STOP THE INSANITY.....

These are the words that kept ringing in my head, as I read the Arabian BUSINESS.com article about Tiger's first golf course design project in Dubai:. Some highlights from the article are reprinted below:

"Tiger Woods received $55.4m from UAE developer Tatweer to promote a golf resort in Dubai, just 24 days before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Documents seen by ARABIAN BUSINESS reveal that Woods was originally paid $26,250,000 to promote the Tiger Woods Dubai resort, following a contract first signed on 20 June 2006.

Aerial of Al Ruwaya

However, on 22 August 2008, both Woods and Tatweer signed an “Amendment to Golf Course Design and License Agreement” which contained 15 new clauses.

On top of the $26,250,000 already paid to Woods' company ETW (Eldrick Tiger Woods), the new deal stated that ETW would be paid “the sum of $70m as a promotional fee”.
The document broke down the extra payments as:
*$29,166,667 would be paid to ETW within ten days of the agreement being signed
*$14,583,333 would be paid to ETW within ten days of Woods appearing at the official opening of Tiger Woods Dubai."

Okay, in fairness, ETW reportedly agreed to forego the option to receive a "Chosen Devleopment Unit" within the project.  (But, according to the article, we aren't really supposed to know about this.  Whoops!  Also, it occurs to me that all golf architects could truly benefit from Tiger presenting a contract re-negotiation seminar! These guys ARE good!)

"The new deal also added that Woods' company would receive a “one-time fee of $28,800,000” if he agreed to develop a second golf resort with Tatweer." - bada bing! 

"In total, the potential value of the new deal was worth $98.8m to Woods – more than the $92.2m he had earned in prize money up to 2008." - bada bing, bing!

"When asked on Wednesday whether he had signed an amended contract, Tiger Woods told Arabian Business: “No, I’m not going to talk about that, sorry.” - OK.  Honestly, it's none of our business.  But, we just can't help ourselves, can we?????

So, let's see, Tiger Woods Design (TWD) - hasn't finished it's first course design, but has already been paid more than every golf architect will ever make in their career (if you exclude Jack Nicklaus, that is...). 

In the immortal words of golfing great - Roberto de Vincenzo, "What a stupid I am!"  You see, when people asked me what I thought about Tiger designing golf courses, I told them I thought Tiger has gone about it all wrong.  Why is he desiging golf courses?  He doesn't need the money.  Most golf pro's start designing once they are no longer competitive.  But, Tiger can still play.  So what's the deal?? 

I thought, with his celebrity status, Tiger could have (and should have) opened TWD and announced he was looking for the best sites in the world on which to design golf courses.  Very likely, developers would have been delighted to have TWD design their course, and benefit from the association with Tiger. He wouldn’t have to charge big design fees.  Heck, he doesn’t need the money (Okay, this is only speculation on my part). 

Then, TWD would get his pick of the best golf opportunities in the world.  In this way, he would have a better chance to do some truly fantastic and meaningful courses.  TWD - present portfolio of 3 golf course projects seems to me to lack a truly extraordinary potential site.  (The best opportunity to design a meaningful golf course is probably at the Cliffs in Carolina.  The Dubai site will be 100% manufactured - which means it can only look man-made i.e. difficult to do something "exceptional".  And, the Mexico site looks severe, at least the routing and photos of the site make it look "challenging" - to put it mildly.)

So it leaves us to wonder;  If you have the ability and opportunity to attract and work on the best golf sites in the world, why wouldn't you?