The Week That Was, june 3, 2012

talking points In Defense of Britney Spears

Here’s a headline that pretty much sums up the problem our business has with attracting young people: BRITNEY SPEARS TAKES UP GOLF, SCARES OFF GOLFERS.

The headline was written by a wag at the Arizona Republic, in the mistaken belief that he (or she) was doing the golf business a favor by making fun of a celebrity who’s learning to golf. The unfortunate truth is, Spears isn’t scaring off anybody on any golf course in the world. In fact, when she steps up to a tee, large crowds gather. And if the so-called leaders of the golf industry had any guts, they’d enlist her to attract a lot more.

The Republic’s story, like so many others about golf presented by the lamestream media, is really ugly and demoralizing.

For starters, it identifies Spears as the singer of a song called “Toxic,” and we all know that “toxic” things are bad things. The suggestion, I presume, is that Spears is toxic for golf.

Don’t think I’m making a mountain of a molehill. Spears has released something like seven albums. She’s sung dozens of songs that a newspaper writer could link to her. To cite just one example, a story in the Sun, where I believe the news of Spears’ interest in golf broke, linked her to “Oops!... I Did It Again.” What makes “Toxic” a more appropriate association?

The story says that golfers are “struggling to deal with Britney’s inability to play the game, as she regularly lets go of her club and cannot hit the ball.” News flash: This is typical of beginners.

Finally, the story repeats a comment from a golfer originally published by the Sun: “'It’s heads-up when she’s around. She’s hit a few golfers and managed to land balls in golf carts.” So did Gerald Ford, folks.

You know, I never in my life imagined I’d write so many words about Britney Spears, let alone so many in her defense. And I’m not done yet.

Justin Timberlake, the singer and actor, is so passionate about our game that he bought a golf course in Tennessee. Emily Blunt, the love interest in The Adjustment Bureau, has taken up golf. (“There’s something cool about whizzing around on a golf cart with ice-cold beers,” she says.) Adam Levine of Maroon 5, a “Haney Project” graduate, was recently spotted playing nine holes at a course in New Jersey.

These are young, popular, successful people who enjoy golf, and in recent years our industry has been desperately seeking to attract others just like them. But do you think we’ll see them – or any crowd-attracting, opinion-making young stars – in an advertising campaign for golf anytime soon?

The answer is no. Our tradition-bound business would rather let the press joke about young celebrities who play golf, especially when they don’t quite fit the mold that country-clubbers prefer. (See Cooper, Alice.) Our idea of reaching out to new markets is to trot out geezers and has-beens at celebrity tournaments, in the mistaken belief that they’ll make kids laugh and “grow the game.” (Note: I still love you, Bill Murray.)

It wouldn’t be so awful to see a television commercial featuring Spears mis-hitting a few balls, making some jokes about herself, and ending with a tag line that goes something like, “Join me. It’s fun!” I know she sometimes comes off as white-trashy, but jeez, she plays at Sherwood Country Club.

Like rats, we eat our young.

And in Other News . . .

. . . russia  An important piece of golf history -- Moscow City Golf Club, the home of Russia’s first golf course -- will soon have a new owner. The club, which was built on a garbage dump in downtown Moscow, opened in 1988, as Moscow Golf Club. Its debut was weighty enough to lure some internationally known sports dignitaries, notably Mike Tyson and Pelé, to hit ceremonial balls on opening day. The club’s nine-hole course was designed by Sven Tumba, a Swede who took up golf -- first as a touring pro, later as an architect -- after he retired from a renowned career in ice hockey. Tumba died late last year, and his family, which co-owns the club with the city of Moscow, has been looking for a buyer. The search led it to Sberbank, an entity controlled by Bank of Russia, the nation’s central bank. I wish I could report that Moscow Golf Club’s opening sparked the glorious history of golf in Russia, but it wouldn’t be true. Over the past 14 years, developers have managed to open only 14 other golf properties in Russia.

. . . india  Construction has begun on Gary Player’s first golf course in India. The track will be the second at DLF Golf & Country Club in suburban New Delhi, and it appears that Player has been required to weave some design magic. “I want you to tell you that the surface I was given to work with is as flat as this stage I am standing on,” the South Carolina-based architect said at a recent press function. The club is among the attractions at DLF City, India’s premier planned community, which is probably best known as the business center where General Electric, Nestle, PepsiCo, British Airways, American Express, and other multinational giants have set up shop. The club’s first course, an Arnold Palmer-designed track, is widely regarded as one of the nation’s most challenging venues, and it’s hosted several noteworthy professional events, including the Johnnie Walker Classic and the Avantha Masters. Kushal Pal Singh, the community’s developer, expects to open the first nine holes of Player’s course next spring, the second nine in 2014.

Some information in the previous post originally appeared in the September 2009 and June 2010 issues of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

. . . brazil  For the first time in weeks, we’ve received encouraging news from Rio de Janeiro: The golf events of the 31st Olympiad may take place as scheduled, because a judge has rejected a petition that would have prevented contracts from being signed and construction from taking place. The petition was filed by Elmway Participacoes, which has laid a claim to the property where the games’ Gil Hanse-designed course will be built. The judge’s decision doesn’t serve as a ruling on the legal dispute over the land, but it will allow the city and the Olympic organizers to resume business as usual. Naturally, however, Elmway Participacoes will appeal.

. . . wild card click This week, we got another reason to sing the blues.

italy Gary Player’s Double Play

If the economic and political chips fall the right way, Gary Player’s firm is going to break ground on two golf courses in Italy this year.

One will be built on Sardinia, as part of an established golf resort called Is Molas. The other will be the centerpiece of the Manzano Golf Resort in Tuscany, one of the nation’s premier vacation destinations.

It behooves me to note, however, that when it comes to development in Italy, there are no sure things.

“There’s a fairly cumbersome approval process the projects have to go through,” says Scott Ferrell, the president of Gary Player Design. “And of course, the recent economic news hasn’t helped any.”

Then again, Player has been through this before. His firm has already designed two courses in Italy, a nine-hole layout at Arzaga Golf Club in Brescia and an 18-hole course at Donnafugata Golf Resort & Spa on the island of Sicily.

So, fingers crossed, Player hopes to break ground on its new courses by the end of 2012.

The first is likely to emerge at Is Molas, the first resort on Sardinia to offer golf and the only one with a 27-hole complex. Its 18-hole Old course, designed by Ken Cotton and Frank Pennink with assistance from Piero Mancinelli, is a Mediterranean favorite, as it’s hosted numerous professional and amateur championships since it opened in 1975. It’s complemented by a nine-hole executive-length track that was designed Franco Piras, Player’s representative in Italy.

Unlike the Old course at Is Molas, Player’s 7,100-yard track will be tailored primarily for vacationers, and it’ll take shape on flat, mostly featureless property. “The course will have to be manufactured,” notes Jeff Lawrence, the firm’s staff architect in Travelers Rest, South Carolina.

Player’s other Italian job, an 18-hole championship-length layout at Manzano, will be part of what’s being billed as “the first-ever golf resort in Cortona.” At build-out, the 200-acre property will feature 36 “fractional” villas, a 40-room hotel, meeting space, a wellness center, restaurants, and other attractions.

Farrell tells me that his firm is pursuing several other opportunities in Italy these days, including another prospective course on Sardinia.

A slightly different version of this post originally appeared in the March 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

united states, John Harbottle III, RIP

For the second consecutive Sunday, I must sadly report about the passing of a notable golf course architect.

Last week it was K. D. Bagga. This week it’s John Harbottle III, a Tacoma, Washington-based designer who was just 53. The Olympian reports that Harbottle, one of the busiest and best-known architects in the Pacific Northwest, died last Thursday in Los Angeles International Airport, after complaining of pain in his neck and shoulder.

Harbottle had golf in his blood. His father won the state of Washington’s senior amateur championship five times, and his mother won the U.S. Women’s Amateur championship in 1955. Their son studied landscape architecture at the University of Washington, and, like so many architects that are doing commendable work today, apprenticed with Pete Dye.

Harbottle established his own firm in 1992, and he produced 15 original courses in Washington, California, Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. Hands down, his most celebrated work is the Olympic Course at Gold Mountain Golf Club in Bremerton, Washington. The course, part of a municipal complex, has hosted two national events, including the 2006 PubLinks championship, and two NCAA regional championships.

Like Dye, Harbottle learned his craft in part by studying some of Scotland’s most famous links. His goal, he once said, was to produce “natural-looking golf courses with a links touch.” He occasionally produced them with “signature” contributors, among them Johnny Miller, Peter Jacobsen, and Fuzzy Zoeller.

Nearly a decade ago, in an interview with Travel Golf, Harbottle said that he admired the work of Tom Fazio, Jay Morrish, Dana Fry, Bobby Weed, Rick Jacobson, and Keith Foster. He singled out Donald Ross’ No. 2 course at Pinehurst as his favorite place to play but noted that he also enjoyed the classic layouts at Cypress Point Club, San Francisco Golf Club, and Pine Valley Golf Club.

In the interview, Harbottle provided a glimpse of his design philosophy:

These days, when we have a project where we have to move a lot of dirt, we try to move it in a way that looks like we haven’t moved a lot of dirt. So even though we may be moving mountains in some aspects, we’re still trying to do it so it looks like a classical old site. We’re trying to make the site look like it was made for the golf course, even though at times it may not have been.

More recently, in a story in Southland Golf, Harbottle described a great golf course as one that makes golfers “thrilled to just be there.”

I suppose that, in a nutshell, was what Harbottle tried to achieve with his courses. It’s a pity that he didn’t live long enough to design more of them.

brazil Olympics 2016: Still in Limbo

The blunder in Brazil continues, with no end in immediate sight.

The latest: Elmway Participacoes, the company insisting that it owns the property where the golf course for the 2016 Olympics is to take shape, has formally petitioned a Brazilian court to void any contracts that may have been signed and to block any planned construction projects.

The Associated Press reports that a final ruling on the dispute, which is now threatening the start of the course’s construction (it’s scheduled to begin in October), will be made by the nation’s Brazil's Higher Court of Justice -- the highest court in the land, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica. Such courts aren’t known for quick deliberations, and the AP once again notes that a decision “could take months or even years.”

I don’t know about you, but it feels to me like this snafu is on the verge of becoming a fubar. City officials in Rio de Janeiro have acknowledged that they don’t have a Plan B to replace their faltering Plan A. Is it time for them to start thinking about one?

talking points Feeling the Earth Move

Like Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Oprah Winfrey, Tom Fazio now has a vanity publication: Fazio Premier Clubs.

I haven’t yet seen the inaugural issue (and probably never will, if truth be told), but it features an interview with Fazio conducted by the magazine’s editors. In the interview, by happy coincidence, Fazio addresses a topic that I blogged about last month, in my discussion of “minimalist” and “maximalist” courses.

Here’s Fazio’s perspective on the issue:

Variety is good, but I think minimalism got carried away as a theme. Just because it didn’t take that much to create, I don’t think that makes it any better or worse, and I don’t think because you moved a lot of earth that makes it better or worse. The only thing that counts is the end result. No one cares or wonders how much earth was moved at Cypress Point or Pebble Beach.

And in Other News . . .

. . . canada  Greg Norman’s new golf course in Peachland, British Columbia is under construction and on schedule to open next summer. Strictly speaking, the layout is a replacement course, as it’s taking shape on property that once served as the home of Ponderosa Golf Club. But Norman’s 7,100-yard, tournament-worthy track will bear no resemblance to the original Ponderosa track, which occupied just 58 acres. “The current design will stretch over 400 acres from one end of it to the other,” the club’s general manager told the Vancouver Sun. “It’s absolutely enormous, the biggest one I have seen.” The resort community that’s expected to grow up around the course will also be big, as it’s been master-planned to include more than 2,000 houses, a village center, a hotel, an outdoor theater, a winery, and other attractions.

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

. . . united states Regarding those happier days in the U.S. golf business that I blogged about two weeks ago: My pile of anecdotal evidence is accumulating quickly. The latest morsel of good news has been dished out by Don Padgett, Jr., whose Pinehurst golf resort is ringing up rounds at a pre-Great Recession pace. “It has been a great spring,” Padgett recently told Golf Digest. “Our numbers are back to the 2008 levels. We’ve had an early spring, the weather has been great, [and] the buzz for No. 2 [have] all driven our business levels beyond what we expected. We’re very pleased. . . . We haven’t had a spring like this since 2008.”

. . . wild card click So much for the mistaken belief that men can only talk about sports and sex.

Short Notice, may 25, 2012

John Harbottle, one of the Pacific Northwest’s best-known golf course architects, died yesterday. Details are sketchy, but the Tri-City Herald reports that the Tacoma, Washington-based designer succumbed to a heart attack while in California. Harbottle was 53. His courses, he once said, were “old-fashioned-looking” and had a “links touch.” I’ll have more to say about his life and work in Sunday’s blog.

Now that Bandon Dunes has become one of the world’s premier golf destinations, it seems logical to ask which of its four 18-hole courses gets the most play. The answer: Old Macdonald. “I think that has a lot to do with the fact that Old Mac is fun,” the resort’s owner, Mike Keiser, recently told Golf Digest. “How often is a course designed to be fun? Turns out, that’s a popular concept.” If you’re wondering, the second most-popular course at the resort is Bandon Dunes, followed by Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails.

This summer, Nicklaus Design will oversee a minor makeover of the Mountain course at the Bear Mountain resort community in Victoria, British Columbia. The work will affect three holes on the nine-year-old track, which was co-designed by Jack and Steve Nicklaus and opened in 2003. Bear Mountain’s owners are undertaking the work to create room for more houses and condos.

Speaking of British Columbia, a 500-foot-long replica of the Great Wall of China, a faux Chinese junk, and a Pagoda-style clubhouse are among the attractions at a new golf course in Langley. Pagoda Ridge Golf Course, which is said to be the town’s first new course “in decades,” is scheduled to open sometime this summer. The Langley Times says that the 7,000-yard track, which has been co-designed by Mike Gregg and Scott Woodland, has been in the making for 22 years.

Bob Cupp has officially taken his one-year turn as the president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects. Cupp, who’s based in Atlanta, Georgia, was elected by his peers at the group’s recent meeting in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His mission, he said in a press statement, is “to bring attention back to the simple pleasures of walking a well-designed golf course” and “to lead more people -- especially families -- to play more golf more often, for the sheer fun of the game.”

A third event on the European Tour has been called off due to financial problems. It’s the Czech Open, which was scheduled to take place in August at Prosper Golf Resort in Celadna. Money issues have also forced the Tour to cancel events in Bahrain and Spain.

Hindu tradition calls for feeding New Delhi’s monkeys twice a week, and as a result the animals have grown wildly in numbers and become a public scourge. The New York Times reports that the monkeys, roaming the city in packs, routinely rob the city’s residents of food and attack those who don’t cooperate. “They were totally silent, very quick, and highly effective,” said the victim of a mugging.

thailand Days of Heaven

By the end of this year, in an effort to create a “golf heaven,” Siam Country Club plans to break ground on its third golf course.

The New course, as it’s being called, will draw even more attention to Siam, which is already something of a paradise on earth for Asia’s golf business. The club, one of the first private enclaves in Thailand, opened in 1971 and has hosted a Honda-sponsored LPGA event every year since 2007. It currently offers 45 holes of golf.

The New course will take shape on 200 acres dotted with lakes that will come into play on about half of its holes. Its designer, Brit Stenson of Cleveland, Ohio-based IMG, says the layout won’t be as challenging as Siam’s Old and Plantation tracks. “A lot of their clientele is Japanese,” Stenson explains, “and they want something more forgiving.”

To that end, Stenson has designed a course with large greens and shallow bunkers. The track will stretch to 7,489 yards, but he believes the club’s members and vacationers will more often play it at somewhere between 6,000 and 6,500 yards. And while Stenson often collaborates with one of the touring pros managed by IMG, he’s likely flying solo at Siam.

The club is located in a suburb of Pattaya, along the Gulf of Thailand. It was established by Thaworn Phornprapha, the founder of Siam Motors Company. Siam Motors began its existence as a seller of new and used cars, graduated to become the first overseas distributor for Nissan, and then opened an assembly plant in Thailand. Nowadays it’s diversified into manufacturing and trading operations for companies such as Hitachi (elevators), Yamaha (musical and audio products), and Komatsu (heavy equipment).

The club is now run by Phornprapha’s son, Phornthep, who’s taken his father’s dream of creating Thailand’s premier golf destination and run with it. In 2006, Phornprapha hired Scottsdale, Arizona-based Schmidt Curley Golf Design to redesign Siam’s 7,162-yard Old course and to build a new 27-hole complex, the Plantation course. And after the New course opens, he’ll likely hire Stenson to design an “international-standard” golf academy.

“Our objective for the New course,” Phornprapha has said, “is to create something that is beautiful and very unique from our existing courses, providing golfers with an experience that is fun and memorable.”

The New course is expected to open in early 2014. As far as his future plans for Siam go, Phornprapha hasn’t spelled anything out. But he has close to 800 acres of undeveloped property to work with.

The original version of this post appeared in the March 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.