, Utah. The design partners are well known in the area, as they co-designed Kokopelli Golf Course, an 18-hole layout in nearby Apple Valley that opened in 2009 but closed in 2012, a victim, it’s been said, of a rotten economy. Beddo told a local newspaper that his to-be-named new course won’t be “overbearing or difficult” but will place “a lot of demand on a good tee shot.”

     Predictions about the demise of Aurora, Colorado’s Fitzsimons Golf Course have been floated for more than two decades, and now they may finally come true. The Denver Post reports that the 18-hole layout, whose original nine holes were created by the Works Progress Administration in 1938, is “expected to shutter by the end of the year.” Economics may not be factoring into the decision, as the newspapers says that Fitzsimons “remains steadily busy.” An official notice from the city hasn’t yet been filed and no future uses of the course have been identified, but a nearby medical center could expand onto the property. If Fitzsimons does indeed bite the dust, metropolitan the Denver area will lose what’s been described as “one of the most affordable and accessible golf courses in the area.”

     Desolation Row Extended – Speaking of health-care facilities, Frank Veltri has agreed to sell part of his Practice Golf Center, in suburban Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. Specifically, Veltri will sell the center’s nine-hole, par-3 course and continue to operate a driving range and a miniature golf course. . . . The fate of Meadows Golf Course, an 18-hole track in Christiansburg, Virginia, has been sealed. At a recent foreclosure auction, a development entity affiliated with Shelor Motor Mile paid $787,500 for the 115-acre property, and the new owner has already filed for a rezoning that would allow for the construction of houses. The Meadows opened with nine holes in 1955, and it got its second nine exactly two decades later. . . . Accepting an offer they couldn’t refuse, elected officials in Kent, Washington have voted to sell the nine-hole, par-3 golf course at Riverbend Golf Complex. An apartment developer has promised to pay $10.5 million for the 20-acre site, money that the city will use to shore up its golf enterprise fund and make improvements to Riverbend’s 18-hole track. The par-3 course has operated since 1961.

     With friends like Prime Minister Keith Rowley, the golf industry in Trinidad & Tobago may not need enemies. In his defense of a proposed $3 million overhaul of Chaguaramas Golf Course, Rowley stirred unnecessary controversy by comparing his nation’s golf courses to “sheep’s pastures” and then equating them to women because, he said, they both require daily grooming to be presentable. Unfortunately, all the noise Rowley created with his comments drowned out an important message he was trying to deliver, which is that it would be nice if Trinidad & Tobago, which currently has about eight golf properties, could build at least two more. So while Rowley may be burdened by sad, sexist ideas, at least he understands the impact that golf can have on a nation’s tourism business.