paradise lost David McLay Kidd's Golf Course on Laucala

Late last year, a golf course opened that all of us would love to play but few of us ever will.

Oh, who am I kidding? It's a golf course that none of us will ever play.

I'm talking about David McLay Kidd's golf course on Laucala, a 3,000-acre private island somewhere in the northern part of the Fiji chain. You've probably never heard of it. No big deal. Laucala isn't for everybody. Deliberately so.

Malcolm Forbes used to own Laucala. After he died, his family sold it to Dietrich Mateschitz, the guy who put Red Bull in every tavern and grocery store in the world.

Red Bull helped to make Mateschitz extremely wealthy. Forbes says he's worth $3.7 billion. He owns a Formula One race team and a professional soccer team. He doesn't golf, but he built Kidd's course and he wants to build another one in suburban Salzburg. Golf serves his ends.

Mateschitz bought Laucala with the idea of making it a refuge for people like himself. He sells it not merely as an island paradise but as the perfect dream of an island paradise.

And the dream is very expensive.

Laucala has 25 villas. To spend just one night in the cheapest one will set you back $4,000. A place with some nicer appointments and a little more space goes for $7,000. And for Mateschitz's personal house, the one with the commanding view of practically the whole island? That would be $30,000.

For one night.

In other words, a week in even the low-rent digs on Laucala is the equivalent of nice car or a year's worth of private college. For that kind of money, you'd half-expect Robin Leach to stroll by and wish you "champagne wishes and caviar dreams."

So if it's difficult to find, well, the search for paradise is arduous. And if it's ultra-exclusive, well, paradise is reserved for the chosen few.

Laucala reminds me of a line from an old Beatles song: Got to be good-looking 'cause he's so hard to see.

One thing's for sure: If Laucala really is a kind of heaven on earth, it had better have a damned fine golf course.

I'll bet it does, because Kidd has created some good ones. He designed the first course at Bandon Dunes in Oregon, which has been winning raves since the minute it opened. He designed the Castle Course at St. Andrews and Machrihanish Dunes, a pair of gems in Scotland, and very good courses in Oregon and Hawaii and California.

You won't find any of those golf courses in an episode of "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous." They're golf courses for the rest of us, for men and women of all sizes and shapes and colors and ages and income levels.

They're courses that ask if you enjoy a particular style of golf, not if you enjoy a particular lifestyle.

So when it comes to a golf course like the one on Laucala, my question is: Should anyone care?

Not to get all metaphysical, but if an architect designs a golf course that hardly anybody plays, does it really exist? It's like the proverbial tree falling in a forest. If nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Similarly, what kind of sound does a golf course make if there's nobody around to play it? And where would the sound come from? Who would rhapsodize about it, or criticize it? How would it find its way onto a best-of list? What place would it have in history books?

I'm not saying that there isn't a place for a golf course like the one at Laucala. Architects have been designing golf courses for the very rich since who knows when. Kenny Rogers, the county-and-western singer, used to have a personal golf course. John D. Rockefeller had at least two of them. Arnold Palmer designed one for John Kluge in Virginia.

Can you hear the sounds those courses make? It isn't very loud, is it?

Worse, the sound doesn't reverberate. It doesn't echo through the world of golf.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you design a golf course that hardly anybody plays, what good is it? In the grand scheme of things, does it make a difference? Will it ever represent anything more than a paycheck?

I bring all this up because Kidd is one of the most important architects of our time. Like a lot of his contemporaries, he likes to philosophize about the traditions that golf courses should be faithful to. He has compelling ideas about how golf should be played and the kind of experiences golf courses should deliver. He thinks about the history of the game, and, I presume, his place in it.

Kidd calls what he does "purist golf." I used to think I knew what he meant, but now I'm not so sure.

Nearly a dozen times in the United States and around the world, Kidd has taken risks and opened golf courses that are worth playing and worth talking about. On Laucala, he designed and built a golf course that signifies very little, maybe nothing.

If it makes any sound at all, it's just the sound of money talking.

Tiger Woods: Goodbye To All That

The New York Times Magazine has published a long, gloomy story about the fall of Tiger Woods and its affect on golf, particularly the PGA Tour. Jonathan Mahler, who wrote "The Tiger Bubble," ties the sex and the money into a neat bundle and makes some troubling observations about where the sport is headed.

Here's part of what Mahler had to say about the Tour and where it stands with its corporate partners:

The PGA Tour is at a critical juncture. Next year it will begin negotiating new TV contracts with CBS and NBC. In the meantime, the tour is trying to secure sponsors for 10 events in 2011 while economic conditions are not exactly favorable. Two of the hardest-hit industries, financial services and car manufacturing, are responsible for underwriting a third of the PGA Tour’s sponsored events. More to the point, the entire economic model of a golf tournament is looking a bit suspect. At the moment, the value of a company’s flying clients and employees to a sunny locale to drink Grey Goose cocktails and get tips on their short games from professional golfers is most likely to be lost on many of its shareholders.

Mahler also discusses the Tour's inevitable globalization, noting that it "could provide new revenue streams to the tour." He writes:

Just as Michael Jordan inspired a flood of foreign players to seek their fortunes in the National Basketball Association, Woods helped globalize the PGA Tour. When he first went pro in 1996, 26 of the tour’s 200 active members were not Americans; today the PGA Tour has 77 foreign golfers from 21 countries.

Mahler also wonders about corporate America's willingness to fund a tarnished brand.

For years, Woods fueled a frenzy of investment in the game -- from corporate sponsors, advertisers, broadcasters, clothing and equipment manufacturers, even golf-course developers. It was, you could say, a classic economic bubble, the Tiger Bubble. The question now is whether Woods’s crash will end up being just a temporary correction for golf or if the bubble has truly burst. Even if he does manage to dominate his sport again, will investors return to an enterprise whose fortunes have seemed so inextricably linked to a single brand?

Finally, Mahler talks with Jay Williamson, a middling golfer -- not a single victory during his 15 years on the Tour -- who's nonetheless managed to earn more than $5.5 million. Williamson speculates about the sport's prospects:

“I just don’t think golf will ever get back to where it was. I think we’ve worn some of our sponsors out, and I just don’t think in this kind of economic environment we’re going to attract the kind of money we did in the glory days. I hope I’m wrong, but I just feel it.”

The story is worth reading, and I encourage you to check it out.

GREECE Costa Navarino: One Down, Six To Go

Later this spring, probably in May, a shipping tycoon plans to open the seventh golf course in Greece. And before he's done, he may open six more.

The new course is part of Costa Navarino, a collection of four related resorts that will take shape on 2,470 non-contiguous acres along Navarino Bay and the Ionian Sea, on the southwestern Peloponnesian coast. It's no stretch to say that Costa Navarino figures to eventually become the premier golf destination in Greece.

Costa Navarino is being developed by Achilles Constantakopoulos, the managing director of Tourism Enterprise of Messinia, SA (TEMES). Constantakopoulos also owns one of the world’s largest shipping companies, Athens-based Costamare Shipping Company, SA.

Constantakopoulos has one goal: to make Costa Navarino the most popular vacation destination in the Mediterranean, if not in the entire world. To do so, he aims to build thousands of houses, at least seven hotels (and possibly as many as 11, with a total of about 3,000 rooms), six spas, meeting space, and many other attractions, including as many as seven golf courses.

The four resorts that make up Costa Navarino will be located in the villages of Romanos, Pylos, Kynigos, and Rizomylos, all of which are within a half-hour’s drive of each other. The villages are in Messinia, one of the least developed prefectures in Greece, at least in terms of holiday amenities.

The first course has been co-designed by Bernhard Langer, the German golf pro, and Ross McMurray of European Golf Design. It's the centerpiece of Navarino Dunes, which is located on 352 acres in Romanos. When it's completed, Navarino Dunes is expected to have a bunch of vacation-style houses (including time-share condos), two hotels (including a 445-room Westin), meeting space, a spa, and a golf academy.

Here’s the scoop on Costa Navarino's future development plans:

-- The second resort, Navarino Bay in Pylos, will be the most luxurious in Costa Navarino. The 370-acre spread will have villas, two hotels (including a Banyan Tree), a spa, and a golf course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr. The course and an accompanying academy are expected to open in 2012.

-- The third and largest resort, Navarino Blue, will take shape on 740 acres in the hills of Kynigos. Blue will have two 18-holes golf courses, a sports-oriented hotel, an equestrian center, a tennis center, and a health spa.

-- The fourth resort, part of a seaside village in Rizomylos, will have five hotels, a boardwalk with shops, an outdoor theater, a water park, and one golf course, possibly a nine-hole track.

So far, I've counted five golf courses. Constantakopoulos hasn’t said where or when the other two tracks will be built.

NICARAGUA The Names of the Game

Is Kevin Fleming having second thoughts about the golf course he wants to build in Nicaragua?

The Jack Nicklaus-designed track is supposed to be the centerpiece of Seaside Mariana Spa & Golf Resort, which is planned to take shape on a 1.2-mile stretch of beachfront along Nicaragua's Pacific coast, near San Rafael del Sur. Presuming it's built, it would be Nicklaus' first “signature” course in Central America and would unquestionably set the standard for golf development throughout the region.

In a recent interview with International Property Journal, however, Fleming complained that only 15 to 20 percent of Seaside Mariana's potential buyers have been attracted by the golf course. A far larger number -- half of the community's potential buyers, Fleming says -- have been lured by its spa.

"There's more interest in eco-adventure [than golf]," Fleming groused.

This should concern all of us in the golf business. Twenty years ago, when I began writing about golf development, we were told, in gleeful tones, that only about half of the residents in a typical golf community actually played golf. This was, supposedly, evidence of golf's unsurpassed power to spark house sales, even among people who had no interest in the game.

Soon, though, the numbers started to fall. We heard that just a third of the home buyers were golfers, then a quarter.

And now Fleming is telling us that the number has fallen even farther.

How low can it go before no developer in his right mind will build a golf course?

On the face of it, Fleming's hiring of Nicklaus is an absolute no-brainer. Nicklaus is the most famous golf designer on earth, with a list of award-winning projects as long as your arm. Wherever you go on our planet -- Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, Malaysia, or wherever -- people will tell you that the local Nicklaus course is the one you should play. He may charge a king's ransom for his services, but a parade of developers in more than 30 countries will swear that he's worth every penny.

But not in Nicaragua, apparently.

And Fleming isn't the only developer who's questioning the value of "signature" golf these days.

Jim Anthony has inked three of the biggest names in golf design -- Nicklaus, Tom Fazio, and Gary Player -- to design golf courses for his Cliffs communities in North and South Carolina. He was the first U.S. developer to hire Tiger Woods to design a golf course, for Cliffs at High Carolina in suburban Asheville.

Anthony has been selling houses at High Carolina for more than a year. At last count, he'd sold 39.

So where does Anthony stand on the value of "signature" golf today?

He recently admitted that the number of people who buy a house based on its proximity to a golf course is "dwindling."

This is discouraging news for the golf industry in general and for premier golf designers in particular -- not just for Nicklaus but for Fazio and Robert Trent Jones, Jr. and Greg Norman and all the others whose courses anchor many of the world's most luxurious, most desirable golf communities.

Only a few years ago, when it came to selling houses, these designers were money in the bank. Now, due to their prowess as real estate salesmen, they've become victims of their own success.

In a sense, they're all imprisoned by their brands. Nicklaus, for example, can only design one kind of golf course -- an expensive, spectacular course -- because every track he designs will inevitably be compared to the 270 or so he's already designed. Sure, his firm can offer a cheaper alternative -- a "Nicklaus Design" course, say, just as Player can offer a "Black Knight" design -- but, frankly, the downscale alternative doesn't bring much magic to a marketing campaign.

So where do the "brand-name" designers go from here?

And where does golf development go?

INDONESIA Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020, West Java

The Italian city of Venice, with its canals and gondoliers, its beauty and romance, is serving as the inspiration for a waterfront community in West Java, Indonesia.

The community is called Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020, and it aims to become the “Riviera of Indonesia.” On its website, TanjungLesungVenice2020.com, Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 effusively describes itself as “iconic” (a stretch, seeing as it hasn’t yet been built), “one of the most unique cities in the world” (ditto), and -– hang on tight -– “a city so serene that it will change your view about life.”

I can already feel the bliss.

Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 will spread over 1,250 acres along the western coast of West Java, roughly a three-hour drive from Jakarta. (A planned toll road is expected to shave some time off the trip.) As best I can determine, it’ll have 2,000 single-family houses and vacation villas, three hotels, a retail area, a water park, and an 18-hole golf course designed by Greg Norman.

And yes, its residents and visitors will travel within its boundaries by boats and gondolas, at least part of the time. Otherwise it wouldn’t be quite so serene.

Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 is being developed by Oliver Tham, the principal of Thams Developments. Tham, who was born in Malaysia but is based in Australia, has likened West Java to the Gold Coast of Australia, and he’s a true believer when it comes to the area’s development prospects.

“There has never been a region in the world with such great potential,” his website says.

Tham plans to break ground on the golf course in 2011.

Tanjung Lesung Venice 2020 is the first major phase of a 3,125-acre resort destination called Tanjung Lesung, which will be developed over the next 10 to 20 years. Tanjung Lesung’s master plan has been created by the Jakarta-based Banten West Java Tourism Development Corporation, which has so far persuaded developers to build some houses, a hotel with a spa (the Tanjung Lesung Resort Hotel), a beach club, a school, a medical center, and other attractions.

Tjahjadi Rahardja, the director of the development corporation, is reportedly one of Tham’s partners, along with Setyono Djuandi Darmono, the principal of PT Jababeka TBK. The latter developed the Koto Jababeka planned community near Jakarta, which includes Jababeka Golf & Country Club.

The next phase of Tanjung Lesung, which will occupy another 1,250 acres, is to have 2,000 additional housing units, three more hotels, a marina village, an “education campus,” and a second 18-hole golf course. In phase three (also 1,250 acres), the development corporation wants private interests to build more houses and hotels, and possibly a theme park.

Tham says he expects to see “no less than six golf courses” in the area around Tanjung Lesung in the future. He also reports that he hopes to build golf communities in China, India, and Mexico someday, and that he’s decided that any golf courses he builds will be designed by Norman.