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A Golf Course Stillborn

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Marty Bonnar:
Driving out of St Andrews last weekend, we chose to take the A915 Leven road over the hill, past the Cairnsmill Caravan Park. The road runs alongside the site of the currently abandoned construction site of the St Andrews International Golf Club. Check it out on Google Earth or Maps, but not Apple, oddly.
I was quite dismayed to note the state of the site. There’s quite clearly an almost complete golf course emerging from the ground, but it’s rapidly returning to a state of the natural vegetation returning to the shaped, sculpted earthworks of the playing field.
I have no care or interest in the economics of the development, save for the thought of such an enormous waste of money, time and talent.
As our dear friend, Mr H might have put it: “What a Pity”.
Maybe sometimes egos and cash shouldn’t get quite so mixed. Just an observation. No agenda.
Cheers,
F.

Edward Glidewell:
A different setting/locale (to put it mildly), but something similar happened near Myrtle Beach several years ago. The Ocean Ridge Plantation in NC, which is near a family beach house at Ocean Isle Beach, has four courses. However, they had plans for a fifth -- they purchased land which formerly held 36 holes belonging to a different course, and planned to develop housing with a newly designed 18.


They fully constructed at least 9 holes of the course and maintained it. You could see a couple of holes from a nearby road. The fairways were mowed, the bunkers had sand -- I'm not sure if they ever grassed the greens, because they were always covered with tarps. Regardless, the course looked ready to open at any moment and it was that way for at least a year. Now, however, it's so overgrown with weeds that it's hard to tell there was ever a design there. It was bizarre to drive by and see the empty, fully maintained course.


Lot purchasers sued the developers at one point (I think less about the course itself and more that they never built roads or ran water lines, etc.), but I'm not sure what came of it.

Tom_Doak:
This happened a whole lot during the financial crisis, hitting new projects at all stages of construction. 


At Wicked Pony in Oregon, we had nine holes grassed and nine holes rough shaped ... by the time the bankruptcy court got around to cleaning it up, someone had stolen the pump station out of the building!

Edward Glidewell:
Interestingly enough, the Ocean Ridge Plantation website STILL includes the logo for the fifth course, and still has an active page for it: http://www.bigcatsgolf.com/jaguars-lair/


I can't imagine why. I think it's been a decade since they stopped construction on the course.

Edward Glidewell:

--- Quote from: Tom_Doak on March 15, 2018, 08:08:47 PM ---This happened a whole lot during the financial crisis, hitting new projects at all stages of construction. 


At Wicked Pony in Oregon, we had nine holes grassed and nine holes rough shaped ... by the time the bankruptcy court got around to cleaning it up, someone had stolen the pump station out of the building!

--- End quote ---


Whatever happened to the course you were supposed to build at Lake Oconee near Atlanta? I assume the financial crisis eventually killed it completely, but would have been really nice to have both a C&C and a Doak nearby (even if I never had the opportunity to play either!).

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