http://johnstrawn.com Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:21:14 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This interview first appeared in "China Real Estate Business," a Chinese-language newspaper with a national circulation in China, on November 12, 2011. 1. When did your company start to focus on the Chinese golf industry?   Did you focus especially on golf course management and operations?   What kind of problems have you discovered? JOHN STRAWN:  Hills & Forrest is a golf course architectural firm, so our focus is on designing courses.   We have also formed a ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/golf/732/the-china-golf-market-an-interview-in-china-real-estate-business In its November, 2011 issue, Golf Digest finally gets around to recognizing that Oregon's Bandon Dunes is  the "Number One Golf Resort in North America," supplanting Pebble Beach in its annual rankings.   I've been telling everyone for years that Bandon Dunes isn't the best golf resort in North America--it's the best golf resort in the world.  Nothing I've seen anywhere comes close to challenging Bandon Dunes as a single destination resort, even though a better ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/golf/722/the-golf-capital-of-america-the-road-to-bandon-dunes Charles Mann's observations about China's role in the forging of the modern world in his brilliant new book, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, are especially fascinating in light of China's embrace of golf.  A late-blooming minor component of the Columbian exchange, golf has a peculiar status in China—both condemned and celebrated.   Like much of what China has borrowed from the west, golf in the Celestial Kingdom has acquired a distinctive Chinese flavor. A recent ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/golf/709/the-implications-of-charles-manns-new-book-1493-for-golfs-future-in-china Charles C. Mann, 1493.  Uncovering the New World Columbus  Created.  Alfred A. Knopf, 9 August 2011.  $30.50, 544 pages. Apart from its misleading subtitle, Charles Mann’s  1493.  Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, is a book to celebrate.  (Columbus’ personal contribution to the creation of the new world Mann describes was roughly the same as Johannes Gutenberg’s to the invention of word processing.)    But Mann is using “Columbus” as a kind of synecdoche for the class of ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/reviews/682/charles-manns-1493-a-review As the 2012 presidential campaign gets underway, providing the electorate plenty of time to confuse itself before marking its ballots fourteen months from now, a hot question among Republican pundits is whether or not New Jersey’s famously hefty governor, Chris Christie, will enter the race. Piers Morgan asked the well-known political analyst Brooke Shields if she thought an overweight person could be elected president, given our well-known obsession with slender celebrities.  (To give Shields credit, she ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/golf/personalities/690/weighing-in-on-the-2012-presidential-campaign-a-view-from-the-links Joseph Heller assembled the manuscript for Catch-22 from a collection of notes on index cards.   The novel began to spring forth, Heller would recall, “when suddenly this line came to me: ‘It was love at first sight.  The first time he saw the chaplain, Someone fell madly in love with him.’”   He jotted it down. Immediately, Heller remembered, “the book began to evolve clearly in my mind….All this took place within an hour and a half.”  ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/reviews/674/review-of-just-one-catch-a-biography-of-joseph-heller When Rory McIlroy was still an amateur, he visited Padraig Harrington’s house in suburban Dublin, where he eyed the Claret Jug.   “I’d really like to have one of those.”   He then glanced out the window towards Harrington’s practice grounds, maintained in the manner of a course on the Open rota.  “But if I can’t have the jug,” said McIlroy, “who would turn professional later that summer, “I would take that practice facility instead.” Now, the reigning ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/golf/personalities/664/664 When Darren Clarke won the Open Championship last week, he not only collected the $1.4 million first prize money from the R & A, he earned a bonus of two million Euros (about $2,833,000) from Dunlop, courtesy of a clever marketing deal created by his agent,  Andrew “Chubby” Chandler.  Lee Westwood, another Chandler client, had the same deal, but didn’t make the cut. Clarke and Westwood were to wear the Dunlop logo on their shirts for ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/golf/personalities/656/chubby-chandlers-gamble-pays-off-for-darren-clarke The Swinger is the kind of novel the French call a roman à clef. A literary strategy designed to pillory real people by creating characters whose identities have been disguised just enough to give the author—or in this case, authors—plausible deniability, the roman à clef has long been used to settle scores, or to provide an insider’s view of well-known events. The roman à clef is a kind of literary push poll.  Joe Klein’s Primary Colors ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/golf/personalities/640/reviewoftheswinger Last week, the executive director’s office of the American Society of Golf Course Architects in Chicago sent out a note to ASGCA members notifying them that a Chinese associate in the design firm of the American golf course architect, Joe Obringer,(JFO Design) had been kidnapped in Yunnan Province, China, along the border with Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Brian Curley, a principal in Schmidt-Curley Design, the highly successful golf course design company whose Chinese projects include ... ]]> http://johnstrawn.com/golf/uncategorized/634/golfcoursedesignersemployeekidnappedinchina