The oft-praised group of communities in the Carolinas has been split into two entities that cover all unsold real estate and most of the amenities, including six well conditioned golf courses. ClubCo, an entity formed by the group of residents that loaned developer Jim Anthony $64 million last year,

The six Cliffs golf courses, including designs by Fazio and Nicklaus, are challenging layouts, nicely conditioned and private.  Cliffs members, some of whom loaned the developer $64 million, aim to keep them that way.

now owns and manages the Cliffs’ golf courses, clubhouses and other amenities after about half the loan was used to pay off debt. Anthony still maintains tacit control as long as ClubCo pays its bills. The other half of the loan amount, according to Cliffs residents, has been used mostly to finish the Gary Player designed Mountain Park course, which was originally planned to open last year but now is scheduled for a summer 2012 debut; some for clearing land to make way for the ill-fated Tiger Woods course at High Carolina; and a portion to finish partially built amenities, including a lake house and tennis courts. (Note: We erred in an earlier article about The Cliffs’ latest advertising campaign when we said the Gary Player course was open for play.)

Lawsuit makes property sales tougher

        In order to survive financially, ClubCo depends on golf membership deposits, monthly dues, food and beverage receipts and a fee generated from every developer lot that is sold. ClubCo promised to pay its note holders -– those who contributed to the $64 million loan to Anthony -– 12% interest over seven years in the form of cash or a dues waiver. That

        In advance of the injection of dues payments in 2012, ClubCo has raised member dues by 10%, or $100 per month, for the last four months of 2011. But ClubCo owes its note holders roughly $8 million as of this coming January. If it can’t pay, the note holders gain title to virtually all of The Cliffs’ amenities, including the golf courses and clubhouses, and take over full control from Anthony. Insiders at The Cliffs do not believe Anthony himself will come up with an investor to fund the interest payments –- barring an 11^th hour bailout by some multi-millionaire like, say, Anthony’s good friend Tiger Woods –- and that means The Cliffs’ visionary will no longer have any say in the running of the amenities he conceived.

Protecting The Cliffs vision

        Assuming the ClubCo note holders do take full control of the amenities, that protects The Cliffs members and residents from someone buying the real estate and amenities in one package, on the cheap, and “dumbing down” the product (condos, semi-private or public golf clubs, building homes where a golf course or two once stood). Even

        Some of the residents who invested more than seven figures in a home at The Cliffs largely on the basis of Jim Anthony’s vision now believe the communities’ future will best be served if he is no longer a part of the operation. A couple of residents, who always temper their comments with kind words about Jim Anthony’s character, used the word “delusional” to describe the developer’s continuing obsession with developing High Carolina and its Tiger Woods course. (Editor’s Note: I believe his obsession with Tiger Woods himself, as evidenced in the latest Cliffs’ ad campaign, also seems delusional. Fallen stars can’t sell anything but they certainly can pollute the value of your brand.)

Residents imagine three Cliffs communities

         Once The Cliffs is freed from the yoke of its original conception, a relic of a bygone economy, some creative new thinking could help bring the development back to solvency. A block of residents and ClubCo note holders are arguing for breaking The Cliffs into three groups of communities -– lake, mountain and Asheville. Access to seven golf courses sounds good in marketing materials, but in reality, Cliffs members tell us, relatively few members play golf courses outside their own community more than occasionally. (Note: It is an hour’s drive each way from one end of the string of Cliffs communities to the other end.) The communities in the Keowee Lake area feature a total of three golf courses, the area around Greenville will have three of its own, once Mountain Park is completed, and the Jack Nicklaus Signature Walnut Cove course near Asheville is arguably the best of the bunch. Dues, which are bumping up close to $1,000 per month already, will surely have to rise further to cover the shortfall in operating budgets without the benefit of significantly more lot sales or influx of new members. And whoever winds up owning the golf clubs will have to reconcile if the market can continue to bear $100,000 initiation fees ($50,000 non-refundable).

        Most insiders at The Cliffs believe that Anthony will not be able to survive financially in the current market, and that some land development group will come in to re-start the sales process, unencumbered by the disaster that is High Carolina.

        “Like most developers,” one Cliffs member told us, “Anthony was a gambler, always betting on the next roll of the dice. He rolled two times too many with Mountain Park and High Carolina.”

        “He is, by almost everyone's admission,” another resident said of Jim Anthony, “honest and genuine.  There are no allegations that he misled people or funneled money into his personal accounts.

        Let us say I ran a private golf club, and to get you to join, I promised you, among other things, that I would refund most of your initiation fee within 10 years (in other words, a “deposit”).  That amounts to more than $10 million to you and your fellow members.  One part of my family organization owns the land on which the club sits.  Another part owns the golf club itself. I pay rent from one of my pockets, the club’s, to the other pocket, the landlord’s.  After operating this way for years, the economy

        Trust me.

        Now if you were a member of this club, which happens to be Dominion Club in Richmond, VA’s Wyndham community, and the owners, who happen to be HHHunt and their coterie of other entities, offered you this deal, would you:

1. Take it
2. Cry
3. Grab a pitchfork and lantern
4. Wonder what kind of system permits such legal scams?

        According to Richmond local media outlet BizSense, the club’s creditors -– its members –- argued during bankruptcy proceedings that the rental fees paid by the club to Loch Levan, the Hunt entity that owns the land on which the club sits, were exorbitant and caused the bankruptcy.  The court, itself not wishing to step into a stinking pile of nonsense, sent the parties into negotiations.

        “I think this is a very well negotiated and good deal for everyone,” a lawyer for the club was quoted in BizSense. “Assuming this gets through, it will be a strong reorganized club that can continue into the future.”

by Scott Simpson

        This is the second and final part of a review of Sleepy Hollow Country Club by reader and golf club architecture afficionado Scott Simpson, whom we thank for his interesting and wonderfully written contribution.

        Despite some inconsistencies in design features, inevitable given the number of people that have touched the course and the significant changes in routing, Sleepy Hollow is a delightful track, worthy of its reputation and pedigree. The course is characterized by imaginative use of the terrain, some of which would undoubtedly be daunting to a designer, especially one without recourse to modern earth-moving equipment. Most notable is a ridgeline in the midst of the property, along which the 5^th, 15^th and 16^th holes are imaginatively routed.

The 5^th green appears to be suspended directly above the Hudson River. After an extensive tree removal program, one member is said to have asked his caddy, “When did they put in the river?”

        The green complexes at Sleepy Hollow are mostly of the push-up variety (the infinity-style 5^th green pictured above is an exception), to be expected since both Macdonald and Tillinghast excelled at building greens slightly elevated from the surrounding landscape. Because of the raised greens, the bunkers remain mostly at fairway level, yet provide a substantial lip to be carried by the player’s explosion shot.

The 11^th is typical of the push-up greens found at Sleepy Hollow. Players who miss the green with their approach shots will invariably face a delicate pitch or chip with only the top of the flagstick visible.

        The greens themselves were simply spectacular, a tribute to the greens staff. Despite consistent rain in August, including heavy showers the evening before, the greens ran true and fast -- so fast that we all struggled with our speed initially, but greens that a golfer would sell his soul to play on a regular basis. An MGA official told us later that they were running 12.4 on the stimpmeter at the start of play that morning, readings that I hasten to note are by design taken on the flattest terrain.

Anthony adroitly escapes from a greenside bunker on the 11^th, one of the deepest on the golf course. While not an issue for a player of Anthony’s skill, the challenge for us mere mortals is obvious.

        One minor quibble with the bunkers is that the actual surface of the sand in many cases is quite flat, and balls can frequently end up against or even under a lip of 3 inches or more. When this happens, especially when the ball rests against the back lip of the bunker, the player has absolutely no shot in any direction. Given the raised greens, ensuring that the bunkers play as hazards with sufficient challenge to the recovery shot, I would prefer to see a slight sloping of the bunker, so that balls would feed at least a short distance from the edges.

        Macdonald’s use of template holes was designed to ensure that his projects included no weak holes, an admittedly impossible standard. But the strong holes predominate at Sleepy, and we’ll look at some of the best and most interesting amongst them. The 7th hole is Sleepy Hollow’s Redan, though it is technically a reverse Redan and a downhill one at that. Because the downhill shot comes in at a steeper angle (as well as the fact that the shape calls for a fade), the ball will not release on the green as firmly as it does on the original Redan at North Berwick in Scotland. However, the ground leading to the green also slopes severely from the player’s left to right, and Macdonald recognized that players could utilize that landing area to great effect.

Macdonald’s reverse Redan as seen from behind the green. Despite the flattening effect of the lens, the pronounced slope of the ground short of the green is the ideal landing spot, as the green itself slopes away from the player.

        I can’t render a personal verdict on the hole, as my 5-iron sailed long and left, leaving me no viable shot to the green for my second. The downhill nature of the hole certainly lends an air of drama, awaiting the inevitable hard right bounce. My crooked number notwithstanding, I would happily spend an hour on the tee box experimenting with different clubs and shot shapes, searching for that perfect landing spot, but aware that each day would bring different wind and turf conditions and pin placements to which the player must adapt. In that sense we can declare Macdonald successful in adapting the strategic concepts of links golf to an inland setting.

        Amusingly, I similarly butchered the original Redan, the 15^th at North Berwick, on my only visit to that shrine, though my excuse there was that the hole plays mostly blind. While Redanaphobia is not a widely recognized psychological disorder, my wife Theresa would be well advised to consider a press on the tee when we play the Old Macdonald Redan.

        The 10th hole is a similarly dramatic downhill Par 3, especially photogenic with the fronting water hazard and wooden bridge. The golfer instinctively tenses as his ball seemingly takes forever to fall to earth, unsure as to whether the distance has been correctly gauged. Judging from the contours of the green, the drama might not end after landfall.   The back of the green, where my well struck 8-iron plugged, is severely sloped.   In typically firm conditions, my shot would clearly have spun back towards the center of the green. But, looking at the falloff to the water and the narrow collar of longer grass, it’s unclear whether a shot that lands on that slope remains on the green or even stops short of the water.

Though not tied architecturally to the remainder of the golf course, the 10^th is still an awfully idyllic spot at the far end of the Tillinghast corridor of tree-lined holes. The long walk with a putter must be especially pleasing to club members who have hit the green, as the last segment is over water.

        Sleepy Hollow finishes strong, as the routing heads back towards the Hudson and offers up some memorable holes. The 15^th is called Punchbowl, the name graphically describing the cylindrical shape of the green and surrounding complex. Any approach shot within the contour of the punchbowl feeds down towards the green, but those left short or offline will produce an interesting third shot, one that can be delicately chipped or pitched or, if the line of play is through the short grass, putted.

The entrance to the Punchbowl 15^th green. Again the camera flattens the perspective, as the slope is at a much steeper pitch than it appears. Mitch wisely putted his ball, visible on the left side of the fairway, and barely had to touch it to run it into the middle of the green, despite extremely soft conditions (in dryer conditions, the approach shot probably feeds onto the green).

        We played the hole as a longish Par 4 at 437 yards from the white tees, which was certainly Macdonald’s original intent (and is consistent with the punchbowl template holes at venues such as The National and Seth Raynor’s Yeamans Hall near Charleston, SC). However, an interim renovation of Sleepy Hollow moved the tees back some twenty-five yards and converted the hole into a short Par 5, resulting in most club-players hitting a short, though blind, wedge into the green. The course currently plays as a Par 70, so the temptation to add a third Par 5 is perhaps understandable. But to me (and Macdonald, Raynor, Hanse and Bahto can all be presumed to be in my camp), the challenging longer shot, completely blind except for a directional marker, is the more strategically appropriate, since the challenge of landing a wedge in a punchbowl seems minimal.  However, both our newly famous caddy Sean Wolff, a noted good stick per this recent New York Times article and Anthony preferred the 15th as a three-shot hole.  I can only attribute this to their skill and length, since even the lengthened hole would effectively play as a long Par 4 for them. They would rarely face the flip wedge into the punchbowl and would obviously relish the legitimate eagle opportunity.

        The 16^th hole, called Panorama, is a classic Macdonald/Raynor short hole, and by virtue of the Hudson River backdrop, one of the more

        A review of photographs of the hole over the years confirms the success of the Hanse/Bahto restoration work. Tillinghast broke up the one bunker into several of his typically large sloping bunkers, presumably retaining the challenge but sacrificing the unique visual effect of his predecessors’ work. But far worse lay in store for this hole, as Rees Jones rebuilt the bunkers into his typically shallow, saucer-shaped hazards. I’ve never understood his bunkering, as the shallow saucers present little challenge to the player and are visually boring. In this instance, he placed two such rounded saucers just short of the green and an elongated saucer in front, resembling a sand-filled emoticon. Fortunately the “Open Doctor’s” design malpractice was mercifully short-lived.

The long and the short of Sleepy Hollow’s short hole. The original Macdonald/Raynor design in 1914 (top). A.W. Tillinghast’s version of the hole, with his typically steeply sloped bunkers, did not improve things (below left).  The Reestrocity (below right) made it even worse. (Did players getting up and down from the front bunkers get smileys?)

The current 16^th (above) restored to its former glory.  Below, the view from the front left corner gives only a sense of the contour of the 16^th green. My shot spun all the way back from the middle of the green to this low spot, leaving a long uphill birdie putt, though the player will be fortunate to escape with his par.

        Sleepy Hollow presents an exhilarating challenge for golfers, testing all aspects of their games as they traverse the course’s visually spectacular terrain. Our story also has its own happy ending, as for once the quality of our golf measured up to the venue. Our three amateur partners contributed five natural birdies, which combined with Anthony’s typical firepower, allowed Team Willow Ridge (our club team) to tie for low net in the Pro-Am competition. While we unfortunately didn’t win any money for our professional partner, I’m informed that a beautiful rendering of the 16^th hole is being sent to each of the amateurs.   I’ll be sure to find a place of honor for it in my home office, as a memory of a delightful day on an exceptional golf course, thankfully restored to its prior glory.