Are we in the "Resort Course Age"?

[Joe Lane]

Hi Peter,


Seriously, you ask the most interesting questions on this site: this one attempting what academics would call “periodizing” or “historicizing” our own time. Really ambitious, first of all, and secondly extremely penetrating. What you’re suggesting, as some seem to realize dimly, is that the criteria many of us seem to use to define a “good course” is instead the effect of the premier courses being built these days, which are resort courses instead of the private clubs of an earlier age. That suggests that the wheel will turn again, and perhaps under some other circumstances we will return to tight fairways overgrown with trees and all the rest. Have we truly discovered the secret to golf course architecture, or are we all fashion victims? That’s a pretty shrewd insight.


I don’t have the slightest.

[Niall C]

Mike


You are talking about the current business of golf.
Peter is describing the current artistic style of golf design.


And he makes a strong argument for the Golden "Resort" Era.
To reiterate, he isn't saying courses are resorts, he is saying many golf courses, municipal to private, have been influenced by the "resort" style.


Cheers

+1

[Tom_Doak]

Hi Peter,


What you’re suggesting, as some seem to realize dimly, is that the criteria many of us seem to use to define a “good course” is instead the effect of the premier courses being built these days, which are resort courses instead of the private clubs of an earlier age. That suggests that the wheel will turn again, and perhaps under some other circumstances we will return to tight fairways overgrown with trees and all the rest. Have we truly discovered the secret to golf course architecture, or are we all fashion victims? That’s a pretty shrewd insight.

I think it's true that the commercialization of golf course architecture has led to some of the standardization Peter describes.  Nearly all developers in the present era are worried about the customer [whether the retail golfer or the potential member] and do not want to risk alienating any segment of the potential market.  Thus most courses are built for "everyone" [i.e. resort golfers] much more than 50 or 100 years ago.


The contrast is some of those one-man's paradise courses that keep sneaking their way into the GOLF DIGEST list -- Rich Harvest Farms or Pikewood National, or Ellerston on the GOLF Magazine list.  Such a project, built without care for women golfers or seniors, is much more unusual today than it was back in the Golden Age, and that must be a secondary reason why they get so much attention, on top of their careful cultivation of magazine panelists.

[Thomas Dai]

Out of interest what would be the % split between new private members course's built in say the last 25 yrs and new resort/pay-n-play courses built during the same period?
Atb

[Tom_Doak]

Out of interest what would be the % split between new private members course's built in say the last 25 yrs and new resort/pay-n-play courses built during the same period?
Atb

The pendulum has swung back and forth, but not for the reasons you would expect.


For developers, the appeal of building a private club is that sooner or later [hopefully sooner], you get to pass off the course to the membership and no longer worry about how it is running as a functioning business ... and move on to the next project, as developers are wont to do.  If it's a public course, you're in it for the long haul unless you sell it, and 99% of the people who buy golf courses second-hand are discount shoppers.


However, about twenty years ago in America, the program flipped a bit because new discrimination laws left private clubs open to the possibility of lawsuits, and most developers decided they didn't want to deal with that possibility.


The other, less obvious reason for the shift is that anyone building a golf course to make money, would be better off keeping it public.  There's no way Bandon Dunes would have been as profitable if Mr. Keiser had only sold 300 memberships per course.  There's more risk in running it as a resort, because you've got to roll with the ups and downs of the economy, but also the possibility of much more reward.

[Kalen Braley]

Out of interest what would be the % split between new private members course's built in say the last 25 yrs and new resort/pay-n-play courses built during the same period?
Atb

The other, less obvious reason for the shift is that anyone building a golf course to make money, would be better off keeping it public.  There's no way Bandon Dunes would have been as profitable if Mr. Keiser had only sold 300 memberships per course.  There's more risk that way, because you've got to roll with the ups and downs of the economy, but also the possibility of much more reward.

Tom,

I'm curious.... how would a very remote public high-end place like Bandon be immune to the same ups and downs of the economy?

I can't imagine there are very many locals who pony up the current green fee$$$ to play the courses at Bandon?

[Tom_Doak]

Out of interest what would be the % split between new private members course's built in say the last 25 yrs and new resort/pay-n-play courses built during the same period?
Atb

The other, less obvious reason for the shift is that anyone building a golf course to make money, would be better off keeping it public.  There's no way Bandon Dunes would have been as profitable if Mr. Keiser had only sold 300 memberships per course.  There's more risk that way, because you've got to roll with the ups and downs of the economy, but also the possibility of much more reward.

Tom,

I'm curious.... how would a very remote public high-end place like Bandon be immune to the same ups and downs of the economy?

I can't imagine there are very many locals who pony up the current green fee$$$ to play the courses at Bandon?

I didn't write that last sentence very well; I'll fix it above.  I meant there was more risk with the green-fee model than with a private club, as my first paragraph had stated.  Public = longer-term financial risk, more potential reward.

[Kalen Braley]

Out of interest what would be the % split between new private members course's built in say the last 25 yrs and new resort/pay-n-play courses built during the same period?
Atb

The other, less obvious reason for the shift is that anyone building a golf course to make money, would be better off keeping it public.  There's no way Bandon Dunes would have been as profitable if Mr. Keiser had only sold 300 memberships per course.  There's more risk that way, because you've got to roll with the ups and downs of the economy, but also the possibility of much more reward.

Tom,

I'm curious.... how would a very remote public high-end place like Bandon be immune to the same ups and downs of the economy?

I can't imagine there are very many locals who pony up the current green fee$$$ to play the courses at Bandon?

I didn't write that last sentence very well; I'll fix it above.  I meant there was more risk with the green-fee model than with a private club, as my first paragraph had stated.  Public = longer-term financial risk, more potential reward.

Thanks for the clarification, that's what I would have thought too.

P.S.  Given the popularity of Bandon, I wonder if the rankings at the courses would be even higher if it were a private facility, leading to increased prestige and outsiders salivating to play them....

[Thomas Dai]

Thanks Tom (& Kalen).

Resort/public, ups-n-downs, greater risk, greater reward I can understand. "For developers, the appeal of building a private club is that sooner or later [hopefully sooner], you get to pass off the course to the membership....". That's interesting, as surely once upon a time the developers were the members, or did private members courses/clubs come into being in different ways in different countries?

Atb

[Joe Lane]

Hi Mr. Dai,


I think what Mr. Doak means by “developers” is not an abstract sense of “whoever develops a golf course” but rather “companies engaged in the specific business of developing golf courses.”


Mr. Doak,

In what sort of circumstances could you envision a return of tight fairways & the rest once again becoming the dominant mode of golf architecture? Or would you say that the current sense hits a kind of Platonic ideal?

[Joe Lane]

Hi Mr. Doak,


One follow-up: do you see a resemblance between the kind of risk-taking involved in long-term golf course management—high-risk, high-upside—and the values of strategic architectural philosophy? It appears to me that there is a nearly one-to-one correspondence—has that ever struck you, or do you think that the particular details in either case to be so overwhelmingly determinative that any resemblance is merely a matter of perception and/or chance?


It’s a question that arises, in part, because I saw an art show entitled “Strandbeest” here in Chicago at the Cultural Center. It’s worth checking out the website:
http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/strandbeest.html


You might find the page interesting on its own merits, aside from gca!


Joe

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