Golfweek

The Northern Trust Open came and went with modest fanfare, and that’s a good thing. The talk during the opening two rounds was about Dustin Johnson’s power and putting, and during the weekend the focus shifted to Steve Stricker’s methodical victory march.

Those aren’t the flashiest storylines, but they’re a heckuva lot better than what Northern Trust endured last year, when many of the stories centered on the title sponsor’s entertainment and hospitality during tournament week. Those stories skipped over this point: Companies might enjoy the chance to contribute to charities and support an event through their tournament sponsorships, but they need something in return – namely, the ability to entertain their good customers.

Public relations nightmares like the one Northern Trust and other companies endured last year redounded through the resort industry, which typically depends on corporate customers for at least half of their revenues.

I recently talked with a number of resort and travel industry executives to see if the climate has improved for corporate entertainment. (That story will appear in the Feb. 12 issue of Golfweek.) The verdict isn’t good. Scott Anderson, group president of Hospitality and Real Estate at Kohler ...

This year’s PGA Merchandise Show marks the three-year anniversary of a brand of golf apparel that has seen a swift rise in the golf industy: Travis Mathew. It’s a line of clothing designed for golfers by a golfer, Travis Johnson.

Johnson, 29, has been around the game all his life, from growing up in a golfing family in Southern California (and playing a match when he was 5 against Tiger Woods) to a full-ride golf scholarship at UCLA to grinding for a spot on the PGA Tour after graduation.

Though his Tour-chasing days are over, Johnson manages to keep an element of golf in his life through his clothing business. His line includes pieces with unexpected details, like pants with an extra pocket in the back to hold a digital music player or a strip of Velcro sewn in to hold a golf glove.

I had the chance to talk with Johnson before this year’s PGA Show to find out more about his transition from the golf course to clothing design.

Why are you spending more time on golf shirts than with golf clubs these days?

Starting in June 2004, I traveled most of the world chasing ...

When Americans contemplate a golf trip to Europe, the default choices are either Scotland or Ireland. And why not? Whether it’s a buddies trip or a couples getaway, one could hardly go wrong in either destination.

But perhaps the most interesting development this year in European golf is taking shape on the southern tip of Italy, where Verdura Golf & Spa Resort (www.verduraresort.com) is scheduled to open March 1 in Sicily. The resort sits on 570 acres, with 1.2 miles of private Mediterranean coastline, and has 45 holes of golf – two regulation 18s and a nine-hole par 3 course.

The man behind Verdura is Sir Rocco Forte, whose eponymous Rocco Forte Collection operates some of Europe’s most acclaimed hotels. Sir Rocco, who turns 65 years old Jan. 18, grew up in the hotel business and in 1982 became CEO of Forte Group plc, the conglomerate built by his father, Lord Charles Forte. The company owned hotels, restaurants, a winery and even highway service areas. But in 1996, the Forte family lost control of the company to Granada plc in a £3.9 billion hostile takeover.

The Forte family walked away with £325 million, and Sir Rocco ...

For the past decade, the year in review always has included a strong mix of major renovations along with new course openings. But 2009 appears to be unique in terms of how slow the U.S. market has become – only 55 course openings for the year, as per the National Golf Foundation, the lowest figure since the early 1980s.

An anecdotal look at the U.S. design map for the year shows – despite, or maybe because of, the slow down – plenty of experimentation as architects and developers try to snare public attention and market share.

Case in point: the Pete Dye Course at French Lick (Ind.) Resort, where the Marquis de Sod has blessed the hills of his home state with as sharply honed a set of holes as he has ever created in his half century of Hall of Fame work. The 8,104-yard back tees on this par-72 layout are a reminder of how absurdly hard and long an architect can make a course today. From the middle tees, its iconic etched fairway contours are far more negotiable, but the edges often tumble off so precipitously that you get the feel Dye’s out not just to make ...

When Herb Kohler let the world know that he had purchased Hamilton Hall last week, it made perfect sense. Who else could undertake such a mammoth project in an economic climate like this? In fact, who would want to? But Kohler loves golf and clearly loves St. Andrews, as he owns the Old Course Hotel and the Dukes Course, just outside the “Home of Golf.”

“It’s a shambles,” Kohler said of the interior of Hamilton Hall. “You take your life in your hands going from floor to floor.”

So why do it?

Kohler said he loved the location, the history of the property and, as he said, the views of the golf course, the North Sea and the R&A clubhouse are magnificent.

The golf course view from the 6th floor, the highest at Hamilton Hall, must be something, looking down the 18th hole to the 17th green and then off to the right is the first green and more of Old Tom’s home course.

The plan is not to start construction until around August of next year, just after the Open Championship at St. Andrews in July. Kohler is opening the decision making process to members of ...

Palm Springs, Calif. – The golf-rich Coachella Valley has not been immune to the pressures facing course operators across the country. But there’s at least one positive piece of news on the north end of the valley.

Escena Golf Club, located near the Palm Springs International Airport, reopened in November. The course, a product of Nicklaus Design, originally opened in the fall of 2005, but closed in 2007.

Sunrise Golf Company, which had maintained the golf course during the two years that it was closed, oversaw the reopening and the completion of a 16,000-square-foot clubhouse. Sunrise Golf had maintained the golf course the past two years on behalf of Lennar Homes, the original developer. Escena has been owned since April by New Valley LLC, a Miami-based real estate business.

Green fees at Escena are $80 on weekdays and $90 on weekends. Sunrise Golf, which also manages Desert Dunes Golf Club in Desert Hot Springs, Calif., sees a potential upside in the mid-priced public-course market.

“There are waiting lists to get out of private clubs, and I think people are seeing the value of playing the fine variety of public courses and saving the money they had been spending on ...

MIAMI – Despite having five golf courses, 700 rooms, a huge spa, more than 110,000 square feet of meeting space and one of the country’s most famous golf schools, Doral Golf Resort & Spa for years has been defined by one thing: the Blue Monster Course. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, the Blue Monster has been the site of some of the PGA Tour’s most memorable duels and is anchored by one of the game’s most famous finishing holes.

But with a nearly six-year, $100 million-plus renovation winding down, Doral’s other assets will take on a much higher profile.

On Nov. 13, Doral officially opened its Jim McLean Signature Course following a $4.3 million renovation. The course had been largely an afterthought in Doral’s inventory; it was located off site and beleaguered by persistent maintenance problems. Famed teacher Jim McLean, whose golf school has been based at Doral since the early 1990s, was recruited to overhaul the course and give it a compelling identity.

McLean, who spruced up the Blue Monster in 1999, says he borrowed liberally from some of his favorite designers, hoping to replicate the fast, firm conditions that ...

With the Open Championship at St. Andrews next year, one of the best golfing venues is on the shelf. So where do you go? There are many options, but one I experienced after this year’s Open was Machrihanish Dunes.

Machrihanish Dunes is the type of golf course that Old Tom Morris, Young Tom, Robert Ferguson and Willie Park played in the mid to late 1800s.

It is rough, but the truest links, mainly because very little dirt was moved to get the project approved. I was told it is the first new golf course on the West side of Scotland in 100 years, mainly due to the hoops the developers had to go through to get the deal done.

All that said, it is a true delight to play. The term “rub of the green” could have originated at the Dunes as the fairways have more angles then a deft politician that kick the golf ball in any direction, both intended and unintended. Add wind and rain and you’re hitting driver, 3-wood and 4-iron to a 407-yard par 4, which I did.

What has prompted this excited utterance about the Dunes is that the first flock of Hebridean ...

As a venture capitalist, Paul Schock has made his living searching out businesses in which his investors’ money could be entrusted. When he decided to build a major golf resort in an unlikely location – 17 miles south of Valentine in north-central Nebraska – it was Schock who needed to secure the trust of his investors.

Schock is the man behind The Prairie Club, which is likely to be the biggest domestic resort opening of 2010, with three golf courses, including one short course, and a lodge. Course construction is completed and grow-in is on schedule for the May 2010 opening.

The notion of attracting golfers to the remote Nebraska Sandhills, near a town of just 3,000 residents, initially led Schock’s investors to question whether his passion for golf was clouding his business judgment.

“The first question out of their mouths was, ‘Paul, are you suspending the good judgment that we’ve come to depend on and just following your heart here, and is this a foolish thing to do with our money,’ ” recalls Schock, formerly a partner in Bluestern Capital in Sioux Falls, S.D.

But Schock makes a convincing argument for The Prairie Club. Interviews with “dozens” of ...

Got a little sideways on my way home to Florida from the Presidents Cup and ended up in Bandon, Ore., with some pals. Here are a couple of thoughts after playing all four courses at Bandon Dunes Resort.

1.) The new Old MacDonald, which officially opens in June, is my favorite of the four courses there. It’s clearly the one that makes you most feel as if you’re in Scotland.

That’s saying a lot because the Golfweek rankings for American modern courses (after 1960) lists Pacific Dunes No. 2, Bandon Dunes No. 5 and Bandon Trails No. 22.

2.) Who knew? I mean, who knew there was a void for the best golf resort in the world? Who saw that? Who saw the need for and creation of four gems on the same property? Apparently Mike Keiser did.

It’s evident even before you pull into the parking lot at Pennard Golf Club that you’re in for a unique experience. Cattle roam the area along Southgate Road and near the clubhouse on Wales’ scenic Gower Peninsula. The opening tee shot potentially can get a bit hairy as the cattle graze near the forward tees. Keep your head down.

It goes without saying that Americans travel overseas looking for something they can’t find at home. Pennard, a links that dates to 1896, fits the bill. While in Wales in late September, I had the opportunity to pair nine holes at Pennard with 18 at Southerndown Golf Club, where the critters that roam the course are sheep.

With few exceptions, most notably Celtic Manor, which will host the 2010 Ryder Cup, golf in Wales is simple and unpretentious. You show up, pay your greens fee – typically very reasonable compared to elsewhere in the United Kingdom – pick up your yardage book and head directly to the first tee. A few warm-up swings and you’re off. Walking, not riding. American tour operators with whom I’ve spoken compare the experience to Ireland before that country got hot 20 years ...

It’s 6:30 a.m. on a late September morning, and Ron Bingeman is doing what he always does this time of year: starting another 36-hole marathon in Myrtle Beach.

Every September since 1969, Bingeman, 65 years old – along with buddies Larry Spangler, 66, and Everett Cassel, 73 – have been making the pilgrimage from the Philadelphia suburbs to the Grand Strand. Another friend, Craig Aiken, joined them 20 years ago.

Every day is the same: They rise early, play 36, make a few bets, share a lot of laughs, then do it all over again the next day. They wouldn’t have it any other way.

This year their loyalty was rewarded. With Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and Gene Weldon, director of golf at Thistle Golf Club, leading the way, the local golf community covered the cost of the flights, accommodations and golf for the foursome. This year they stayed at Barefoot Resort and Golf.

“We feel like we died and went to Myrtle Beach,” Bingeman says via cell phone as the group pulls up at Tidewater Golf Club & Plantation for their first round of the day.

Bingeman recalls that in the 1960s, he and his buddies “fantasized that ...

N.C. State officials had been talking for nearly 20 years about building a golf course on the school’s Centennial Campus near downtown Raleigh. The project finally got the kickstart it needed in 2007, when Lonnie Poole (class of ’59) committed $3 million to the project.

I had a chance to see the Lonnie Poole Golf Course recently. As domestic course construction has ground virtually to a halt, the rare new openings draw an inordinate amount of attention. Lonnie Poole GC opened in July, too late to be considered for inclusion on Golfweek’s Best New Courses list, which will be published in October. But I’ll be interested to see how Golfweek’s course raters assess the layout. I suspect they’re going to find that it’s a course worthy of the Wolfpack’s NCAA champion, junior Matt Hill, who already has made his mark with a double eagle on the 589-yard 7th hole.

The layout was produced by Arnold Palmer Design, and spearheaded more specifically by two N.C. state alums: senior architect Erik Larsen, who has been with Palmer since 1983; and Brandon Johnson, who joined Palmer’s design staff in 2006.

The course, which ...

As a general rule, I enjoy watching travel shows, particularly if they’re hosted by an attractive blonde. But the pilot episode of “Destination Golf,” Golf Channel’s foray into the travel market, didn’t leave me reaching for the remote to record future episodes on my DVR.

The show, which aired initially on Sept. 21, was dragged down by a superficial approach and a lack of authenticity, which relates in part to the miscasting of Lauren Thompson as host. Golf Channel viewers know Thompson as the host of its “Top 10” series, in which her role is simply to introduce segments. On “Destination Golf,” she’s asked to do much more.

“Going from the familiar to the unknown, that’s the thrill of golf travel,” Thompson says at the outset of “Destination Golf: Ireland’s Wonderful West.” “That’s why I look up at a departure sign and see a wish list of adventures.”

Those adventures apparently don’t include golf, which, one assumes, Thompson doesn’t play. Her job is to serve as the spokesmodel on a whirlwind trip through seven Irish counties, but she’s out of her element, arriving at golf courses not in FootJoys but ...

Three years ago I received an aerial photo of a new mountain golf course in a remote part of southern Virginia, just a few miles from the North Carolina border. The photo of Donald Steel’s dramatic Primland layout had a definite wow factor. Visually, it reminded me of Cape Kidnappers, minus the ocean – it’s holes darting perilously along the edges of the Dan River Gorge. After my Golfweek colleagues and I scraped our jaws off the carpet, we made the decision to display the photo prominently across a two-page spread in an upcoming issue.

It wasn’t until recently that I managed to get to Primland, which is no small task. Lacking a private plane – and for reasons that remain unclear, the boss won’t let me borrow the Golfweek G5 – those living outside the region most likely will fly into either Roanoke, Va., or Greensboro, N.C., drive an hour or more to the tiny hamlet of Meadows of Dan, at milepost 177.7 off the Blue Ridge Parkway, then continue a few more miles to Primland’s front gate, before driving up the mountain to the lodge and golf course.

It’s not easy to get ...