Posts Tagged ‘golf’

Golf, Taxes, Jobs

August 10th, 2010 by John Feehery

Bandon Dunes Golf Course in Oregon

About twelve years ago, Mike Kaiser started construction on a golf course in southern Oregon called Bandon Dunes.  Kaiser, a former greeting card company owner turned mogul, had a vision of exporting a piece of Scotland into the Oregon coastline.

The course turned out to be smashing success, and it has turned into a complex of five magnificent golf courses, a spa, a hotel and a bunch of restaurants.  It is not a cheap place to play, but it has become a tourist Mecca, with duffers from around the world coming in to try their hand at links-style golf.

Oregon is a beautiful place to visit.  It has a thriving wine industry, a robust agriculture sector, and world-renown companies like Nike and Columbia outerwear.

But it also has a problem with crystal meth, especially in the more rural areas that surround Bandon Dunes.  Unemployment in some parts of rural Oregon goes well beyond the national average, and there is a sense of desperation and foreboding in some of the smaller towns, all because of crystal meth.

The Housing Shank

May 17th, 2010 by John Feehery

“Every golf shot makes somebody happy.”

I thought about that old sport adage when driving in this morning and listening to a radio commercial about foreclosures.  This ad wasn’t about how to avoid foreclosure.  It was about how to take advantage of somebody else’s foreclosure.

Foreclosures are an unhappy reality in today’s struggling economy.  It is an unhappy circumstance for those who can’t afford their mortgage payments and are getting kicked out of their house.

It is an unhappy circumstance for the bank which has to kick the non-payers out of the house and then take a bath on the remainder of the loan, which won’t be paid off.

And it is an unhappy circumstance for the neighbors, who see a foreclosed property and immediately assume that the neighborhood is going to the dogs.

But it is not an unhappy circumstance for those who are looking for a house bargain.

And who would that be?

A new family who couldn’t buy a house in the overheated market five years ago.   A new retiree who is looking to downsize.  An expanding family that needs more space for all the kids.

Tiger

April 12th, 2010 by John Feehery

I thought it was interesting that Tiger Woods wore sunglasses during the Masters Golf Tournament.  Nobody else seemed to notice, but Tiger never did that before.

But, of course, Tiger never took five months off from the Tour before, became the center of scandalous speculation, became a regular target to late night comics the world over, and became a symbol of all that is wrong with the male species everywhere.

It would have been amazing if Tiger finished first in the tournament earlier today.  Of course, he didn’t, but he still did pretty well considering.

After he finished, you could tell that he was angry, and not just about coming in fourth.  He was angry about the whole thing, the whole scandal, the whole truth of his sex life that has slowly become a part of the American experience.

And maybe he has a right to be pissed off.

After all, it is not exactly news that professional golfers (or any professional athletes for that matter) routinely cheat on their wives.

And last year, with the many different examples of men behaving badly (Elliot Spitzer, Mark Sanford, John Ensign, etc), it was only fitting that the year end with a bang, which it did with Tiger getting banged over the head by his wife.