I was describing to Will at the recent ULI conference that for the past couple years the developers of resorts have been asking how to develop golf for less. The number that gets bantered around is $14MM for a resort course. So what was the response from the golf architect community? -- design 3-6 hole golf courses!! "No wonder no one is coming here any more. If all you've ever done is build 14+ million dollar courses and we've proven that model doesn't work, why in the world would we listen to anything that the experts have to say? We should be doing the opposite of what you've done. Your solution is to build 3 hole courses?" -- Will
Last year someone asked me "Why do I need a golf course?" He was told that he needed golf to have a successful resort - but he didn't think it was good value. Where can someone go to learn about developing golf if not here?
Golf is too expensive
Golf is too hard
Golf is only there to sell real estate
Pictured above is the 16th green at Wolf Point. Our answer. We'll be talking more about the questions next week.
Golf Course designing is a career initself and involves a 6 to 7 years of studying in golf course maintainence, design, operations management etc if one has to set up a golf club. we have set up a successful golf club with more than 2500 life members in India a decade back and were happy to employ reputed designers, professionally trained golf greens keepers and operations staff with professionally run hotels. its best to stick to professionals than do a mistake ourself.
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