World Golf Report

February 3, 2012: This was the day that the deciders in Rio de Janeiro were supposed to announce the winner of the design competition for the Olympics’ golf course. Like so many of our days, however, this one ended not with a bang but with a whimper.

No decision was made. No winner was selected.

After sitting through presentations from the eight contestants vying for the commission, the selection committee has decided to sit a while longer. The committee now says it’ll announce the winner sometime next month.

India’s golf industry has been invaded by aliens –- aliens who hope to have very close encounters with the nation’s upwardly mobile home buyers.

No, they’re not extraterrestrials. They’re Hari and Venkat Challa, the principals of Hyderabad-based Aliens Group. Since 2004, when they founded their company, the brothers have been committed to, in their words, “revolutionizing the urban landscape of modern India.” It’s a large, even other-worldly ambition that’s reflected in their motto: “We are young, we dream big.”

malaysia A Spring Opening for 99 East

Ross Watson’s fifth golf course in Malaysia, the centerpiece of a resort community in Jalan Bukit Malut on Pulau Langkawi, will debut its full 18 holes in the spring of 2012.

No sales tax, no income tax, no capital gains tax, no property tax, no inheritance tax -– no wonder Grand Cayman Island seems like heaven to the planet’s well-heeled bankers, financiers, and investors, not to mention at least one Republican presidential candidate.

The island isn’t a golf paradise, though, as it has just two golf courses: 18 holes at North South Golf Club and nine holes at the Greg Norman-designed Blue Tip Golf Course. And the future of the course at North Sound is in doubt.

scotland The Wind and Other Blowhards

Donald Trump has threatened to abandon his soon-to-open resort community in Aberdeenshire if government officials approve the construction of an off-shore wind farm that will be visible from his coastal property. And the world is asking, Is Trump bluffing?

International golf development has been on life-support for three years and isn’t likely to get healthy in 2012.

A new and hopefully better year has arrived, and so has the January 2012 issue of the World Edition of the Golf Course Report. In it, we offer a bounty of news (and perfectly acceptable amounts of comment) about forthcoming new courses in nations from A to S -– from Ajman to Slovakia.

We also provide definitive answers to the following questions. Can you answer them?

A destination-worthy golf course -– one that its creator says will be good enough to “rank inside the world’s top 15” –- may soon take shape on Inishmore, the largest of the Aran Islands off the western coast of Ireland.

china Hearts and Minds and Golf

Here are two delicious little ironies about golf in China:

One, the People’s Republic lacks golf courses designed for the people. And two, a U.S. architect, one with unquestioned capitalist sympathies, is trying to persuade China’s golf industry to start building modest, price-friendly golf properties that can be enjoyed by everyone, not just the wealthy members of private clubs.

Mitt Romney won’t speak French in public, but I will: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I mention this proverb because Golf Digest has published its annual ranking of the top earners in golf, and this year’s top 10 is pretty much a mirror image of last year’s. Of course, anybody who cashed enough checks to make the list isn’t complaining.

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