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.

It’s allowed a number of those who dislike Trump to come out of the woodwork.

Is Trump arrogant? Of course. But so what? So is the average retail consumer – if you’ve ever had the pleasure of working retail, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

Most people dislike Donald Trump because he’s rich – not because he’s a bully. People can only be a bully if they’re empowered to be a bully – usually by people who want his money. An excellent example are the citizens and politicians of Rancho Palos Verdes.

The fact of the matter is that nearly every developer has dreamed of suing communities they work in for any number of perceived (and sometimes even real…) ridiculous regulations. Trump is suing for a number of reasons – he wasn’t allowed to plant a screen of ficus trees, wasn’t allowed to build a terrace on the clubhouse and wasn’t allowed to rename a street. Now, as ridiculous as a $100 million lawsuit is, so are regulations that don’t allow you to plant a screen of ficus trees, build a terrace, build a flagpole or rename a street.

People say that Trump doesn’t like to play by the rules – because he’s Donald Trump. That may or may not be the case – but I do know that most everybody doesn’t like to play by the rules in some aspect of their life. However, we all love rules when they don’t apply to us and really love rules when they apply to some “evil, rich developer”.

Some rules are, in fact, ridiculous.

So, while I expect this case to be settled long before it reaches court, I’m actually looking forward to the seeing the merits of the case and the city’s defense of its regulations. That is what is at the heart of this lawsuit. Not Donald Trump, $100 million, ficus trees or egos. But a defense of regulations that don’t allow a person to plant a screen, build a terrace or rename a street on their property.

“Our style is to fly under the radar and keep things low key, but we are looking forward to opening on December 19,” says longtime General Manager Mark Brenneman. “That will be exactly seven months from when we closed and began this process.” That process included increasing the teeing spaces on holes, which now allows Shadow Creek to be stretched to 7,560 yards for those willing, up from 7,239 yards. Also, the greens were rebuilt and seeded with Bentgrass–as were the approaches to the greens–and a dynamic 7-acre short game practice was created. Plus, a new, more efficient irrigation system was put in and all of the fairways were sand-capped. The fairway grass is a high-tech 419 Bermuda. Shadow Creek Golf Club is one of more than 70 Las Vegas golf courses in the Las Vegas area.

“Tom Fazio took the opportunity to move some tees and greens closer to some of the beautiful streams that were kind of being lost because of the maturation of the trees, and he wanted to make them more visible as they were when the course opened in 1989,” says Brenneman. “We wanted to keep the course intimate and secluded, but we also wanted to create a more open feel because over time the trees kind of closed it up.” He also noted that the greens and teeing areas got smaller over the last two decades due to natural mowing processes, and it was time to “open” up those surfaces and return them to the original sizes.

And contrary to some public speculation, the new renovations were not made in hopes of hosting a large, televised event. Brenneman emphatically stated that there has never been a plan or any talks about hosting any Tour or other televised events, and course and hotel management (Shadow Creek is owned by MGM Mirage) have “no desire” to do that. Shadow Creek is open to any guest staying at an MGM Mirage property. The green fee is $500 and includes cart, caddie, and limo transportation to and from this Las Vegas golf course.

This is a course that I’d like to see for the simple reason that it’s 100% man-made, but, according to so many people whose opinion I trust, it’s actually a very good golf course and a lot can be learned from the architecture. If any readers have a chance to play the new course, please post your opinions on the changes.

I wonder why that is? To keep people from discussing them? He doesn’t want anybody to steal his ideas?

There are a few places where we get to see some idea of what the routing looks like for some of these golf courses. Here is the routing for the Cliffs course in High, North Carolina. (Click for larger.)

I’ll be the first to admit that judging any golf course by a routing is unfair – we can’t see the topography, although Tiger said that he wanted the course to be walkable, which means that the topography can’t be too severe, even if the course is in the mountains.. The fairways and greens won’t look exactly like what is shown and bunkers won’t be in the same place. There may even be more or fewer bunkers on each hole.

Now, that being said, we can still get a feel for what the design intent will be. We have returning nines that are segregated from one another – the front nine is on the west side and the back nine is on the east side. The good news is that the course is a “core course” – there is very little housing on the course. It is mostly along holes 5-8, which you can sort of see in this picture. It looks like there might be housing along 16-18 at some point in the future, but it’s difficult to tell with any certainty. Having looked at the routing for a little while, I don’t see anything of particular note. Holes 9 and 17 look somewhat interesting, but the rest look like copies of one another. I’ll be curious to see how the greens and their surrounds turn out – will there be bold green contours in the mold of Augusta or the sand hills of Australia that Tiger has praised in the past? Will more strategic elements be included?

We found out that, even in the current economy, that property sales weren’t too shabby. They sold $40 million worth of real estate in November. With property prices starting at $500,000 and going to over $3 million, that’s a decent haul. Probably enough to cover the cost of construction, land costs and Tiger’s design fee for the course. Maybe even a road or two in the subdivision.

The golf course at Punta Brava is quite different since it’s along the Pacific Ocean. The best I could come up with for a routing is below (that Tiger’s hand in the picture…). (Click for larger version.)

This is a different animal than the Cliffs. We see some pretty dramatic holes in 4, 9, 10, 16, 17 and 18. I’m sure the view on every hole will be spectacular. The internal holes also have some interesting features, like the shared bunkers on holes 3 and 4 and again on holes 14 and 15. The biggest downside I see to this design are all of the parallel holes, but that’s a minor quibble. This is actually a course that should be pretty interesting.

I’m looking forward to seeing some of the actual construction photos from the golf courses as well as how it’s played as a finished product. Hopefully his courses will live up to his playing ability.

Unfortunately, I came away totally disappointed. The public golf is pretty bad. The best of the public accesible lot is undoubtedly the City of Wilmington’s Municipal Course. It’s an old Donald Ross course that underwent a renovation in the late 1990s. Golf Club Atlas’ profile of the course details how Ron Prichard, along with the Donald Ross Society, restored the bunkers to give the course a lot of life. I walked the course, which was a pretty easy walk, and really enjoyed many of the holes. It is incredibly affordable.

The other courses that I played included Echo Farms Golf Club, Beau Rivage Golf Club, Castle Bay Golf Club and Magnolia Greens Golf Club. The publicly accesible golf courses I did not play that are in the area were the Cape Golf Club, Belvedere Country Club, Olde Point Golf Club, Porters Neck Golf Club and Topsail Greens Golf Club. The Cape was undergoing a total renovation and was closed. What I saw from driving around the courses at Belvedere, Olde Point and Topsail Greens was totally uninspring. Portners Neck is a Tom Fazio design that I’m sorry I didn’t get a chance to play. From what I saw of the few greens driving around the course, they did show some interesting contours that would have been fun to play. Magnolia Greens, which gets high marks in Golf Digest’s Places to Play (4 stars…) was about as boring and lifeless a golf course that I’ve ever played. For the life of me, I can’t figure out how or why people rank it as high as they do.

There are three private clubs that I never did get a chance to play. I was able to see some of Cape Fear Country Club, another Donald Ross layout. It was recently restored by Kris Spence and it looked fantastic. The day I was setup to play it, it poured and I never got a chance to get back to the course. The ultra-private Eagle Point by Tom Fazio is reportedly a really good tract. And there are two courses located inside a planned development called Landfall. One course by Jack Nicklaus and one by Pete Dye. I was able to see a little of the courses in Landfall – they looked in immaculate shape, but not very unique.

There is one course under construction – the terribly named Cape Fear National Country Club. It is part of a planned development already well under construction and with many homes already occupied. While it isn’t scheduled to open until late 2009, an article The Real Estate Channel caught my eye because of the comments made by Cape Fear National’s architect, Tim Cate.

“It’ll blow everything out of the water up there,” says Cate, who also is working on a fourth new course at the Ocean Ridge resort-style community in Sunset Beach, N.C., called Jaguar’s Lair.

“You could bring (Cape Fear) down here (to Myrtle Beach) and it would be one of those top-five, best new courses and all that stuff. Up there in Wilmington they’ve never had competition like they have down here.

“I think the people that play it are going to be pretty surprised at what they see.

They’re going to see a sophisticated, detail level of golf that they probably don’t even know about. It’s a very good project with very good developers. And KemperSports is top of the line.  Everybody’s just totally committed to make Cape Fear really good.”

Those are pretty interesting comments made by Mr. Cate. He must have seen the same thing that I saw – rather unispired golf. Hopefully his golf course will be something that adds an interesting twist to an otherwise rather boring golf landscape.

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.

Let’s look at the ten tenants:

1. Create courses on sites that will sustain golf with a minimum disturbance to and maximum enhancement of natural ecosystems, and/or rehabilitate degraded landscapes and environments.
2. Move earth more efficiently to create courses that fit their sites and respect the natural characteristics of the terrain.
3. Design and construct courses with ongoing operations and future maintenance and sustainability in mind.
4. Protect native flora and fauna.
5. Protect and enhance wildlife habitat and other sensitive environmental areas while providing active corridors for species diversity.
6. Minimize clearing of trees and other native vegetation and, where possible, revegetate with indigenous plants from the site.
7. Create courses that use less water, pesticides, and fertilizers than traditional courses.
8. Protect, conserve, and improve water quality and resources by incorporating wetlands, turfgrass, and other natural site features to clean and filter water.
9. Maximize the effectiveness of available water through the use of drought-tolerant grass species; and specify soil amendments that lead to water conservation, and, where applicable, absorb properly-treated effluent.
10. Employ new technologies wherever and whenever feasible, that will further these goals.

I’m in total agreement that we need to be looking for ways to “green” golf – it has several benefits that Geoff Shackelford’s recent Golfdom article, “Time for Change”, points out. I even have an entire section dedicated on this website to environmental issues with regards to golf.

However, I’m a little skeptical when it comes to top ten lists and proclamations by architects for a couple of reasons. First, I just don’t see an architect turning down a job because it violates one of these tenants – especially in the current economic climate. Second, there is a lot of hyperbole in these tenants that, while certainly they should be followed, make sense from a financial standpoint. Let’s go one by one.

Create courses on sites that will sustain golf with a minimum disturbance to and maximum enhancement of natural ecosystems, and/or rehabilitate degraded landscapes and environments.

The idea of minimal disturbance has been used by every golf course architect in the world. All of them claim to disturb the minimum amount of land. Of course my definition and your definition of minimal is totally subjective. To a developer building a golf course it’s all about yield for the subidivision, since nearly every new golf course is built with housing these days. (Well, before residential development ceased…) Maximum enhancement of natural ecosystems is far too ambiguous for me to understand. Obviously building golf courses on otherwise degraded environments is going to be a positive.

Move earth more efficiently to create courses that fit their sites and respect the natural characteristics of the terrain.

This is actually very similar to the first tenant. Again, few architects actually preserve the natural characteristics of the terrain. On many sites this just isn’t feasible – which means RTJ II will have to turn projects down if he actually intends to be a true convert. Again, though, this is very ambiguous.

Design and construct courses with ongoing operations and future maintenance and sustainability in mind.

Okay, now we’re getting into something here. Again, pretty ambiguous, though. If a golf course architect, especially one of RTJ II’s experience, is not designing a course with ongoing operations (I’ll let you define that for yourself…), then he hasn’t been doing his job. I wonder if this means going to single, or at most, double row irrigation and not irrigating rough – ever. Or, how about irrigation of greens and tees only? Now that’s keeping sustainability in mind. But what developer is going to accept this? What GOLFER is going to accept this? This would have been a real good one for a little more detail on what sustainability means.

Protect native flora and fauna.

This one definitely wins the most ambiguous award. How do you protect native flora and fauna when you’re disturbing between 80 and 150 acres building a golf course? What’s the point? What if it doesn’t deserve protection? When is it protected and when does it not get protection?

Protect and enhance wildlife habitat and other sensitive environmental areas while providing active corridors for species diversity.

Active corridors for species diversity? What in the world is that? I could understand passive corridors for species diversity because that would essentially mean you leave it alone. (If you’re not familiar with the terms “active” and “passive” when it comes to landscape architecture speak, “passive” means you don’t touch it, “active” means you build something. Think of it like this – 30 acres of passive parkland hasn’t been disturbed by man. 30 acres of active parkland means there are 15 soccer fields and 500 parking spaces on it.) Sensitive environmental areas are already required to be protected by law. I wonder if this means no more stream buffer disturbance or wetland filling on any RTJ II courses?

Minimize clearing of trees and other native vegetation and, where possible, revegetate with indigenous plants from the site.

This is very similar to number 4, except we’re leaving out fauna this time.

Create courses that use less water, pesticides, and fertilizers than traditional courses.

This is very similar to number 3, except we’ve gotten a little more specific. However, a benchmark would be useful here. What are “traditional courses” – something designed by RTJ II’s dad? Use of pesticides and fertilizers is dictated by the super, and of course, the golfers using the course.

Protect, conserve, and improve water quality and resources by incorporating wetlands, turfgrass, and other natural site features to clean and filter water.

This is a good one – incorporation of water quality best management practices is an admirable goal. Many places in the US are going to required treatment of runoff and man made wetlands, biofilters, and other types of runoff treatment devices are a great idea.

Maximize the effectiveness of available water through the use of drought-tolerant grass species; and specify soil amendments that lead to water conservation, and, where applicable, absorb properly-treated effluent.

By far the most detailed of RTJ II’s tenants, this one is also a very good one.

Employ new technologies wherever and whenever feasible, that will further these goals.

Ambiguous at best, I think they were stretching to come up with number 10 and this was thrown in. Obviously you’re going to use the most effective “technology” is you’re employing these goals. They may be new, or they may be old, but they’re likely to be expensive. So, it’s going to come down to whether or not an owner is willing to pay for this.

With the green market catching on, this kind of press release is good public relations. It allows them to provide clients, environmentalists and concerned citizens with tangible evidence of how “green” they are. It’s preemptive too – as land development of any type is more and more challenged by citizens through the approval process (i.e. rezonings, etc.), those architects who can provide this kind of feel good PR are more likely to get what they’re after. That makes as much business sense as it does environmental sense.

“My sense is that they’ve widened the fairways a little bit this year,” Mr. Crenshaw said. “But that sight” — he motioned toward the first and ninth fairways below us, both lined by the darker-green second cut — “is still a little unpalatable to my eyes.”

To Mr. Crenshaw, the second cut is unnecessary given the other many strategic challenges that Augusta poses, and given that the founding designers, Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie, chose not to grow deeper grass near the fairways. They took their design philosophy in part from the strategic but roughless St. Andrews links in Scotland.

“There’s no question that Augusta National and the other courses in the world need to do something because the equipment has got away from us,” he said, referring to the increased distance that the top players in the world are hitting the ball these days. But the second cut takes away some of the angles into the greens that strategically inclined players like to play. “There are many ways around this course. It was designed to make you think,” he said.

Ben’s being very kind and sticking to just the topic at hand with regards to what has taken away some of the angles into the greens. The club claims that the rough imposes a one-half stroke penalty. Apparently, they think that the rough is imposing that penalty and that were the rough not there, the penalty would be less.

Could they be more wrong? First, the penalty is not because of the rough – it’s because of an improper angle to the green. Second, the rough actually prevents a number of balls from finding a far more imposing penalty – having to hit from pine straw between trees.

Ah – but the club has realized this to a point and has added MORE trees because the rough isn’t, apparently, penalty enough. So the corridors are getting tighter and the rough is coming in further (from zero). And that means that founder Bobby Jones’ and architect Alister MacKenzie’s philosophy of having the course be in “the spirit of St. Andrews” gets more and more bastardized each year.

Each year we hear more and more about how dull and boring the Masters is – how the roars are gone. How the course has gone from anticipation of a charge to anticipation of a train wreck. That more trees were added or bunkers widened. That the rough is a little tighter or a little longer. With each tweak, Augusta loses a little more of itself and, by their symbiotic relationship, golf loses a little more of itself.

Below are some details on the changes.

Every hole was redesigned with new tees, fairways and greens. Square tee boxes created a more traditional look. Much of the mounding was softened, creating better sight lines for players and improved views for fans. White-faced bunkers added definition to fairways and greens. And about 200 yards were added.

Weibring turned one of the least favorite holes, No. 11, into what could be an exciting, drivable par-4. He enhanced No. 17, the popular par-3, by clearing viewing areas on both sides and around the green. A stadium feel was created with grandstands and luxury boxes framing the hole. The 18th hole is highlighted by a series of four ponds with waterfalls.

The 11th sounds intriguing – the 18th sounds boring. White faced bunkers sounds typical and not at all Texan.

Looking at player/architect D.A. Weibring’s website where he discusses the changes, we find more detail.

Every tee box, green and bunker has been redone. About 165 trees have been moved.

Other parts of the landscape have been altered for shot value and to improve views. Mounds have been softened. A new irrigation system is in place. It’s a clean, less-is-more look that should intrigue pros, members and resort guests. When fans arrive at the April 24-27 tournament, they will find open viewing areas that will bring them much closer to the action.

Removal of trees sounds great. It would be nice to know what “softening” means to mounds. I have no idea what the cliche “clean, less-is-more” has in the context of golf course design.

“You hear competitive and you hear challenging, but the word you have to hear is fun,” Weibring said. “It’s got to provide all levels of player the visual opportunities to play a shot. Do they have a bailout? Can they bounce the ball on the green? Will they remember the holes?”

I think Weibring meant bounce the ball on TO the green. Weibring was very critical of Pete Dye’s design at Whistling Straits with regards to the ground game, so it will be interesting to see if the TPC actually does allow for the ability to play a ground attack.

Colin Montgomerie and Vijay Singh are two big stars to cash in on the trend, adding their names to a who’s who of golfers with course interests in the booming country.

“There’s certain meetings this week while I’m here and we hope to do that,” Montgomerie said, when asked if he planned to design courses in India.

“We look forward to it.”

Singh, a Fijian of Indian heritage, said he already had plans to design a signature course in the tourist state of Goa.

“Hopefully I can get a lot more opportunities to design golf courses here,” he said.

“I’m doing a few more in the Asian region but here in India, that’s the first one and probably after that we’ll see if we can get some more.”

The Classic was held on the Arnold Palmer-designed DLF Golf and Country Club here, while Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman have also charted courses and Nick Faldo and Ernie Els have layouts in the works.

Well, nobody can blame these guys for taking a paycheck. The question, as is always the case, is what level of involvement will they have? There aren’t any regular tour stops in India – and for Els and Singh, tournament golf is still a high priority. How they will balance family, tournament golf and golf courses in India would seem fairly tricky. Especially with the difficulty of putting together a piece of property large enough for a golf course.

According to Narain, one of the main difficulties in establishing courses is buying land, which is usually held in small parcels by various families.

“If you want to put together 200 acres, you might have to negotiate with 200 owners,” he said. “It can take up to five or 10 years sometimes.”

Negotiations can turn ugly, as in 2002 when thousands of homes in Chandigarh were knocked down to make way for a golf course. One man died after setting fire to himself in protest, reports said.