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.

The Laurel and Hardy of American Politics

Too Big to Fail?

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 found the question sad and perplexing.)  The whole enquiry expresses a paradox in American culture: the fatter the people get, the skinnier we expect our idols to be.   This is a corollary of the curious belief among people earning fewer than fifty thousand dollars a year that they will somehow benefit from tax breaks for the rich.

Michael Kinsley of Bloomberg Views was viciously blunt about Christie’s chances: “Christie cannot be president: He is just too fat. Maybe, if he runs for president and we get to know him, we will overlook this awkward issue because we are so impressed with the way he stands up to teachers’ unions. But we shouldn’t overlook it–unless he goes on a diet and shows he can stick to it.”

But we’ve had fat presidents, some even elected to more than one term.  Grover Cleveland, although a New York resident when he was elected to his two non-consecutive terms as president, was a New Jersey native with a build similar to Christie’s.    Both William McKinley, whose term was brief because he was assassinated, and his successor, Theodore Roosevelt, were bulky men, although Roosevelt was also famously fit.

The fattest of them all, however, was William Howard Taft—also the only president to also serve on the Supreme Court.   Taft weighed well over 300 pounds when he was in the White House.   Taft was also our first presidential golfer, playing twice a week.  Roosevelt is said to have despised Taft’s golfing hobby, even though there were rumors that TR himself had a secret golfing habit.

President Taft's Pure Putting Stroke

Portland physician Jim Puterbaugh, whose brother is the well-known teaching pro from San Diego’s Aviara Golf Academy, Kip Puterbaugh, recently published an article about the health benefits of walking 18 holes, especially if you carry your clubs.  (He also denounces golf carts as health hazards.)   According to Puterbaugh’s research, as reported in Golf, Inc., if Christie were to walk two rounds a week, he would “easily meet the exercise recommended by the cardiovascular model.”

It Breaks to the Left

We have a slender president now, of course, who is also a golfer, although like Roosevelt, President Obama has tended to play his rounds under the radar.   His famously public golf summit with House Speaker John Boehner, VP Joe Biden and Ohio governor John Kasich during the battle over the debt ceiling had the political impact of a Justin Bieber concert, but at least it put golf on the front page for a day.

So maybe in his well-known spirit of political reconciliation and compromise, Obama should offer to introduce Christie to golf and get him walking on the links, a bipartisan approach to solving one small healthcare problem.   They might look like the second coming of Laurel and Hardy, but Obama and Christie together might also inspire a healthier approach to political dialogue.

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.

And the winner is....Darren Clarke

Clarke and Westwood were to wear the Dunlop logo on their shirts for no money up front, but each stood to collect a small fortune if he won a major.  Chandler and Clarke were betting on their own success, eschewing a guaranteed payment for the chance at a jackpot.

According to a July 13^th report by Charles Sale in the MailOnline, the web version of The Daily Mail, “the agreement was struck six years ago between International Sports Management boss Chubby Chandler…” and Newcastle United football team owner Mike Ashley through Sports Direct, a publicly traded online retailer founded by Ashley which owns the Slazenger and Everlast brands as well as Dunlop.

In looking ahead to the Open, Sale thought Lee Westwood, ranked world’s number two and projected as among the favorites at Royal St. George’s, was the likeliest candidate to earn Ashley’s millions.   David Howell was also eligible for the bonus for winning a major, Sale noted, but wrote that it was a “safe bet that neither Clarke nor Howell, who failed to qualify, will be enjoying Ashley’s millions.”  The bookmakers had Clarke at 125-1.

Matt Judy, EVP of Blue Giraffe Sports out of Atlanta, admires Chandler’s gambling approach to endorsement deals, but also sees the much different market reality in the States making such arrangements unlikely.  “The approach Chubby took was unique and is not a common one in the US market,” Judy says.   “Most deals done here have some type of compensation involved up front and are not totally based upon incentives.”

America may be the theoretical land of unrestrained capitalism, but when it comes to risk, European golfers seem a lot more willing to put their games on the line.  The all-exempt PGA Tour has created a market loaded with incentives to do well enough but not necessarily great.  Top 10s and even top 25s finishes consistently achieved can provide a grand income.

It’s perhaps not surprising that players such as the supremely confident Rory McIlroy—another horse in the Chandler stable—prefer not to commit themselves to the PGA TOUR full time.  They can earn appearance money overseas, but they can also leverage their wins through incentivized endorsement deals.

There are 54 players who have earned over a million dollars on the PGA Tour so far in 2011.  Twenty-six of them have won tournaments (including three two-time winners.)   That means there are twenty-eight players who have already won more than a million dollars this year  without winning an event.

“The kind of deal Chubby’s set up is legal on the US TOUR” says Judy, who is a graduate of Mercer Law School outside Atlanta, “but our market has not yet widely adopted this type of deal from the corporate or the player side.  With more examples of these type of successes, I think a hybrid of these kinds of deals will become more prevalent in certain situations.”

Payments under these “win to get paid” arrangements are usually funded through an insurance policy, Judy explained.  “It’s just like hole-in-one insurance” he said.   The cost of the insurance policy would be roughly the same for a company as the annual endorsement payment to a player of Clarke’s stature.    It’s not clear, however,  how Dunlop has funded its payment to Clarke.

If the payment had been provided through an insurance policy, somebody—probably through Lloyd’s of London—figured out the odds for Clarke winning a major and wrote a policy to cover that unlikely event.  (I would love to meet the actuary whose job it is to handicap players in major championships.  Meeting with the oddsmakers at the betting parlors would surely be a part of the research required.)

Dunlop was not really much at risk for the €2M, even if it has to cough up to Clarke.   Dunlop’s logo is featured in every interview and photo of Clarke, who is immensely popular already and will now be even more in demand.  Dunlop is getting its money’s worth.

Chandler’s players currently hold three major championship trophies:  The Masters (Charl Schwartzel), the US Open (McIlroy) and Clarke’s Claret Jug.   His influence as an agent and International Sports Management’s (ISM) stable will surely grow.   But unless there is a shift in sensibility, Chandler’s clever strategies for leveraging his players’ successes may never play well among American professionals.

The Swinger

The roman à clef is a kind of literary push poll.  Joe Klein’s Primary Colors was a roman à clef, skewering an imaginary Bill Clinton on the campaign trail, while Robert Harris’ The Ghost, the basis for the film “The Ghostwriter,” was the literary evisceration of a fictional British Prime Minister addicted to deceit which was clearly based on Tony Blair.

If you don’t want to know what happens in the The Swinger, stop reading now.  I don’t know how to review this book without giving away the plot.

OK

We have in The Swinger a coded version of Tiger Woods’ life post-scandal, courtesy of two of Sports Illustrated’s finest golf writers, Michael Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck.   Naming the main character  “Herbert X. ‘Tree’ Tremont” signals to readers that their imaginations will not be taxed by trying to break The Swinger’s code. Tree is a mixed-race golfing prodigy with multiple majors won, an income north of one hundred million a year, and a gorgeous Italian wife named Belinda.  He has a taciturn caddy from overseas (a Scot, not a Kiwi), an arrogant lawyer as an agent, and sponsorship by an apparel company with an eccentrically exuberant boss.

We’re left to guess what the “X” stands for, but on my scorecard, an X means surrender.   No echoes of Malcolm X and his repudiation of slave names sound in the deliberately race-neutral sagas of either Tiger Woods or Tree Tremont, but a hint of Mandingo lurks in The Swinger’s description of Tree.

“Even from two hundred yards away, Tree Tremont was an unmistakable figure.  He was built like a martini glass, with powerful shoulders and a chest tapering to a thirty-inch waist, all of it accentuated by his tight European-cut clothing that Belinda hand-picked for him, as Tree liked to remind reporters…Tree’s stride radiated athleticism, confidence, superiority.   There was something virile about his presence, certainly for women but for men, too.”

The narrator gushing thus about Tree is Joshua Dutra, a Florida-based sportswriter.   The conceit of the novel is that Dutra gets hired by the Tremont brain trust to help guide Tree through the aftermath of a tabloid’s discovery that he is not the upstanding family man his PR machine has claimed, but rather a sex-addicted narcissist who lies to his wife as readily as he intimidates his rivals.

There is a Phil Mickelson character in The Swinger called “Will Martinsen.”   He is, no surprise, Tree’s biggest rival.    “Big Herb”—Herbert X. Tremont, Senior—stands in for Earl Woods.  Some golfers appear in the novel under their real names, echoing a favorite technique in the fiction of E. L. Doctorow— Zach Johnson, Jack Nicklaus, Corey Pavin and Luke Donald are among the famous players making cameo appearances as themselves.   This pumps up the verisimilitude while providing a virtuous counterpoint to Tree’s scandalous conduct.

The sportswriter/narrator’s first person account provides an insider’s view of Tree’s self-inflicted wounds and self-destructive fall.   Dutra even accompanies Tree to his stint in rehab for sex-addiction therapy.    Tree is also hooked on a variety of pain-killers and performance enhancers.   He is not a sympathetic guy, with his yachts and his sycophants and his lies.

Then something curious happens.  Tree and Dutra’s business relationship somehow segues into something resembling friendship, and Tree’s rehab succeeds.   His therapist is drawn with sympathy and grace, and an Oprah episode breaks out on a Jerry Springer stage.   The vinegar turns to syrup, and the narrative abandons anger and parody for the sweet prospect of redemption.

The Swinger is fun to read, even after it takes its earnest turn and stops dishing dirt.    As with all successful romans à clef, it keeps the reader on his toes, looking for plausible clues about what Bamberger and Shipnuck must really know that lies hidden behind the burlesque.    If pro golfers were readers, The Swinger would surely find a receptive audience among them.

But  as much as I enjoyed The Swinger, I found this counter-version of Tiger’s life—and especially one that ends with the Tree character turning into a nice guy, a kind of St Augustine of the links—as incomprehensible as the true story of Tiger Woods’ fall from grace.

JS

Michael Bamberger and Alan Shipnuck, The Swinger.  Simon and Shuster, July, 2011.  254 pp, $25.00.

As I wrote on Friday and Saturday, McIlroy’s composure after his Masters’ disaster, his courage in facing up to the questions about his performance, his insistence that he would learn from the collapse, presaged this performance for the ages.   Not only did he shoot four rounds in the 60s on a long, strong golf course, matching Lee Trevino’s 1968 performance at Oak Hill (with rounds of 69-68-69-69,Trevino was the first player in Open history to play all four regulation rounds in the 60s, tying the scoring record of 275), McIlroy’s total of 268 broke the previous scoring record by 4 shots.  That’s Usain Bolt-level record setting, a quantum leap in a sport whose records creep forward in tiny increments.

Rory’s win was as dominating as Tiger’s Pebble romp, but equally unexpected.  Rory is 22, and his game has no weaknesses.  His swing does not explode against his joints, but goes through a graceful arc with smooth precision.  He’s here to stay.  In retrospect, the final round at Augusta will look like a fluke, the outlier in a career that is sure to accumulate more majors.

The exuberance of the performance led to some hyperbole, as when Padraig Harrington suggested that Rory might win as many majors as Jack Nicklaus, a quest only Tiger has ever seemed fitted to pursue.  When asked about Harrington’s prediction in a press conference after the third round, Rory could only shake his head and tsk, “Paddy, Paddy….”   He has the Irish instinct for repartee and a genuine kindness to sharpen and sustain it.

Golf was lucky to have someone as dynamic as Woods come on the scene almost twenty years ago, but cursed in equal measure when the game’s greatest player disgraced himself and tarnished his sport with revelations of sexual escapades and an accompanying campaign of cover-up and deceit.   Now, with Rory, the game has once again summoned a champion for the ages, but one from whom a fall from grace seems unimaginable.

Ironically, Rory’s ascendency may give Tiger room to recover and re-emerge.  The game is in good shape now, with Rory and Jason Day and the other rising stars, so Tiger can stay in his lair and lick his wounds and think about his return while the golf world’s attention is focused elsewhere.

Rory McIlroy is the real deal.  Ireland is now the world’s top producer of golf champions on a per capita basis: good on ya!

Brilliant, Calm and Unstoppable--Rory McIlroy

Sometimes the ethnic pairings were a little awkward—American Anthony Kim, whose ancestors are Korean, in a group with Korean Y. A. Yang and Japanese phenom Ryo Ishikawa, as if Japan and Korea are somehow the same, even though the historical enmity between the two countries runs deep.  They could have created an all-Kim pairing from among the four Kims qualifying for the Open, surely a surname record.    The pairings accomplished what I believe the USGA intended, stimulating excitement and  interest in a wide array of players, especially in the absence of Tiger Woods, who always attracted the largest galleries.

Paul Azinger, whose acerbic observations add a welcome element of bitters to the generally savory blend of Open commentary, crabbed aloud that these nationality-based pairings would somehow confer an advantage on the international players.   Playing with someone they know well, Zinger said, would help them relax.  He singled out the Swedes and the Italians, the latter group including not merely countrymen but the fratelli Molanari.   This was early in the first round, when players from both of those groups were scoring well—Francesco Molinari was three under after four holes, and Edfors and Stenson each three under after eight.

Professional golfers are trained to ignore outside influences, although whether or not they can succeed in doing so is an enduring challenge—perhaps the issue in championship golf.   There were many pairings of Americans, by the way, but no one saw fit to comment on that—it’s the default reality, so it seems “normal.”   Webb Simpson, Bill Hass and Jonathan Byrd, for example, played together in the first two rounds, as did Chad Campbell, Harrison Frazar and Marc Turnesa.    Did they have an advantage?

None of the pundrity seemed to think so, suggesting that the advantage of national pairings somehow is conferred only on “foreigners.  It’s highly unlikely that any of the pairings had an impact on the scoring, though perhaps someone with a richer set of statistical skills than I possess might discover a trend.   Given that 72 of the 156 players in the field at the 2011 US Open are international players, discovering any benefit in their foreignness other than skill and courage on the course seems doubtful.

What is not at issue is the extraordinary play in the first two rounds of the young Irishman, Rory McIlroy.

The USGA did not create an Irish threesome, although a group consisting of defending champ Graeme McDowell, three-time major winner Padraig Harrington, and McIlroy would have been the most brilliant on the Championship.  But the USGA stuck with its traditional approach to the champion’s pairing: McDowell in the first two rounds with USGA Amateur champ Peter Uihlein and the Open (ie, “British”) champion, Louis Oosthuizen.

Rory McIlroy, playing with Dustin Johnson, who withered as McIlroy flourished, and whose power was matched by a man who seems tiny in the big American’s presence, and Phil Mickelson, of whom much was expected but who visibly deflated when his very first tee shot, on the fearsome par 3 tenth, found the water on Thursday, quickly obliterated any evidence of an enduring effect from his final round meltdown at the Masters.  McIlroy was flawless until his 36^th hole, when he double-bogeyed after trying an aggressive shot from the rough after his first poor drive in two days, when a cautious approach would likely have yielded nothing worse than a bogey.  Still, he takes a six shot lead into the third round, set the all-time two round scoring record, and became the first player ever to reach 13 under par at a US Open.   Not bad for a 22 year old player who came to this event with the specter of his Masters’ collapse dominating all commentary and any expectations for him.  And he did it playing with foreigners.

So how would Rory do against the “teams” from Sweden, Spain and Italy?Rory shot 66-65 for a total of 131.  But if you take his best scores on each hole from the two rounds, how would it compare, for example, to the best-ball of the Swedes –Henrik Stenson, Johan Edfors, and Fredrik Jacobson?  How about against the Spaniards, Sergio Garcia, Miquel-Angel Jimenez, and Alvaro Quiros?  Or against the Molinari brothers and Matteo Manassero?  Remember, these are not the outrider qualifiers, but seasoned touring professionals.

It’s a pretty astonishing comparison, given that it is three top professionals’ balls against one player over  the course of two rounds.

The Spaniards collectively posted a best ball of 61, the worst of the three groups, although both Garcia and Quiros made the cut.  The Swedes were next, with a combined score of 60, and all three of them made it to the weekend.   (With identical 142s, Stenson and Edfors are paired in the third round—another advantage for the Swedes, Zinger?)  The Italians had the best collective score, 58, even though their average score was 73.16, compared to Rory’s average score over two rounds of 65.5.  Edoardo Molinari and Manassero are also playing on the weekend.

Rory’s “best ball” over his two rounds was 60—he birdied or eagled 9 of the 18 holes, equaling par on the rest.

So by this measure, one young Irishman is the superior of three Spaniards and the equal of three Swedes, but not quite up to a triumvirate of Italians.

What will today bring?   Rory McIlroy will stand up to the pressure this time, I am convinced, and on Sunday afternoon will take his place as a champion in the new, improved, fan-friendly and marvelously spirited, contemporary, Mike Davis-influenced version of the US Open.

Saturday Night Update:

Rory’s third round was pretty much a walk in the park.  The only drama was in the agonies of the commentators trying to find a story line that would inject some drama into the championship.  It was especially delicate talking to the other great players who at this point are so far behind McIlroy.  World number one Lee Westwood had a great round of 65 but remains 9–nine!–strokes back.  Bob Costas asked him if he still had a chance and he had to say yes, because that is what competitors say, but without uttering the graceless words “but only if Rory has another Augusta collapse.”    O.f course there is no way of knowing what Rory will feel like on Sunday.  Will the memory of the Masters intrude?  I don’t think so, in part because McIlroy handled the aftermath of his collapse so well–he didn’t shirk, he didn’t hide, he didn’t try to bully his interrogators into silence, as the world’s most recent dominant player would have.  He calmly answered questions with intelligence and poise, regaining his emotional equilibrium quickly.  The quality of his game, the skills that put him in the final group at Augusta on Sunday hadn’t abandoned him, he had simply had a bad day, which under the pressure of a major enlarged into an corrosive mess.   But he has clearly recovered, and tomorrow he will continue his march towards greatness.  By the end of the final round on Sunday, only Tiger’s peerless performance at Pebble will belong in the same discussion of the greatest major triumphs ever with Rory’s four days at Congressional.  At 22, McIlroy has the game, the temperament, and the focus to launch himself onto a path towards matching Tiger’s 14 majors.

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