The Week That Was, april 21, 2019

     The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, and nowadays the apple of Mike Keiser’s eye is without doubt the design team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
     The world’s premier golf developer has hired the Austin, Texas-based duo to create the fifth course at Bandon Dunes, an expected world-class layout that will take shape on the 150 acres currently occupied by the resort’s free-form, 13-green Sheep Ranch course. The site has been described as “spectacular,” “crazy good,” and “really unbelievable,” and Coore, who’s set foot on most of the planet’s finest linksland, thinks it has “some of the most magnificent natural contours for golf that I have ever seen.” Keiser and Phil Friedmann, the property’s co-owners, expect the 18-hole, 7,100-yard track to debut next year.
     The existing Sheep Ranch course has operated as a poorly kept secret for more than a decade, but it’s been slated for redevelopment since 2016, originally with Gil Hanse as the front-runner for the commission. The stars had apparently aligned, as Keiser had been talking about finding a place for a Hanse-designed course at Bandon Dunes for years, but he changed his mind after he and Friedmann played the Hanse-designed course at the Streamsong resort in Florida. According to Golf Advisor, Keiser and Friedmann concluded that Hanse’s approach to greens design would be too “extreme” for the Sheep Ranch property.
     As a result, Coore and Crenshaw, who’ve already designed two of Bandon Dunes’ 18-hole courses, got a chance to create a routing, and they delivered one that Keiser believes is “truly brilliant.” Their final product is also going to be Keiser’s last bite of the apple at Bandon Dunes, for he told Golf Advisor that the Sheep Ranch track will be the resort’s final regulation-length course.

     An Indian tribe in Wisconsin has acquired Big Fish Golf Course, a Pete Dye-designed venue that claims to offer “a fun, challenging, and memorable golf experience” to players in the extreme northwestern part of the state. Via its governing board, the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians has paid $1.1 million for the 18-hole course, which is located on 173 acres adjacent to its reservation in Hayward. The tribe believes that Big Fish will boost the financial prospects of its Sevenwinds Casino, but it has no illusions about the course’s ability to generate profits. “We are telling tribal members this is not a gold mine,” a tribal official told the Sawyer County Record, “but if we can break even and drive more business to the casino, that will be a win for the tribe.” Big Fish opened in 2004. Dye has designed four other courses in Wisconsin, all of them at the Whistling Straits and Black Wolf Run resorts in Kohler.

     Surplus Transactions – Thanks to an anonymous donation, the Dickinson County Conservation Board has acquired Brooks National Golf Club, a 27-hole facility in Okoboji, Iowa. The 230-acre venue, which will begin operating this season as Brooks Golf, has operated since 1932, and over the years it’s reportedly attracted players such Sam Snead, Walter Hagen, and Babe Didrikson Zaharias. . . . Sometime next month, a club in Shelby, North Carolina that’s said to have “declined in recent years” will change hands. Cleveland Country Club, which has been in business since 1928, will be sold to what’s been described as “a group of current and former members” who hope to “save the club for the next generation.” . . . Ron and Kathy Brown have sold Tall Pines Players Club, a venue in Friendsville, Pennsylvania (it’s outside Binghamton, New York) that’s been in business since 1992. Adam Diaz told a local newspaper that he bought Tall Pines and its 18-hole golf course because “it just fit with something I always wanted to do.”  

     Duly Noted – Greg Norman isn’t the only golf personality who’s hopped on the CBD bandwagon. Scott McCarron, a player on the Champions Tour, has become a spokesperson for a Colorado-based CBD provider (he claims that the substance relieves the “mental stress and anxiety that comes with pro golf”), and Phil “the Gambler” Mickelson was seen taking a shot of what appeared to be CBD oil during one of his rounds at the Masters. In fact, Golf News Net claims that the use of CBD products “has spread throughout the PGA Tour,” and some have speculated that Tiger Woods was chewing CBD-laced gum while he was winning his 15th major championship. Without question, CBD is trending. . . . The Central Coast of Vietnam is about to raise its profile as a golf destination. The marketing group that represents the area’s celebrity-designed golf courses has entered into a partnership with Golfasian, the top tour operator in Southeast Asia, to attract more golf travelers. Golfasian will be offering play at a half-dozen venues, among them tracks designed by Nick Faldo, Robert Trent Jones, Jr., Colin Montgomerie, and Greg Norman. . . . Four years after it acquired Honours Golf, which managed 10 golf properties in the Southeast, Troon has acquired OB Sports Golf Management, which manages more than 70, the vast majority of them west of the Mississippi. As professors in business school always say, buying in one fell swoop sure beats buying one by one.

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