The Week That Was, march 3, 2019

     The world is now home to 38,864 golf courses at 32,471 golf facilities, according to a count by the R&A and the National Golf Foundation. As of year-end 2018, the partners write in “Golf Around the World 2019,” golf could be played in 209 countries, although 78 percent of the total supply is located in just 10, a group led by the United States (16,752 courses, which translates to 43 percent of the world’s total). Two final notes: First, the vast majority of the world’s courses (29,288) are said to be “publicly accessible.” Second, 47 of the countries that offer golf have just one course.

     Ron Fream, who’s designed courses in more than five dozen countries, is part of the team behind what’s been called “the first major golf project” in Primorsky Krai, Russia.
     Fream and his partners, George Philpot and Jari Rasinkangas, expect to break ground next month on Vladivostok Golf Club, which will take shape on part of a 300-acre spread in greater Vladivostok, a port city in the extreme southeastern tip of Russia, across the Sea of Japan from Japan. (For what it’s worth, the area is said to have 199 days suitable for golf annually.) The club will serve as a drawing card for an emerging “smart eco-city” (a Russian translation calls it an “intellectual eco-city”) that’s been master-planned to include houses, a hotel, a campground, and other attractions, including both nine- and 18-hole golf courses. The city’s developers, a group operating as Golf-Park DV, hope to establish “a sustainable community oriented towards ecology, health, sports, and active lifestyle,” with their main target market being golfers from China, Japan, and South Korea.
     Fream, who’s arguably the world’s most traveled course architect, has been blazing new frontiers since the early 1970s, and he’s worked in most every country the average American can find on a map as well as others well off the beaten trails. He’s probably best known for Club at Nine Bridges in South Korea (#23 on Golf Digest’s list of the World 100 Greatest Golf Courses) and the Serapong layout at Sentosa Golf Club in Singapore (#79 on the same list), but his greatest contribution to golf has been his never-ending enthusiasm for taking the sport to places it’s never been before.

     For an undisclosed price, South Street Partners has acquired what it views as “the premier collection of private mountain and lake communities in the Southeast.” The Charlotte, North Carolina-based real-estate investment group is talking about the Cliffs communities in North and South Carolina, all seven of them, which were developed by Jim Anthony, went bankrupt in the wake of the Great Recession, were sold to Carlile Group and other entities, and in 2014 fell into the hands of Arendale Holdings. The communities are gated (a feature that apparently makes their residents feel “more connected to yourself and the world around you”), and each one features a golf course, the majority of them layouts by “signature” and celebrity designers with a proven ability to spark home sales. South Street has some expertise is marketing the lifestyle of high-end golf communities, as it’s owned the tony Kiawah Island Club since 2013. It’s confident about the Cliffs’ future, as it is about Kiawah Island’s, for it believes that golf communities tailored to the upper crust will be able to sustain themselves over the near term. It’s a sensible bet.

      Surplus Transactions – The Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians has agreed to buy Mountain Springs Golf Course, an 18-hole track in Sonora, California that closed late last year. The course, a Robert Muir Graves design, will reopen, but the tribe, which says it’s making the purchase as part of an effort to ensure “the long-term sustainability of the golf course,” hasn’t said when. . . . Elected officials in Walton County, Florida have voted to acquire the nearly century-old DeFuniak Springs Country Club and its 18-hole golf course. The price is certainly right, for the financially struggling club is willing to give up its assets for just $1. . . . Pending all-but-certain approval by its board of commissioners, Washoe County, Nevada will soon buy Wildcreek Golf Course, a 41-year-old track in Sparks. The Reno-Sparks Convention & Visitors Authority has agreed to accept roughly $980,000 for the 212-acre course, whose centerpiece is an 18-hole layout that was co-designed by Brad Benz and Dick Phelps.

     Duly Noted – Despite all the optimism that floats across the golf industry these days, the number of rounds played in the United States last year fell by 4.8 percent from the number posted in 2017. The National Golf Foundation blames the decline on “a greater frequency of unfavorable golf weather” across most of the country, which is an excuse we’ve heard repeatedly of late. . . . Here’s a nugget that was buried in a mostly upbeat report on golf travel from the International Association of Golf Tour Operators: The pace of growth in international golf travel is slowing, at least in part due to “demand exceeding supply in the most popular golf destinations at the busiest times.” . . . As he was being roughed up by his former lawyer, the U.S. president lost another round in his long-running battle against the wind farm that’s now producing electrical power in the waters off his golf resort in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. A court has ruled that Trump International Golf Club Scotland, Ltd. must reimburse the Scottish government for the legal costs it incurred while fighting to preserve its sovereignty.

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