The Week That Was, june 9, 2019

     Cabot Links, the naturalist golf mecca in Nova Scotia, has broken ground on its third golf course, one that a spokesperson says is “a little less serious” and “a lot more fun” that the property’s much-admired existing layouts. The forthcoming 10-hole, par-3 track, a co-design by Rod Whitman and Dave Axland, is scheduled to open next year, and it’ll have, according to Whitman, “a Scottish feel and look to it.” Whitman, who designed the resort’s Cabot Links course, told Golf Course Architecture that the commission has given him “another excellent opportunity to build fun and interesting golf.” His new course will eventually be joined by a clubhouse, a putting course, hydrotherapy pools, hiking and biking trails, and other attractions, an indication that even world-class golf resorts can’t survive on golf alone. “Not everybody is a golfer,” the resort’s general manager told a Canadian news service, “and we understand that.”

     Pipeline Overflow – An Australian news service reports that Arm End Golf Course, a proposed venue in Tasmania that may rival Barnbougle Dunes, Barnbougle Lost Farm, and Cape Wickham Links, could open in 2022. If the schedule holds (and there are plenty of reasons to be leery), the 18-hole track will debut exactly a decade after it was first announced. . . . Speaking of long-overdue golf courses, the people who own Revelstoke Mountain Resort told a local newspaper that they hope to break ground on their golf course in the summer of 2020. Revelstoke hired Nick Faldo to design the 18-hole track in 2008 (at the time, Faldo was working with Schmidt-Curley Design), but it never initiated construction and Faldo ended up suing over non-payment. That being said, Revelstoke probably needs a golf course if expects to become a true four-season destination. . . . As long as we’re talking about Nick Faldo, last week he said that his forthcoming golf course in Punjab Province, Pakistan will be almost fully contrived, as it’s taking shape on “completely flat land” that’s full of mango trees. (Mangoes are Pakistan’s national fruit.) To provide visual interest, Faldo acknowledged that he’s taken some design cues from local landscapes, and they include “mud wall villages.”

     The National Golf Foundation reports that 198.5 18-hole equivalent golf courses – typically, according to the trade group, “value oriented, public facilities in the best-supplied areas” – bit the dust in 2018. Here are a few that the NGF can allocate to 2019’s closings.
    – Jack’s Mountain Preserve, originally known as Old Fort Golf Course, has bitten the dust, due to what’s said to be “a lack of new and returning golfers” and “less and less support from the community.” The course, outside Asheville, North Carolina, was designed by John Van Kleek, who once called it his “masterpiece.”
    – Riverside Golf Course, the oldest municipal track in Indianapolis, Indiana and, reportedly, the fourth-oldest in the United States, will end its 119-year run at the conclusion of this year’s golf season. The 18-hole layout, one of the city’s 13 golf facilities, will be replaced with an “ecological park.”
    – Sherwood Hills Golf Course, outside Ogden, Utah, has hung a NO TRESPASSING sign at its main gate, and it reportedly isn’t answering phone calls. The nine-hole layout, designed and co-owned by Mark Ballif, opened in 1973, and a local newspaper says “its fate is up in the air.”
    – Links Golf Club, a 30-year-old venue in Hudson, Florida with an 18-hole, Steve Smyers-designed course, hosts its final rounds this month. The Tampa Bay Times reports that the club’s owner, Matthew Lowman, pulled the plug “after failing to entice surrounding neighbors to invest in club memberships.”
    – Village Greens Golf Course, an 18-hole, executive-length layout in suburban Reading, Pennsylvania, may be razed and replaced with apartment buildings and a medical center. Donald Robitzer, Jr., the grandson of the course’s designer/builder and the current owner of the 33-acre property, submitted the redevelopment proposal.
    – Springs Ranch Golf Course, an 18-hole, Dick Phelps-designed layout that’s operated in Colorado Springs, Colorado since 1997, may give way to residential development. Pending a successful rezoning, a local homebuilder is expected to buy the 200-acre property.
    – Willow Brook Golf Course, in suburban Allentown, Pennsylvania, has lost nine of its 18 holes to proposed residential development. The course, which made its debut in 1929, aims to be, in the words of its pro, “the best nine-hole facility we can be.”
    – Sycamore Creek Golf Course, a nine-hole, municipal track in Fort Worth, Texas, will soon close for a two-year infrastructure project, and it may not reopen. Sycamore Creek hasn’t turned a profit since 1993, according to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and the city suspects that the course’s 66 acres would better serve local residents as a park.

     Duly Noted – Mark Parsinen, who died last week after suffering a stroke, collaborated with a pair of talented architects, Kyle Phillips and Gil Hanse, to create a pair of Scottish tracks ranked on Golf Digest’s list of the World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses, namely Kingsbarns Golf Links (#30) and Castle Stuart Golf Links (#53). Architects always say that their courses will serve as their legacies, but I think Parsinen’s will instead be an idea: The notion that the best golf courses keep golfers “engaged and hopeful.” It’s a philosophy that will endure. . . . “Plagiarism is part and parcel of golf course architecture,” David McLay Kidd declared in an interview with National Club Golfer. “We take inspiration from the greats of course design, whether it is Braid or Colt or Mackenzie or Ross. And I take inspiration from looking at the work of my contemporaries and thinking, “Wow, look how they did this or that!” Plagiarism is indeed the greatest form of flattery.” . . . The Professional Golfers Association has added Slieve Russell Golf & Country Club, a 27-year-old venue in County Cavan, Ireland, to its collection of branded properties. Slieve Russell, which features an 18-hole, Patrick Merrigan-designed golf course (along with a nine-hole, par-3 track), is now part of a marketing group that includes The Belfry in England, Gleneagles in Scotland, and clubs in Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Italy, Russia, and Turkey.

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