The Week That Was, may 26, 2019

     Truong An Golf Company has broken ground on the second Brian Curley-designed course at Stone Valley Golf Resort, a recently opened 500-acre venue in Hà Nam Province, Vietnam. The company hopes to grass the track before the end of the year. Darius Oliver of Planet Golf has called Stone Valley’s first course “memorable,” and he recommends it for golfers who desire “a higher-quality golf experience than typically found around Hà Nội.” Curley, who’s known in Southeast Asia as the “Designer with Golden Hands,” says that course #2 will “match the other nines in playability, look, and bunkering.”

     A group of preservation-minded citizen-activists in Northern Virginia have threatened to wage a “war” on the high-powered, Baltimore-based developers who’ve purchased Reston National Golf Course. An entity led by Marc Weller and Scott Plank (he’s the brother of Kevin Plank, the CEO of Under Armour) reportedly paid almost $24 million for Reston National, an 18-hole, 168-acre spread in Reston that was targeted for closure by home builders just years ago, leading to a protracted legal brawl. Memories are still fresh, and it’s apparent that concerned residents operating as Rescue Reston fear that the course’s new owners have similar ideas. Weller and Plank haven’t as yet floated any development plans, but it’s hard to imagine a 50-year-old, daily-fee golf course, even an especially well-located one in a prosperous suburb of Washington, DC, delivering an acceptable return on a $24 million investment.

     Surplus Transactions – Crane Currency, the company that makes the paper for U.S. money, plans to sign away its majority stake in Wahconah Country Club, a venue in Dalton, Massachusetts that’s operated since 1930. The club, a non-profit with more than 400 members, opened with a nine-hole, Wayne Stiles-designed course, and it added a second nine (designed by Geoffrey Cornish) in 1961. . . . A small investment group has acquired Wabeek Country Club, a 47-year-old property in suburban Detroit, Michigan with an 18-hole golf course what was co-designed by Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus. Bloomfield Township reports that the club, whose membership is said to be at “close to capacity,” changed hands for $2.5 million, but the new owners contend that the amount is “not accurate.” . . . Robbie and Jason Davis have paid an undisclosed price for Birchwood Country Club, a nearly 60-year-old venue in greater Raleigh, North Carolina that some say is “no longer financially viable.” Given the economics at play, the new owners plan to sell the land now occupied by Birchwood’s 18-hole course to a home builder.

     Duly Noted – For just the second time, a woman has been elected as the president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. She’s Jan Bel Jan, who joined the mostly old boys club in 1990 and established her own design firm, in Jupiter, Florida, in 2009. The late Alice Dye was the first woman to serve as the ASGCA’s president, in the late 1990s. . . . McConnell Golf has assumed management of Porters Neck Country Club, a venue in Wilmington, North Carolina that’s said to be “in dire financial straits” as a result of damage inflicted by Hurricane Florence. McConnell, a regional owner/operator that’s “set its vision on building clubs of the future,” believes that Porters Neck has “all the qualities of a first-class facility” and will be a “perfect fit” in its stable of high-end golf properties. . . . The marketing geniuses at Nicklaus Companies are thinking beyond wall calendars, ice cream, and low-priced cabernets. In the latest example of their commitment to licensing agreements that “mirror the high standards established in the career and life of our founder, Jack Nicklaus,” they’re branching out into sunscreen, shampoo, lip balm, and hand sanitizers.

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