Yesterday, I received an email message pitching a new development called Whispering Pines that will overlook the Greg Norman designed Fire and Earth golf courses at the Jumeirah Golf Estates in Dubai. Vijay Singh has designed a third course, called Water, which will be ready for play in 2009. Norman, along with Sergio Garcia and Pete Dye, are teaming up to design the fourth track there, a links-style layout, that will be called -- drum roll, please -- Wind. It represents Garcia's first foray into golf course design, but he has two of the world's most prolific designers to hold his hand. I hope the musical group Earth, Wind and Fire has been paid a licensing fee; they haven't had a hit in a while. The course will be ready for play in 2009.
The villas, which have a Tuscan motif to their design, top the US $1 million mark but are spacious and have views of the courses. From the sketches we saw, they look like many of the Addison-Meisner style Mediterranean homes in Naples and other locations in Florida. The community surrounding the two golf courses at Grande Dunes in Myrtle Beach, SC, is of a similar style; homes there sell for US $1 million and higher. At Jumeirah, four different floor plans are offered in three and four bedroom models at prices beginning at US $1.2 million (638,000 in pounds Sterling). Of course, given the current weakness of the dollar, our readers from the UK and the rest of Europe will get a lot more house in the States for their money (that's reality, not chauvinism).
The four courses at Jumeirah are semi-private but offer memberships and the guarantee that at least one will be dedicated to member play only on any given day. There are hole-by-hole descriptions of the Earth and Fire courses at the Jumeirah Golf Estates web site . If any of our readers have played the courses there, we invite reviews.