"The two reasons golf courses fail is that almost no one does basic demographic research, and developers and lenders get starry-eyed by the name of the designer."

Kurt Badenhausen's Forbes.com story on the state of Tiger's design business gets interesting on page two. He's writing about how Jim Anthony put together new financing for the Woods-designed course that we've been told is under construction.

Hungry for capital, Anthony turned to homeowners at Cliffs' eight properties. He scared up $64 million from 525 of them in the form of a mortgage note paying 12% annually. So far it's the only debt on the course. Creative fundraising on Anthony's part. Because it was a private placement, he didn't have to register the deal with the Securities & Exchange Commission. "Banks are not lending to any developer," he laments.

Maybe that's because bankers are concerned about repayment. Over the past decade the number of golf courses in the U.S. has crept up 3% to 16,000, but the number of rounds played has declined 6%. In 2000, 30 golf courses closed while 399 new courses opened, according to the National Golf Foundation. Last year 140 closed and only 50 opened. Over the past five years 607 courses have closed.

Now this is fun:

"The two reasons golf courses fail is that almost no one does basic demographic research, and developers and lenders get starry-eyed by the name of the designer," says Jerry P. Sager, a managing director at First National of America, a privately owned financial holding company whose main asset is loans to golf course owners. Sager says that a name architect helps sell real estate during the first year of a project. After that sales look like those at any other development. Bad news for Cliffs, which has sold only 44 lots surrounding the future Woods course.

Wait, you mean to tell me that someone has just now figured out that the quality of the course ultimately outweighs the value of the name brand designer. At least it's finally common knowledge!