MYAKKA CITY, Florida – When you put Nick Price and David Leadbetter together on a golf project you most likely will have a winner.

This week those two were in the spotlight at the ground-breaking for the Soleta Golf Club on the outskirts of Sarasota, FL.  Soleta’s expected opening is in late 2024 and will be the centerpiece for a private residential golf community that will include 93 residences and other amenities.  Needless to say, it’ll be highly upscale with the initiation fee for a full golf membership set at $100,000.

Both Price and Leadbetter are long-time Floridians. Price lives in Hobe Sound and Leadbetter has lived in the Sarasota area for the past eight years. Both were closely involved in the planning stages at Soleta and will be on site frequently during the course’s construction phase. Price is the course designer while Leadbetter is designing a 30-acre practice facility called Field of Dreams and an indoor center that will include a biomechanics studio, club fitting, a putting studio, simulators and other advanced training technologies.

“My buddy Nick and I go back a long way,’’ said Leadbetter. “I designed a course once, but it was in China.  I figured it was far enough away that nobody would know about it.  I thought Nick and I could be co-designers here, but he was afraid I’d screw it up.’’

Clearly they enjoy working together. Though the Soleta home sites will be worth a look, the most interesting aspect at this stage of the project is the pairing of Price and Leadbetter. Leadbetter was once Price’s swing coach.  Leadbetter’s tutelage helped Price make a swing change in 1982 and that worked out so well that another Nick, this one named Faldo, underwent the same treatment a few years later and achieved even greater success.

Though Price is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, his playing career is not be as appreciated as it should be.   That’s my perception, and I was up close and personal in witnessing just how good Price was. Being a Chicago-based writer then, I was most impressed by his back-to-back victories in the 1993 and 1994 Western Opens.  In the first he beat Greg Norman by five strokes. Price had a shot at a third Western title in 2000 but lost in a playoff to Robert Allenby.

Sadly that late, great Western championship – first played in 1899 — was shut down in 2006 when the PGA Tour and Western Golf Association opted to convert it into a FedEx Cup Playoff event called the BMW Championship. Golf in Chicago hasn’t been the same since.

I was also on hand to watch Price win two PGA Championships, at Bellerive in St. Louis in 1992 and Southern Hills in Tulsa, Oka., in 1994. Oh, yes, there was also that eye-opening day in 1986, when I covered the Masters for the first time.  Price set the tournament record with a 9-under-par 63.  It’s a record that still stands, though Norman tied it in 1996. Throughout his playing career Price was a class act on and off the course.

Now 66, he notched the last of his 18 PGA Tour victories in 2003 at a time when he was just getting involved with golf course architecture. Not all great players turn out to be good course designers, but Price has held his own. His design website lists a portfolio of 13 courses, the first five of which were outside of the United States.  One of those, TPC Cancun in Mexico, is the only TPC layout outside of the U.S.

Price plays out of one of McArthur Golf Club in Hobe Sound, a course he co-designed with Tom Fazio. The only Price course I’ve played is Grande Dunes – one of the very best layouts in the golf mecca of Myrtle Beach, S.C.

So what will Soleta be like?  Other than the fact that it’ll be separated from the home sites, Price could give only an inkling.

“We’re here to create a special place for golfers to play, spend time with friends and have fun,’’ he said.  “The property has wetlands, uplands, open grassland and some great trees.  We’ve laid out the course to take advantage and incorporate those natural features into the design of the holes. I’m really happy that no wetlands have been impacted or eliminated anywhere on the property.  These natural elements will be part of what gives the course its natural look and feel.’’

 

 

 

LIV Tour’s second season is history.  The team championship at Doral created great drama and was an appropriate ending to the 2023 campaign.

Now, however, the real fun begins.

LIV chief executive officer Greg Norman took at least a brief look ahead during lulls in the action at Doral..  He started by confirming that he hasn’t been a part of the mysterious negotiations between LIV, the PGA Tour and DP World Tour and still declaring that he’s not worried about his job.

There’s no reason he should be. LIV made progress in Year 2 and Norman was a big reason, but there’s so much more to do.

“Our next couple months are probably going to be my most exciting time,’’ Norman told a small but select media contingent.  “We’re going through the relegation process, the trade process, building out the teams to a position that each captain wants to negotiate. All that stuff is really going to energized it.’’

True, but there are some things that concern me and should concern others who have closely followed this changing world in golf:

WORLD RANKINGS:  Something has to change, for the good of the game as a whole and not just for LIV, which continues to be snubbed by the Official World Golf Rankings.  The OWGR are a joke without LIV players being recognized. Limiting their appearances in the major championships only denigrates those tournaments, all of which should want the strongest fields possible.  How do you get that with a LIV presence?

LIV players can try to qualify for the U.S. Open and British Open but won’t be eligible for the Masters or PGA Championship.  Those are basically the only opportunities for the best players in the world to compete against each other. How should Talor Gooch, for instance, be kept out of anything after winning three times on the LIV and have seven other top-15 finishes – and winning over $33 million – this season? Oh, yes.  Gooch’s current world ranking is No. 201. Ridiculous!

SCHEDULE:  At this time LIV hasn’t announced its 2024 schedule.  Sports Illustrated presented an unofficial version a few weeks ago, and it concerns me. It listed only 14 events – the same as this year.  I would have expected a bigger schedule in Year 3. The SI version – if accurate – didn’t include a return to Chicago.  That strikes home with me, of course, as my long-time home base has been short-changed by the PGA Tour regarding annual tournaments in recent years. LIV’s stop at Rich Harvest Farms in the suburb of Sugar Grove helped alleviate the problem and that event was generally recognized as one of LIV’s most popular stops the first two years.  So what happened?  It’s a story that I’ll be following, to be sure.

TEAM ASPECT:  I’ve been on hand at three LIV events and each time the team aspect was improved.  Having a Brooks Koepka-Phil Mickelson matchup to start play at Doral was terrific.  Still, the teams need to be differentiated better.  Same color team shirts each day perhaps?

RELEGATION:  LIV is doing it right.  A three-day Promotions event was announced at Doral.  It’ll be played Dec. 8-10 in Abu Dahbi — a 54-hole event, a $1.5 million purse and a cut to the low 20 after 36 holes. Size of the field and identity of the participants will be key.  It should provide some meaningful offseason drama.

SCOREBOARDS:  I’m still not happy with what I see, either at the courses or on the TV telecasts.  The scoreboards are hard to follow, which may be inevitable given the shotgun start format. On TV the score list with players names abbreviated in some instances makes for difficult reading, as the type is inevitably small to accommodate all the information that is bring provided.  While I don’t have all the answers to this one, more thought is needed to upgrade the situation.

That sums up 2023, an overall good year for this fledgling circuit.  Let’s see some significant new player signings, some eye-catching trades and a bigger schedule.  That “framework agreement’’ with the PGA can wait.  It’s not much of an “agreement’’ anyway.

Norman and Bubba Watson revealed that numerous  inquiries to purchase teamwould be  were already in the works.  Phil Mickelson has been talking to more PGA Tour players and “knows’’ more will be making the jump to LIV.

Gooch and Bryson DeChambeau’s Crushers  are now the champions to beat in what promises to be LIV’s best season yet in 2024.  Bring it on!!