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 joint venture with two Chinese partners, one of which, Cheng Jun Golf, does own and operate courses.    The courses they operate are private membership courses, and have been popular because they have good teaching academies as well as good restaurants in the clubhouse.   The Tianan Club in Beijing, not far from the main airport, is a Cheng Jun course.

Tianan Golf, Beijing

We focused on China because we believe the Chinese golf industry will grow substantially in the years ahead.   But to do so successfully, the China golf industry needs to focus on how it can stimulate demand and attract more players.    Right now, all of China’s golf courses are private membership clubs, with the exception of a few resort courses open for green fee play.   But the concept that is most popular in the USA, the so-called daily fee course, has not made any inroads into China yet.  Most towns and cities in the US own and operate golf courses for their citizens, not expecting them to make a profit but simply to cover operating expenses.  Sometimes they are even subsidized, just as a recreation center or swimming pool would be, but that is rarer these days.    Still, most golf courses in the US manage an operating profit, but the real value of golf courses over the last four decades to developers has been their contribution to real estate values.   Houses on golf courses sell for higher prices than houses without access to golf.  This is partly just because golf provides a beautiful landscape—a kind of garden, with grass and trees and clean air.   The recreational aspect is a bonus.   Golf is also good for a player’s health.  Walking especially is good exercise.   I see many Chinese courses using golf carts, and I don’t think this is a good tendency.   The best courses are walkable, and walking should be encouraged, especially given the availability of caddies in China.

2. According to research institutions, 80% of the golf courses in China don’t make money. Does this research match what you know about China? What is the reason for this situation?

JOHN STRAWN:  To understand this situation, you have to think through what a golf course has to sell.   A golf course owns tee times.  Every day, it has so many available times for people to play golf.   Let’s assume that we want to put groups out at ten minute intervals.  That is six groups of four players every hour, or 24 players per hour.  (This is an optimal spacing—eight minute starts are more common in the US.)   If an average round takes four and one half hours, and the first round goes off at 7 a.m. and the last at 4 p.m., that means the course has 216 tee times to sell that day. (9 hours of starting times X 24 players per hour.)    The maximum revenue yield would be based on “selling” all of those tee times.   That is what well-managed daily fee golf courses do in the US.   They can discount last minute rounds, for example, or offer specials via the internet.   In China, because the courses are not based on daily fees, the operations have to be supported by collecting monthly dues from members.   Fundamental Rule: It costs the same to maintain a course at a proper standard whether anyone plays it or not.  If you are not filling up the tee times, the cost per round to maintain the course goes way up.  At some point, this is not sustainable.

3. What are the attributes for a successful golf course? What kind of business pattern would make a course to be successful?

JOHN STRAWN:  We must first define what our expectations are.   For a members’ course, the measure of success is different from a course based on daily fee play which must make a profit.  Members’ or private courses may measure their success on the prestige of their membership, or on tournament play.  But a daily fee course is strictly a profit-making entity whose success is measured just as any other business measures success—return on investment.   If developers de-couple the golf course from the real estate returns, then the golf course functions more like infrastructure.   It is like having roads and power and water service—it is necessary for the overall success of the project—that is, for selling real estate at good prices—but doesn’t bring in a direct return.   We don’t expect roads and power lines to “make money,” and if we divorce the real estate from the golf operations, and don’t put the golf course on a business basis, it makes no sense to expect the golf course to somehow succeed as a business.

China's Grandiose Approach to Golf: Luxury as the Highest Value

4. Golf courses in China depend too much on combining with real estate.   Is this healthy?  What’s the difference between China and other countries in regard to golf and real estate?

JOHN STRAWN:  As we have noted already, golf courses need to attract more play to succeed as stand-alone businesses.   If the only model is the private membership club, this won’t happen.   Some clubs in Europe and the US are what are called “semi-private”—that is, the course has members but also allows outside play.   This is done in some cases in China, also, but the highest status golf courses are still private members’ courses.   This does not have to be the case.   In the US, there are many famous private clubs, but there are also resorts which are prestigious to play and earn substantial profits.  Examples of this would be Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, and perhaps the most important and creative golf development of the last twenty years, Bandon Dunes Resort in Oregon.   It has no real estate to sell, only lodging in hotel rooms and villas, and its four courses earn millions each year for its developer.

5. To get out of this dilemma, what should Chinese golf courses do for a positive future?

JOHN STRAWN:  I believe the Chinese golf industry needs to focus on developing a platform for popular golf—that is, inexpensive, accessible public courses.  These can be 9 holes, for example, with a driving range.   Many, many smaller US cities feature 9 hole courses.  Developers and members’ courses should contribute to the development of daily fee, muni-type courses to develop the next generation of golfers.   Cities and towns should look to developing golf courses as public amenities, like parks.  This will also create jobs, and inspire a new generation of Chinese golfers, who can take their place on the world golf stage.

Never too Early to Start

China is already arguably the most important contributor to the world golf economy.  Why?  Because most of the clubs, balls, bags, shirts, hats and shoes are made in China and sold to golfers all over the world.   I don’t know what the dollar volume of the China golf manufacturing is, but surely it is in the billions.   If China wants to encourage domestic consumption of articles made in China, the golf industry is a good place to focus.   There is a potential demand for golf in China that would make it the number one golf country in the world within thirty years.

6. Do you know the details about profits, quantity and the potential developing space of golf courses in China?

JOHN STRAWN:  China has some of the most beautiful landscapes in the world, but clearly not all of it is available or appropriate for golf.  Worldwide, we know from surveys that golfers prefer to play on seaside courses.  Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, St Andrews and the great Scottish links, such as Aberdeen and Turnberry, and  the great Irish courses, such as Ballybunion or Lahinch, are along the sea.  China has an immense coastline, where golf could be developed.   Lake-side courses are also popular.    Core courses must be a key component of China’s long-term golf strategy, along with a focus on public golf.   China must find ways to stimulate demand.   In so-called “developed golf countries,” such as the UK, the USA, and Sweden, about 7% of the people play golf.   That’s roughly 27 million people in the USA, which has about 18,000 golf courses (on only a slightly larger land mass than China.)   China has 1.3 billion people.   If 7% of Chinese people played golf, that would be 91,000,000 golfers—more than twice the total number of golfers in the world today!  Even if only 1% of Chinese people played golf, that would be 13,000,000 golfers.   The rule of thumb is that you need roughly one golf course per 1,500 golfers.   If China reaches a golf participation rate even of 1%, according to this formula it would “need” more than 8,000 golf courses.   So the potential for growth in China is enormous.  What China must do to encourage golf development is to support public golf, and develop and operate golf courses using only the very best sustainable designs and management practices, to assure that the water supply is clean and preserved, and that the environment will benefit from a healthy landscape.   The knowledge of how to do this exists–it just needs to be applied with conviction.

Oregon may seen an unlikely location for a golf destination.  Residing in Oregon is like living under one of those mist-ers that keep vegetables fresh in the super market.    Living under the constant trickle of the good rain, you feel crisp and vigorous and blessed with an extended shelf life.  We enjoy the soft polish of that eternal drip, and the endless grey makes the rare sunny day brighter.

As we golfing Oregonians bask in Bandon’s reflected glory, it’s fitting to recall that this not the first time Oregon has laid claim to preeminence as a golf destination.   In 1933, Portland was host to the “National Municipal Golf Tournament”–that is, the Public Links.   To celebrate that event, the Portland Chamber of Commerce put out a beautiful pamphlet called “Golf in Portland and in Oregon.”   It made the not immodest claim that Portland was “The Gold Capital of America,” and a banner across the top of every page insisted, with a booster’s dead certainty, that “GOLF IS PLAYED EVERY MONTH OF THE YEAR.”

“Golf has become America’s new national game,” the pamphleteers observe, “and no city in the United States…has made such provision for the enjoyment of this game for all classes of its residents as the city of Portland.”    And that was an honest claim.   Golf has come as close in Portland as it has anywhere in America to the Scottish ideal of golf as a game of the people.    What was true in 1932 is still evident in Portland’s popular, high-quality munis.

Two of the munis celebrated by Portland’s Chamber of Commerce—Eastmoreland and Rose City–still fill with golfers almost every day, and have been joined by the two wonderful layouts at Heron Lakes, built on the flood plain of the Columbia River not far from where a once-celebrated course called Peninsula, which no longer exists, hosted the very first Pacific Northwest Golf Association’s Public Links championship.

Golf was popular in Portland, according to the pamphlet, “because it was so inexpensive.”  Private club memberships ran from $300 to $650, which in fact was quite a bit of money in 1932, when the average per capita income in the USA was under $2,000.   Still the game was affordable, and the Chamber lists green fees and the munis and daily fee courses.   Eastmoreland’s green fee was thirty cents for 9 holes, the same fee charged not only by all of the munis but by the privately owned daily fees.   The private courses also charged green fees: two bucks on weekdays, three on the weekends.

In an appendix, the pamphlet lists all of the courses in the state including a 9 holer in Bandon I had never heard of, called “Westmost Golf Club,” on Beach Road.  It charged fifty cents to play 9 holes, and a buck and a half to play all day.   That’s how golfers still like to spend their time in Bandon–playing golf all day.

A recent article in China Daily USA reports that only the rich play golf in China.   Chinese golf is certainly elitist, keeping with the Chinese tradition of preserving luxury goods for the emperor and his circle.  That’s part of golf’s attraction to young people, who flood the annual golf shows in Guangzhou and Beijing—they aspire to a lifestyle that includes playing golf.  Membership fees at Chinese golf clubs—and there are no daily fee courses in China, both for economic and cultural reasons— range from 100,000 to 1.7 million Yuan, or in US dollars, between $15,685 and $266,650.  And this in a country with an average per capita income of $4,400, compared to the US’s $46,860.

One avid Chinese golfer, described in the China Daily story as a Beijing businessman who plays golf every day and spends $15,640 annually to support his habit, called golf “green opium,” linking it to another famous addiction introduced to China by the West.   Britain’s opium smuggling from India led to the world’s first drug wars, the 19^th century Opium Wars.   American merchants were also complicit in this trade.   These original narcotraficantes’ ruthless disregard for the Chinese peoples’ well-being was equal to the contempt any Mexican or Colombian drug lord holds for the gringos.

The Original Chinese Golfer? The Ming Emperor Xuande, 15th Century.

Now China’s emperor is called the Premier, and he’s no longer born into the job.  The premier’s courtiers–the inner circle of the ruling Communist party–play golf.  There is a tight link in China, despite its official adherence to communism, between wealth, privilege and political power.   The government’s policies since 2004 have officially circumscribed golf’s development, in order to preserve farm land and water.   But this official moratorium by the State Council was ignored until the summer of 2011, when, as the China Daily article puts it, “11 Chinese ministries collectively ordered new checks on all golf courses to prevent illegal land use and seizure and to ensure no loss of farmland in China.”

Enforcing the moratorium has had a powerful effect on the group of western golf course architects, project managers, course operators and others who have a stake in China’s golf industry.   The collapse of the US real estate market had already vitiated the demand for their services at home.   China is without question the most powerful developing market in golf, and the uncertainty over its future is very worrisome to industry insiders, among whom I include myself.

1493 helped me understand how China’s golf scene fits into larger patterns of Chinese politics and history.   I’ve wondered why, if there really was a moratorium in place since 2004, our clients in the provinces tended to pay it little heed.   It’s partly because China is a culturally complex country, where conflicts between the capital and the provinces are historically endemic.  Local leaders in Fujian province, or in Yunnan or Sichuan or Guangdong, have always tried to trick the big boys in Beijing.

Two years ago I was riding from the city center of Chengdu toward a site where our client intended to develop a large real estate project with 36 holes of golf.   Chengdu is the capital and most important city in Sichuan province, a region admired throughout China for its natural beauty and cuisine.   Giant pandas are native to the bamboo forests along the mountain slopes in western Sichuan.

As we were driving south, I noticed a complex of buildings that looked sort of like the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, but on an even grander scale.  There were a number of linked buildings nestled within elaborately landscaped grounds, but no evidence of any activity going on in any of them.   I asked our client what these buildings were, and got a wan, wry smile in reply.

Sichuan province, you’ll recall, had a terrible earthquake in the spring of 2008.    The epicenter was about 80 kilometers northwest of Chengdu, but the quake was felt as far away as Beijing.   Schools collapsed, and thousands of children were killed, which led to charges of corruption against the officials in charge of building the classrooms.  More than 70,000 people were killed and millions left homeless.   Premier Wen Jiabao came down from Beijing to assess the damage and assist in guiding the rescue operations.  And here’s where the new building complex comes back into the picture.

This was the new administrative headquarters for the party and the municipal government.  Designed by the French architect Paul Andreu, who also designed the new opera house in Beijing, the complex reportedly cost $180 million.  A new “Technology and Science Enterprising Center” was also part of the complex.  In the context of millions of people left homeless by the earthquake, coupled with intense public criticism over shoddy construction practices having contributed to the loss of life, the big cheeses from Beijing ordered the Sichuanese to get rid of these new buildings.    Local officials announced that they would sell them.   That’s why they were sitting empty a year later.   But according to a BBC report in the spring of this year, the buildings have not been sold.    As Charles Mann demonstrates in 1493, that’s a typical narrative in China.  Orders come down from Beijing, local officials announce their capitulation, and then nothing more happens.

“In the feud- and faction-ridden Ming court,” Mann writes, referring to the period between 1368 and 1644, when China first encountered western traders arriving by sea, “government policies were often accidental by-products of ministerial intrigues, enacted with little regard for their actual effects.”   Echoes of these Ming policies reverberate off the walls today in Zhongnanhai, the Beijing neighborhood where the present government is headquartered.

Mann writes about the wonderfully convoluted trade practices that evolved among Chinese and European merchants, for example, especially the relationship between Fujianese and Spanish traders through the port of Manila in the Philippines.   The emperors wanted a monopoly on trade, just as the current government preserves its monopoly on land.   But the policies prohibiting trade didn’t work for the emperors, and the current land policies have created a giant headache for the central government.

Throughout it all, the qualities that have made China preeminent in so many arenas, whatever the shifts in regimes or policies, shine through.   Our tendency to think of Chinese manufacturers producing products for the global economy as something unique to the post-Mao era is misplaced, as Mann makes clear.   The Chinese in the Philippines were restricted to a ghetto adjacent to Manila called the Parián.  “Parián artisans and merchants…”—most from Fujian province, Mann notes—“sold the Spaniards everything from roof tiles to marble statues of baby Jesus—‘much prettier articles than are made in Spain,’” noted a Spanish clergyman in Manila, “and sometimes so cheap that I am ashamed to mention it.”

Chinese tailors were also making “perfect knockoffs of the latest European styles.”   The Europeans then tried to abolish trade in finished goods, wanting only the cloth—rehearsing disputes that would echo in modern trade agreements.

Mann also describes how the introduction of American crops—particularly the sweet potato, maize, and tobacco—radically transformed the Chinese countryside.  Vast new regions of Sichuan, for example, which is described prior to the end of the 18^th century as a “big, empty place,” were settled.  Just as the potato facilitated a population boom in Ireland, with tragic consequences, the American crops introduced to China instigated a series of transformations that ruptured the Emperor’s control over the provinces.  Forests cleared to grow tobacco, even though the crop was officially prohibited, resulted in shortages of rice and inflated food prices.   Hungry people will fight to survive, and rebellions against imperial authority punctuate China’s history.   China’s current rulers obsess over food security.   There is a direct link between the government’s commitment to low food prices and its complicated attitude toward golf development.

Tulou in Fujian

There isn’t space to review all of Mann’s analysis here, but I recommend that anyone with an interest in China’s economy—and especially people in the golf business—pick up a copy of 1493.   Pay close attention to “Part Two: Pacific Journeys.”   Among the episodes of Chinese history recounted in 1493 is the tale of the Hakka people after the introduction of American crops to China.    The Hakka historically practiced slash and burn agriculture on hilly, marginal land in southern China, occupying parts of Jiangxi, Fujian, Guangdong, and Hainan Provinces.  They lived collectively in large, round, well-defended structures called tulou.   They quickly adopted tobacco as a cash crop, contributing to the crisis described above.  The environmental effects of the deforestation practices following the introduction of tobacco are still in evidence in southern China.

The new Mission Hills golf resort on Hainan Island is one of China’s grandest golf developments, following on the success of the original Mission Hills in Shenzhen.   There are ten new courses designed by Schmidt-Curley, along with villas, hotels and spa.   It’s a grand complex, the equal or better of any golf resort in the world.   And one of the architectural themes at Mission Hills Haikou is a tribute to the tulou.   Guests with a view from the upper floors of the hotel toward the south will see the rounded walls of a large faux-tulou.   Merging an ancient Chinese architectural style with the grandiose amenities of a modern golf resort, Mission Hills’ version of the tulou expresses a typically contemporary Chinese affection for the ancient and enduring leavened with the allure of foreign luxuries.

Now, the reigning US Open champion owns a practice complex to rival Harrington’s.   And the link between these two great Irish golfers and their practice facilities is a Dublin company called Turfgrass Consultancy, which built and maintains these state-of-the-art practice grounds.

John Clarkin and Rory McIlroy on the Practice Ground That Helped Conquer Congressional

Harrington’s practice area was finished about eight years ago, though it’s been remodeled and added to since.   Harrington had a green built in imitation of the 13^th at Carnoustie, with a severe slope running off the back.  “The harder the shot, the happier Padraig is,” says John Clarkin, founder of Turfgrass Consultancy (“TC”) and the first Irish graduate of Penn State University’s Turfgrass Management Program.   Perhaps Harrington had a premonition, or perhaps playing thousands of shots around that practice green gave him a psychological edge, but whatever the reason it’s perhaps not surprising that Harrington’s breakthrough major championship came in the 2007 Open—at Carnoustie.

The main green at Harrington’s is used only for chipping and putting.  No full shot carrying the vicious spin imparted by a top professional’s swing ever gouges a lesion onto Harrington’s green.   It’s kept smooth and flawless, and can be maintained at Stimp speeds up to 14.  “When Padraig does hit a shot toward that green,” Clarkin notes, “he always lands it on the fringe.  Always.”

A fairway for practice with longer clubs complements the short game area.  Harrington can hone in his distance at precisely calibrated targets.  A teeing ground built at an angle across the edge of his house allows him to pound drives into an adjacent field.  Harrington has never nicked the house, Clarkin says, although a mortal golfer surely would.

McIlroy moved into his new house in August of 2009 and commissioned Turfgrass Consultancy to commence construction of his practice grounds in March of 2010.  They were ready for use by the time Rory returned from this year’s first major at Augusta National.   McIlroy already had a design in hand of his own making, Clarkin says, but Turfgrass Consultancy suggested additional features to Rory’s liking.  “The links bunker was added,” said Clarkin, referring to the deep bunker Rory can be seen hitting bunker shots from on a BBC report filmed there in June.  McIlroy wanted as tough a practice test as any championship golf can provide, which would have to include the pot bunker from the 17th at St. Andrews.   “While the Road Hole bunker is about six feet deep, that bunker is seven feet and you can’t really see where the ball ends up.  Rory would need his dad stand on the green and report to him back down in the bunker on where his shots were landing,” Clarkin joked.

Rory's Road Hole and Practice Pitch

Rory asked TC to build three “holes”: one provides a downhill shot from 170 yards; a second is a 120 yard shot from a flat lie; and the last 110 yards from an uphill lie.  The target greens for these holes are in addition to the main practice green, which was designed to allow TC to replicate conditions on championship courses from all around the world.  The grass on the green surfaces is a mix of creeping bentgrasses and poa annua reptans, a cultivar cousin of the poa annua annual bluegrass that is variously treated as a pesky weed or accepted with a sigh by greenkeepers in cool climates everywhere as part of the family of grasses growing on their greens. This is the same grass that can be found on the greens at Pebble Beach.

The collars and approaches on two of the greens are fescue, while the others have a mix of creeping bentgrass and ryegrass, enabling TC to prepare a practice ground “for every turf type imaginable—excepting Bermuda, of course.”

TC built Rory’s greens according to USGA specs and installed SubAir systems to make sure the greens remain dry and firm, given that  it does rain a bit in Northern Ireland. “The main green is about 650 square meters,” Clarkin says, which is an average green size on a tournament course.  “The other three greens range from 250 to 300 square meters.”

Greens can be fast without necessarily being firm, Clarkin says.   McIlroy wanted to practice on greens with the firmness of Augusta National’s famously taut putting surfaces, where the ball lands with a distinctive ring tone that distinguishes a firm green’s sound from the gushy plop a soft green makes.

In preparation for the US Open at Congressional,  TC had Rory’s greens “close to 12” on the Stimpmeter.   “And we can go to 14 or back down to 12 or 11 pretty quickly.”

“It may have cost him hundreds of thousands of pounds,” the BBC reported, “but McIlroy admits this unique golf range has given him an extra edge and shows his commitment to Northern Ireland as a base.”

“To have a practice facility at the back of my own house is incredible,” McIlroy said.  “It was done as an investment in my future.   Since I got it built I have won my first major, so it has paid for itself already.  It is a long-term commitment to Northern Ireland, I see myself always living here.  It would be a shame to leave it, you couldn’t do it anywhere else.”

In getting ready for the Opens, McIlroy told the BBC, “I can ring up the USGA or the R&A and say, ‘what speed are the greens going to be?’  And they’re going to say, ‘we’re going to try to get them at 10.5,’ so I can say to the guys, ‘I want them at 10.5 for the next two weeks,’ and I can prepare just like I was there, really.”

The key to maintaining consistent Stimp speeds, Clarkin says, does not depend on the height of the cut, but rather on a regimen of both cutting and rolling the greens on a frequent and regular basis.  “Whether they are rolling 11 or 14, we’re mowing at the same height, but to get them really fast we’re rolling often. Topdressing and using the Subair will help to increase speed, too”

TC has two full-time staff on site at McIlroy’s practice ground, and a full complement of equipment to maintain the greens, the fairways, the collars and rough and the bunkers.  The Road Hole bunker has sand from Portrush, McIlroy told the BBC film crew.   The other bunkers, Clarkin says, have either the type of sand the USGA typically wants in the bunkers on its championship courses—a firm sand with particle sizes that resist buried lies and drains well—or the local “rabbit” sand, a finer grained type often found on Irish links courses that is incredibly firm because its small particle sizes pack easily but can make hitting heavy explosion shots risky.

Clarkin, whose grandfather was Lord Mayor of Dublin, consults on new course projects and course preparation for championships around the world.  He was an agronomic advisor to the Robert Trent Jones II design team at Chambers Bay, the publicly-owned links course in Washington State which will host the US Open in 2015.   McIlroy calls Clarkin “The Gardener,” pleased with the work of the man whose company has helped McIlroy prepare for his ascent to the summit of the golfing world.

Many American touring professional golfers live in Texas and Florida and elsewhere in the Sun Belt, where tax laws are more attractive and there is the promise of year-round outdoor living.   But fewer varieties of grass can grow in warm climates, and the so-called “warm season grasses” have different playing characteristics from the fescues and bents and ryegrasses which flourish in cooler climates.   Bermuda greens are grainy, bermuda fairway lies are spongy and the rough can grow as bristly as a wire brush.   Practicing on warm weather grasses may be putting the players who live in the southern USA at a disadvantage.   Unlike McIlroy and Harrington (and Graeme McDowell and Darren Clarke), the Americans practice on turf quite unlike the surfaces they will be competing on in championships.

Despite its northern latitude, the climate of Ireland closely resembles that of the Pacific Northwest, where similar grass types flourish.  Oregon, in fact, has long been the center of the grass seed industry in the US, and the creeping bentgrasses and fescues on thousands of golf courses started as seed in a Willamette Valley farm field.  Belfast is at 54 degrees latitude, slightly north of Edmonton, Alberta.   But the moderating effect of the ocean currents off its coast provides Ireland with a relatively mild winter season compared to inland Canadian cities on the same latitude.

On a typical winter day in Ireland (although there’s never been a typical day in Ireland), the temperature will be in the 40s, much as it is that time of year in Portland, Oregon, which is just north of the 45^th parallel.  (For those of you who are geographically challenged, the distance from the 45th parallel to the 54th is around 550 miles.)    Belfast’s average rainfall is 34 inches—again, comparable to famously rainy Portland’s 35, but much less than Miami’s 55 inches or Houston’s 53.   But the mild persistent rains in Oregon and Ireland provide the green and embracing landscape that its residents love—and the perfect conditions for growing turf grass.  The players who winter in Ireland, choosing to be among their friends and family, may have a distinct advantage in preparing for the next season because they can practice on turf and greens exactly like what they will find on the championship courses in the US and Great Britain.

Tim Boyle Tiptoes into the Frying Pan

Civic minded, generous and modest, Tim Boyle has always combined business acumen with civic responsibility.   I am happy to call Tim a friend.  So when I heard that he had bought a golf course, during the worst downturn in the golf business since the Great Depression, I had to ask him: “Tim—you’re a smart guy.  What in the world were you thinking?”

Tim, as I expected him to, laughed.  He originally was part of a small ownership group which acquired Gearhart after the previous owners went bust about a dozen years ago.  (The Boyles have a house nearby.)   A couple of the shareholders made unsuccessful attempts to run the restaurant side of the business, Tim said, before bailing out.  Tim recruited his friend Mike McMenamin of the McMenamins brewery, restaurant and hospitality chain, to take over, and  McMenamins continues to run the food and beverage at Gearhart.  “There’s nothing like a cold pint of Hammerhead Ale in the Pot Bunker room to top off your golfing experience,” Tim says, previewing the marketing theme for the new and improved Gearhart, coming your way soon.

Like a lot of golf course proprietors, the family which had run Gearhart Golf Links for many years went sideways when it got too ambitious.  The town of Gearhart is a prosperous seaside community, but Oregonians with money have a habit of keeping it in their pockets (or least not showing off and keeping their consumption inconspicuous), so no one in Gearhart had any interest at all in a fancy golf course designed to impress strangers.   This is not Donald Trump’s world.

After a fire burned down Gearhart’s modest clubhouse, the previous owners erected a fancy new one and spent a lot of money to renovate the course, which made the whole operation tougher and more expensive to run, which is pretty much the standard golf ownership formula for disaster.  Once a course starts losing money, it cuts costs by skimping on maintenance, which makes the course less attractive, which reduces demand, and thus the wheel of misfortune rolls on toward insolvency along the gloomy trajectory of failure.

The new improved clubhouse....where the troubles began.

“Over time,” Boyle said, “I bought some of the partners out and by last year owned about 40%.  In the fall of 2010 we decided to buy the rest.    Now it’s a family enterprise again.  My son, Joe, and my daughter, Molly, are my partners in our new family business.”

The younger Boyles are both excellent golfers, but Joe is a recent dad with limited free time, so his handicap is percolating upwards.   Molly played at the University of Washington—she’s a real stick.  Tim plays better, too, than he lets on; he’s a twelve handicap but broke 80 recently, he confessed, at Nanea Golf Club, the Big Island course in Hawaii that Oregon resident David Kidd designed for moguls Charles Schwab and George Roberts.  Boyle says Nanea is his favorite course, although another Kidd creation, Bandon Dunes, is a strong local contender.

Gearhart has a lot to recommend it, starting with its history.  It’s the oldest golf course in Oregon, and perhaps on the entire west coast.   It’s not really a links (it has tons of trees and it’s tight, two un-linkslike qualities,) but it is near the coast and its soils drain well.  Originally only three greens worth of  golf, Gearhart steadily accreted holes until it reached a full 18 sometime around WW I.    Chandler Egan, the great amateur champion who lived in Medford and during the Twenties designed Eastmoreland, Oswego Lake, Tualatin and Riverside in Boyle’s hometown (as well as laying out an extensive renovation for Waverley Country Club, where Boyle is a member), reportedly assisted in the design of the final 18 hole routing at Gearhart over the decade before his death in 1935.   Boyle said he’s going to see if there are any archives which might help establish the course’s provenance.

“We’re going to approach this in two phases,” Boyle says.  “First we want to get the course’s curb appeal restored.  We’ve already remodeled the restrooms.   We want to put the course on a solid financial footing.”

The  Boyles have hired Greenway Golf from California to put in place a plan to resurrect Gearhart, starting with improved operations.  The team is working with a well-known local consulting agronomist, Forrest Goodling, to improve turf quality.   Boyle wants Gearhart to attract players looking for a straightforward and tranquil place to play.

David Jacobsen of Portland’s well-known golfing family, himself a great amateur for many years and also a member at Waverley, is a good friend of Boyle’s and an advisor on Gearhart.   “David told me we should make Gearhart the place where you have your best round of the summer,” Tim says.

I have heard David espouse this view before, and it has always made sense to me.  The daily fee courses around Portland that are always full and crank out a maximum (if perhaps not optimal) number of rounds each year are the ones which allow medium and high handicappers to score well and not lose a lot of balls.  If a player gets really good, David says, he can head down to PGA West for some comeuppance.  But in the meanwhile, if golf hopes to attract new players and desist from discouraging its current devotees, it has to offer some opportunities for beginners and hackers to experience some success.   Boyle intends to put Jacobsen’s formula to the test.

The 18th at Gearhart Golf Links, Oregon

Phase 2 is still a bit formless, Tim says, and will depend on the pace and execution of Phase 1.  “Phase 1 is really just to make sure we’re not embarrassing ourselves.  Perhaps we’ll do some lodging somewhere down the road,” Boyle says.  “We’ll market around the history of the course.”

Given Boyle’s track record, I am sure he will achieve his goals for Gearhart, with help from Joe and Molly and the team of consultants they’ve brought aboard to assist them.  I’ve played Gearhart enough to know it can be fun and friendly and exactly the kind of golf course that can meet David Jacobsen’s low expectations.  And that’s not a slam, it’s a compliment.

You can’t build a great retail brand without having the kind of x-ray vision that can peer into the consumer’s heart.   When someone with the marketing acuity and wisdom of Tim Boyle lays down a bet on golf, no matter how modest, it’s a hopeful sign for the future of the industry.

For more on Gearhart from The A Position, see http://jeffwallach.com/golf/1378/gearhart-golf-links

The unlikely saga of Woodie Alan is the subject of “Big in China,” Paul’s modestly framed yet keenly observed and entertaining account of his life as an expat. An inquisitive traveler, Paul relied on the reportorial skills honed by his experience as a freelance writer to shape his response to his rather luxurious life abroad.

An authority on the two elements of American popular culture with the most marked influence on contemporary Chinese life, rock music and basketball, Paul was able to use his Guitar World network to find Chinese musicians to jam with, which led to the formation of the band and its improbable success. The band’s performances were a revelation to Paul, who had always seen himself as a listener and critic and a strictly amateur strummer, but who blossomed as a bandleader and singer in China.

Paul and his wife, Becky — Rebecca Blumenstein, who would win a Pulitzer Prize for her reporting from China in 2007 — lived with their three young children in an expat compound called Beijing Riviera. Becky stays in the background in “Big in China,” busy running the bureau, while Paul, as he had in New Jersey, minds the household and tends the kids.

In China the family enjoys a housekeeper and nanny, which frees Paul to continue writing and to take on a column for the Web version of the Journal. The columns form the scaffolding around which “Big in China” is built. But Paul didn’t isolate himself in the Westerners’ compound. He studied Mandarin, sampled the fabulous variety of cuisine available in Beijing, including the great banquet of street food, and even managed to pass the Chinese driver’s test — an accomplishment that will perhaps be best appreciated by readers of Peter Hessler’s last book, “Country Driving.” And he found his musical family.

The kids were a constant attraction in China. “A growing pack of curious onlookers followed us from our hotel to the restaurant,” Paul writes of a family holiday in Guiyang. “The entire waitstaff crowded around two-and-a-half-year-old Anna, wanting to hold her, kiss her and pose for pictures with her.” Their local guide explained that no one had “seen anyone who looks like Anna, except in pictures. They think she looks like an angel.”

Four-year-old Eli wanted to know why the Chinese were so fascinated with the three American children. “In China,” Paul started to explain, “people are only allowed to have one kid.”

“Eli’s eyes grew fearful; I understood that he was worried that we were going to have to get rid of him and Anna. ‘That’s only for Chinese people,’ I quickly added.”

By the end of their third year in China, Paul writes, the kids were settled in and not eager to return to the States. He worried about the dilemma of “third culture kids,” who “come from one culture, move with their parents to another, and end up feeling like they don’t quite belong to either.” Paul’s not raring to go home either, because he suspects he’ll never find a group of musicians as compatible and in sync as the ones he’s playing with in Woodie Alan.

Paul’s musical friendships provide him with an entree to a China few Westerners see: nights out in working-class bars run by Chinese gangsters, hidden in remnant neighborhoods, or the chance to eat home-cooked meals prepared by his bandmates’ mothers. He writes about what he learns from his fellow musicians with a sympathetic and generous ease. Paul knows and has written about most of the modern guitar wizards, but the musicians of Woodie Alan earn his affection and respect as real bluesmen.

By the time I finished reading “Big in China,” I really wanted to hear Woodie Alan’s music, and found it on the Web at woodiealan.com. Paul’s modesty about his singing voice is appropriate, but the band is solid and fun to listen to, and it is a tribute to Paul’s energy and enthusiasm for the music of his native land that Woodie Alan existed at all.

Alan Paul Rocking in China

Big in China seems to have struck a cord with readers in ways that more grandiose encounters with China by westerners have not.  Hollywood has acquired film rights, and for sure it’s a story with built-in cinematic appeal–cute kids, culture shock, powerful wife, creative husband, exotic settings–what’s not to like?  Ivan Reitman to direct–cool.

Alan Paul, Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing. HarperCollins, 272 pages, $25.99.  For a video of a reading by Paul at the Asia Society, see: http://asiasociety.org/video/countries-history/alan-paul-big-china-complete

Would You Buy a Used Golf Ball from this Man?

“You know about golf courses,” he begins, so I know he’s about to tell me something he expects me to agree with.  “When was the last time you’ve seen or heard about an ‘obsolete’ course?”

What’s got him started this morning is a letter to the editor in the New York Times, prompted by an article by Bill Pennington in the May 9th issue, about the Polara golf ball, which “is designed to reduce slices and hooks by 75 percent or more….”—nirvana, Pennington notes, for the hacker who is indifferent to the USGA’s stringent rules about conforming equipment.   Pennington found plenty of golfers willing to admit that they would happily play the Polara if it would help them hit the ball straighter.

When the Polara first came on the market in the 1970s, the USGA tested it and found that the ball’s irregular dimple pattern really did correct hooks and slices.  The USGA “refused to approve the ball for tournament play,” according to Polara’s website, “ruling that it would ‘reduce the skill required to play golf’.”   Duh.

But of course the USGA has no right to prohibit Polara’s sale.   It could keep it out of competitions sanctioned by the USGA, but not prohibit its use among casual players who are not ideological disciples of approved and proper golf.  So thirty years later the forbidden Polara ball is still finding its way onto the course, a career desperado with a chip on its shoulder.

The correspondent to the Times who kick-started Lee’s morning rant took up a cause that’s percolated among golf purists looking for a way to arrest the pace of technological improvement in equipment for years: require a single conforming ball for tournament play.   Baseball and basketball have a conforming ball standard, the letter notes, as do most sports.  Nike and Adidas both make soccer balls, but Nike can’t claim its ball bends better.  Its performance characteristics are prescribed and immutable (except perhaps for durability.)

But that’s not what set Lee off.   Because the new clubs and balls which do conform still help players hit it longer and straighter, the letter asserted “that historic courses have been rendered obsolete.”

How many courses did I know of, Lee demanded, that “have been rendered obsolete?”

And of course there aren’t many which come to mind.   Merion was once thought of as undersized, but will host the 2013 US Open, playing to a par 70 at around 6,800 yards.  (Part of Merion’s problem was how to accommodate the large galleries who love to walk the Open courses,not simply its length.)

And length is far from the only defense a golf course can mount against low scores anyway.  Strategy—from exacting bunker placements to complex (and not necessarily simply fiendishly sloped) greens to treacherous rough—can force a more complex set of challenges into a golfer’s cranium than the expectation of an endless series of 300 yard drives ever could.

So the “technological ‘arms race’” the letter to the Times laments has, quite to the contrary, allowed more players to enjoy the game, even if it’s extremely unlikely that any of them will ever play at an elite level.  I’m using the best equipment I can lay my hands on, and Lee spent a significant portion of the largess the government doles out to him annually to get fitted with a whole bag full of game improving PINGS last year, and it’s still a moment for great celebration when either of us breaks 80 from the white tees on a run-of-the mill, no rough, few hazards, flat greens, state-of-the-art, no forced-carries golf course.

Obsolescence of courses today is less an issue in the golf industry than the disappearance altogether of a regrettably large number of courses that are just not economically viable.

Think about this: supposedly there are about 25 million golfers in the US.  This pretty much counts anyone who’s held a club in his or her hands over the last twelve months.  If you play one round a year you’re a “golfer.”  (That’s like saying if you have one drink you’re an alcoholic.)

But only about 4.5 million golfers carry handicaps—that is, take their hobby seriously enough to post scores and engineer their bets based on something more than deceit or desire.   That’s the number we should be trying to pump up, and not by making courses harder but by making the game more fun—even if it means constantly challenging the standards for conforming equipment, with Nike and Taylor Made and Titliest and PING and Callaway competing endlessly to make that magic wand that every golfer must have in his bag.

What's Next?

 Miller, whose commentary bristles with conviction, noted that for Tiger to pass Jack now would require a career from this point forward roughly equal to what Phil Mickelson has accomplished in two decades—an astonishingly high standard, given that no currently active player—discounting for the moment the possibility that eight-time major champion Tom Watson will make another run at The Open Championship—has won more majors than Mickelson’s four.   (Vijay Singh, Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington have each won three.)    Put in those terms, Tiger’s chances now do seem slight.

 Faldo focused on the incredible challenge of recovering the conviction that the shot you’re about to hit is in your arsenal, especially when you’re feeling the squeeze of competitive pressure.   Watching Tiger take practice swing after practice swing, as he did during his first round loss to Thomas Bjorn, Faldo pointed out, was to witness a declaration of doubt.   And the results reinforced the uncertainty clearly crippling Tiger’s psyche—he couldn’t hit fairways that were 80 yards wide.

Padraig Contemplates Retroactive DQ in Abu Dhabi

Brandel Chamblee, who is as knowledgeable and articulate as anyone writing or talking about professional golf today, noted that “the biggest travesty” as far as arcane rulings go was Roberto De Vicenzo’s “disqualification” at the 1968 Masters “for signing a scorecard with a higher score.”  What’s amazing about this comment is not simply that someone as well-informed as Chamblee recounted what is in fact a persistant myth about that Masters, but that both NBC Sports and the Golf Channel’s leading experts let Chamblee’s comments stand.  But Chamblee’s version of the De Vicenzo debacle is not what happened.

If you sign a scorecard recording a lower score than you actually made, you are of course disqualified.   But if you sign for a higher score, the erroneous score stands.  And that’s what happened to De Vicenzo.  He signed a scorecard that recorded a “4″ on a hole where his real score was “3″.  Curt Sampson, author of a small shelf of fine golf books—among them Hogan, The Eternal Summer, and Royal and Ancient—wrote a wonderful, comprehensive account of t the 1968 Masters, but despite his corrective effort the legend of De Vicenzo’s “DQ” persists. 

In The Lost Masters: Grace and Disgrace in ’68, Sampson tells this remarkable story through the eyes of the two  men whose lives were most affected by it:  De Vicenzo, and winner Bob Goalby, who many people persist in believing kept the wrong scorecard that De Vicenzo signed.  In fact Goalby was not even playing with De Vicenzo’s group, and put together a great final round that would have put him in a playoff with De Vicenzo had the Argentine signed an accurate scorecard.   So Di Vicenzo didn’t “lose” the Masters because of the errant scorecard: he lost the chance to win it in a playoff.

What Really Happened at the 1968 Masters--the Inside Story from Curt Sampson

Another topic the experts chewed over was the dominance of the European Tour players in the world rankings and in the Ryder Cup, a harbinger of the overall shift in the axis of the game away from North America.   The proof was evident in the next day’s matches, which left two men standing: new world number one Martin Kaymer, and match play monarch Luke Donald, who dominated every long-hitting challenger who dared to step on the course with him at Dove Mountain.  As I post this commentary, today’s final match is a couple of hours away.  Whoever wins, we can only hope no bizarre rules infraction will mar the outcome, and that the match is competitive at least through the 18th hole.  Golf can use a shot in the arm, especially in the USA, and nothing tops the competitive thrill of a great mano-a-mano golf match.

You Talking to Me?

God forbid Murray should ever come to the USA and step foot in a Major League dugout.   Baseball players don’t merely spit everywhere on the diamond, a lot of them juice up their saliva with a concoction of tobacco and chewing gum, with the occasionally sunflower seed thrown in the mix for nutrition.   Some players keep up a more or less continual flow of sputum going, like little living fountains—sometimes aiming into their gloves, sometimes onto the infield dirt, sometimes onto the grass (or the Astroturf.)   The dugout floor acquires a kind of golden patina from the tobacco juice.  Players spit in the batter’s box, on the mound—just about anywhere there is room to let fly without actually hitting somebody.  (The great infielder, Robbie Alomar, crossed even baseball’s pliable boundary when he spit directly into an umpire’s face.

Roberto Alomar Spit on the Umpire--A Breach of Etiquette Even in Baseball

Managers inadvertently spit on umpires all the time when they’re questioning their judgment face to face, practicing the traditional art of the out-of-control tirade, one of the first skills they’re taught in manager’s school.)   And there are pitchers in the Hall of Fame whose speciality was–the spit ball.  Spit, throw, hit, field and throw–that saliva could travel from hand to hand to hand, especially in a double play.  And while players complained about not being able to hit Gaylord Perry, no one ever complained about what was actually on the ball, so far as I know.

Baseball players glory in grit, while golfers have a more fastidious approach to their game.   That being said, micturition on a golf course, whether discretely behind a tree or in a hazard is an acceptable practice for golfing men–and balls can roll in those places, too.  I’ve never played a round with a group when we didn’t hit some balls into places where the pros never visit—except, of course, to relieve themselves.  This doesn’t happen on TV, of course—there are strategically placed porta-potties for the players—but I guarantee you they use nature’s facilities when playing for fun just like every other male golfer.   I have never heard a complaint about someone urinating on a golf course, not even aimed at the guys who just kind of wander, unsheathe the equipment and piddle in the rough, casually as a hound.  So forget about the spit–nobody would notice, unless it was a real loogee on the green.

I wouldn’t want to putt through a big gob any more than Murray, but I don’t think Americans have quite the aversion to expectoration that the Brits do.  Some attribute this to an atavistic fear of spreading TB held over from early last century, and perhaps there is something to that.  But changing a people’s spitting habits is hard.  The Chinese have always been great spitters—practitioners of big throat-clearing calisthenics that gather up the goods.  During the Cultural Revolution, Mao sent out legions of school kids to humiliate old folks into giving up the habit of hawking phlegm onto the people’s streets and sidewalks.  When they spotted a culprit, the little policemen would surround him, draw a circle in chalk around the evidence, and write the person’s name next to it while the little comrades shouted anti-spitting slogans and otherwise did their best to humiliate the culprit.  Maybe the campaign had an effect, but I still see plenty of people hacking and hawking wherever I go in China.

Tiger Beach Golf Links--the Rare Links Course in China

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TheAPosition writers love orlando golf!

Defender and Pretender: Congressional Open, 2011

When I covered the NBA a couple of decades ago, I used to dread the obligatory pre-game performance of the National Anthem.  I have a robust sense of empathy and found it extremely uncomfortable to watch when a singer would panic and forget the words, which happened with alarming frequency, given that the performers were typically amateur and young.     So I took to hanging out back in the press room until after the anthem had been sung.   I self-diagnosed and named a curious new medical condition to explain my aversion: francisscottkeyesaphobia, defined as the “fear of watching someone humilate him- or herself by forgetting the words to the national anthem in front of thousands of people at a sporting event.”

Pebble Beach, Site of 2010 US Open

Almost every America sporting event now expropriates the National Anthem, a shameless tactic to enlist the patriotism and good will of fans for what is, after all, typically a commercial enterprise— one more lunge for your entertainment dollar.    Baseball started the anthem habit eighty years ago, and then only because the President of the United States was in attendance.   It took a while, but now it’s ubiquitous, and largely empty of significance—a weightless habit.

Ironically, the sport whose fans and practitioners, both amateur and professional, are collectively the most conservative among US sportsmen (with the possible exception of NASCAR), dispenses entirely with the anthem ritual.   Golf tournaments don’t have as formal a start as other sporting events, and besides, if you launched every player off the first tee with his national anthem ringing in his ears, it would take a month to finish a golf tournament.  At last year’s US Open, the winner was an Irishman (northern variety), the sixth foreign victor in the last ten years, and there were competitors from 25 countries in all.   And while it might have been refreshing to hear the Finnish national anthem, or South Africa’s, or Fiji’s, I am glad the USGA treats our national Open championship purely as a sporting event, and not as an excuse for a decorous display of patriotism.   The Open identifies and honors the best golfer, not the one from the toughest country.   It makes me proud to be an American.

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TheAPosition writers are big fans of Phil Mickelson and John Daly although we don’t want to hear them sing our National Anthem.