"We're as committed as ever to High Carolina and the Tiger Woods golf course"

There appears to be a difference of opinion in how to represent the state of Tiger's project for The Cliffs in North Carolina, as Dawn Wotapka files a lengthy WSJ story quoting developer Jim Anthony that the project is still very much on, contradicting a Golfweek report posted online yesterday.

"We're as committed as ever to High Carolina and the Tiger Woods golf course," Mr. Anthony said in a recent interview. "The reasons we chose Tiger are still true: his dedication to golf and he is the greatest golfer in the world."

As you read further though, there are glimpses that the project is stalled, as Golfweek reported.

Mr. Anthony acknowledged the weak economy has posed a big hurdle. "Our timing could not have been worse," he said. "It's been a tough year and a half, but we can see the marketplace beginning to turn."
And when the high-end market returns, Mr. Anthony hopes its location will help set this development apart from other golf-course projects.

And as Ms. Black points out, Mr. Woods's problems even might be a blessing.

"The good twist on it would be it's not likely he's going to be doing another course anywhere" in the U.S., she said. "It will probably make it a more scarce product, which, in turn, increases its value."

Well they've got that going for them.

In noting the Golfweek story, Lawrence Donegan concluded his post this way:

On a wider note, is it too much to hope that the troubles besetting these Woods' golf courses might cause a re-evaluation of the widespread practise in which leading players are paid enormous fees to "design" golf courses when, in fact, the closest they come to "designing" them is visiting the site a few times for photo opportunities, leaving the actual design work to a team of largely uninspired hacks? The upshot is a world covered in golf courses that are expensive to play (because the owner has to claw back the players' "design" fee somehow) and all look the same.