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Sunday, December 18, 2016

The Week That Was, december 18, 2016

     The President-Elect’s golf operation may be looking to buy a high-prestige golf resort in suburban London, England. The Daily Mail reports that Trump Golf has expressed an “interest” in Stoke Park Country Club, Spa & Hotel, a venue that features a 27-hole golf complex. The property, in Buckinghamshire, is said to be the first “country club” in the United Kingdom. It’s probably best known for serving as a location for scenes in two James Bond movies, Goldfinger and Tomorrow Never Dies, as well as Bridget Jones’s Diary. Top 100 Golf Courses believes that the resort’s original 18-hole track, a Harry Colt design that dates from 1908, is “surely one of the finest parkland golf courses in the South of England,” and its seventh hole, a 150-yard par-3, served as the inspiration for the 16th at Augusta National. Trump Golf hasn’t commented on the potential acquisition, but the resort’s owner, a family-controlled entity called International Group, has acknowledged that it’s received “unsolicited approaches from interested parties.”

     The President-Elect may not be familiar with Harry Colt’s work, but Mike Keiser sure is. In fact, the world’s foremost developer of neo-classic links is thinking about building a Colt “homage” course at Sand Valley, his naturalist-style resort in central Wisconsin. Keiser describes himself as a “big fan” of Colt’s work, and he’s been down the tribute road before, as he famously commissioned Tom Doak and Jim Urbina to honor C. B. Macdonald at Bandon Dunes. For those who may not be familiar with Colt, he’s one of the seminal figures in the history of golf architecture, as he designed, redesigned, or made crucial design improvements to many of the world’s most famous golf courses. The complete list is much too long for me to regurgitate, but the group includes Muirfield, Royal County Down, Pine Valley, the Dunluce course at Royal Portrush, Swinley Forest, Sunningdale, Royal Porthcawl, the West course at Wentworth Club, Toronto Golf Club, and, of course, Stoke Park. Sand Valley, which could eventually have as many as six courses, expects to open its first, a Coore & Crenshaw design, in the spring of next year, and its second, by David McLay Kidd, could enjoy a soft opening several months later. Keiser is currently weighing options for course number three, with the tribute track vying against proposals from Doak, Urbina, and Mike DeVries. If he opts to go the Colt route, he’ll likely give the commission to Coore & Crenshaw.

     One of the biggest names in golf has agreed to design the Chicago Park District’s highly anticipated, Barack Obama-endorsed golf complex. It’s Tiger Woods, who was nominated for the job by the First Golfer and who now has a chance to produce a career-defining layout. The to-be-named complex, which will take shape on property currently occupied by two financially challenged municipal tracks, will consist of an 18-hole course capable of hosting an elite PGA Tour event and an easier-to-play nine-hole course. “This is a really exciting time if you are a golf nut in Chicago,” the park district’s superintendent told the Chicago Tribune. “For far too long, you’ve watched droves of Chicagoans leave the city to play golf in the suburbs.” The complex will take shape along Lake Michigan, in the shadow of Obama’s forthcoming presidential library. The park district hopes to break ground in the spring, with play to begin in 2020. Woods, who needs good public relations to rehabilitate his image, has promised to deliver “a course that everyone will enjoy.”

     Though he’s no fan of “signature” golf, Mike Keiser has endorsed the Chicago Park District’s selection of Tiger Woods as the designer of its lakefront golf complex. “I like the choice,” says Keiser, who understands how valuable a brand-name architect’s salesmanship can be in potentially divisive development ventures. Keiser is serving as an adviser to Mark Rolfing, the project’s initial evangelist, and as a fundraiser for the park district, which may need $30 million or more to complete the construction. On the fundraising front, Keiser regards President Obama, a Chicagoan, as an ace in the hole. “When Obama became engaged, he galvanized the donor class of Chicago golfers,” he says. “He’s why the fundraising is going to be successful.”

     Concert Golf Partners is hoping to acquire a Philadelphia-area venue that claims to offer “a relaxed yet refined private club experience.” Peter Nanula’s Newport Beach, California-based investment group has offered to buy White Manor Country Club, a venue in Malvern with an 18-hole golf course that’s operated since the early 1960s. Concert has reportedly offered $46,000 an acre for the club, an amount that translates to somewhere between $7.36 million and $7.82 million. Such a price will certainly catch the attention of the club’s bondholders, but the sale is no sure thing for two reasons. First, although the club will lose money this year, a local newspaper reports that the deficit is “not alarming and could be handled without selling the club.” Second, other potential buyers have emerged since White Manor’s availability became known.

     The on-again, off-again sale of Accordia Golf is on again. MBK Partners, a South Korean private equity group, has offered $760 million for Accordia, Japan’s best-known golf operator, and the price has received a thumb’s up from Accordia’s ownership. The Financial Times reports that Japan’s golf industry has fallen on hard times -- the culprits are “shrinking corporate expense accounts and stagnant wages” that are “putting courses out of business” -- but it acknowledges that “Accordia has generally thrived.” For its part, MBK believes it can buck the prevailing negative trends by attracting golf tourists from nearby nations and persuading Japanese retirees to take up the sport. Accordia, which was established by Goldman Sachs, reportedly owns 43 golf properties and manages 93 others, which is roughly 5 percent of the 2,500 in Japan.

Sunday, December 11, 2016

The Week That Was, december 11, 2016

     Nobody ever said that making Scotland great again would be easy, and now it appears that the President-Elect has ticked off some members of Trump Turnberry. The Sunday Post reports that Trump Golf has levied a 38 percent tariff on the club’s membership fees, increasing the annual amount to £2,500. An unidentified member, characterizing the increase as “a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum,” believes that Trump has raised prices to clear out the local riff-raff and usher in a wealthier clientele. Which is probably true. But let’s put the price rise in perspective: Assuming that the limits on tee times aren’t too onerous, how many U.S. golfers would jump at the chance to join a newly renovated Trump Turnberry, a former Open Championship venue, for a lousy $3,143 a year?

     As part of its continuing effort to generate tourism, the government of Sri Lanka is implicitly expressing its faith in golf. The island nation wants to bring at least 1 million travelers annually through the recently opened but little used Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, outside Hambantota, and it needs crowd-pleasing attractions to do it. Therefore, its minister of public administration and management is reportedly “looking for land to build a golf course” in nearby Uva Province. No details have been announced, probably because it’s way too early in the process, and the government isn’t likely to undertake the venture without private-sector assistance. Besides, Uva is among Sri Lanka’s larger provinces, occupying nearly 8,500 square miles, so the search could take a while.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the September 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     Slowly but surely, a town on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, Australia is making progress on its volunteer-built golf course. Maleny Golf Club opened the first nine holes of its Graham Papworth-designed track in 2015, and last month it received a $100,000 grant that will enable it to add three more, hopefully by 2018. If you’re wondering when all 18 holes might be completed, well, nobody has set a schedule. But in this case, time isn’t of the essence. The people who are building the municipally owned course see a bigger picture. So far, they’ve spent $750,000 on design and construction, and the Sunshine Coast Council believes the track is already worth at least $3 million to the local economy. What’s more, the course may turn out to be a gift that keeps on giving, because it serves as a training center for a new generation of golfers. For many in our business, golf development is meaningless unless it’s accompanied by six-figure initiation fees or a place on a top-100 list. Maleny is a vision of what else golf might be.

Friday, December 9, 2016

Transactions, december 9, 2016

     Las Vegas, Nevada. Billy Walters, a prominent gambler and a frequent target of the Securities & Exchange Commission, has found a buyer for his replica golf course. For an undisclosed price, Walters has sold Royal Links Golf Club to Scottsdale Golf Group, a firm led by Shelby Futch, a co-founder of John Jacobs’ Golf Schools & Academies. Walters is getting out of golf operations. He disposed of his Desert Pines Golf Club in 2014, and he’s put his sole remaining golf property, Bali Hai Golf Club, on the market. “We are paring back our golf investments in Las Vegas because the golf business isn’t what it used to be,” he told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “There is too much supply and too little demand.” Walters, who got into some insider-trading hot water with Phil Mickelson a couple of years ago, believes that his golf investments -- he’s reportedly owned 10 properties over the years -- have been “the worst decisions I’ve ever made in my life.” Royal Links, which opened in the late 1990s, has a selling point unlike any other venue in Vegas: It features holes whose designs were inspired by some of the best-known courses in the rotation for the Open Championship, among them Royal Troon, Royal Liverpool, Royal Lytham & St Annes, and Royal Birkdale. The club is Futch’s first in Sin City, though he and his partners own seven in Arizona.

     Oviedo, Florida. The city has agreed to buy Twin Rivers Golf Club, to ensure that the financially insecure 310-acre property doesn’t become a subdivision. The price: $5 million. Twin Rivers, which features an 18-hole, Joe Lee-designed course, is among a handful of Orlando-area venues owned by the Golf Group, a firm led by Bob Dello Russo. The 27-year-old club is said to be “struggling,” which is the condition that Rock Springs Ridge Golf Club, in nearby Apopka, was in just two years ago, when the Golf Group shuttered it. The city aims to keep Twin Rivers in business, and it’s set out to find a private-sector operator willing to do it. The transaction is expected to close next month.

     Middletown, Ohio. Myron Bowling didn’t hold on to Weatherwax Golf Course for very long. The auctioneer who admitted that he’d “never held a golf club” in his life paid $1.6 million for the 36-hole, Arthur Hills-designed complex in 2014, and now he’s agreed to sell it to the Trust for Public Land, a non-profit group dedicated to preserving open spaces. Weatherwax’s 450 acres will be converted to parkland. Bowling hasn’t revealed the price that TPL paid for the property, but the group reportedly flipped it to MetroParks of Butler County for $2 million.

     Lompoc, California. The owners of La Purisima Golf Course have acquired a second golf property in Lompoc. Last month, Chris Bellamy and Sean Hecht became the new owners of Village Country Club, which features an 18-hole, Ted Robinson-designed track that opened in 1961. The club, which had been owned by its members, will operate as Mission Club, but don’t let the name fool you: Mission Club will be open to the public.

     Mohave Valley, Arizona. A group of homeowners has reluctantly purchased El Rio Golf Course, the centerpiece of a community in the northwestern part of the state, near Bullhead City, Nevada. The Mohave Daily News reports that none of the new owners (10 in all) “ever wanted to own or run a golf course.” They acquired El Rio after the community’s developers were indicted and convicted of wire, bank, and mail fraud, which is the kind of news that isn’t good for business. “We want everyone to know the course is under new ownership,” a spokesperson for the new owners told the Mohave Valley Daily News. El Rio, which opened in 2004, features an 18-hole, Matt Dye-designed layout.

     Marshfield, Wisconsin. The Acker family business has changed hands. Jesse Jacobson, a local hotel owner, has acquired Marshfield Country Club, which claims to be the city’s first golf venue. Marshfield’s original nine opened in 1923. Darrell and Jane Acker bought the club in the mid 1960s and added its second nine in the mid 1970s. Their son Chip eventually became the club’s sole owner, and he’s agreed to manage the property for Jacobson. A sales price hasn’t been announced, but it appears that Robert B. Harris completed a renovation of the course earlier this year.

     Interlochen, Michigan. In late September, a well-known PGA pro purchased the city’s only golf course. Brad Dean, most recently the director of golf at Crystal Mountain Resort & Spa in nearby Thompsonville, paid an undisclosed price for Interlochen Golf Club, an 18-hole layout that’s operated for a half-century. “We’ve got a lot of plans,” Dean told the Traverse City Record-Eagle. “We’re looking at refreshing things here.” Dean is one of Michigan’s top golf instructors, and he’s won several teacher-of-the-year citations. He reportedly bought Interlochen from Tony Kochevar.

     Hudson Falls, New York. Kingswood Golf Club has new owners and a new name. Deric Buck and his mother reportedly paid $1.75 million for the 25-year-old venue, which now operates as Kingsbury National Golf Club. The seller was Pinhas Shabat. Over the winter, improvements will be made to Kingsbury National’s 18-hole course, which will eventually be reconfigured. “We want to raise the bar on what a golf course around here can be,” Buck told the Glens Falls Post Star. According to the newspaper, Kingsbury National is merely the first golf acquisition for Buck and his mother. They’ve also agreed to buy Bay Meadows Golf Club, a nine-hole course in nearby Queensbury.

Sunday, December 4, 2016

The Week That Was, december 4, 2016

     If one hand truly does wash the other, where will the 2018 edition of the Philippine Masters be played?
     The European Tour, the decider in such matters, hasn’t yet announced a venue for the first professional event to be held in the Philippines since 1995, but the odds-on choice has to be the Don Salvador Zamora Championship Course, an 18-hole track located roughly 40 miles southwest of Manila. If you’ve never heard of the DSZ, you aren’t alone, because it doesn’t exist. It isn’t scheduled to open until about this time next year. It’s taking shape on property currently occupied by a course that you might be familiar with, though, the Puerto Azul Golf & Country Club. Puerto Azul’s nearly 40-year-old layout, a co-design by Gary Player and Ron Kirby, formerly hosted the Philippine Open and other high-profile regional events, but these days it’s nowhere near to being in shape for an international tournament. It’s being completely redesigned.
     By happy coincidence, earlier this year Puerto Azul was leased to Salvador “Buddy” Zamora II, the licensee to Philippine events that will be played on the European Tour between 2018 and 2020. Zamora controls companies involved in mining, renewable-energy production, agricultural products, hotel operations, and real-estate development, but it appears that his true love is golf. Just last month, he staged an exhibition match that pitted his favorite professional golfer, Jason Day, against Rory McIlroy.
     “My vision is to continue bringing in world-class golfing events to the Philippines to thrill our golf enthusiasts and fans, giving them access to the game and the players that they love,” he recently told the Manila Standard.
     Zamora is spending $18 million or more to ensure that Puerto Azul can host those world-class golfing events. And to make absolutely, positively certain that the forthcoming DSZ will meet the European Tour’s standards, he’s hired European Golf Design to do the makeover. EGD, a British firm, is co-owned by the tour, and over the years it’s designed, co-designed, or redesigned many, if not all, of the tour-affiliated courses on the planet, including its Ryder Cup venues and the courses at its “branded” communities. If any firm on the planet can deliver a tour-approved course, it’s EGD.
     In this scenario, everyone benefits: Zamora and his companies put their names in newspapers and on television, the European Tour establishes a presence in a promising market, EGD gets a high-profile commission, and a few dozen of the world’s elite golfers cash another paycheck.
    It’s how the system works. On hand washes the other.

     Some information in the preceding post first appeared in the October 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     A Japanese hotelier has chosen to make its first international investments, including a golf course, in one of Vietnam’s fastest-growing vacation spots. Tokyo-based Route-Inn believes there’s money to be made in Đà Nẵng, the largest city on the Central Coast, and it recently sought permission to build a golf course within a short drive of the city. Katsutoshi Nagayama, the company’s chairman, sees synergies in these investments, as he plans to host tournaments and other golf-related events that will fill his hotels with Japanese tourists. Nagayama, who’s been described by Deal Street Asia as a billionaire, is just getting started, however. By 2025, he hopes to own 50 hotels, resorts, and golf courses throughout Vietnam -- in Đà Nẵng, Huế, Hội An, Hà Nội, and Hồ Chí Minh City. Route-Inn’s real-estate portfolio is said to include 265 Japanese hotels, nearly two dozen restaurants, a ski area, and at least three golf courses. For its initial foreign investments, the company has chosen a place that’s quickly emerging into a golf destination. In recent years, four golf properties have opened in greater Đà Nẵng, all of them with celebrity-designed courses that have earned critical recognition: Montgomerie Links (it has a Colin Montgomerie-designed course), Đà Nẵng Golf Club (Greg Norman), Laguna Lăng Cô Golf Club (Nick Faldo), and Bà Nà Hills Golf Club (Luke Donald). Route-Inn hasn’t identified an architect for its course, but these days it may be difficult for a golf operator to compete in Đà Nẵng without a “signature” layout.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the June 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     A welcome increase in tourist traffic may soon give the golf industry in Cyprus a lift. The island nation in the eastern Mediterranean is expecting to break tourism records this year, thanks in part to vacationers from Russia and the United Kingdom seeking warm, safe places to take their families. “We’re having, and will have, a fantastic year,” the nation’s minister of energy, commerce, industry and tourism, said last summer. To capitalize on the opportunity, Skift reports that government officials are pressing ahead with plans to build golf courses, marinas, and other attractions, in particular a “super casino” near Larnaka that could, it’s been said, “rival some of the casinos currently seen in Las Vegas.” The number of entities seeking to build the casino (along with hotels, entertainment venues, a theme park, and a golf course) has been whittled down to three, and the tourism ministry is supposed to pick a winner by the end of the year. In the meantime, the ministry is also hoping to find private groups willing to build as many as five other golf courses, all as part of its continuing effort to keep the tourism turnstiles moving.

Friday, December 2, 2016

Vital Signs, december 2, 2016

     It won’t matter to anyone who matters, but there’s more evidence to suggest that women continue to be a giant untapped market for the golf industry. Women currently account for only 24 percent of the world’s golfers, and a Syngenta-commissioned study contends that bringing more of them into the fold could be worth as much as $35 billion annually to the global golf economy. “This is a huge opportunity for the golf industry,” a spokesman for Syngenta said at the just-concluded HSBC Golf Business Forum. But here’s the rub: In his next breath, the spokesman noted that “realizing this opportunity -- engaging and then converting prospects -- requires golf to listen to and address the specific needs of its different customers.” Sounds as if he thinks our industry’s leadership won’t allow that to happen.

     Golf Monthly recently asked one of the golf industry’s recurring questions: “Do we really need to lengthen golf courses?” The short answer: No. Naturally, though, the British magazine provides evidence to support its argument. Drawing from research done by the R&A, and contrary to popular opinion, it reports that the average drive for professionals on the European Tour in 2015 was 288.4 yards, which is just 2.1 yards farther than the average drive measured in 2003. What’s more, during the same period the average driving distance for players on the LPGA Tour, the Ladies European Tour, and the Japan Golf Tour not only didn’t increase but actually declined. Regarding amateurs, nowadays the average drive by a good male player travels 234 yards, while a good female’s goes 205 yards. All these numbers lead the magazine to a logical conclusion: If golf operators want their courses to defend par, they should make them harder, not longer.

     Data from a new survey offers a glimpse into the uncertain future of British golf clubs. Here’s the encouraging news, according to a study commissioned by England Golf: Between 2014 and 2016, 30 percent of the nation’s clubs registered an increase in membership. And even better, the members of England’s golf clubs are, on average, playing at least a bit more frequently. These increases haven’t been large enough to put the clubs back on Easy Street -- today, on average, the clubs have virtually the same number of members that they had in 2014 -- but it gives the industry some traction to build upon. The survey also contains discouraging demographic news, however: Since 2014, the number of club members who are 65 and older has increased by 13 percent. A press release calls this aging “a reflection of the good health of golfers,” but it’s worth mentioning that good health doesn’t last forever.

     England Golf has some other noteworthy things to say about British golf clubs, one of which is that 95 percent of them have vacancies. Another: Only 10 percent of the nation’s clubs have a waiting list in any membership category.

     Speaking of worries about the future, golf clubs Down Under remain mired in a membership funk. Golf Australia reports that the nation’s clubs have lost nearly 50,000 of the 446,428 members that they had in 2006, and it doesn’t appear as though reinforcements are on the way. What’s worse, more than 50 percent of current club members are 55 or older.

     Does Asia have room to grow as a golf destination? The current pace of golf construction suggests that nations across the continent believe it most certainly does, and over the next decade those nations will be easier to get to and more accommodating for longer stays. By 2026, according to data from the World Travel & Tourism Council, $1.5 trillion will be invested in Asian travel and tourism projects -- better airports, for the most part, but also related conveniences including up-to-date banking systems and reliable telephone service. Skift reports that nearly half of the money ($723 billion) will be spent in China and that virtually all of the rest will boost the appeal of Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Such expenditures serve as the foundation for a wide variety of traveler-friendly attractions, and the right golf courses in the right locations stand to benefit.

Sunday, November 27, 2016

The Week That Was, november 27, 2016

     Gil Hanse’s golf course in Rio de Janeiro may be a critical success, but it isn’t doing much to grow the game in Brazil. In fact, an international news service suggests that the track has such serious money troubles that it may soon go out of business. Agence France Presse reports that the course, which hosted the golf competition for the 2016 Olympics, attracts only 40 paying customers on an average day and that its operators, who haven’t been paid for two months, and are “set to pull out” as early as next month. This disturbing news should remind us of the many headaches that were involved in getting the course built in the first place. Once again, golf in Brazil is proving itself to be one of the nine circles of hell, and our industry’s leadership may soon be resigned to post the warning that Dante made famous in the Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”

     The members of Las Vegas Country Club have decided to sell their nearly 50-year-old property to Discovery Land Company. If due diligence proceeds without a hitch, DLC and a partner, Wolff Company, will close on the transaction in early 2017. Las Vegas -- Sin City’s first private-equity golf club -- features a colorful history and an 18-hole, Ed Ault-designed golf course. Its members were hoping to get $24 million or more for their 120-acre property, but the Las Vegas Review-Journal says that a proposal from the prospective owners lists an “aggregate consideration,” which sounds suspiciously like a sales price, of $22.5 million. Each of the club’s members will reportedly receive a “net payment” of roughly $29,350. DLC owns close to 20 golf properties in the United States, Mexico, and the Bahamas. Next year, it expects to open a second private golf club in Las Vegas, the Summit Club, a suburban venue it describes as a “private heirloom community.”

     Just two months after Arnold Palmer’s passing, the golf industry has lost another legend.
     Peggy Kirk Bell, described variously as “a tribute to the game of golf,” “an inspirational figure to thousands,” and “the female Arnold Palmer,” died last week at her home in Southern Pines, North Carolina. She was 95, and she’d lived what must have been a truly wonderful life, one dedicated almost entirely to golf in general and women’s golf in particular.
     Bell was an accomplished golfer, a renowned golf instructor, and a tireless ambassador for the sport. “She supported juniors, she helped touring pros, she was there for seniors, she was there for women,” a past president of the U.S. Golf Association said of Bell. “She was there for the game.”
     In the 1940s, before a professional golf tour for women had been established, Bell was one of America’s best-known amateur golfers. She left what’s been called “one of the most impressive amateur records ever compiled,” and she was a member of the 1950 Curtis Cup team. Eventually, she helped to establish the Ladies Professional Golf Association. On occasion, she’d fly to tournaments in her own plane. The news coverage helped to promote the events.
     Bell never tried to make a name for herself in professional golf, however. Instead, she dedicated herself to teaching. She became a nationally recognized instructor and the first woman inducted to the PGA Golf Instructors Hall of Fame. She made instructional videos and wrote a book called A Women’s Way to Better Golf.
     Bell was also a course owner and operator. She and her husband, the late Warren Bell, owned two popular and well-regarded golf properties in the Pinehurst area, Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club and Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club. The U.S. Women’s Open was played at Pine Needles three times, in 1996, 2001, and 2007. The mayor of Southern Pines believes that Bell “solidified Southern Pines as a golfing destination” and that “golfers from around the world return each year to Pine Needles and Mid Pines because Mrs. Bell treated everyone like royalty and made golf fun.”
     For her contributions to golf, Bell was honored by institutions including the U.S. Golf Association (it gave her the Bob Jones Award), the LPGA (the Patty Berg Award), the National Golf Course Owners Association of America (the Order of Merit), and the National Golf Foundation (the Joe Graffis Award). She was named to at least seven halls of fame, and a golf tour for girls has been named after her.
     “Bell was the personal embodiment of the history of golf,” the Raleigh News & Observer wrote in an appreciation. “She knew everyone, lived through everything, [and] quickly earned the respect of everyone who met her.”
     Few people have done as much for golf as Bell. May her spirit live on.

Sunday, November 20, 2016

The Week That Was, november 20, 2016

     Just three years ago, Pacific Links International bought Dove Canyon Golf Club and told the Los Angeles Times that it planned to buy “two or three more” in Southern California. Well, the spirit may have been willing, but the cash flow was weak. Not only did PLI fail to buy another club in the area, but now it’s sold Dove Canyon. The new owner of the 25-year-old club and its Jack Nicklaus “signature” course is SJS Tomorrow LLC, an entity that appears to be affiliated with a South Korean clothing manufacturer named Sae-A Trading Company. A price hasn’t been reported, but the Orange County Register says that SJS owns Steele Canyon Golf Club in suburban San Diego. Dove Canyon is the fifth U.S. golf property that PLC, a Chinese/Canadian company that operates an international network of limited-access membership golf clubs, has sold since early 2015. Gone from the company’s shrinking portfolio are three properties on Hawaii’s O’ahu Island (Royal Hawaiian Golf Club, Kapolei Golf Club, and Olomana Golf Links) as well as DragonRidge Country Club in suburban Las Vegas, Nevada and Pete Dye Golf Club in Bridgeport, West Virginia. According to the Times, when PLI bought Dove Canyon the club “had never made a profit and had been losing nearly $1 million a year.” No word on how the club is doing today.

     The battle appears to be over, but Christine Brennan is still firing deservedly sharp criticism at the U.S. Golf Association over its insistence on holding next year’s U.S. Women’s Open at Donald “the Educator” Trump’s golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Less than a month after she took her first shot, the USA Today columnist skewers the USGA for being “paralyzed by a rich, white man who has ridiculed almost everyone but his cronies and peers” and accuses it of being without “a spine” or “a moral compass.” Like so many other women, she wonders why one of golf’s most important institutions continues to do business with “a man who bragged on video that he sexually assaults women.” For what it’s worth, the USGA responded by saying that it “has not changed its position on the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open at this time.”

     Donald “the President-Elect” Trump isn’t the only wealthy golf-course owner who won an election this month. By a wide margin, the people of West Virginia have selected Jim Justice, the owner of the Greenbrier, to be their governor. “I want us to quit being 50th in everything,” Justice said during his campaign. He ran as a Democrat, though he tried his best to keep his party affiliation a secret.

Friday, November 18, 2016

The Pipeline, november 18, 2016

     Pinar del Rio Province, Cuba. Within the next few weeks, Cuba’s tourism ministers hope to seal the deal on what may be their biggest golf venture. The ministers are negotiating with Spanish investors who aim to develop Punta Colorada Golf & Marina, a waterfront resort community that will reportedly feature 20,000 vacation houses and “luxury apartments,” five hotels (1,060 total rooms), two marinas (1,400 total slips), what’s said to be one of the most pristine beaches on the Guanahacabibes Peninsula, and seven 18-hole golf courses. Punta Colorada is expected to spread across 4,000 acres near the village of La Fe, in the far western part of the island nation. If the community is actually built -- and, as we all know, there are no guarantees in Cuba -- it could end up being Cuba’s version of Pinehurst or Mission Hills Shenzhen.

     Šibenik-Knin County, Croatia. Brad Pitt, the star of movies including Fight Club, Fury, and Moneyball, is the highest-profile partner in a long-percolating community that’s slated to take shape along Croatia’s Adriatic coast. The to-be-named community has been initiated by a Swiss investment group, TFI Holding, and a European newspaper believes it has the potential to “change the image of Croatian tourism.” The community will be built at the site of an existing marina outside the town of Šibenik, and it’ll feature houses for 2,500 residents, a high-end hotel, a shopping area, a medical center, a school, and a golf course. Pitt and his estranged wife, Angelina Jolie, have vacationed in Croatia -- Pitt reportedly thinks it’s “the most beautiful country he has ever visited” -- and in 2012 they became investors in a golf-focused, 2,500-acre resort community that Danko Končar, one of the nation’s richest people, had hoped to build near Pula, along the Istrian coast. Končar has apparently given up on the idea, however, leaving Pitt footloose and fancy free. TFI’s venture has won the support of local elected officials, and the group’s principal is “certain it will be successful.”

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the September 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     New South Wales, Australia. Royal Sydney Golf Club has commissioned Gil Hanse, one of golf’s so-called naturalists, to create a master plan for upgrades to its Championship course. The track has hosted the Australian Open more than a dozen times, but Aussie Golfer believes it’s “slipped down the lists of Australia’s best golf courses,” as it suffers from “poor drainage and a narrow, unimaginative design.” Other critics echo such sentiments. “It’s not a great course,” Darius Oliver of Australian Golf Digest has written, “and some of the green contours feel a little contrived.” Royal Sydney no doubt hopes that Hanse can elevate the course’s status, for the Malvern, Pennsylvania-based architect has proved himself to be adept at creating courses that can test elite golfers while remaining enjoyable for amateurs. The club hasn’t outlined any details about the renovation or set a start date, but Aussie Golfer thinks the work will begin in the first half of next year.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the August 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     Norwich, England. Royal Norwich Golf Club aims to break ground on its new home before the end of the year, and it hopes the place will become “the region’s most prestigious and talked-about golf facility.” The club, a fixture in suburban Norwich since 1893 (it’s one of only 16 in England with the “royal” designation) will be relocating to a 300-acre property currently occupied by Weston Park Golf Club, seven miles from its current home, where it believes it can establish “a club fit for the 21st century.” Royal Norwich’s members overwhelmingly approved the move two years ago and soon afterwards agreed to sell their 120 acres in Hellesdon to a home builder. The sale became official last summer, when the home builder received permission to raze the club’s well-regarded, James Braid-designed golf course and replace it with roughly 1,000 houses. The new Royal Norwich Golf Club will feature a 7,150-yard, 18-hole golf course and an easy-to-play nine-hole track, both to be designed by Ross McMurray of European Golf Design. McMurray told Golf Course Architecture that the courses “will appeal to golfers of all ages” and help the club create “a warm and friendly environment for their members, families, and guests.”

     Pampanga Province, Philippines. Pradera Verde, a 1,000-acre resort community in suburban Manila, is going to celebrate the opening its first 18-hole golf course with an exhibition “duel” featuring Rory McIlroy and Jason Day. The amateurs and professionals who’ve played the recently opened track say the golf mega-stars will be competing on “a great golf course” that was designed “for champions” and will eventually be viewed as “one of the best in the country.” Such notices must be gratifying to Mike Singgaran, the Malaysian architect responsible for the course. He got his start in the Philippines’ golf business as a shaper for Andy Dye, a U.S. architect, and these days he serves as the in-house designer for the golf division of Sta. Lucia Realty, a Manila-based company that’s developed probably a half-dozen communities with golf courses, including two others in Pampanga Province. Pradera Verde has already broken ground on a second Singgaran-designed layout that’s expected to open sometime next year.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the July 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     Karnataka, India. Government-owned properties near lakes and reservoirs in Karnataka, India are being eyed for tourism development, and at least one of them could get a golf course. The state’s water resources department believes it can attract vacationers by offering what it calls “adventure sports” -- activities that include boating, rafting, kayaking, water skiing, hiking, and rock climbing -- at more than a half-dozen locations. Working in partnership with private-sector groups, the department aims to outfit the properties, some of which occupy as many as 300 acres, with lodges, mid-priced and budget hotels, floating restaurants, and other attractions. At the Bhadra Reservoir, outside Lakkavalli in the western part of the state, it controls 186 acres that it thinks can accommodate a hotel, a spa, a theme park, a restaurant, and a golf course.

     And in the United States . . . Last month, Tom Fazio put boots on the ground in suburban Las Vegas, Nevada, so he could get a look-see at the 13th golf course he’s designed for Discovery Land Company. The 18-hole track -- “handcrafted,” according to Fazio -- will be the centerpiece of an ultra-exclusive and ultra-expensive community called Summerlin. It’s scheduled to open in the spring of next year. . . . Also in the spring of 2017, Dana Fry and Jason Straka expect to break ground on Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club’s second 18-hole golf course. Fry told Golf Course Architecture that the club, in Arcadia, Michigan, has provided a site that’s “perfect for golf” and that he aims to deliver a track that “exposes golfers to a golfing experience unlike any many of them have had before.” If construction schedules hold, the course will open in the summer of 2018. . . . Phil “the Gambler” Mickelson is overseeing the redesign of the flood-ravaged, Seth Raynor-designed course at the Greenbrier in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Mickelson, one of the resort’s “ambassadors,” has reportedly created 10 new holes for the 18-hole layout, which dates from 1929. He’s promised “to stay true to [Raynor’s] design concepts while updating the course to challenge and excite generations to come.”

Friday, November 11, 2016

Desolation Row, november 11, 2016

     Plainville, Massachusetts. What’s been described as a “massive” community for so-called active adults may soon replace the 27-hole golf complex at Heather Hill Country Club. The 225-acre club has been owned by the Poholek family since 1982, but play has declined in recent years and home builders have been knocking at the door. The family accepted an offer when it decided that the 18 holes at their other golf course, nearby Wentworth Hills Golf Club, could satisfy the current demand. Heather Hill’s golf complex will continue to operate until residential construction begins, whenever that day arrives, and it may be closed in nine-hole increments.

     Beaumont, Texas. Time has run out on Bayou Din Golf Club. For George W. Brown III, the club’s owner, the numbers tell the story: In 2005, his 27-hole complex rang up 54,000 rounds, a number that’s slipped under 30,000 in each of the past two years. “My hope was that 2016 would be the year the business turned around,” Brown told the Beaumont Enterprise. “I just don’t see an enthusiasm for golf.” Bayou Din’s original 18-hole track opened in 1959, and Brown added the venue’s “Links Nine” in 1993. The facility will close on the Sunday after Thanksgiving.

     Peterborough, New Hampshire. The end of the 2016 golf season was the end of the line for one of the state’s oldest golf properties. Monadnock Country Club, a going concern since 1901, turned out its lights for the last time on Halloween, a victim, reportedly, of membership losses that led to a loss of revenues. The club, the centerpiece of an artists’ retreat, featured a nine-hole, executive-length course.

     Monroe, Michigan. A health-care company has a prescription for what ails the 40-year-old Raisin River Golf Club: A repurposing. Beginning most likely in 2020, ProMedica plans to build a new hospital on the club’s 250-acre property. The club and its 18-hole, William Maddox-designed golf course is expected to operate at least through 2018.

     Leesburg, Georgia. Speaking of hospitals, Lee County wants to build one on the property currently occupied by Grand Island Golf Course. Selling the course was an easy decision for the county, because Grand Island, which has operated since 1995, is reportedly “losing money.” The blinds will be pulled on the 18-hole layout next month.

     Salem, Oregon. The owners of Creekside Golf Club have delivered an ultimatum to city officials: Reduce our water bill or we’ll close our golf course. It’s what Donald “the President-Elect” Trump would call a negotiating position. But there’s still a ways to go before Larry Tokarski and Terry Kelly, the club’s co-owners, discontinue play on their 18-hole, Peter Jacobsen/Jim Hardy golf course, because the city hasn’t made a final decision and the issue is complicated by a lawsuit filed by an angry, worried group of home owners in the Creekside community. The case goes to trial in January.

     Shreveport, Louisiana. Seven years after a change in ownership, Shreveport Country Club and its 18-hole golf course have gone belly up. “People are so busy these days, they don’t have time to golf like they used to,” the Reverend Denny Duron told the Shreveport Times. He added: “We’re just at a place financially where it’s tough to continue.” Shreveport opened in 1909, and a non-profit group controlled by Duron assumed control of it in 2009. Now that the club has closed, Duron needs to figure out what to do with its 186 acres.

     La Vista, Nebraska. After years of covering losses, weary city officials have pulled the plug on La Vista Falls Golf Course. The nine-hole, executive-length golf course will become a park. The course opened in 1992, and the city has been forced to provide $125,000 to it in each of the past two years.

     Auburn, Washington. After 26 years in business, Jade Greens Golf Course has reached the end of the line. The track will close at the end of the month. “We had a great run as a little nine-hole course out here,” Jim Hawk, the course’s owner, told the Auburn Reporter. “But times change, and things get a little different.” The course was designed by Hawk’s father, on land that’s been in the family since the 1960s. The family still hasn’t decided what to do with the property.

Sunday, November 6, 2016

The Week That Was, november 6, 2016

     Regarding Michael Jordan’s super-exclusive, “celebrity-laden” golf club in Hobe Sound, Florida: Two new bits of information, both of them noteworthy, were reported this week. For starters, the venue will take shape upon a former orange grove, and hence its name: Grove Golf Club. More importantly, though, the Palm Beach Post and other sources say that Jordan is working with Bob Whitley, who’s developed a string of high-profile, high-end clubs. There’s one in South Carolina (Colleton River Plantation in Bluffton) and another in Georgia (Currahee Club in Toccoa) as well as four in Florida: Old Marsh Golf Club in Palm Beach Gardens, Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa in Jupiter (now known as Trump National Golf Club Jupiter), Bear’s Club in Jupiter, and Medalist Club in Hobe Sound. Jordan owns a home at Bear’s Club and is a member at both Bear’s Club and Medalist. He may be undertaking the venture for all the wrong reasons, but it appears that he’s at least surrounding himself with experienced people.

     A press release issued last week says that European Tour Properties has this year affiliated itself with more six golf venues, which means that somewhere along the line I neglected to mention two of the new additions. My bad. The first one I overlooked is Constance Belle Mare Plage, which sounds like a wealthy matron who lives on the Main Line in Philadelphia or maybe a fast-spreading disease but is actually a five-star resort on Mauritius. The property has two 18-hole golf courses, both of which were co-designed by Rodney Wright and Peter Alliss, and it hosts the European Senior Tour’s season-ending championship. I also missed on Marco Simone Golf & Country Club, the venue in suburban Rome, Italy that will host the Ryder Cup competition in 2022. Marco Simone features a 27-hole complex designed by Jim Fazio that’s currently being refreshed by European Golf Design. If you’re keeping score, the other additions to ETP’s portfolio this year were Lighthouse Golf & Spa Resort in Bulgaria, Albatross Golf Resort in the Czech Republic, and two in Portugal, Bom Sucesso and Tróia Golf Resort. All told, ETP now has 22 properties in what it calls an “exclusive network of world-class venues.” Of course, simple logic suggests that the group gets less exclusive with each addition.

     “Landmark” anti-graft legislation is adding to the woes of South Korea’s golf industry. The Improper Solicitation & Graft Law, which took effect in late September, prohibits people who work for public institutions, private educational institutions, and the media from giving or receiving meals worth $27 or more, presents worth $44 or more, and monetary gifts worth $88 or more. The ban includes rounds of golf, and the nation’s golf courses as well as its popular indoor golf venues are already said to be losing players as a result. What’s more, the law’s long-term consequences may be significant, because the Korea Herald says that “offering to organize a round of golf during the weekend has long been considered a show of respect and importance to the counterparts in business transactions, particularly among high-ranking public servants, politicians, or even journalists.” It’s worth noting that South Korea’s golf courses have been experiencing a “decline in customers, which has hurt their finances” for years. But you know how it goes: When it rains, it pours.

     Though he no longer plays a day-to-day role in the golf business, Deane Beman has a good reason to attend next February’s Golf Industry Show: He’s 2017’s winner of the Don A. Rossi Award, the highest honor that the Golf Course Builders Association of America can bestow. Beman is in good company, as previous winners of the Rossi award include Robert Trent Jones, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, Brent Wadsworth, Pete Dye, and Rees Jones. Beman won four events a professional golfer, but he had the most impact on our business between 1974 and 1994, when he served as the PGA Tour’s second commissioner. While in office, he created the Players Championship, the Presidents Cup, the Senior PGA Tour (now the Champions Tour), and the Ben Hogan Tour (now the Web.com Tour), and he hatched the idea for Tournament Players Clubs. Beman has been on quite a run of late, because last year he received the PGA Distinguished Service Award, the PGA of America’s highest honor.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

The Week That Was, october 30, 2016

     More than a year after he originally floated the idea, Michael Jordan has taken another step toward building his own personal Golf Valhalla. The Chicago Bulls legend recently attended a public workshop (which would have been news on its own) where he laid out a plan for the private, super-exclusive golf club he wants to build in Hobe Sound, Florida. An unidentified source told TCPalm.com that the venue would be “celebrity laden” and that Jordan has found 25 investors who are willing to pony up $1 million apiece. As far as the golf course goes, it won’t be designed by Tom Doak, as once rumored, but by Bobby Weed, who apprenticed with Pete Dye and served for several years as the PGA Tour’s in-house architect. Weed did the heavy lifting for the touring pros who ostensibly designed four of our nation’s Tournament Player Club courses, including TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Connecticut and TPC Summerlin in Las Vegas, Nevada. His solo work includes the Slammer & Squire track at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Florida, Hilton Head National Golf Club in Bluffton, South Carolina, and the Golf Course at Glen Mills in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. No doubt, the commission from Jordan will lift Weed’s profile to a place it’s never been before. And while we’re waiting for Jordan’s proposal to see its way through the entitlement process, let’s all remind ourselves that ego isn’t the best reason to open a private club.

     Just days after Greg “the Living Brand” Norman announced that he was changing the name of his company, Eldrick “Tiger” Woods came out and did pretty much the same thing. No fair nicknaming him “the Copycat,” though, because this move has been percolating in Woods’ brain probably since Elin Nordegren celebrated Thanksgiving by taking a nine-iron to his Escalade. Woods calls the move “the next step in what I like to call Chapter 2,” which he defines as “my evolution as a competitor off the course.” The new company is called TGR, which is, of course, “Tiger” without the vowels. Removing vowels and writing in all capitals is pretty popular these days, especially for rock ‘n’ roll bands (MGMT, STRFKR, PWR BTTM), so jeez, maybe he really is a Copycat. Then again, he’s the first to bring the idea to golf, so give him some credit. According to Fast Company, Woods is “wagering that the move will help define his legacy and keep him in the game long after he’s done bringing home golf titles,” although most people think those days ended long ago. Perhaps the move also indicates that Woods no longer thinks of himself as a golfer or a serial adulterer but as a corporate pitchman, a restaurateur, an events promoter, a philanthropist, and a golf course architect. Regarding the latter, he’s changed the name of his architectural firm to TGR Design, although he’d probably get a rise from millennials if he called it TGR DSGN.

     It’s starting to get crowded on the African bandwagon. Here’s proof: For the first time, a golf course in Africa has won the PGA’s seal of approval. The PGA (the British version, of course, not the American) has accredited Vipingo Ridge, an 18-hole, David Jones-designed layout in suburban Mombasa, as a worthy destination for its members. The course, the centerpiece of a 2,500-acre community, has generally been regarded as Kenya’s top track since it opened, in 2009. Such recognition may not mean much to us in the United States, but it’s a significant honor in Africa. With the PGA’s branding, Vipingo Ridge’s owners will be able to attract more golf travelers, host high-prestige tournaments, charge more for their real estate, and perhaps even break ground on their long-overdue second course. Business Daily Africa thinks the honor “could mark a new phase in Kenya’s golfing scene” and “could very well be the biggest thing in the Kenyan golf scene since the eradication of ‘browns’ at the Machakos Golf Club!” Now there’s a day none of us will never forget!

     The distant pounding you hear is the ever-louder drumbeat of complaints being leveled at the USGA for playing one of its premier events at a venue owned by Donald “the Nominee” Trump. We’re talking specifically about the 2017 U.S. Women’s Open, which is scheduled to be held next July at Trump’s tony club in Bedminster, New Jersey. After hearing what Trump said about women on the “Access Hollywood” bus, Christine Brennan of USA Today wrote a column in which she argued that the tournament “must be moved,” and then three U.S. senators -- all Democrats, naturally -- recommended that the USGA not only relocate the Open but “seriously consider suspending further events at Trump properties.” The USGA is bunkered down and hasn’t responded, probably because it’s worried that its partner is going to be elected. Then again, maybe the USGA has taken the pulse of the women who play professional golf. Golfweek reportedly interviewed a dozen of them and discovered that they don’t find Trump or his clubs in the least bit deplorable.

Friday, October 28, 2016

Transactions, october 28, 2016

     Lansing, Illinois. The financially stressed Lansing Country Club, famous for being the site where “Champagne Tony” Lema met his tragic end in 1966, will soon fade into history, as its 110 equity members have sold their 175-acre property to a developer who’ll cease golf operations. Lansing opened in 1941, as a “sportsman’s” club, and, because it’s located in an area defined by steel mills and oil refineries, sometimes called itself a “blue-collar country club.” Its 4,763-yard course has nine “short” holes in Illinois and nine longer holes across the state line in Munster, Indiana. Chase Development, which reportedly paid $5 million for the club, plans to build an industrial park on the Indiana side of its property.

     Venice, Florida. There’s still a long way to go, but it appears that Coral Hospitality just might make good on its promise about putting at least two dozen golf properties into its management portfolio. An entity linked to the Naples, Florida-based company has reportedly paid almost $2.76 million for Jacaranda West Country Club, a venue that features an 18-hole, Mark Mahannah-designed golf course. The course, which opened in the early 1970s, is the centerpiece of a 600-acre community with roughly 900 houses. In 2013, Coral began to operate a handful of golf courses for the state of Georgia, and last year investment groups consisting mainly of Coral executives purchased two golf properties in Florida, Rosedale Golf & Country Club in Bradenton and Eagle Ridge Golf Club in Fort Myers. All told, these days Coral counts 10 golf properties in its collection, and goodness knows there are plenty more in the Southeast that are ripe for the picking.

     International Falls, Minnesota. The way Jordan Pearson tells it, he went out looking for a new house and ended up buying Falls Country Club. “I went out there, it’s absolutely beautiful, and by the next day I wrote a purchase agreement on it and it was accepted,” he told the International Falls Journal. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the year. Pearson, the owner of Island View Realty, doesn’t golf, and he hasn’t revealed what he’ll pay for the property. The Falls features an 18-hole, Joel Goldstrand-designed golf course that opened in 1998.

     North Augusta, South Carolina. The bank that controls the deeply troubled 27-hole golf complex at Mount Vintage Plantation has found a buyer: The community’s residents. Earlier this month, the Mount Vintage Plantation Homeowners Association paid $2.9 million for the Tom Jackson-designed complex, which has in its short history (it opened in 2000) endured a lawsuit from some of its members, a Chapter 11 filing, and a temporary shut-down. “We’re controlling our own destiny,” a spokesperson for the HOA told the North Augusta Star. “The main goal is to be a class-A golf club that serves members and contributes to the growth of the Mount Vintage community.” The golf complex is currently being managed by a group of members and home owners. The job may be a challenge, because last year the club was managed by KemperSports for several months and then by Integrity Golf Company.

     Grand Rapids, Michigan. Come the first of the year, the company that operates “four great clubs” in the Grand Rapids area will move into daily-fee operations. For an undisclosed price, Watermark Properties has agreed to buy the Golf Club at Thornapple Pointe, which features an 18-hole, Bill Newcomb-designed course. Thornapple Pointe will continue to accept public play, as it’s done since it opened in 1997, while Watermark markets its other venues with a “one membership, four great clubs” pitch. The company owns two private properties in Grand Rapids, Watermark Country Club and Thousand Oaks Country Club, as well as Sunnybrook Country Club in Grandville and StoneWater Country Club in Caledonia.

     Erie, Colorado. The owner of two golf properties in Colorado has acquired a controlling interest in the venue that serves as the home of the University of Colorado’s golf teams. SW Greens LLC paid an undisclosed amount for a piece of Colorado National Golf Club, a 13-year-old venue anchored by a Jay Morrish-designed golf course. Colorado National opened in 2003, as Vista Ridge Golf Club. It’s the fifth property in SW Greens’ portfolio, as the LLC owns Bear Dance Golf Course in Larkspur and Plum Creek Golf Club in Castle Rock and manages two tracks for the city of Brighton. The LLC acquired its share of the club from Steve Kerr (no, not the basketball coach), who purchased Vista Ridge in 2008. Kerr made news in 2013, when he was convicted of tax evasion.

     Graeagle, California. Plumas Pines Golf Course, a property that was established in the late 1970s, has changed hands. Completing an agreement struck in early 2016, a four-member LLC led by the course’s director of golf, Brandon Bowling, paid an undisclosed price for the 146-acre property and its 18-hole, Homer Flint-designed golf course. The seller was Mark Cleary, who purchased Plumas Pines with his late brother in 2000. And if you like stories that go full circle, you’ll appreciate the fact that Bowling’s wife is the grand-daughter of the course’s original owners.

     McAfee, New Jersey. The abandoned golf property at the former Playboy Club in northern New Jersey is going to reopen next spring, under new ownership. The owner of the nearby Mountain Creek ski resort, a family-owned corporation led by Jeff Koffman, has purchased the 27-hole golf venue once known as Great Gorge Country Club. The 45-year-old complex, designed by George Fazio, had gone through several owners, the most recent being a Japanese corporation that defaulted on a $10 million loan. “From what we’ve heard, Great Gorge used to be the preeminent golf course in Sussex County and one of the top-ranked courses in New Jersey,” Koffman told the New Jersey Herald, “and we have every intention of bringing it up to those standards again.” When it gets back in business, the complex will operate as Great Gorge Mountain Creek.

     Kellogg, Idaho. Jeld-Wen Holdings Inc. has sold its last remaining golf property. The giant window and door manufacturer, a former sponsor of an event on the Champions Tour, has accepted $5 million for Silver Mountain Resort, a ski area that includes the nine-hole Galena Ridge Golf Course. In 2010, Jeld-Wen sold three resort communities in Oregon to a hotel company for $9.5 million. The group consisted of Running Y Ranch in Klamath Falls (it has an 18-hole, Arnold Palmer-designed course), Brasada Ranch in Powell Butte (18 holes co-designed by Peter Jacobsen and Jim Hardy), and Eagle Crest Resort in Redmond (regulation 18s by John Thronson and Gene “Bunny” Mason, plus an 18-hole executive-length track). Silver Mountain’s course was designed by Thronson and opened in 2010. Its new owner, Tryg Fortun of Eclectic LLC, told the Spokane Spokesman Review that Silver Mountain is “my favorite ski resort anywhere in the world.”

Sunday, October 23, 2016

The Week That Was, october 23, 2016

     Dubai, which likes to brag about its potential as a golf destination, is about to lose one of its nine golf properties. Al Badia Golf Club, a venue that opened in 2005 (it was originally known as Four Seasons Golf Club Dubai Festival City), will close in February 2017. The club offered no explanation for its demise, and the news appears to have caught its members by surprise. “We’ve never heard of a club closing down,” one of them told a Middle Eastern news service. Al Badia’s 18-hole course, literally an oasis in a desert, was designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr., who once said that “water is seen, heard, and felt almost everywhere, on and off the course.” Although Al Badia isn’t nearly as prominent as Emirates Golf Club, Jumeirah Golf Club, or some other nearby golf properties, its passing certainly raises a red flag. Dubai is wealthy beyond belief, but it has a limited water supply and its real estate market toggles between boom and bust. What’s more, a couple of years ago KPMG’s Golf Advisory Practice intimated that its golf market was about to max out. Given the dearth of information that we’ve received so far, it’s impossible to draw any conclusions about what Al Badia’s closing means to Dubai’s golf business. But it can’t be a positive sign.

     Is Turkey’s nascent golf industry about to suffer another setback? A little more than a week ago, some bad hombres launched a pair of missiles into the heart of the nation’s favorite vacation spot, and now the Turkish Airlines Golf Open, scheduled to take place at Regnum Carya Golf & Spa Resort next month, may be canceled. The missiles didn’t kill anyone, but everybody in Antalya is on edge and the European Tour is wrestling with matters that it’s never confronted. “We will update further as soon as possible,” it said in a press release. Turkey is a troubled country -- two recent terrorist bombings, last summer’s aborted military coup, strained relations with Russia -- and the golf courses in Belek/Antalya are suffering as a result. Rory McIlroy had agreed to play in the open, and his presence at the $7 million event was sure to boost television ratings and give Turkey’s golf business a welcome shot in the arm. Today, though, the tour is in a no-win situation. It may soon give the all-clear signal, but fear is contagious and you’ve got to wonder how many pros would rather play virtually anywhere else.

     Greg Norman thinks he can be in business forever, and he’s set up a holding company that he hopes will help him do it. Beginning next year, “the Living Brand” will dissolve Great White Shark Enterprises and start operating through the far more cleverly named Greg Norman Company. “Over the years, I have learned that no business can stand still,” he said in a press release. “We need to build a company not just for today, but for the future.” Regrettably, however, the future isn’t on the immediate horizon. In the near term, GNC will do exactly what GWSE has been doing for decades: Design golf courses, sell “branded” merchandise, make real-estate investments, and extend loans to small businesses. But sometime next year, when Norman begins to transform into a true captain of industry, he promises to unveil unique enterprises that will make GNC “a force on the landscape of golf and beyond.” These enterprises could be anything, really, because Norman is a man of the world and a deep thinker. If you’re looking for a hint of what the “beyond” might be, however, think Verizon and educational technology.

     An often overlooked international design firm has opened its fifth golf course in Indonesia, this one on Bali, a popular vacation spot that markets itself as “the Island of the Gods.” Belmont, California-based JMP Golf has produced an 18-hole, par-3 track for Bukit Pandawa Golf & Country Club, the centerpiece of a resort that’s taking shape on the Bukit Peninsula, along the island’s southern coast. The area is said to feature a “dramatic craggy coastline” and “imposing cliff-tops,” and Bob Moore, the course’s architect, reportedly preserved “rock outcroppings” and “architectural ruins” for additional aesthetic punch. Moore is responsible for two other JMP-designed courses in Indonesia, Royale Jakarta Golf Club in Jakarta and Royal Sumatra Golf & Country Club in Medan. He and his partners, Brian Costello and Mark Hollinger, along with JMP founder J. Michael Poellot, have also created courses in the United States and at least 10 other nations, among them China, France, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, and Thailand. Bukit Pandawa is being developed by PT Bali Ragawisata, which will eventually complement the resort’s course with a hotel that includes villas and a beach club.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the October 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     This year, for the first time since its inception in 2004, the annual Golf Business Forum will be held in the United States. The event, which touts itself as “the largest and most significant meeting of golf-industry executives and decision-makers in the world,” will be held at the Sawgrass Marriott Golf Resort & Spa in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida from November 28 to December 1, 2016. It’ll feature what HSBC, its sponsor and promoter, calls “an action-packed agenda” of “thought leadership and networking sessions” where “the game’s most influential voices, leaders, decision-makers, and global innovators” will “reflect on an exciting year and debate the future of the game.” A complete list of speakers hasn’t been announced, but Jack Nicklaus, Tim Finchem, and Martin Slumbers will reportedly be there, and Annika Sorenstam will receive HSBC’s lifetime achievement award.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

The Week That Was, october 16, 2016

     One of the high flyers in China’s golf business has acquired a high-profile golf portfolio in greater Seattle, Washington, a place it reportedly views as “a gateway into the North American golf market.”
     An affiliate of HNA Group, the owner of more than a dozen golf venues in the People’s Republic, has reportedly paid $137.5 million for eight properties assembled by Oki Golf, a group led by former Microsoft executive Scott Oki. The collection consists of Golf Club at Hawks Prairie in Lacey (36 holes), Golf Club at Newcastle in Newcastle (36 holes), Golf Club at Redmond Ridge in Redmond, Harbour Pointe Golf Club in Mukilteo, Indian Summer Golf & Country Club in Olympia, Plateau Club in Sammamish, Trophy Lake Golf & Casting in Port Orchard, and Washington National Golf Club in Auburn.
     HNA Group is an aviation company -- it offers flights to and from several cities in China and the United States, including Seattle -- with a hospitality division that owns and/or manages more than 80 hotels in something like 30 Chinese cities. It owns seven golf properties on Hainan Island, among them Kangle Garden International Golf Club and Sun River Golf Club, and four others elsewhere in the nation. The company owns two other golf properties in the United States -- Nicklaus Club Monterey (formerly Pasadera Country Club) in Monterey, California and Somers Pointe Golf Club in Somers, New York -- and in 2013 it entered into a partnership with Nicklaus Design’s Chinese affiliate that was expected to lead to “the re-design and re-branding of many of the HNA facilities.”
     Oki Golf no longer owns any golf properties. It’ll continue to operate the courses that it’s sold to HNA Group as well as one other -- Golf Club at Echo Falls in Snohomish -- that it sold last year. Oki reportedly sold Echo Falls to an unnamed “international investment group.”

     Finally, Mike Keiser is acting on advice that he’s been getting for years: He’s going to build Bandon Dunes’ next course -- the resort’s fifth 18-hole track -- on waterfront property currently occupied by the free-form Sheep Ranch layout he co-owns with Phil Friedmann
     “It should happen in the next two years,” the Chicago-based developer told Golf Advisor.
     Keiser has identified Gil Hanse as “the front runner” for the design commission, and Hanse’s mouth is already watering.”The Sheep Ranch is the best site we’ve ever seen for a new golf course,” he told the online news service. “When Jim [Wagner] and I walked the property, we were doing cartwheels.”
     The minimally maintained Sheep Ranch course, which has 13 Tom Doak-designed greens but no tees and no real beginning or end, is the worst-kept secret in golf. Though its existence has for years been denied by the folks at Bandon Dunes, knowledgeable visitors know where it is and who to call to make a tee time. And, as Hanse has indicated, it’s a tee time that’s worth making. Keiser says the site is “spectacular,” and Josh Lesnik of KemperSports, the operator of Bandon Dunes, thinks it’s “crazy good” and “really unbelieveable.”
     Sheep Ranch’s disappearance will disappoint some of Bandon Dunes’ customers, but Keiser needs to protect his most precious asset. The resort already faces strong competition from well-regarded venues in Nova Scotia (Cabot Links) and Florida (Streamsong), and next year it’ll get a Keiser-created rival in Wisconsin (Sand Valley). A fifth course at Bandon Dunes would certainly keep the tourist traffic flowing, especially if Hanse can deliver a track equal to those already created by David McLay Kidd, Tom Doak, and Coore & Crenshaw.

     Things aren’t just going badly for Donald “the Nominee” Trump on the campaign trail, as his golf properties in Scotland lost £9.5 million (almost $11.6 million) between them last year. Trump Turnberry, which was undergoing a renovation that depressed income, was the big loser, as it was £8.4 million ($10.2 million) in the red. In a statement to British authorities, Eric Trump said that he expects the property to “return to profitability in the short to medium term.” For what it’s worth, Trump’s course in Aberdeenshire hasn’t turned a profit since it opened in 2012.

     Phil “the Gambler” Mickelson has found another revenue stream. The three-time Masters champion will join Bubba Watson and Lee Trevino as “ambassadors” for the Greenbrier, a historic golf resort and PGA Tour venue in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. “My family, like all others who have visited the resort, loves the Greenbrier,” Mickelson said in a press release. The financial terms of the agreement haven’t been disclosed, but Mickelson will be moving into a house at the resort’s Greenbrier Sporting Club -- “a wonderful community,” according to Mickelson -- and he’s agreed to help Jim Justice, the Greenbrier’s owner, market the emerging Oakhurst community, which will feature a golf course that’s been co-designed by Trevino, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and the late Arnold Palmer. Mickelson, who’s had several brushes with the law of late, collected more than $50 million last year in golf-related endeavors.

Sunday, October 9, 2016

The Week That Was, october 9, 2016

     Just when you start thinking that Mike Keiser would never work with anyone except a certified naturalist, along comes Tiger Woods. The disgraced professional golfer and pitchman is reportedly being considered as the architect for the 27-hole golf complex -- an 18-hole course capable of hosting the BMW Championship and an easy-to-play nine-hole layout -- that Keiser and Mark Rolfing want to build along the Windy City’s lakefront, on property currently occupied by a pair of municipal tracks and just a chip shot from Barack Obama’s planned presidential library. Rolfing, a commentator for the Golf Channel, told the Chicago Tribune that a commission for Woods is “not a done deal,” but Keiser thinks the chance of it happening are “two in three.” One related issue to consider: Ben Crenshaw, half of Keiser’s favorite design team, has reportedly made a site visit.

     Gannett Company has placed a bet on golf’s future. For an undisclosed price, Gannett’s USA Today Network has acquired Golfweek, the magazine that once famously promoted a story about Tiger Woods with a picture of a noose. In a press release, the new owner says it believes that Golfweek’s assets -- in particular, its “industry-leading editorial team” and “events business” -- will bring “significant value to Gannett’s suite of audience-focused, content-driven sports business” and give it “an unmatched relationship with golf’s core demographic community.” In other words, Gannett views the transaction as an opportunity to make more money, not to break new ground in golf journalism. The seller was an entity linked to Crain Communications, the publisher of Advertising Age, Autoweek, a group of namesake business publications, and other periodicals. The transaction has been described as “a distress sale,” and Geoff Shackelford says that Golfweek has made “multiple layoffs on the sales and production side,” though without providing any details.

     Gifts of Gab: When it comes to determining the health of the golf business, would it be prudent to take the game by the balls? “The game is healthy,” Robert Trent Jones, Jr. told Crave. “I think the stat to watch is the number of golf balls sold. There’s been little decline there. That means there may be fewer players, but those still with the game are playing more often.”

Sunday, October 2, 2016

The Week That Was, october 2, 2016

     A British golf consultant has identified some of the world’s hot spots for golf development, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone to hear that Vietnam tops his list. The socialist republic is, after all, where “huge amounts are being ploughed into the game,” according to Paul Dellanzo, a Liverpool, England-based designer, developer, and manager. Dellanzo also sees an upside in Oman, which he believes “has everything to be the next emerging luxury golf destination,” and Indonesia, thanks primarily to its “younger demographics” and “a very healthy ratio of quality, demand, and price.” He also cites Canada and Russia, though without making a persuasive case, as well as France and Italy, but only because they’re upcoming host nations for Ryder Cup competitions. Of course, there’s been a chill in the development air for many years, and Dellanzo continues to feel it in Dubai (“a chaotic and expensive city” where “most rounds are actually played by expatriates”), Japan (it’s “suffering for now from an older population and one of the highest national debts in the world”), Great Britain (“it is often cheaper for the British to fly to southern Europe to play for a short holiday”), and the United States (“still in a tailspin”).

     Thinking about taking a golf vacation in Tasmania? Well, the biggest booster club for Australia’s golf industry is gushing about Ocean Dunes, the new waterfront links on King Island. Golf Australia says that Ocean Dunes’ Graeme Grant-designed track, which has been laid out upon “one of the most impressive seaside locations for golf on the planet,” is “as strategically layered as it is visually mesmerizing” and “a triumph for those who agree that the game is far more interesting when the ball is on the ground rather than in the air.” To be sure, the group’s reviewer makes the inevitable comparison to nearby Cape Wickham Links, a track already regarded as being among the world’s elites, but, naturally, declines to pick a winner. “Both are ingenious designs on stunningly beautiful ground, both utilize their vast natural assets with aplomb, yet each owns characteristics the other doesn’t,” the reviewer has concluded. “They make a great double act.” Other reviewers will no doubt concur. King Island is on a fast-growing number of bucket lists.

     Before the end of the year, FLC Group expects to unveil the second 18-hole course at FLC Quy Nhơn Golf Links, a venue that serves as the centerpiece of what’s said to be a “seven-star” resort community outside Quy Nhơn, in Bình Định Province. Both of Quy Nhơn’s courses were designed by internationally known U.S. firms, and both took shape in hardly any time at all. The builder, Flagstick Golf Course Construction Management, claims that the community’s Oceanside course, by Nicklaus Design, emerged in just five months. It opened in March. Flagstick tried to finish the forthcoming Mountain track, by Brian Curley of Schmidt-Curley Design, in only four months, but it may end up taking six. Quy Nhơn is FLC Group’s second golf property (the first, FLC Sầm Sơn Golf Links in Thanh Hóa Province, opened last year), and within a few months the publicly traded company also figures to open an 18-hole layout at FLC Hạ Long Bay Golf Club & Resort in Quảng Ninh Province. In addition, FLC Group has enlisted Curley to design the first two courses at FLC Đồng Hới Golf Links, a 7,500-acre spread in Quảng Bình Province that’s been master-planned for 10 courses. If you’re wondering where FLC Group goes from there, the company aims to have 20 courses in its portfolio by 2020.

     The original version of the preceding post first appeared in the September 2016 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report.

     For just the fourth time in 33 years, the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America is giving its top award to a golf course superintendent. He is Paul Latshaw, who over a 38-year career worked at some of our nation’s most celebrated venues, among them Augusta National Golf Club, Oakmont Country Club, Congressional Country Club, Riviera Country Club, and Winged Foot Golf Club. Along the way, he prepared courses for nine major championships. “I was a farm boy from central Pennsylvania who became a golf course superintendent,” Latshaw joked in a press release. “It sure was better than bailing hay and feeding chickens.” Previous winners of the GCSAA’s Old Tom Morris Award include Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Pete Dye, Byron Nelson, Annika Sorenstam, Bob Hope, and Dinah Shore.

     Jack Nicklaus has earned many accolades during his brilliant career, but he’s never been known as a defender of the free world. That may soon change, however, because South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense wants to deploy U.S. missiles on one of his golf courses.

Friday, September 30, 2016

Arnold Palmer, 1929-2016, september 30, 2016

     “To place a president of the United States in proper historical perspective might take several generations, but to evaluate the impact of Arnold Palmer on golf we need not wait. He has meant more to the game than anyone, ever, in every conceivable way.”  
     -- Nick Seitz, editor at large, Golf Digest

     Arnold Palmer, the champion golfer whose full-bore style of play, thrilling tournament victories, and magnetic personality inspired an American golf boom, attracted a following known as Arnie’s Army, and made him one of the most popular athletes in the world, died on Sunday evening in Pittsburgh. He was 87.  
     -- New York Times

     His immense talent on the golf course was undeniable; it helped him win more than 90 professional events during his career, including four Masters titles, two British Opens, and a U.S. Open championship. But Palmer’s charisma stemmed from the way the Western Pennsylvania native connected with almost everyone he met, with an authenticity that truly made him a champion of the people. It was that likeability that made him a legend.  
     -- Forbes

     “No one has had a greater impact on those who play our great sport or who are touched by it. It has been said many times over in so many ways, but beyond his immense talent, Arnold transcended our sport with an extraordinarily appealing personality and genuineness that connected with millions, truly making him a champion of the people.”  
     -- Tim Finchem, commissioner, PGA Tour

     Palmer was a golf icon, but his reach spread far beyond just the sports community. Palmer was one of the first true golf celebrities and was among the first golfers to take advantage of his popularity by launching businesses tied to his name.  
     -- CBS Sports

     He was a part owner of the Pebble Beach Resort in California and principal owner of the Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, the site of the annual Arnold Palmer Invitational tournament on the PGA Tour.  
     -- New York Times

     Along with his incredible golf career, Palmer became one of the top golf course architects in the country with Palmer Course Designs launching in 1972.  
     -- CBS Sports

     PGA Tour Commissioner Tim Finchem said without Palmer there would be no modern-day PGA Tour, no senior tour, and certainly no Golf Channel, the television network devoted solely to golf that he helped create.  
     -- Forbes

     He was the first athlete to receive three of the United States’ civilian honors: the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and the National Sports Award.
     -- New York Times

     “He was the king of our sport and always will be.”
     -- Jack Nicklaus 

     From 1958 through 1964, Palmer was the charismatic face of professional golf and one of its dominant players. In those seven seasons, he won seven major titles: four Masters, one United States Open, and two British Opens. With 62 victories on the PGA Tour, he ranks fifth, behind Sam Snead, Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, and Ben Hogan. . . . But it was more than his scoring and shotmaking that captivated the sports world. It was how he played. He did not so much navigate a course as attack it.
     -- New York Times

     Palmer was . . . the PGA Tour’s leading money winner in 1958, 1960, 1962, and 1963 and its player of the year in 1960 and 1962. In 1968, he became the first golfer to earn more than $1 million in career prize money on the PGA Tour. The award for the leading money winner each year is now named for him.  
     -- New York Times

     Palmer had a literal army of supporters, a legion of fans known as Arnie’s Army, and popularized the game in ways no golfer before him had. He was not only a transcendent sports star but a business and philanthropic icon who ushered golf into the television era. The charismatic and competitive Palmer not only helped make golf popular outside the country club set with his everyman appeal, but he was one of the first golfers to build a global brand and established a charity foundation that will continue his philanthropic legacy for decades to come.  
     -- Forbes

     “He was the prototype for all of today’s high-earning sports men and women, and one of the few people you can truly say changed the world of sports business.”  
     -- Nigel Currie, sponsorship consultant, NC Partnership

     Palmer won $3.6 million in prize money during his 52 years on the PGA Tour and Champions Tour but 240 times that from appearances, endorsements, licensing, and golf course design. His estimated $875 million in career earnings ranks third all-time in sports, behind only [Michael] Jordan and [Tiger] Woods.  
     -- Forbes

     “He established the sports marketing industry as we knew it. It became a much more sophisticated exercise. It became a real business with real money.”  
     -- Alastair Johnston, chairman, Arnold Palmer Enterprises

     When Mr. Palmer began playing golf professionally, in the 1950s, few athletes were endorsing products, and those that were usually did so for nominal fees and free samples, often cigarettes. Then, in 1958, Mark McCormack, a golf fan with a hunch that professional athletes could be stars off the field as well, began pitching golfers on the idea of letting him represent them in their business dealings. Mr. Palmer was reluctant at first. “I wasn’t looking for an agent,” Palmer said in a recent book, Players: The Story of Sports and Money, and the Visionaries Who Fought to Create a Revolution, by Matthew Futterman. “I had my wife. She was handling everything.” But in the fall of 1959, Mr. Palmer agreed to work with Mr. McCormack on an exclusive basis. Mr. McCormack wanted to sign a contract, but Mr. Palmer preferred a handshake. That handshake, legend has it, was the foundation of one of the most lucrative partnerships in the history of sports.  
     -- New York Times

     Palmer once told McCormack: “I made clear ... from the beginning that I didn’t feel comfortable pitching a product or service I wouldn’t use or didn’t think was very good. That just seemed dishonest to me, and I was pretty sure the public would see right through it.”  
     -- Daily Mail

     A ubiquitous pitchman for more than a half-century, he hawked nearly 50 products and services, from Johnston & Murphy shoes to Ketel One vodka, transforming the celebrity endorsement from a novelty to an industry. At the same time, he carefully cultivated his personal brand, forming his own company, creating a logo, selling products and equipment adorned with his signature, and paving the way for modern stars with diverse business interests like Serena Williams and LeBron James.
     -- New York Times

     “He was the starting point for the creation of the modern sports world. Arnold Palmer is going to be making money long after we are all dead.”  
     -- Matthew Futterman, reporter, Wall Street Journal

     The late Mark McCormack, who represented Mr. Palmer in his business affairs, in his book Arnie wrote that he “had little heart for business dealings.” That was an ironic assessment because Mr. Palmer became the first sports star to turn into something of a corporation. Forbes magazine calculated his earnings in 2015, more than 40 years after his last PGA Tour win, at $40 million, saying his drinks line, including the eponymous iced tea-lemonade drink, was about one-quarter of revenue for AriZona Beverage Company.
     -- Wall Street Journal

     “Last year we sold half a billion containers with Arnie’s face on it.”  
     -- Don Vultaggio, founder, AriZona Beverages

     In the 1990s, the New York Times reported that an Upper West Side wrap restaurant was trying to rename the drink the Tiger Woods “for a new generation.” This effort does not seem to have caught on, and the wrap place has closed.  
     -- New York Times

     Every retired iconic athlete seemingly wants to copy the “Arnold Palmer” model where they license their name and the royalty checks roll in, but few can match the original. Palmer was one of a kind.  
     -- Forbes

     “He meant so much to so many people from all walks of life, and is the embodiment of what can happen if you work hard and always treat people well.”  
     -- Mike McCarley, president, Golf Channel

     On Monday, St. Martin’s Press said it would move up the publication date of Mr. Palmer’s final book by two weeks, to October 11. A Life Well Played: My Stories rocketed up the best-seller list on Amazon to crack the top 50.  
     -- New York Times

     “He was a drinker but never seemed drunk. He was a winner but never seemed cocky. He was richer than many nations but came off like a guy who had a Christmas Club savings account. He had charisma pouring out of his ears, manners enough for entire towns, and swimming pools of testosterone. He flew his own planes, jiggered his own clubs, and drank his vodka straight. He loved people like he loved his next breath and golf even more than that. Golf just got lucky.”
     -- Rick Reilly, Golf magazine