The Week That Was: April 10, 2011

russia What's Under the Table?

Some fun statistics about golf in Russia, courtesy of the BBC: Of the nation's more than 141 million people, only about 3,000 are “registered” golfers. Only 17,000 Russians have played golf even once. And the nation has just seven golf courses, says the British news service, most of them “private, elite places designed by the world's leading golf course architects.”

So why hasn't golf development gained any traction in Russia, a big, wealthy nation with Western pretensions? Why is there what the BBC calls “an almost complete lack of golf culture” in Russia?

The problem, at least in part, is the extremely high cost of golf construction. In Russia, according to the BBC's sources, it costs as much as $36 million to build an 18-hole golf course -- $2 million per hole. By contrast, the BBC points out, a fellow in Finland can build a golf course for a measly $100,000 per hole.

Why the huge disparity?

Igor Malyshkov, the president of Moscow City Golf Club, blames the high prices in Russia on “the complexity of the irrigation system,” the “quality of grass,” and unspecified “design demands.”

Are you laughing as hard as I am?

C'mon, Igor, cut the comedy. How gullible do you think we are?

Golf construction in Russia is ridiculously expensive because most everyone who wears a tie to work in your country is looking for a little extra money on the side. In Russia's venal, corrupt economy, virtually everyone lines his or her pockets with payola, most especially the petty bureaucrats who sign their names on construction permits. Bribery is a time-honored tradition in Russia, and Western companies who operate there budget for it, as a cost of doing business.

No need to tip-toe around the subject, folks. The problem can't be fixed until it's addressed.

europe When Does the Gloom Lift?

Now that signs of golf's recovery are beginning to make a welcome appearance in the United States, the BBC has apparently discovered that the European golf industry “suffered during the recent economic downturn, and many challenges remain.”

In a nutshell, here are the major challenges that the BBC believes must be addressed by Europe's golf industry: the construction boom has ended, affordable financing has evaporated, participation levels have fallen, skyrocketing oil prices have increased maintenance costs, and a crazy number of distressed properties have put the squeeze on market values.

To be sure, these are daunting challenges. But they've been around for more than two years. The U.S. golf industry has already addressed them. Hasn't the European golf industry done likewise?

Maybe not. An official at KPMG's Golf Advisory Practice in Budapest, Hungary characterizes the “overall” state of golf in the Old World today as “quite gloomy.”

“There will have to be a lot of changes made,” Marnix Von Bartheld told the British news service. “Golf piggy-backed for a decade on a growing economy and now needs to restructure.”

Not to put too fine a point on it, but didn't most every industry on earth piggy-back on the flush, pre-crash economy? The good times rolled, and everyone with an attractive product or service rolled with them.

But the rising tide that floated our boats receded long ago. Haven't most of the golf companies in Europe already restructured their operations so they can compete in a leaner, post-crash world? If not, why not?

Golf in the United States bottomed out last year. In 2011, the industry will begin its comeback. It won't be dramatic or anything to brag about, and many golf-related businesses will continue to face hard times. But golf on this side of the Atlantic has finally regained its pulse. If you look hard enough, you'll see the evidence.

Is a recovery in Europe still years away?

scotland The Gushing Continues

When he isn't running a fraudulent campaign for president, starring in a hokey television show, and spewing hot “birther” air on Fox News, the increasingly irrelevant Donald Trump continues to build “the world's greatest golf course” on a sandy, coastal expanse he calls “the Great Dunes of Scotland.”

And much to Trump's delight, people won't stop slobbering all over it.

Esie O'Mahony, the construction manager for SOL Golf Course Construction, the course's builder, told the Scotsman that the course is indeed destined to become “legendary.” He proclaimed that Martin Hawtree, the course's designer, is “a genius.” He said that building the 7,400-yard track has been “the highlight of my career.”

“It is only going to go downhill from here,” O'Mahony concluded. “You are never going to get a site like this or a client like this again. It is going to be hard to motivate yourself to go to work once we are finished here.”

Such talk must be music to Trump's ears. With every sentence, another tee time is reserved.

More importantly, the Scotsman reports that the construction of Trump International Golf Club Scotland is progressing full bore. All 18 of the course's holes have been shaped, and the dunes they sit upon have been stabilized. The track's tees are in place and will be sodded later this month. Its greens are being sculpted, its irrigation system is set to begin operating next month, and its fairways will be seeded later this summer.

Bury all doubts: The course is on pace to open in the summer of 2012, as Trump has promised.

talking points Gary Player Rants and Raves

During a Q&A at the Masters, Gary Player yet again scolded golf's Powers That Be on the subject that most perturbs him: The “live ball” era, and its effect on golf design. Here are the highlights of his complaint, as edited and punctuated by me:

You cannot put the tees in the streets, gentlemen and ladies. They have got to their limit. So the next thing is, you have to slow the ball down. Because golf courses are going to be completely outdated, which is happening now. . . .


From Timbuktu to Tokyo to China to here, everyone is lengthening golf courses. The members hate it. Fees are going up [because] oil is getting more expensive and we are running out of water. . . . People are saying, “Let me out of here” -- they can’t afford it -- instead of staying where we were and just [slowing] the ball down. . . .

This is going to happen, I can promise you. It is going to happen in time, because hundreds of millions of dollars are going wasted on unnecessary programs.

talking points The Public Domain

Can you build a reputation off a golf course that's practically invisible?

That's the question I asked a couple of weeks ago, in a post about Mike Nuzzo, the architect who designed Wolf Point Club in Texas. Wolf Point is said to be a very good golf course, but it was built for the personal use of a wealthy Texan and, as a result, hardly anyone has played it.

Wolf Point is not a career builder. It may very well deserve glowing reviews, state rankings, maybe even national rankings. But it won't ever get them. For all practical purposes, it doesn't exist.

Similarly, exactly how visible are the golf courses at private clubs? How much easier is it to build a reputation off courses that are only marginally more accessible than Wolf Point?

Tom Doak addressed this issue during a recent interview with Darius Oliver of Planet Golf. Oliver asked about the value of designing golf courses that are open to the public. Here's part of Doak's answer:

When I was a younger architect, I thought doing private clubs had more prestige. Out of the first 10 golf courses I built, eight of them were public golf courses, mostly modest public courses.

But then I built a course in Philadelphia called Stonewall. It was my first private club. I thought it was really good, [but] it got no recognition at all. I thought it was going to be the course that boosted my career up, but once it didn’t get voted best new golf course of the year, no one paid attention anymore, because it was private and people couldn’t play it.

The magazines write about courses that are publicly accessible, that readers can go and play. . . . Pacific Dunes, Cape Kidnappers, Barnbougle -- they’re all beautiful places, they’re all by the ocean, they’re all publicly accessible. Golf Digest, Golf magazine -- every magazine writes something about Bandon Dunes every year.

It’s like being the guy that built Pebble Beach, Jack Neville. [He] really only did one golf course. If he were still alive, he’d still be getting a ton of work without even trying, because everyone would want to hire the guy who did Pebble Beach. But the reason Pebble Beach is as famous as it is is because it’s a resort golf course and people can go there.

It's a great fortune for me to have [my best] courses all be public.

I love Sand Hills, but Sand Hills is not only a private club but a private club with a short season and a small membership. They play maybe 8,000 rounds of golf a year there. The year after Pacific Dunes opened, they played 40,000 rounds of golf on it. They’d already played more golf on it, and more people had seen it, than had seen Sand Hills in the seven years it had been open.

That’s important.

china The Healing Game

Perhaps as soon as this year, a coal mine in one of China’s most polluted cities could begin to find new life as a golf community.

The to-be-named enclave is to take shape on 1,500 acres in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi Province, and will eventually include houses, a hotel, a retail/commercial area, and a pair of 18-hole courses.

Joe Jemsek, a Chicago, Illinois-based architect, has been hired to design the first course, part of which will consist of mountain-style holes that will be routed through hills on the property. (No, the track won’t be walkable.)

“I like the concept of taking a site that’s unsuitable for much of anything and healing the mountain with new, environmentally friendly development,” Jemsek says.

Jemsek is working with a Chinese firm, Royal Golf, on the project.

The developers, a group led by a Taiwan-based Chinese investor, are currently trying to secure a lease on the property. If they can wrap up the negotiations quickly, they could start remediating the site this year.

With luck, Jemsek’s course could open in 2014.

The Week That Was: April 3, 2011

cambodia A Huge Resort in Koh Kong Province

A Chinese development firm aims to build a massive vacation destination in Koh Kong Province, in southwestern Cambodia.

The to-be-named mega-resort will spread over some 90,000 acres in the province's Botum Sakor and Kiri Sakor districts. At build-out, it's expected to include houses, hotels, an airport, a marina, a shopping area, and at least one golf course.

“This is a major tourism development in Asia,” the province's deputy governor told the Phnom Penh Post. “It will be the second largest attraction for tourists to Cambodia, after the Angkor Wat temples.”

The resort is being developed by Union Development Group, which has already built a port to facilitate the delivery of construction materials to the site. UDG has begun to work on the resort's infrastructure, and it expects the construction to take 25 years.

design Tiger Blood

People are quick to make jokes about the whiffs that Tiger Woods has made in the design business: Three projects, three strike-outs. Ha ha ha.

Me, I'm not laughing. As far as I'm concerned, the entire golf industry would be better off if each of Woods' commissions -- the desert course in Dubai, the coastal course along the Baja Peninsula in Mexico, and the mountain course in North Carolina -- were open and thriving. After a while, gallows humor stops being funny.

This morning, on the eve of the Masters, Paul Sullivan of the New York Times addressed a question that many have previously asked: “Can Tiger Woods Design re-emerge as a viable enterprise?”


In Sullivan's view, the answer to the question goes like this: It seems likely that Mr. Woods will get the opportunity to build other courses in the future. At some point, his personal scandal will have faded, the real estate market may pick up, and he could even start winning golf tournaments again.

Not very enthusiastic, is he?

Sullivan's story breaks no new ground, but it does add to the knowledge about Woods' trinity of bogged-down projects. To wit:

Dubai. You can stick a fork in it. An official with a group that promotes golf in the Middle East tells Sullivan that Woods' course is “as good as dead and buried.”

“Basically, it was an exorbitant project,” said the unnamed official, who also provided a nice detail about the whereabouts of the development group: the CEO “had left” and his right-hand-man is “back in Canada.”

Mexico. Two and a half years after Punta Brava was announced, Sullivan reports, “no dirt has been moved” and Woods “has not visited in some time.” Nonetheless, the developers continue to insist that the “groundbreaking is set for later this year.”

If and when it's built, Punta Brava is likely to be a downscale shadow of its former self. Brian Tucker, one of the developers, says that prices of residential properties in the community, once expected to range from $3 million to $12 million, will now go for $800,000 to $3.9 million.

North Carolina. Cliffs Communities continues to work on its seventh course, a Gary Player-designed track in South Carolina, but Woods' course outside Asheville remains stuck in development limbo. “Woods’s course can’t be completed until more homes are sold,” Sullivan writes, “but buyers won’t commit until the course is finished.” As a result, “construction has halted until at least this summer.”

“We make no bones about it,” says a Cliffs insider. “Cash flow is still tough.”

Cash flow is also tough at Tiger Woods Design. Since accepting the assignment at Punta Brava, Woods hasn't been offered a contract he's been willing to sign.

“We are evaluating opportunities from all over the world,” the president of Tiger Woods Design told Sullivan. “We’re staying focused on our original mission of finding great sites, great partners, and creating spectacular designs. I’m very confident about our future.”

If that doesn't sound like boilerplate, I don't know what does.

talking points Swimming with the Shark

In a recent sit-down with the Golf Channel, Greg Norman identified some of the places where he believes golf development has a big upside. Here's a little of what he had to say:

The central government and head of tourism [in China] would like to see the game explode [to] where they have more golfers playing than in the United States in the next 20 years. Will they get there? Who knows.

Everyone's talking about how there are 3 million golfers in China, but only 380,000 play golf 10 or more times a year. Only 50 courses in China are under construction right now, which is not a lot, to say the least. If they meet the growth they want -- 25 million golfers -- they have to build 3,000 to 5,000 golf courses. . . .

There is a boom in South Korea because of Y. E. Yang and all the girls [on the LPGA tours]. A lot of Chinese money is in Vietnam, and it's a great destination. . . .

[The 2016 Olympics are] a big catalyst to stimulating the game of golf. We're seeing it from Brazil, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Columbia. Everywhere you look, people want to build golf courses.

News & Notes from the USA #2

. . . Is Billy Casper Golf embarrassed to admit that it manages municipal courses? Last week the company inked a contract to take over three golf properties owned by Prince William County, Virginia. An account of the transaction noted that Casper now has more than 125 courses in its portfolio, 70 of them municipal tracks. Among the latter are golf properties owned by the Chicago Park District, the Cook County (Illinois) Forest Preserve District, and the cities of Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Knoxville, and Tulsa. But Casper doesn't call them “municipal” courses. In fact, I can't find even a single use of the word municipal on the company's website. Instead, Casper lumps its municipal holdings into a group named “multi-course golf portfolios” and indirectly refers to them as “affordable, daily-fee courses.” What gives? In recent years, no golf course operator has been more adept at winning municipal contracts. Why isn't Casper proud to say so?

. . . Los Angeles County is the latest U.S. municipality to raise its golf fees. Since the beginning of the year, dozens of towns and cities from coast to coast have added a dollar or two to their greens fees -- a clear indication that the price of a round of golf has bottomed out and the era of cut-rate pricing is about to end. In L. A. County, the new rates take effect this month.

. . . Sometimes it seems that the only golf courses being built in America today are so-called minimalist courses. The next one set to make an appearance, probably on Memorial Day, is Awarii Dunes, a Jim Engh-desigened track in Kearney, Nebraska. A local newspaper has described it as “Engh’s vision of Irish golf.” The course's owner, Kent Freudenberg, whispered sweet nothings into a reporter's ear -- he said that Engh “found a golf course instead of building it” -- but he correctly noted that “a lot of people are excited about this style of golf.” As for Engh, well, the opening of Awarii Dunes officially closes the book on his current slate of U.S. commissions. He's said to have other courses in the works in China, Mexico, and the Canary Islands.

. . . Speaking of minimalist golf, Jim Urbina -- fresh off his contributions to Bandon Dunes' acclaimed Old Macdonald course -- has hung out his own shingle in suburban Denver, Colorado. His first solo commission: he's overseeing a restoration of the A. W. Tillinghast-designed golf course at the former Dellwood Country Club in New City, New York. Urbina, part of the new breed of architects who hand-crafts his work -- he apprenticed with Pete Dye and was graduated by the University of Tom Doak -- says that he intends to “bring back the expanse, the broad views, and beauty” of Tillinghast's course. “When it's done,” he said in a press release, it's “going to open people's eyes.” Dellwood was sold in 2009 and is now called Paramount Country Club, mostly because it was originally built by movie mogul Adolph Zukor, the founder of -- you guessed it -- Paramount Pictures. The makeover begins as soon as weather will allow.

. . . Entertainment Weekly recently asked actor Michael Weatherly what he likes to carry in his back pocket. “A knife wrapped in a comic book,” came the reply. A symbol of our times, or a sign of a pending apocalypse?