The Week That Was, june 24, 2018

     The blockbuster transaction that would have moved 16 of Concert Golf Partners’ 18 properties into ClubCorp’s portfolio is dead in the water. The parties mutually agreed to scrap their negotiations last week, ending a process initiated by ClubCorp in April. Peter Nanula, Concert’s chairman, reports that the tentative sale collapsed due to disagreements related to price, terms, and “softer issues” concerning “commitments we have made to our members.” The sale “just didn’t come together as we all planned,” he wrote in a text message. The folks at Concert and ClubCorp may now be feeling as though their discussions were ultimately much ado about nothing, but the dissolution of their deal is undoubtedly welcome news to our nation’s club owners and real-estate brokers, as the golf industry is better off having two (or more) strong competitors bidding for properties. And on that score, Nanula reports that his investment group expects to close on another acquisition “shortly.”

     It took three years, and they had to fend off objections from environmentalists as well as unfair comparisons to Donald “the Deceiver” Trump, but Mike Keiser and Todd Warnock have secured approval for their much-anticipated golf course in the Scottish Highlands. “It’s now time to build a golf course,” Warnock gleefully wrote after the proposal for Coul Links received its long-overdue thumbs-up. The next two years promise to be an exhilarating time for all involved, for Keiser and Warnock believe their 18-hole, Coore & Crenshaw-designed track will offer “one of the most memorable golf experiences in the world,” and they expect that it’ll establish the area surrounding Royal Dornoch Golf Club (the venue that inspired Keiser to create Bandon Dunes) as “the third major golf destination in Scotland.”

     Australia’s first and greatest male golf star, Peter Thomson, died last week. The CEO of the PGA of Australia celebrated him as “a gentleman of the game, a legend of Australian sport, and an Immortal of the PGA of Australia.” Thomson wasn’t as well known in the United States as he was in other parts of the world, but he was one of the premier professional golfers of the 1950s. With a playing style that was particularly well-suited to links golf, he won the Open Championship four times during the decade (and for a fifth time in 1965), accomplishments that helped him earn induction into the World Golf Hall of Fame. After his playing career ended, he founded a Melbourne-based “signature” design firm that over the years operated as Thomson Wolveridge Perrett Golf Design, Thomson Perrett & Lobb, and Thomson Perrett Golf Course Architects. The companies designed or redesigned more than 180 courses in more than 30 nations, according to one source, and they had a strong presence in Asia and Southeast Asia. It’s hard to say, however, how many of Thomson’s courses adhered to his homespun philosophy about course design: “If my grandma can’t play it, it has to be a lousy course.” Though he worked until the summer of 2016, when he retired due to “declining health” that was later revealed to be Parkinson’s disease, Thomson once called golf “a good excuse for not working.” He was 88.

     The head of an Atlanta, Georgia-based auto-dealership group has hired David McLay Kidd to design a golf course in the Bahamas. Steve Harrell, who owns 700 acres on Great Abaco Island, has set out to build Kakona, a community that his publicists say will be “a one-of-a-kind oasis focused on luxury, longevity, and legacy.” In addition to alliterations, Kakona will offer “a golf experience like no other,” with a Kidd-designed 18-hole, partial-oceanfront layout that’s “sure to become a showpiece in the world of golf course design.” It appears that the community will also have what’s been described as an “executive” track, but its designer hasn’t been identified. Kidd says the property has the “best beach I’ve ever seen,” and he hopes to break ground on the course next year.

     Pipeline Overflow – The course at Kokona isn’t the only entrée on Kidd’s plate these days. He recently told the Robb Report that he’s collaborating with Mike Keiser on “a secret project” (the course in California, presumably) and, as most everyone knows, he’s been hired to produce the second course at Gamble Sands Golf Club in Washington. A tastier morsel is what he described as “a huge project in the Middle East,” but he won’t talk about it because he signed a non-disclosure agreement. . . . Paul Albanese’s golf course for the Island Resort & Casino in Harris, Michigan will celebrate its grand opening next month. The reviews haven’t yet been written, but in 2015, when the commission for the track was awarded, the resort expected Albanese to deliver one of the state’s top five public courses. . . . Nicklaus Design has so much work in Asia and Southeast Asia, according to one of its top executives, that “it is sometimes a challenge to keep up with it.” Say it with me: Nice problem to have.

     Bob Lohmann has sketched out the future of his design firm. The Marengo, Illinois-based company is transitioning into the hands of Todd Quitno, who’s been working with Lohmann since the mid 1990s. Lohmann, who’s 65, says that his longtime right-hand man has “all the design skills in the world” and “a better handle” than his “on what the market requires today, including the role of technology and social media.” Quitno, a 45-year-old who’s been overseeing most of the firm’s projects for several years, expects “to look at some different approaches as to how we pursue and execute our work,” and he promises “to be responsive to changes, to new opportunities, and to utilize a variety of delivery methods to satisfy our clients’ needs.” The company now operates as Lohmann Quitno Golf Course Architects, Inc.

     Finally, a prominent voice in the golf industry has commented on the regrettable black/white confrontation that occurred at Grandview Golf Club in April. It wasn’t the most forceful statement that could have been made, and it certainly wasn’t easy to find, but Jay Karen stands alone in addressing it. “It’s a shame the police were called to resolve a conflict that could have been handled through a conversation, talking to each other as human beings,” the CEO of the National Golf Course Owners Association told NBC News. “These kinds of conflicts should not happen on golf courses, and they shouldn’t happen at Starbucks.” Sadly, other influentials in our business continue to condone what happened at Grandview with their silence. Where are you, Silent Steve Mona?

     Duly Noted – Greg “the Living Brand” Norman, a man who never met a microphone he didn’t like, has begun to host a radio show. Thank goodness he only has time to do it once a month. . . . There could be any number of explanations, so take this with a grain of salt, but the Associated Press reports that last year’s revenues at Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point were off by 7 percent from the number posted in 2016. . . . First came Coore & Crenshaw, then Jack Nicklaus, and now Golf Digest has published a list of William Flynn’s best courses. Wake me up when this tedious series ends.

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