The Week That Was, august 5, 2018

     The United States is nowadays home to 2,497 municipal golf facilities – a record number and 17 percent of our nation’s total supply of golf courses, according to data provided by the National Golf Foundation. A golfer is mostly likely to stumble across one in Utah, where half of the state’s 112 golf facilities are government-owned, but the largest number of municipal layouts are in California (179), Illinois (178), and Texas (176).

     Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh, India, is searching for a private-sector partner willing to build a residential community with an 18-hole golf course. The city’s development authority is dangling a 90-year lease on 65 acres known as Vasant Kunj Yojana, which is expected to emerge in a neighborhood called Gomti Nagar. Unquestionably, this would be a tight squeeze for a regulation-size layout. To generate interest in the venture, the development authority will also offer leases on nearby commercial sites.

     Pipeline Overflow – Jumping on the “short”-course bandwagon, later this month the Greenbrier Sporting Club, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, figures to debut a replica track called the Ashford. The Ashford’s nine par-3 holes will reportedly play to 835 yards, which is a mere 100 yards longer than just one par-5 hole at Gallery Golf Club in Marana, Arizona. . . . As if anyone needs more evidence of Pakistan’s emergence as a hot spot for golf development, a government-controlled entity is looking for a private-sector group to help build M-3 Industrial City, a 4,500-acre spread outside Faisalabad. M-3 has been master-planned to include houses, office and industrial space, shopping areas, and a golf course. . . . Next month, Pinehurst Resort & Country Club expects to take the wraps off its back-to-the-future No. 4 course, an 18-hole layout that’s said to have “a special place” in the resort’s history. The redesign was overseen by Gil Hanse, who was directed to create a course that’s “more natural and authentic to the sandhills of North Carolina.”

     Stockton University is going to pocket just over $21 million for one of its dormitories – the one with the 36-hole golf complex. A Florida-based investment group has agreed to buy the university’s Stockton Seaview Hotel & Golf Club, a 670-acre venue in Galloway, New Jersey that’s served as a home away from home for a couple hundred well-off students in recent years. In addition to its 296-room hotel, the club features a pair of “classic” 18-hole golf courses produced by time-tested architects: The Bay course, a co-design by Hugh Wilson and Donald Ross that dates from 1914, and the Pines course, a co-design by William Flynn and Howard Toomey that dates from 1929. While the university may no longer offer housing with easy access to quality golf, this fall it reportedly plans to open an upscale beachfront dormitory in Atlantic City.

     Surplus Transactions – Speaking of advanced education, for the second time this year a school in North Carolina is going to take possession of an 18-hole layout. In January, Wingate University reportedly accepted Stonebridge Golf Club, in Monroe, as a gift, and any day now David Cuthbertson, a home builder, expects to donate Larkin Golf Club. Cuthbertson estimates that Larkin and its Clyde Johnston-designed track are worth more than $20 million, a number that the school hasn’t disputed. . . . ClubCorp has paid an undisclosed price for Brookstone Golf & Country Club, a “lifestyle” venue in metropolitan Atlanta, Georgia. The club features an 18-hole, Larry Nelson-designed course that opened in 1998. It appears that the seller was American Golf Corporation, a company that’s been lightening its load for a decade or more. . . . The former owner of a lumber company has acquired a nine-hole course that was created by legends from the Golden Age of golf architecture. Frederick Dill, who doesn’t play golf, paid $500,000 for Hooper Golf Club, a 90-year-old venue in Walpole, New Hampshire that was co-designed by Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek. Dill told a local newspaper that he didn’t want the course to “go down the drain.”

     Stan Richards has purchased his third golf course. For $525,000, Richards now owns Lakeview Greens Golf Course, an 18-hole track in the farm country north of Muncie, Indiana. But Lakeview Greens isn’t likely to complement Richards’ nearby golf properties, Albany Golf Club in Albany and Blackford Golf Club in Hartford City. To the Muncie Star Press, it appears that Lakeview Greens’ 108 acres are being plowed under.

     Desolation Row Extended – The fate of Links at Queen Creek, an 18-hole track in greater Phoenix, Arizona, has been sealed. The 24-year-old course will operate through the winter but close in the summer of 2019, eventually to be replaced with houses, a hotel, a shopping area, and places to eat and drink. . . . You can stick a fork into Cedar Creek Golf Club, an 18-hole, 53-year-old track outside Fort Wayne, Indiana. Elected officials in Allen County have approved a rezoning of the club’s 116 acres, an expanse that Dave Gilbert and his partners is ideally suited for a subdivision. . . . The New York Chiropractic College, in Seneca Falls, New York, has pulled the plug on its nine-hole golf course. The school believes that the demise of Cayuga Links supports “good environment and good fiscal stewardship.”

     Duly Noted – The group that oversees Scotland’s most environmentally sensitive and important properties has determined that the construction of Martin Hawtree’s golf course at Trump Aberdeen Scotland partially destroyed up to 168 acres of legally protected sand dunes – sand dunes that the Trump Organization promised would not be harmed. And, in what is surely a related story, elected officials in the Scottish Highlands have postponed making their final decision on the fate of Mike Keiser’s Coul Links proposal. . . . For the second consecutive time, SCOREGolf has judged Cabot Cliffs – a “jaw-dropper” that “has it all” – to be Canada’s top golf course. The Cliffs’ companion course in Inverness, Nova Scotia, Cabot Links, checks in at number four, though it offers the “purest golf experience in Canada.”