The Week That Was, october 2, 2011

russia Zero, Nothing, Nada

So much talk, so little action.

That's how I started a post about golf in Russia back in July 2010, and nothing has happened since to change my opinion.

Russia is one of the richest nations on the planet (I believe Moscow is still home to more billionaires as any other city), it provides office space to virtually every major international corporation on the planet, and the Olympics, with thousands of tourists in their wake, are headed to Sochi. Nonetheless, I don't believe the nation's golf business has managed to build even 20 golf courses since way back in the 1970s, when Armand Hammer told Leonid Brezhnev that he needed to commit to golf if he wanted to woo Western money.

Just a few years ago, the Russian Golf Association hatched a grand plan to build 500 golf facilities by 2018, and do you know what came of it? Nada. Today, whenever anybody in golf talks about Russia, he talks about the same thing people were talking about at the turn of the century: development potential.


So excuse me if I ho-hum the news that PGA National Golf Course will soon open in the Zavidovo Lakes area north of Moscow, or that a publication described as the city's “leading real estate magazine” has already named it “Best New Design in Russia 2011.” For my money, it's too little, too late.

Here's what's passing for golf news in Russia these days:

The ridiculously long (7,400-yard) course, designed by Dave Sampson of European Golf Design, is scheduled to open next fall. It's the centerpiece of the 3,282-acre Zavidovo resort community, which is taking shape along the southern shore of the Ivankovskoe Reservoir, about 80 miles north of Moscow. If all goes as planned, the community will eventually include 5,000 houses, a town center, hotels, office and meeting space, a spa, two marinas, a water sports center, and a short, nine-hole layout that will be part of a PGA National Golf Academy.

Sounds like nothing more than a real estate play to me, but I'm just another ugly American.

Oh yeah, one other thing: Maria Verchenova, Russia's first (and, I believe, still only) LPGA pro, will be, according to a press release, “attached” to the club. I think she knows her role, even if the press release isn't willing to spell it out.

“I always like to bring something extra-special to the golf course,” Verchenova once said, “so if I’m wearing sexier, more stylish stuff -- like a shorter skirt or a nice, tennis-style dress -- and people notice, then great.”

Some information in this post originally appeared in the December 2008 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

netherlands Holland Daze

Golf Course Architecture has published some new information about Frank Pont's golf course in southern Holland, which is under construction and could open at least nine of its 27 holes sometime next year.

De Swinkelsche is taking shape on a 240-acre farm owned by Harry and Hendrik Swinkels in the town of Someren. Earlier this year, Pont told me that it would be “one of the Netherlands’ best new courses built in the last 30 years.” Based on what he told GCA, reaching that goal will require him to combine both minimalist and maximalist design approaches.

Allow me to explain.

The Swinkels' farm is mostly flat and featureless. But a glimpse of its more interesting past can be found in the forest that stands adjacent to it. The forest is full of contours and undulations that lend themselves poorly to farming but well to golf.

Pont plans to build five holes in the forest, disturbing as little of the topography as possible, as a minimalist would. The other 13 holes, however, will be laid out on the farm, which needs to be utterly and completely transformed, Tom Fazio-style, into an expanse that resembles the forest. As Pont explained it, “That means everything -- from the run of the little creek to the positions of hills, humps and hillocks, ponds and wetlands -- will be created. The key will be to create a credible, wild, and natural landscape from scratch.”

Sounds like fun.

Pont earned an MBA at the University of Chicago and, after a stint as an investment banker in England, studied golf design in Edinburgh and did an apprenticeship with David McLay Kidd. He's enlisted Conor Walsh, Kidd's favorite shaper (they worked together on Kidd's celebrated Scottish courses, Machrihanish Dunes and the Castle course at St. Andrews) to do the dirty work at De Swinkelsche.

“It has the potential to be an amazing course,” Walsh said.

Pont has also invited a Canadian architect, Jeff Mingay, to provide some design ideas. “I’ve always wanted to sort of do the equivalent of a jam session in building a golf course,” he told GCA.

When all is said and done, De Swinkelsche will offer a regulation-length 18-hole track, a nine-hole “practice” course, and an aqua range.

Some information in this post originally appeared in the January 2011 issue of World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

ukraine From Russia, With You Know What

All the Russian money flowing into Ukraine is about to spark the development of the nation’s fifth golf course.

The nine-hole, regulation-length track is being designed by Peter Harradine, a third-generation Swiss architect, and it’ll be the centerpiece of a mid-scale golf community in Stugna, a suburb of Kiev.

Stugna Golf Club will be part of a community that’s been designed by a Swiss firm, IN-VI. The community’s unidentified developers also plan to build houses, a hotel, a small shopping area, and an international school.

Harradine, an ardent promoter of “affordable” courses that can be enjoyed by average golfers, has described the layout as “a new and unpretentious type of course” that will be “sustainable” and serve as “a welcome contrast to the usual monster 18-hole ‘championship’ courses that have already ruined the game in most emerging golfing markets.”

Ukraine’s golf portfolio currently consists of nine-hole courses in Kharkov, Lugansk, and Makarovsky and a 36-hole facility in Kiev, all of which have opened in this century. One of the nine-hole courses, Superior Golf Club in Kharkov, is expected to soon grow into an 18-hole, championship-length track.

Harradine’s 18-hole course at Pravets Golf & Spa Resort in Pravets, Bulgaria officially opened in May, and these days the Erlen-based architect is redesigning the Nad al-Sheba Golf Course in Dubai. The course, which will eventually grow to 18 holes, is part of the new Meydan horse-racing facility.

Some information in this post originally appeared in the March 2011 and July 2011 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

The Week That Was, september 25, 2011

mongolia Postcard from Ron Fream

A couple of days ago I received this dispatch, via postcard, from our faithful, Malaysia-based correspondent:

Khövsgöl Lake -- Hello, Bob! Golfplan is doing 18 holes at Ulaanbaatar, Sky Resort-Golf-Ski. Winter is approaching in higher areas. We are 500 miles west of Ulaanbaatar. Reindeer herders have left for higher, greener places. Many yak, casmin goats. Yak soup and yak cheese is good here. Cheers! Ron Fream

A few notes:

1. Khövsgöl Lake is located in northern Mongolia, not far from the Russian border. It's one of the world's 17 “ancient lakes” -- it's said to be 2 million years old -- and one of the most pristine. Its water is said to be pure enough to drink.

2. Ulaanbaatar is Mongolia's capital.


3. Golfplan's course will be Mongolia's first championship-length track. It's been designed by David Dale.

4. Sky Resort will have houses, a hotel, and ski trails. It's being developed by Ulaanbaatar-based MCS Group, which is controlled by Odjargal Jambaljamts and his brother, Od. In addition to its development activities, MCS distributes Proctor & Gamble projects and is Mongolia’s Coca-Cola bottler.

5. Finally, yes, that's a picture of a yak in the wild.

Some information in this post originally appeared in the October 2009 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

india Will Trump Tower Over India?

The Trump Organization wants to export its brand of uber-luxurious hotels to India.

In a recent interview with Daily News & Analysis, Donald Trump, Jr. outlined some of the company's thoughts about India and had the following to say about its prospects:

I have been to [a] majority of the emerging markets, and I am bullish on India. After visiting the country at least six times in the past five years, I have realized that our brand can add significant value to India. . . .

We are proactively seeking management contracts that are aligned with the company’s long-term strategic vision of operating a collection of iconic properties in key cities and resort destinations globally. For India, this means a handful of hotels, likely ranging from approximately 150 to 500 rooms, depending on the market. . . .

We continue to strategically review opportunities in major cities and resort destinations including Mumbai, New Delhi (Central), Bangalore, and Goa and are working with local developers who carry strong track records to bring [the] Trump Hotel Collection to the market. Selectivity is fundamental, as we only want to be part of the best developments. . . .

My question: If the Trumps are looking to build hotels in India, can a golf course be far behind?

scotland Trump's Scotland Yard

Speaking of the Trump Organization, it's released an artist's rendering of the clubhouse it plans to build at Trump International Golf Club Scotland.

Here's what the 17,200-square-foot building will look like:


According to a story in the Galloway Gazette, the building's design “echoes that of Trump's home in Scotland,” the 19th-century MacLeod House on the Menie Estate.

One of Trump's colleagues has said that the building “will be second to none,” but some members of the design community disagree. The New York Post found a Scottish professor who describes the structure as a “hideous leftover from the Victorian era” that's “not even worthy of Disneyland.”

The clubhouse was designed by Acanthus Architects, an Aberdeenshire-based firm.

worth reading The Rise of the Soul-Less City

We all know the world's mega-cities, and may have even visited some of them: Beijing, New York City, Tokyo, Mumbai, Mexico City, London. These are the sprawling urban centers that define nations, fuel ambitions, and capture imaginations. If you can make it there, as the song goes, you can make it anywhere.

But Edwin Heathcote of the Financial Times believes that “the real, phenomenal growth in world cities is happening outside these famous, historic -– almost romantic -– centers, in the second-tier cities of Asia that can seem to spring up overnight.”

The way Heathcote sees it, these meticulously planned second-tier cities will serve as models for Asia's urban future and may soon re-define the way all of us live. Here's an edited version of his story about these emerging urban centers in China:

Earlier this year, I ascended the 100 stories or so of Guangzhou International Finance Centre –- the tallest building ever built by a British architect, Wilkinson Eyre. It is an elegant, streamlined cigar of a building. From the top, you could see perhaps four or five miles in every direction before the yellowish industrial smog swallowed up the horizon. The young architect showing me around said that when construction on the tower started, a couple of years ago, virtually nothing was there; it was all farmland, there was no city to see from the site.

Guangzhou has exploded -– the same goes for Wuhan, Chengdu, Shenzhen, and dozens of others. But these are not cities growing through informal settlements at their edges, haphazardly; they are ruthlessly planned. A McKinsey report published in March this year predicted that, in 2025, 100 of the world’s 600 top cities will be new entries from China.

It is calculated that 40 percent of global growth over the next 15 years will come from 400 mid-size cities, many of which we will never have heard of. That growth equates to more than that predicted for all the world’s developed economies and the mega-cities of the emerging markets (including São Paulo, Mumbai, Shanghai, and the others) together.

The top five fastest-growing cities in the world are all in Asia -– and they may come as quite a surprise: Beihai (China), Ghaziabad (India), Sana’a (Yemen), Surat (India again), and, despite everything, Kabul [Afghanistan]. Somehow business will need to re-orientate itself towards these exploding cities and their vast opportunities.

The Chinese government has long realized that its extraordinary industrial boom is not only attracting former agricultural workers from the country to these new mid-size cities but that it is creating a new bourgeoisie, a business class of entrepreneurs and managers.

This emerging and increasingly wealthy middle class is exactly where China has decided to invest. It has realized that they will begin to demand the infrastructure of bourgeois city life, from education, health care, and public transport to leisure facilities, shopping, and parks. And China’s notably top-down planning system allows the creation of these at a stroke. Huge, almost unimaginable infrastructure projects are being put in place not only in the big centers, in Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, but in these secondary cities. . . .

The established mega-cities -– New York, Istanbul, London, Cairo, Beijing, Tokyo, and São Paulo -- developed over many centuries, from historic cores that bred poorer, less formal settlements around them, which were then themselves subsumed and upgraded into new quarters, so that cities grew in concentric rings.

These new cities, theoretically, will allow their planners to bypass the problems of historic cores and aging infrastructure, to wire in connected city tissue from the outset. And if you stroll along the green spine of Guangzhou’s Zhujiang new town, which conceals a subway built beneath a central pedestrian park space and a seemingly endless shopping mall at sub-basement level, you get the feeling that these cities could work. . . .

It is easy to criticize these new cities as soul-less and corporate –- which they are -– but the scale of the achievement in building these places is astonishing. These are cities that will be capable of housing the millions still pouring in from the country. The rural population, currently standing at 900 million, is expected to decrease by 500 million over the next 30 years. . . .

Is it a choice between vibrancy and inefficiency versus the grimly repetitive but inarguably efficient? One is making do and getting by, the other is getting on with it. It is impossible not to admire the Chinese for their extraordinary determination, even if their vision of the future is not necessarily one we all might want to live in.

At least they have a vision.

canada Tilting at Windmill

The Royal Canadian Golf Association can breathe a sign of relief: After more than two years’ worth of delays, it appears that Windmill Golf Group will soon break ground on the course that may host the 2016 Canadian Open.

The 7,800-yard course, in suburban Calgary, has been pegged for Canada’s premier golf event since 2009, when it was known as the Legacy Club. Since then, the track has been given a new name -– Copithorne Club, after Bill and Harriette Copithorne, who own the land it’ll sit upon –- and all indications are that construction will begin in the spring of 2012.

Windmill owns three golf properties in and around Calgary, including Silverwing Golf Course and Elbow Springs Golf Club. Its track at Copithorne has been co-designed by a pair of well-known touring pros, Johnny Miller and Stephen Ames, with assistance from two of Tom Fazio’s former associates, Tim Jackson and David Kahn of Phoenix, Arizona-based Jackson Kahn Design.

Copithorne will be among the attractions at Harmony, a 1,748-acre community that’s being developed by Calgary-based Bordeaux Developments. The course, which could eventually grow to 27 or even 36 holes, is now scheduled to open in 2015.

That still may be cutting it a bit close for the RCGA.