The Week That Was, october 29, 2017

     Tom Fazio and Discovery Land Company are once again joining forces, this time to put their distinctive marks on an emerging high-end community in suburban Nashville, Tennessee. An 18-hole, Fazio-designed golf course is set to take shape at Hideaway at Arrington, a 742-acre private community that will feature up to 350 houses as well as a variety of amenities that will, the developers say, enable residents to enjoy the area’s “rich cultural heritage” and engage in “an active, outdoor lifestyle.” Discovery owns at least 16 golf communities in the United States, Mexico, and the Bahamas, and Fazio has created courses for probably half of them, including Estancia Club in Scottsdale, Arizona; Gozzer Ranch in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Iron Horse in Whitefish, Montana; the Madison Club in La Quinta, California; and the recently opened Summit Club outside Las Vegas, Nevada. Discovery has also enlisted Fazio to produce a course for the Hills at East Quogue, on New York’s Long Island, but nresidents in the area have proven themselves to be formidable opponents. A groundbreaking for the track at the Hideaway hasn’t been announced, but in a press release Fazio said he aims to make it “one of the top-rated courses in Tennessee.”

     Pipeline Overflow – Tantalizing news from New Zealand’s North Island: Tom Doak’s 18-hole track at Tara Iti Golf Club may soon have a companion. Darius Oliver, the well-known Australian design critic, reports that Tara Iti’s developers, a group led by Los Angeles, California-based financier Ric Kayne, have decided “to proceed with a second course” and that an official announcement is “expected soon.” This will be a plum assignment for whoever wins the commission, but it may not be possible to match Doak’s accomplishment. His course is the nation’s most talked-about new venue, and Oliver himself has concluded that “there isn’t anything else quite like this in golf.” . . . Elected officials in Orange County, California have set out to build a golf course in Newport Beach, on 205 acres of the closed Coyote Canyon landfill. They’re currently negotiating the terms of a lease on the property with an investment group that wants to build an 18-hole “short” course and other attractions, including what’s been described as “wedding gardens” and “a food court.” The county appears to be in a good bargaining position, because it has another development group waiting in the wings. . . . It’s been an ordeal, but Brian Coutts has finally secured permission to build a driving range and a nine-hole pitch-’n-’putt course on property he farms in Ollerton, a village north of Nottingham, England. After denying Coutts’ proposals for 10 years, local planners have concluded that it may actually be “a much-needed sporting facility for the community.”

     Earlier this year I criticized Jack Nicklaus, he of the spotless reputation, for accepting a design commission from a world-class tyrant, Gurbanguly “Spellcheck” Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan. The way I see it, Nicklaus has agreed to polish the image of a notoriously repressive regime, and his support of Berdymukhamedov’s golf ambitions is a tacit endorsement of policies contrary to fundamental American values. As it turns out, I’m not alone in finding the opening of Turkmenistan’s first golf course, at Ashgabat Golf Club, distasteful and troubling. Radio Free Europe was on hand for the unveiling, and it says that Nicklaus appeared to be “smitten” by Berdymukhamedov, whose nation is now “in the throes of an economic crisis” that has “led to shortages of certain foods and other commodities.” And here’s the worst part: Nicklaus has agreed to design not just one more course in Turkmenistan, as I reported, but as many as 10. It’s often said that power corrupts. So does money.

     Pipeline Overflow Overflow – Early next year, according to Golfasian, Golfplan-Dale & Ramsey Golf Course Architecture will debut its second course in Pattaya, Thailand, one of Southeast Asia’s favorite golf destinations. The 18-hole track will be the main attraction at Chee Chan Mountain Golf Resort, a 250-acre spread that was conceived several years ago as Master Golf Resort. Pattaya is home to at least 30 golf properties, including some notable layouts by “signature” architects, among them Jack Nicklaus (Laem Chabang International Country Club), Pete Dye (Khao Kheow Country Club), Gary Player (Sriracha Golf Club), and Peter Thomson (Greenwood Golf Resort). Golfplan’s first course in the area, Mountain Shadow Golf Club, was designed by the firm’s founder, Ron Fream, and opened in the early 1970s. . . . The wraps have come off the first of two Paul Albanese-designed golf courses at Yên Dũng Golf Resort, in metropolitan Hà Nội. The 18-hole track, which publicists say is “one of the most beautiful, challenging golf courses in northern Vietnam,” will eventually be joined by vacation villas, a hotel, an amusement park, and other attractions, including, in 2020, a second 18-hole layout. In the United States, Albanese is probably best known for Tatanka Golf Club, a links-like, minimalist-inspired layout in Niobrara, Nebraska. . . . La Romana Golf Club, the centerpiece of a resort community on the Dominican Republic’s southern coast, has opened its second golf course. The 18-hole “championship” layout, designed by a Spanish company that operates as Maverick Design & Construction or Maverick Golf & Construction, will complement the community’s existing executive-length track.

     A retired baseball player is the leader of a team that’s purchased a private golf club in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Paul Maholm, who spent nine years pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, and other major-league teams, paid an undisclosed price for Hattiesburg Country Club, which the Clarion Ledger describes as “one of the oldest and most storied golf clubs in the Magnolia State.” The newspaper reports that the club, which features an 18-hole, Max Maxwell-designed golf course, is suffering from “dwindling memberships.”

     Surplus Transactions – Tri-City Country Club, a financially struggling venue in Kennewick, Washington, has been rescued by 20 of its members. The new owners plan to open the club to the public, and they’ve given it a new name: Zintel Creek Golf Club. The club opened in 1938, as Twin City Golf Club, and its original nine-hole golf course was built by the federal government’s Works Progress Administration. . . . It appears that Bergen County, New Jersey’s sixth golf property will be in suburban Newark. County officials have agreed to pay $8.5 million for Emerson Golf Club, a 54-year-old venue in Emerson that features an 18-hole, Alec Ternyei-designed golf course. The transaction is expected to close sometime over the winter. The county’s other courses are in Mahwah, Paramus, River Vale, Rockleigh, and Teaneck. . . . Melrose Club, the centerpiece of South Carolina’s mostly abandoned, possibly cursed Daufuskie Island, is about to get another owner. A bankruptcy court is expected to turn the 400-acre island over to its main creditor, a Netherlands-based investment group that reportedly loaned $27.5 million to the Utah-based company that promised to breathe new life into the property in 2011. Melrose features an 18-hole, Jack Nicklaus signature golf course that opened in 1987.

     As part of its struggle for survival, a private club named after Thomas Edison has decided to develop part of its 27-hole, Devereux Emmet-designed golf complex. Edison Club, a 286-acre venue in the northern suburbs of Albany, New York, has been suffering for years from a parade of problems – it recently listed them as “normal inflation, lifestyle changes, tax-code changes, decline in private club golf demand, and an overbuilt inventory of local golf” – but it believes it can sustain itself if it builds houses on seven of its holes and obliges the home owners to become club members. Edison was founded by a group of executives from General Electric in 1904 and relocated to its present home in 1926. It may not have any revenue-generating ideas beyond its development proposal, for it believes it’s already done “everything we can to be more attractive to the community around us.” 

     Desolation Row Extended – The new owners of the Phoenician, a 315-acre resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, have secured permission to close one-third of their 27-hole golf complex. The holes will come from the complex’s Oasis and Desert nines, and they’ll be replaced by 300 single-family houses and condos. Host Hotels & Resorts reportedly paid $400 million for the Phoenician, which never lived up to being “the eighth wonder of the world,” in 2015. . . . A home builder has reportedly coughed up nearly $23.5 million for Lipoma Firs Golf Course, a 27-home complex in suburban Tacoma, Washington. Lipoma Firs opened with 18 holes in 1989 and added its third nine in 1994. It’s now closed, and the new owner believes its 202 acres can comfortably accommodate more than 1,000 houses. . . . Golf Club at Ballantyne, part of the Ballantyne Corporate Park in Charlotte, North Carolina, may not have much of a future. A spokesperson for Northwood Investors, which purchased the 535-acre business park earlier this year, told the Charlotte Business Journal that his company has “no immediate plans” to close the 20-year-old club but acknowledged that it’ll be “evaluating” the possibility “over time.”