I read only one cartoon strip on a daily basis, the brilliant “Dilbert” by Scott Adams.  I was first attracted to Dilbert during my career as a corporate executive.  It was comforting to know that someone out there understood so perfectly the odd behavior of a few of my fellow execs, as well as one or two bosses whose peculiarities were the stuff of cartoons.  Dilbert helped me laugh to keep from crying (except, of course, when I recognized a little of my own behavior in the strip; then it was just crying).

        Now almost seven years beyond early retirement -– my choice, in case you are wondering –- I still read the column every day.  It is funny how the things that annoyed you up close and personally are a source of great mirth once you put some distance and time between you and a former career.

        Cartoonist Adams spares no one or no thing in Dilbert, and today he got around to the game of golf.

        Wally, who is the laziest person on the staff –- he celebrates his sloth –- announces today that he wants to expand his uselessness beyond the workweek.  “I decided to take up golf,” he tells Dilbert and fellow staffer Anok, “so I can be useless on the weekends too.”

        But when Dilbert asks Wally, “Are you going to take lessons?” the idiot savant’s response is unerring in its insight into the game most of us love to hate.

        “You get to hit the ball more,” says Wally, “if you don’t.”

        Today’s comic strip is available at http://www.dilbert.com.

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The large estate house dominates Keswick Estate near Charlottesville, VA, and almost puts Arnold Palmer's monstrous bunkers in their place.

 

        Keswick Estate is sited on one of the most beautiful pieces of property in central Virginia, just east of Charlottesville, and at its core, sitting high above the Arnold Palmer golf course and the rest of the property, is a large estate house now used as both a resort and clubhouse for Keswick’s members.  When I played the golf course a few years ago, I thought Palmer’s layout was out of character with the rest of the estate, lacking a certain consistency and refinement.  Some holes were straightforward, almost boring, and others were overwrought, with huge bunkers carved into steep hills that would have presented enough challenge without the scarring sand traps.

        Homes in the community are large, generally on two-acre lots and expensive.  Current listings show the lowest priced home at $1.7 million, but it does boast more than 6,000 square feet, 6 BRs, 5 ½ BAs and frontage on the 4^th fairway of the golf course.  Nearby Charlottesville is a wonderful town to visit and live in, with much American history and Thomas Jefferson’s inspiration, the University of Virginia, at its heart.  The downtown mall, closed to vehicular traffic and rife with interesting shops and restaurants, as well as a popular amphitheater for concerts, shows that city planners were able to think out of the box more than a decade ago.

        Contact me if you would like to learn more about Keswick Estate or the other interesting, and lower-priced golf communities in the Charlottesville area.

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        Last year, I bought a used set of Ping Eye Two irons I thought would help me straighten out my longer approach shots.  This morning, I thought I was dumb lucky when I read in the Wall Street Journal that old Ping Eye Two irons with U-Grooves are exempt from a ban the USGA imposed on PGA golfers this year and on us amateurs in 14 years.  As a result of a 1990 court case, the USGA had agreed that the Ping Eye Twos would conform in “perpetuity.”  For that reason, golfers like John Daly will be able to continue to use their Pings, which generate more backspin out of the rough, even though their competitors will be using clubs with new, less active grooves.

        I don’t notice much action out of the rough with my Ping Eye Twos, but I don't generate John Daly like clubhead speed (I can't take the club back that far).  After reading the article this morning, I thought maybe I could sell my relics to another PGA tour player.  But alas, when I checked with Ping, I found out that my irons are circa 1993, too late to be grandfathered in.

        The private golf club landscape, especially in golf communities, continues to change as the pressure on clubs to pay their bills mounts.  More than 500 golf clubs closed in the U.S. the last three years, and this year is expected to bring more of the same.  Faced with bills of their own, many upper middle class golfers and families who would have thought nothing of plunking down a few thousand dollars in initiation fees just six or seven years ago, have put golf club membership at the bottom of their expenditure lists.  If they have to play golf, they will be doing so until further notice at the local daily fee track.

        Every week, these private club prospects have more and more choices as private clubs opt to open

their doors (and tee sheets) to the public rather than close those doors permanently.  One of the latest to go that route is The Federal Club in Richmond, VA, whose story of bad market timing strikes a familiar note.  It reminds me somewhat of Cobblestone Park in Blythewood, SC, the former Bobby Ginn development, which fell prey as much to bad management as to bad timing.  There, the nice golf course has gone from private to public and the uncompleted clubhouse stands out as a bleak advertisement of the community’s issues.  Just yesterday, one of our readers asked me my thoughts about a piece of property he owns at Cobblestone; he paid $120,000 for it five years ago.  He is thinking of walking away from it rather than continue to pay dues and fees.

        The three-year old Federal Club, which until its October bankruptcy filing charged member fees in the low five-figure range, now will charge green fees to all comers for as low as $65, cart included.  To throw a little bone to its current members, who of course thought they were joining a members-only group, The Federal Club has developed a reciprocal member arrangement with the nearby Spring Creek.  That is not likely to mollify most of the members.  The new public fee model, Federal Club officials hope, will help the club break even by the end of the year in the face of monthly losses of $75,000, to say nothing of starting to chip away at more than $14 million they owe creditors.

        Three local friends conceived the Federal Club 10 years ago, when golf community sales were booming along with the economy and Tiger

Woods’ on course performance.  One of the friends owned most of the land the course was built on and had the golf course management experience in the group.  He passed away in 2006, shortly after the economy and housing market began to tank and sales of the adjacent lots virtually dried up.  Nearly half of the one-acre properties remain unsold; homes average $700,000.

        Bankrupt golf clubs don’t typically emerge from debt as deep as The Federal Club’s, and the key to this one’s survival will be some forgiving, if not forgetting, creditors and a full tee sheet 10 months of the year in 2010.  That may be a tall order.  During bankruptcy proceedings last week, and after saying most golfers he knew thought the Arnold Palmer design for the Federal Club was one of The King’s best, he added it was “a back-handed compliment,” according to an account at RichmondBizSense.com, “because most golfers aren’t particularly fond of Palmer layouts.

         The Arnold Palmer Design Group is suing The Federal Club for an outstanding balance of $600,000.