Tiger Woods presents his plans for an Ultra-luxury golf development in Mexico

If you had said to me last week, “I am planning a new residential golf course development,” I would probably have laughed and suggested that it was poor timing on your part.

With golf course developments around the world struggling for memberships and some pretty high-end developments being canceled, it is probably not the best time to start a new one.

Unless (and this is a big unless) - It is being designed by Tiger Woods, will limit availability to only 40 homes and 80 condos; is within a short drive of San Diego and the entire course will be oceanfront.

Tiger Woods announced his involvement in a new venture this month – Punta Brava in Mexico, just 65 miles from San Diego. I imagine long and hard sessions went into deciding just how many people were likely to be able to afford the $3 million, one-acre plots, and this particular development is most likely immune to the current financial disaster. This may now be the most expensive real estate in Mexico. These are a few photographs of the environment, pre-development.

Mr. Woods is involved in two other developments at the moment, both of which are still in the construction phase. The Tiger Woods Dubai will eventually feature some staggering obstacles such as waterfalls and dramatic elevation changes, and thousands of trees and shrubs are being transplanted out in the Dubai desert. The other course is on The Cliffs in North Carolina.

Video Courtesy - Fairway Properties

The story is a little different further down the food chain, and several up-market developments have either been delayed or put up for sale recently. The 300-acre Beechtree course in Maryland closes it’s doors at the end of the year, a mid-luxury fractional ownership development on the edge of St. Andrews in Scotland was canceled recently, and the St Andrews Beach Golf Club in Melbourne, Australia is closed and currently up for sale along with a sister course The Golf Club at Kennedy Bay.

Although, according to the previous owners – the weather was to blame. What I hear is there was a drought on a third course near Phillip Island which caused the other two to fail also. Nothing to do with over-building. I guess that is a little better than the Spanish property developer that is suing Greenpeace for scaring the Spanish property market into a collapse when they produced a photo-book showing the likely effects of global warming on the Spanish coastline.

Punta Brava

Golf courses around the world are more and more turning on to the idea that to be truly successful they need a residential development alongside the greens and fairways. The other feature many seem to be unable to dispense with is a PGA professional-designed golf course and the two seem to go hand in hand.

It is hard to say who is leading the pack as far as golf professionals, but Jack Niklaus is one of the most active. Nicklaus rarely competes in competitions nowadays but appears to be very busy on golf course design, including a course at The Cliffs golf community in Carolina. In fact Niklaus design has over 300 golf courses currently open for play and almost 100 golf courses under design. A full list is available here. One of the more spectacular courses is the Great Waters course on The Reynolds Plantation golf development, which was voted among the “Ten Best New Courses,” by GOLF magazine. This is a video of their development courtesy of Fairway properties, a residential golf property sales portal.

Graham Marsh and Vijay Singh are two other PGA pros now involved in course designs on residential development, collaborating on the Al Houra Luxury Golf Resort in Tangiers, Morocco.

Tiger Woods has now “designed,” several courses, one notable course being the Tiger Woods Dubai, a massive development with over 100 villas on the course. More often than not, the courses are combined with residential golf communities, not all of them as large as the tiger Woods Dubai, but many pundits are seeing this as the only way to make modern golf courses profitable.

According to Monte Stewart of Ontario’s Business Edge,

“The days of Canadian golf courses being built without housing projects around them are coming to an end.”

Mr. Stewart quotes Ken Fulton, the general manager of Baxter’s creek Golf Course near Peterborough as saying,

“You do need a real estate component if you’re spending multi-millions of dollars. At the millions that we’ve spent here, you can reap the benefits through green fees and make money at it.”

The 2008 British Open Golf championship tees off today, with the notable absence of Tiger Woods. Whether Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia, or Ernie Els will step up and fill the breach remains to be seen

The course for this year’s British Open Championship is Royal Birkdale in Lancashire and as I understand these things is in perfect condition unless you count the wind. Already the golf pundits are talking up a storm about just how exciting this year’s open should be, even without Tiger Woods.

Lancashire boasts no less than 20 of the UK’s best and most challenging courses, and is jokingly named the “Golf Coast,” of England. A major industry has sprung up around luxury golf properties in the area and visitLancashore.com has a huge list of properties available.

Perhaps the most luxurious property in the area is Knowsley Hall, the seat of the Earl of Derby (no relation, sadly). Cottages are available to rent in the 2,500 acres of rolling parkland, and there are 9 luxuriously furnished bedroom suites available in the main building. According to the Knowlsley Hall website, tours are available and the property is for hire as either a pretty spectaular film backdrop or for private functions and capable of receiving up to 200 guests.

The Knowsley Home Farm operates within Knowsley Park producing quality Aberdeen Angus beef and Suffolk cross sheep. The Estate Woodland gardens provide a valuable ecological resource which are sensitively managed to safeguard the natural flora and fauna. * chokes on coffee * and interested parties can, for the paltry sum of £20, purchase a book detailing His Lordship’s horse racing experiences with Ouija board, a famous British racing Mare. Not a best-seller in the making I feel, but all proceeds go to Racing Welfare.

If any more proof was needed that you can do anything with enough money, the latest news from Dubai regarding the Tiger Woods Golf development should clinch it. The Tiger Woods Dubai, a residential golf course development at Dubailand, is now also planned to become the country’s largest nursery.

An eighty-hectare nursery with more than 30,000 trees and shrubs which will be transplanted across the development in several phases. After the Tiger Woods Dubai development has been finished, there are now plans to expand the nursery by another 20 hectares to cater to Dubailand project.

Tiger Woods Dubai will include “Al Ruwaya” - a Tiger Woods designed golf course, a golf academy, a clubhouse, a seven-star boutique hotel, one hundred villas, including twenty-two “palaces” (trying not to snicker), seventy-five mansions and a community retail area. The development will have 30,000 fully developed trees, which are being imported from Thailand, Australia, South Africa, the US, India and Saudi Arabia.

The trees, all around 40 feet tall, are some of the tallest ever imported into the UAE. Prominent species include Siris Tree (Albizia lebbeck), Golden Flame (Peltophorum pterocarpum), Golden Shower (Cassia fistula) and River Bush Willow (Combretum erythrophyllum), but I have to wonder – if these trees cannot grow here naturally, how on earth do they expect them to survive after being imported. And has any one considered the possible environmental implications of importing this many non-native trees and shrubs? I have two words

Rabbits - Australia

And the last time I checked a “Nursery,” was a place where you grew young things rather than imported adults for storage and later transplanting so this is a bit of a misnomer.

The cost of importing the trees and shrubs and developing the nursery is expected to be over $20 million. Approximately 11,000 of the 30,000 mature trees will be used in Al Ruwaya itself, while the remaining will be replanted all across the development. Currently the plan is to bring in about 480,000 shrubs as well.

The shipping cost of each container will be about $2,500. “At present we have shipped about 10 containers. There will be 25 containers coming every week for the next three to four months. About 800 containers of trees and shrubs would be shipped into the UAE for use at the golf course alone,” said Abdhulla Al Gurg, the project’s director.

“Al Ruwaya, a 7,700 yard, par 72 championship-quality course has been designed to include dramatic elevation, lush landscaping, stunning water features and an overall design program, which will challenge and entertain golfers,” he said.

The turf for the golf course was ordered from Georgia, in the United States. “It is a very special type of grass and is superior to any other type on earth. The species is the same that Tiger has recommended. It has been specifically selected to create the playing condition in the golf course and for the way he wants the ball to bounce,” said Al Gurg. “The turf was flown in temperature-controlled containers. It is a premium turf that can withstand the heat. With the right amount of sand, nutrients and water, the turf will be perfectly fine,” he said.

Over 10 hectares of sprigs for the turf have been planted at the nursery and will be ready for harvest by mid August. The grass takes 10 weeks to grow and the schedule is to grass three holes at a time

A $25 million reverse osmosis (RO) plant, to be constructed and operated by the developer will be installed on site to purify 5,000 cubic meters a day of treated sewage effluent water to specified standards. An network of pipeline was laid to fetch water into the development from almost 18km away. The course would require at least 13,000 cubic meters of water to irrigate.

A special team of engineers from Landscape Unlimited are working on the shaping of the golf course. “They have worked on about 800 courses and have been nominated by Woods,” said Al Gurg. One of the hindrances he said had been the shortage of sand. “We are actually running out of sand within the development. But we have the luxury of having unlimited amount of sand from the neighboring areas. We need extra sand to create features, structures and elevation,” he said.

Excavation work for the six-meter deep lakes and the foundation of the club house is in progress. Nearly 31,000 cubic meters of cut-and-fill per day is in progress at the golf course area. The design for six of the 18 holes has also been simultaneously accomplished, with concepts explored for remaining holes.

Currently earth works are in progress and the lakes are being excavated. For two months every Wednesday dynamites were used to excavate six meters deep. The last blast is tomorrow. “The deeper the lakes the more aesthetically real and hygienic they will be. About 7.5m sqft of lakes will be created, all of which will be interconnected. Water for the lakes will be sourced from RO plant,” he said.

The power for the golf course will be supplied from a substation where work has started and is scheduled to be completed in 12 months. Work on the eight and half-km ring road the boulevard that will link the hotel and all the club house, has also begun. More than 300 trucks operate daily and work is being done round the clock to ensure completion.

Environmental disaster waiting to happen or forward-thinking, Leonardo Da Vinci-like vision?

Comments welcome.