With major gaming companies beginning to invest in Billoxi Miss, golf will see a huge growth spurt in the Gulf coast region. More importantly, its not just new courses, its major new courses which are in the works. This could dramatically spur interest in the southeast.
Golf grows up
JOHN PORRETTO
THE SUN HERALD
In the early '90s, as the Coast fell further and further behind booming golf destinations such as Gulf Shores, Ala., and Myrtle Beach, S.C., it was difficult to imagine the names Palmer and Nicklaus involved in the local golf scene.
Casino gambling, thousands of new hotel rooms and more jet service changed all that.
A glimpse of the green
Here's a range of prices for 18 holes of golf with a cart at courses on the Coast and in Gulf Shores, Ala., and Myrtle Beach, S.C.
No. of courses Range of fees
Mississippi Coast 21 $23 to $80
Gulf Shores 16 $30 to $75
Myrtle Beach 99 $15 to $115
Note: Fees fluctuate depending on season and time of day.
Today, the two legends are very much a part of the Coast golf industry, and several other companies, including one owned by golfing great Raymond Floyd, either have bought property or are considering golf ventures here.
Some existing courses, meanwhile, are spending millions of dollars to upgrade their layouts, trying to remain competitive in the battle for local and visiting golfers.
"Names like Palmer and Nicklaus will help us make a statement throughout the United States that we're an up-and-coming golf destination," said Scott Ratcliff, who promotes golf at national trade shows for the Mississippi Gulf Coast Convention & Visitors Bureau.
"Golf is a lot about perception," Ratcliff said. "Those courses will add to our ability to market the Coast as a true golf destination."
The newest course, The Oaks, will open in a couple of weeks on Menge Avenue in Pass Christian.
<Picture>
Sun Herald photo/John Fitzhugh
Bryce Cook and Pete Santos, both of Pass Christian, rake one of the sand traps on The Oaks' par-4 third hole, which measures 381 yards from the blue tees.
The owners, Landmark National, have developed nearly 30 courses and 13 residential communities, including The Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, S.C., site of the 1991 Ryder Cup matches between the United States and Europe.
The Oaks will give the Coast more than 20 golf courses from Bay St. Louis to Pascagoula. Landmark hopes to open The Oaks on Feb. 14.
"For several years, we watched from afar what was happening here," said Chris Cole, Landmark National's golf director.
"If you look at gaming, it's a three-legged stool - Las Vegas, Atlantic City and now Biloxi and Gulfport," said Cole, who lives in Charleston, S.C. "You've got beaches, nice weather, nice people, a good service industry and an aggressive government.
"The growth was going to come, and we said, 'We're getting in.'"
In with the new
Arnold Palmer made the first big splash on the Coast, designing The Bridges Golf Resort at Casino Magic in Bay St. Louis, which opened a year ago.
In October, during a visit to Casino Magic, the 68-year-old legend said he expected several new courses to open on the Coast in the near future.
Jack Nicklaus, a friend of Palmer and perhaps the greatest golfer of all time, is involved in one of the ongoing projects, a $20 million course and clubhouse that Grand Casinos is building in northern Harrison County.
The course, which Grand hopes to open in the second quarter of 1999, is in the final design stages. The site is east of U.S. 49 between the Biloxi and Little Biloxi rivers on part of 1,750 acres owned by the Grand.
"Jack personally designed this course," said Grand executive Tom Isham, who's overseeing the project. "His next visit will be after we complete the next stage: cutting the inside fairways and setting the elevations. Then he'll come in and place the water and sand hazards and reshape the greens."
Isham said the course will be private, accessible only to Grand's guests. The company is considering a second course, but the focus is on the first layout.
"It's going to be a limited-play course, mainly for players' parties and functions," Isham said. "We're not looking for 40,000 rounds a year. It's an amenity, complemented and driven by our hotels. It's part of the whole package."
The Oaks, which is not affiliated with a casino, will be open to the public and feature a dramatic elevation change, deep bunkers and four sets of tees. Home sites are planned around the course; lots will go on sale in June.
If the Nike Tour returns to the Coast for a professional tournament next year, The Oaks would be the site. Project director Joel Gann said owner Landmark National has a history of good relations with the PGA Tour. Oak Tree Country Club in Edmond, Okla., built by Landmark, hosted the 1984 U.S. Amateur and the 1988 PGA Championship.
"We'd love to have the Nike event because of our interest in promoting golf on the Coast and showing people nationally what's here," Gann said. "From a local standpoint, with a planned residential development, I can't think of a better way to get 8,000 to 10,000 people on your property."
Upgrading the old
The owners of some existing courses also have spent a lot of money of late to improve their layouts.
A couple of examples:
Miami-based Florida Golf Properties bought Southwind County Club in St. Martin last year and has spent about $1.2 million to renovate the course, now called BlackJack Bay Golf Links. Holes were redesigned, greens were moved and trees and mounds were added. The course, which reopened in November, will begin construction on a new clubhouse next year.
The Great Southern Golf Club in Gulfport, formerly the Broadwater Sea Course, has spent $500,000 on a new irrigation system and concrete cart paths around the 94-year-old course, the oldest in Mississippi. Golf professional Terry Kleinsasser said the club has plans for new greens and an improved clubhouse and is considering a complete course redesign.
Other projects are in the works:
Floyd visited the Coast in October to check out Gulf Hills Resort in Ocean Springs, whose 18-hole course is in desperate need of improvements.
Morning Star Development in Gulfport is negotiating to buy the course and 6.5 acres near the resort. Morning Star principal Buzz Pemberton said the deal could close by the end of February, and Floyd will handle course improvements if that happens. The price tag for course renovations: about $4 million.
"You're going to have a completely different look at Gulf Hills," Pemberton said. "If we sign a contract, work should start in the spring."
The President Broadwater Golf Club in Biloxi, formerly the Broadwater Sun Course, has plans to renovate cart paths, greens and bunkers and add trees and shrubbery behind greens "so you don't feel like you're playing golf downtown," said Phillip Dalrymple, the President's golf executive.
"The basic layout is pretty good, but grasses are better now," said Dalrymple, a golf pro on the Coast since 1985. "This course was built in the days when greens were relatively flat, so we hope to put some contour and movement in them."
Competition on the Coast is not the only reason for the rush to build and improve courses, Dalrymple said.
"Not only are courses here getting better, the courses where people are coming from are getting better," he said. "One of the things I noticed in the past seven or eight years is that when you ask people where they're from, a lot of times they say, 'I'm from so-and-so, Indiana. Fuzzy Zoeller just built a course up our way, and you should see it. It's spectacular.'
"That's stuff you didn't hear many years ago, and it's happening everywhere."
Still looking for developers
Deals for more new courses on the Coast continue to evolve.
Beau Rivage hotel and casino in Biloxi, part of Las Vegas giant Mirage Resorts, has bought land for a course near Mississippi 15 in northern Harrison County. A Mirage spokesman said not much else has been done as yet, but famed course designer Tom Fazio likely will be involved.
Scratch Golf, a development company based in Hilton Head, S.C., also is seriously considering building a course on the Coast, but company officials declined to comment last week.
The Harrison County Development Commission, which is in the fifth year of an effort to attract course developers, continues trying to hook up golf companies and interested Coast landowners.
"It's taken longer than we had hoped, but when you're dealing with commercial-type ventures, sometimes they take awhile," said Becky Montgomery, the commission's commercial development manager.
Montgomery used Gulfport Factory Shops, the outlet mall at Interstate 10 and U.S. 49, as an example. She said the owners, Baltimore-based Prime Retail, first looked at the Coast in 1990, but they weren't convinced the numbers were here for a successful outlet center.
They returned in 1993, after the advent of casinos, and eventually opened the center in late 1995.
"We can see what's going on here," Montgomery said, "but trying to convince people in other areas is difficult."
Better courses are important to making the Coast more competitive with golf havens such as Gulf Shores, where you seemingly can hit a pitching wedge from one championship course to the next.
With thousands of new hotel rooms here, innkeepers realize they can't rely solely on gambling to fill their rooms. More and more inns have started offering golf packages, which is one reason why the number of package rounds has increased steadily during the past few years.
Between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31, Coast courses reported 12,664 golf-package rounds. That's an increase of 2,000 rounds from the same period in 1996.
"The growth is phenomenal," said Linda Hornsby, director of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Hotel-Motel Association. "In the past few years, some properties may not have needed packages, but now they're seeing it as a way to sell rooms.
"What they're doing," she said, "is giving guests what they want." |
