The buyers were Oaktree Captial Management LP of Los Angeles, and Avenue Capital Group of New York, two entities that have been busy during the last year acquiring distressed properties. Reports put the selling price at $197.5 million, and said Sea Island's creditors, including Bank of America and Royal Lloyds Banking Group, are "walking away from" $340 million in debt.

So what's the future for Jones and the Sea Island community? Business as usual, if this passage from the WSJ story is accurate:

"As part of the deal, about 2,500 Sea Island members as well as some 360 members of private Ocean Forest Golf Club will be transitioned to a new membership structure that is similar to the current one. Oaktree and Avenue plan to retain Sea Island's employees and management, including Mr. Jones."

We'll see.

-- G.R.

Nicklaus and Sorenstam, who helped spearhead the effort that got their sport voted into the Summer Olympics last year, have made a pitch to co-design the layout where the 72-hole competition would be held. 

Doug Ferguson of the Associated Press has the story about the Nicklaus-Sorenstam pairing here. According to the article, "If selected, [Nicklaus] said he and Sorenstam would collaborate on the strategy of each hole -- Nicklaus from championship tees for the men, Sorenstam with women in mind."

Nicklaus has collaborated on courses before, most notably with Arnold Palmer on The King and the Bear at the World Golf Hall of Fame, and with Tom Doak at Sebonac on Long Island.

Competition for the job of designing Brazil's Olympics course is expected to be fierce -- one of the organizers of the 2016 Games recently said that more than a dozen golf architects have expressed interest in the project -- but a Nicklaus/Sorenstam bid will be tough to top.

"I'll be surprised if they don't select us," Nicklaus told Ferguson.

-- G.R.

Can you sense the "but" coming?

Turns out Colorado GC is in a bit of a tight spot, financially -- which really shouldn't be a big surprise, considering it opened three years ago, just about the time the recession wave began to break over golf's shoreline. In his report from the Senior PGA in this week's issue of Golf World, senior editor Bill Fields talked to Mike McGetrick, founding owner of the upscale private club, who denied rumors the club would close after the tournament.

"No, we're not [closing]," McGetrick told Fields. "We hope in the next 90 days to be recapitalized, and that things are going to be great. We have 308 members, and Colorado GC is going to be here, whether I own it or somebody else does."

In a wrapup story published Tuesday, the Denver Post touched on the "instability" of Colorado GC, and floated the idea that the PGA of America might buy the club in an arrangement similar to its ownership of Kentucky's Valhalla GC. But McGetrick and PGA of America CEO Joe Steranka, while admitting a possible sale has been discussed, didn't sound optimistic that it would happen.

"The talks were never serious, in part because of the uncertainty of what's going on here," Steranka told the Post. "Valhalla is still a Kentucky-run private club; while the PGA owns it, we're very hands-off in the management. In my mind, corporate-run clubs lose their individuality, the personal culture."

You can read the entire Denver Post story here.

-- G.R.

The filing had little in the way of details, with Legend owners claiming debts of between $1 and $10 million, and assets of between $1 and $10 million. Legends general manager Ted Bishop told The Indianapolis Star "It would be business as usual for our customers" while the facility restructures its finances.

You can read The Indianapolis Star story here.

It's a familiar story to anyone who has been following the golf course industry, public or private, the last two years or so. But this sentiment from Ron West, who operates four courses in the Indianapolis area and is a past president of the Indiana Golf Course Owners Association, was rather stark:

"I traveled the state a lot [during 2007 and 2008] and I bet in 2008 that 50 percent [of public courses] were on the verge of foreclosure. The last good year we had in the golf business was 2001, and since that point everybody's seen declines in revenue and rounds. The only courses around making any money all are lucky enough to have no debt service and 10-year-old carts and reasonable maintenance costs."

-- G.R.

The move is apparently inspired by the retirement plans of Black Diamond's 81-year-old developer and owner, Stan Olsen, and not the sluggish economy. According to the report, Olsen wants to sell the entire facility, which includes two 18-hole courses and one nine-hole course (all designed by Fazio), a 28,000-square-foot clubhouse and 550 acres of undeveloped land.

The Tribune story says the real estate firm retained to broker the sale, Plasencia Group, Inc., has not set an asking price.

The Quarry Course, which opened in 1987, has been a mainstay on the Golf Digest list of "America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses" for more than two decades (it currently ranks 89th). It features a three-hole stretch that plays along the edge of, into and then out of an abandoned rock quarry.

-- G.R.

Jose Lambiet has the details here and here.

Huizenga ran The Floridian like a true benevolent dictator. The club's approximately 200 members (who included Jack Welch, Dan Marino and Rush Limbaugh) were hand-picked by the Waste Management billionaire personally, and informed of their annual membership renewal by letter each August (how did you know if your membership was revoked? you didn't get a letter). Of course, the price was right: memberships were free and there were no annual dues.

That will reportedly change under Crane. Existing members (and new ones, since Crane hopes to expand the club) will be asked to pay a $25,000 initiation fee and $12,000 in annual dues. 

According to Lambiet, Huizenga paid $750,000 in 1996 for the land on which The Floridian resides. But Huizenga later told Business Week that he spent $75 million developing the club, which includes a clubhouse, three guest cottages, deepwater docks and, of course, its Gary Player-designed golf course. 

-- G.R.

The private 18-hole club, featuring the only Tom Doak-designed course in the Palm Springs area, has been shut down for about a month, and in foreclosure since the beginning of the year. But 14 people -- seven couples, six of them members at Stone Eagle -- have bought the club for cash. The story doesn't include a price, but recent reports said a larger group of club members was trying to raise $12 million to buy it.

Stone Eagle opened in 2005. Memberships cost $100,000, and the story claims the club had 190 members at the time of the foreclosure. The new ownership group has made no announcement regarding membership structure in the future. But local officials are just pleased the club has a future.

From the story: "The purchase and reopening of the club provides some much-needed good news for golf courses in the valley, which have been hit with dwindling membership and a drop in players as a result of the recession. 'It's terrific for the whole desert,' said Tom Cullinan, general manager at Stone Eagle. 'Golf is our lifeline.' "

-- G.R.

First, some background. Omaha's public golf courses (three 18-holers and four nine-holers) -- like most golf facilities in the U.S. right now -- are struggling to make a profit. Reports in the city's press indicate the 18-hole courses are profitable, while the nine-holers collectively lost about $320,000 last year.

So what's the good news? According to this story in the Omaha World-Herald, city officials have abandoned plans to turn over the management of the nine-holers  to a private company. 

“We're going to see, in a year, if we can't get golf to make money,” Melinda Pearson, who began work last month as the city's parks and recreation director, says in the story. “I think it's possible.”

That sounds a like a government committed to golf as a recreational pursuit. We like that. But here's the bad news: the first step towards profitability taken by city officials was to fire the four golf pros who managed the nine-hole courses. Those facilities will now be run by part-time employees, with the help of an on-line tee time reservation system. According the World-Herald, the elimination of the pros -- all of whom were PGA of America members -- will save $250,000.

-- G.R.

But the most breathtaking sign of their wealth might have been their personal residence, Porcupine Creek, a 249-acre estate in Rancho Mirage, Calif., which is now on sale for the hold-your-gasp price of $75 million.

What do you get for that kind of dough? Plenty, naturally. For starters, a 25,000-square-foot main residence, four 2,400-square-foot guest houses and four 800-square-foot guest cottages (in case you were wondering what the difference is between a guest house and a guest cottage, apparently it's 1,600 square feet). A wine cellar, commercial kitchen, home theater, pool with waterfall ... and, of course, a golf course. This one is 19 holes (there is a bye hole), with the design credited to the triumvirate of Tom Weiskopf, Dave Stockton and Annika Sorenstam.

The Street has a good story here about the property, with the interesting conclusion that if and when the estate finally sells -- and who knows when that will be -- it will be turned from a private residence into a resort.

-- G.R.

If you are The Cliffs Communities, you try something a little out of the ordinary: You ask your members for help.

According to this story in the Asheville (N.C.) Citizen-Times, Cliffs Communities is trying to raise $60 to $100 million, and it has sent letters to its members (an estimated 2,400 at six different developments in North and South Carolina, including High Carolina, where Tiger Woods is building a golf course) to see if they would like to contribute.

The story explains, "[Cliffs Communities] head Jim Anthony said the proposal is a product of the scarcity of funds available from traditional lenders and arose from periodic discussions Cliffs officials have with property owners. 'We have bankers and hedge fund guys,' and other property owners with significant resources and financial expertise, Anthony said. 'It was their initiative.' "

At least one member thinks it's a good idea.

"I think the proposal is worthy of consideration ... because it's well understood that the Cliffs needs additional capital to complete its projects at hand," Miller Williams, a property owner at Walnut Cove and chairman of its Finance Advisory Committee, told the Citizen-Times. "I trust my neighbor a lot more than a private equity group."

-- G.R.

Since the Tiger Woods scandal broke, there has been speculation about the status of his three golf course projects (I might add the struggling economy, and its effect on golf and the real estate markets, didn't help matters). Now, in the space of three weeks, the backers of those projects have gone on the offensive, insisting those courses -- in Dubai, North Carolina and Mexico -- will eventually be built, come hell or high water.

The most recent story concerned the course in Mexico: Punta Brava, in Ensenada about 65 miles down the coast from San Diego. In this article in Sunday's San Diego Union-Tribune, the developers said ground would be broken on the $100 million project this year, with a grand opening planned for 2012. That's two years later than originally scheduled, but officials blamed a long permitting process. As for their course architect, Punta Brava's backers insist they remain committed.

"No matter what, Tiger Woods is the best golfer in the world, and there is nobody else that we would rather have design our golf course than the best golfer in the world," Brian Tucker, a vice president of The Flagship Group, Punta Brava's development company, told the Union-Tribune.

-- G.R.