Of the $6 million, $2 million will be pitched in by the city and they’re attempting to raise an additional $4 million from private donations. Thus far, they have raised $2.5 million. The design will be done, for free, by Raymond Floyd. The Palm Beach Daily News estimates that the value of the design at $700,000.

$700,000? For a design of a par 3 golf course? Has anybody ever got $700,000 for the design of a par 3 golf course – ever?

Now the $6 million does include a new clubhouse as well. Must be a heck of a clubhouse, especially for a par 3. The architect of the clubhouse is donating his services and so is an interior designer. And the price tag is still $6 million.

And get this, apparently the course isn’t going to change much.

The course will stay true to the original 1960 Dick Wilson design with minor modifications, Floyd said. The location of the holes will be the same, but the direction of two will be revised.

So, the course routing isn’t changing, outside of changing the direction of two holes, and the cost for the design would have been $700,000? I’d really like to know how that number was arrived at.

I like to do a math exercise to see how long it’s going to take to get the money back. According to the course’s website, the green fee for a non-resident is, at peak time and with cart, is $46.19. Let’s assume every single player is paying that price, the highest possible. In order for the town to get its $2 million back, it will take 43,000 18-hole rounds. That’s being super optimistic too – the average green fee is almost certainly going to be at least half that, pushing the break even number to over 85,000 18-hole rounds. To get back the $6 million, it’s going to take more than 250,000 18-hole rounds.

That’s an amazing number to fathom for a par 3 golf course – even in Palm Beach.

In the good times, golf courses were getting rezoned and bulldozed for shopping centers and subdivisions. Now, the economy is taking a bite out of them on the other side – this time, simply closing down.

As is the case with many architects in today’s economy, the only action is overseas.

Consider Rick Jacobson, a golf course architect in Libertyville, Ill. For nearly two decades, the founder of Jacobson Golf Course Design designed and renovated courses in Chicago suburbs, such as Bloomingdale and Winnetka, as well as nationally. But in the last few years, Jacobson – who has worked with Jack Nicklaus on a number of projects – has focused on a new market: China.

Last month, Jacobson agreed to design a 27-hole course in Hong Kong. It’s his third venture in China, following the 36-hole Lion’s Lake Resort course near Guangzhou and Chaozhou, an 18-hole resort course.

”In the foreseeable future we won’t see growth like the 1990s in the U.S. again,” said Jacobson, who also agreed to design a course in the Italian province of Calabria this year. “Some of the projects were ill-conceived. Some courses were just a temporary fad until they could flip it to a developer.”

The unfortunate part of the current situation is that there must be a lot of architects without work. The list here on EarthGolf contains more than 240 architects currently in the business. Granted, some of them are not in the US and some work together in firms, but with just 80 courses opening in the US last year and almost certainly fewer next year, times could not be more difficult for golf course architects.

Davis Love III, who is also in the golf course design business, had this to say about the economy.

As one of my friends has been saying, he says, I planned for a slow down; not a meltdown. You know, I don’t think we can predict, because what we were predicting six months ago what were predicting in our golf design business what we predicted six months ago we’ve completely thrown out the window.

Now we run them down. Okay, we’re going to project zero that way we won’t miss. So who knows where it’s going to go. I’d love to sit down with Greg and say, all right, and Arnie and Jack who are all in the same kind of business, like, What do you project? Same with the Del Webb guys. What do you guys project? Nobody has anything good to say. I don’t know.

Some of the publicly built courses over the past few years are beginning to see some major pushback. Take the case of the Neshanic Valley Golf Course in New Jersey, a 27-hole course designed by Hurdzan/Fry and opened 2004 and 2005. The county spent over $19 million on the golf courses and now they’ve got trouble as the rounds at the golf course have fallen off sharply. Revenue for the facility is $3.7 million a year, down nearly $200,000 from the previous year.

Even high end courses, like the Tom Fazio designed Hasentree Golf Course near Raleigh, North Carolina, couldn’t escape the collapsing residential real estate market. It is facing foreclosure – and it was a project expected to be worth in excess of $1 billion when complete.

It is likely to be a rough go for the next several years in the golf course industry. It will be interesting to see where things go and how the market will respond to the ecomoic meltdown. As golf course architect Mike Nuzzo points out in this post, it is possible to build a very good golf course under budget. However, it takes an old way of thinking – looking to the property to define the golf course instead of dictating to the property where the golf course should go. It also takes an architect actually concerned about the costs and committed to designing for a budget, something the big name architects have never had to do. That is almost certainly going to change going forward.

CLOSURES OUTPACE OPENINGS IN 2007

NGF has identified 113 golf courses, in 18-hole equivalents, that opened for business in the U.S. in 2007. During the same period, there were 121.5 golf course closures, resulting in a net negative of 8.5 courses. This year’s story is much the same as 2006 when the number of closures outnumbered openings by 26.5.

“The development business has run full circle,” says NGF vice president Greg Nathan. “Developers are now being more prudent about the decision to build, and are doing more due diligence on where to build, and at what price point.”

Closures
Many courses close because of higher and better economic use of land, rather than business failure. Courses may be sold to developers when the underlying land has greater commercial real estate value than cash flow value as a golf course. In these cases, the land may have been unwittingly warehoused by the original owner, then sold by the owner’s heirs as a favorable exit strategy.

A disproportionate number of closures were “non-traditional” facilities – either stand-alone 9-holers or short courses (executive or par-3). In 2007, they accounted for 43% of total closures but only 20% of total U.S. supply.

Five-year trend
Looking at the past five years combined, there have been 678.5 openings vs. 491.5 closures for a net positive of 187 courses, or a modest 37.4 per year. That equates to less than three-tenths of a percent of total supply being added per year. In other words, the overall number of golf courses is virtually unchanged from five years ago.

Looking Ahead
While it’s too early to forecast 2008 openings, given the number of courses currently under construction, we expect the number of new courses built in 2008 to be similar to 2007.

This is not shocking given the over supply of golf courses in most areas of the country. It’s also not surprising given the current real estate market. I would predict this trend continuing for another 2 or 3 years at least. I would also expect the number of course closings to decline and the number of new courses openings to steeply decline.

The reason for the number of closings declining is that land development is slowing tremendously. Many courses that close end up as re-development projects. Those won’t happen as often, taking pressure off courses to sell.

The reason for the steep decline in new courses is similar to the decline in course closings, only at a much larger scale. The majority of new golf courses are associated with a residential development. With residential development at extreme lows, that translates to less demand for golf courses – a lot less.

District officials spent nearly $1 million studying whether the soccer, baseball and softball fields could be built on a lakefront Superfund site. About a month ago, the deal fell through because of cost and environmental obstacles, Petry said.

“We moved back to Plan A,” Petry said, adding that 75 percent of patrons at the golf course are not Waukegan residents.

“Things change. We need to have these fields built. The fields we have are in neighborhoods and the impact has been in the neighborhoods.”

Some interesting statements there without a lot of detail – like the very last by Petry. That statement by itself doesn’t make any sense. What impact? Is the impact bad? Why is it bad? I think the most confusing was this statement by Board President Terry Duffy.

Board President Terry Duffy replied that the decision to close Orchard Hills was not easy and that providing a place for children to play soccer was paramount.

“It’s not about golf, money or anything else,” Duffy said. “It’s about providing soccer fields in our area. That’s the bottom line.”

That’s such a strange statement to make. What was so overriding that soccer fields needed to be provided? That statement doesn’t sound like very good judgment is being used here. Doesn’t exactly follow the mission statement of the Waukegan Park District.

The Waukegan Park District is committed to providing parks, facilities and leisure opportunities to our culturally diverse population through the resources of community involvement, dedicated staff and sound management.

(As a side note, I found it a bit ironic that the District’s website has a graphic pronouncing “The Golf Courses are OPEN!”)

Some applaud, or at the very least, don’t see it as a big deal. I tend to disagree – this is not only a sign of the times, it’s a sign of the problems the game faces. 8,200 yard courses are not sustainable for any number of reasons – from the added cost of maintenance to the time it would take to play a course that long, golf literally can’t afford for technology and/or ego to allow this to become common place. To top it off, the wildly undulating greens stimped at a 12 for the tournament, making three putts common.

The purpose of the Back Black Challenge was to put some of the better players in the state to the ultimate test and also to see how difficult Erin Hills would play from the tips. The course is considered a potential U.S. Open site by the United States Golf Association.

But not even the USGA would make Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson play an 8,400-yard course. For comparison, Whistling Straits measured a record 7,536 yards for the 2004 PGA Championship, but the actual yardage for three of the four tournament rounds was considerably less.

“I was looking at it from a U.S. Open perspective,” said David Albrecht, the head professional at Blackwolf Run. “I don’t think they’ll use some of the tees we played.”

The opening hole was a 655-yard par-5. There were par-4s of 535, 535, 521, 516, 512 and 509 yards and par-3s of 242, 223 and 221.

“It doesn’t get any better than that,” said Charlie Delsman, who shot an 83. “Nowhere else can you go and play an 8,400-yard course. The yardage is intimidating. You stand up there on the par-4s and it’s 535 or 520.”

Sorry, but I have no interest in half the par 4s playing in excess of 500 yards – I don’t find that compelling golf at any level. Think how drab Augusta was this year – and it has one par 4 in excess of 500 yards, the now goofy 11th hole which should be renamed “Tree Farm”. Let’s hope that the USGA finally gets somebody back in charge that understands two things – golf needs compelling leadership on both technology and pace of play and tournament golf needs compelling course setups. Perhaps then there is hope for the future of golf.

Sales and marketing director Tiffany Nelson said the root structure on the course has deteriorated since 2000, when it stopped irrigating with Central Arizona Project water and switched to reclaimed water.

The reclaimed water has high salt content, which drains into lakes on the course and then is pumped back onto the course for irrigation. Nelson said plans are to install a new drainage system next year, which will filter out the salt.

It will require all of the fairways to be resodded. The course will reopen on August 28th.

The future of many golf courses lies in the use of reclaimed water for irrigation. The impacts to turf are likely to be varied depending on the quality of the water, but the use of reclaimed water is a win-win situation for both the golf course, which gets a price break and a more reliable water supply, and the government, which generates income of off lightly treated water and doesn’t use the potable water supply for irrigation.

Mr Cullingford said there was “no demonstrable deficiency in the provision of golf courses either in the Lake District National Park or in the vicinity of the Armathwaite Hall Hotel” and no need for additional provision.

He said the National Park Local Plan made it clear that new courses in the open countryside would not be permitted in the Lake District National Park.

The NPA refused permission because they considered the scheme would be a large-scale visitor attraction in the open countryside which was not needed in connection with an existing business.

The 6,200-yard-long par 71 course would harm the landscape and quiet nature of the area.

Harming the landscape and quiet nature is a reason for rejecting a golf course?

Next, we have a story of vandalism to the Black Country Golf Course.

Chairman of the club’s greens committee Peter Shirley said attacks at the course had been getting worse during the last three months.

“There’s about 24 small holes gouged in the green as well as two bigger holes,” he said.

“It can cause disruption as well as extra work and extra expense to the golf club.

“A lot of people tend to think that golf clubs are millionaire’s playgrounds but our club isn’t like that, it’s just a club for ordinary people.

“It’s very much a club for local people and when something like this happens so often it starts to affect the management of the rest of the golf club.”

Finally, Scotland’s own Paul Lawrie – the winner of the Open Championship in his homeland – isn’t finding that his hero status is buying him much leeway these days.

But Tony Hawkins, of residents’ action group Green Wedge, said: “This proposed golf course has been rolled out to obscure the real issue.

“Aberdeen has a greenbelt and to stick a housing estate in the middle of the most attractive part is really not sensible.”

Lawrie’s mansion overlooks the development site on the banks of the River Dee.

He said: “I have lots of ideas and I am itching to get started on my first course design project.

“With it being practically on my doorstep I am looking forward to being hands on.”

He shot 80 with the 1980s era equipment and 75 with modern equipment.

Snedeker broke out in laughter when he saw an age-worn short iron that had a strange number on it — 11, equivalent to today’s pitching wedge. He also was taken aback by how his new driver dwarfed the Mizuno Pro 1 wood he had to use. He shook his head when he noticed the tiny sweet spots on the TaylorMade irons.

Just as shocking was the once top-of-the-line Rextar golf ball, which featured rubber-like balata-tree material that created a soft cover and yielded more spin. Conducting his own experiment, Snedeker hit one of the Rextar balls with his new sand wedge and shredded the cover of the ball.

…

On the first nine holes using the persimmon driver and the older ball, Snedeker could find the fairway just two of nine times. Each of his drives were low-flying projectiles that snapped to the left and went 200-220 yards — into high rough and behind trees.

On the first hole, he had 188 yards to the pin after his drive with the wood ended near a tree. With his contemporary TaylorMade r7 driver, he had 128 yards from the middle of the fairway to the pin.

On the par-4, 445-yard ninth, he had 200 yards to the pin after his drive with the wood ended up in rough; he had 144 yards from the middle of the fairway after using his modern driver.

“I’m seeing parts of this golf course I’ve never seen before,” Snedeker said on the 12th hole. “I’m trying everything to keep the old driver on this planet.”

Yeah – it’s the grooves, not the ball. Sure. Keep telling yourself that.