The Week That Was, august 19, 2018

     The people who opened the first Seve Ballesteros-designed golf course in the United Kingdom are pressing ahead with their plans to build what they call “the first U.K. golf course designed from scratch by Dye Designs.” Tony and Anne Menai-Davis, the owners of Shire London, recently secured permission to build Dye London, an 18-hole track in the suburbs of England’s capital city that they believe will “attract golfers from all over the globe.” The course, to be co-designed by Perry Dye and Cynthia Dye-McGarey, is scheduled to open in 2023. It’ll complement the Menai-Davis family’s nearby West London Links, “a modern vision of links golf” that was created by other architects at Dye Designs. West London Links is expected to debut in 2020. According to a press release, both of the forthcoming courses will “echo the sort of golfing tests which Tour superstars face in major championships” but nonetheless offer “player-friendly family golf for all lovers of the sport.”

     Some information in the preceding post first appeared in the January 2013 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.  

     Pipeline Overflow – By year’s end Brian Curley, now flying solo as a golf architect, expects to open the first of what could be as many as 10 courses at FLC Đồng Hới Golf Links. The Paradise Valley, Arizona-based designer says that the course, part of a 7,500-acre resort community in Vietnam’s Quảng Bình Province, “looks like Tara Iti” and will be “the most natural-looking golf course in Vietnam and maybe all of Asia.” Curley’s second course at Đồng Hới is ready to be grassed and figures to open in 2019. . . . A Spanish leisure company and tour operator has set out to build La Finca, a mega-resort community outside La Romana, in the Dominican Republic. Globalia Corporación Empresarial SA, the parent company of Air Europa, Be Live Hotels, and some travel agencies, has master-planned La Finca to include houses, an estimated 1,000 hotel rooms, a golf course, and other attractions. . . . Golf courses sometimes die forever, but sometimes they die and then come back to life. A case in point: Iron Oaks Golf Course in Beaumont, Texas, which went belly up last year but is expected to re-open sometime this year, after renovations are completed. Brent Coon, a local lawyer, has assumed a lease on Iron Oaks, which features a Johnny Barlow-designed course that opened in 2005.

     Monte Ahuja has acquired a struggling private club in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, and with it a pair of 18-hole golf courses. Ahuja’s Areco Golf LLC has reportedly paid $3.6 million for Mayfield Sand Ridge Club, a member-owned facility that offers play at both Mayfield Country Club in South Euclid and Sand Ridge Golf Club in Chardon. Ahuja views golf as “more a passion than a business,” but he also owns Barrington Golf Club in Aurora, so he made his recent purchase with eyes wide open. “I’m not in golf to make money,” he told Crain’s Cleveland Business. “No one would be in golf to make money.” Mayfield features a Bert Way-designed track that opened in 1911, while Sand Ridge has a 20-year-old Tom Fazio-designed layout. Ahuja has promised to continue offering golf at both facilities for at least 10 years.

     Surplus Transactions – At an auction in July, an investor from Corpus Christi, Texas bid roughly $1.3 million for Keweenaw Mountain Lodge, a 167-acre vacation spot in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. John Lamb has about a month to complete the purchase, which will bring him a collection of cottages and a nine-hole golf course, all of which were built during the Great Depression to inject some life into the local economy. . . . To bolster their home values, the property owners in the Stonebridge community outside New Orleans, Louisiana have purchased their most valuable amenity. They bought Golf Course at Stonebridge, a track that opened in 1984, from Duininck Brothers, the golf construction company. . . . Because he got “tired of working the hours I work now,” 71-year-old David Puckett has sold Portland Golf Club, a nearly century-old venue in Portland, Indiana. The club, which is now owned by Daniel Carr and Jeremy Kunkler, features a “difficult but friendly” 18-hole course.

     Surplus Surplus Transactions – Acting through an LLC, Clinton M. Holcomb and Lucas G. James have reportedly paid $2.58 million for Arrowhead Golf Club, a 158-acre spread in metropolitan Buffalo, New York. The club, which opened in 2003, features an 18-hole, Scott Witter-designed golf course that the Buffalo News describes as “a combination of a links and parkland-style course.” . . . To energize a retirement that reportedly “got boring,” Ernest and Kathy Dunn have paid an undisclosed amount for Carthage Country Club, in Carthage, Texas. The new owners told the Panola Watchman that they aim to “improve the atmosphere” and “create a family environment” at the 53-year-old facility, whose centerpiece is a nine-hole course. . . . On the first day of 2018, Leif Knudsen and Nick Lesar closed on their purchase of the former Whitewater Country Club, a venue that’s operated in Whitewater, Wisconsin since 1934. The property, which features a nine-hole course, now calls itself Willow Brook Golf Course.