Bob Hope Chrysler Classic - La Quinta, CA

The Bob Hope Chrysler Classic is a professional golf tournament played each January in California's Coachella Valley. Part of the PGA Tour's early season West Coast Swing, this tournament is well known for its celebrity pro-am, as well as having five daily 18-hole rounds of competition vs. the PGA Tour standard of four rounds. Currently, "the Hope" is the third event on the Tour's annual schedule, and is also part of the Tour's FedEx Cup competition.

Founded as the Palm Springs Golf Classic in 1960, the tournament evolved from the Thunderbird Invitational that was held in Palm Springs from 1954 to 1959. Its format remains unique among PGA Tour events, being played over five days and four different courses. From 1960-62, the tournament was played at Thunderbird Country Club and Tamarisk Country Club, both in Rancho Mirage, California; Bermuda Dunes Country Club in Bermuda Dunes, California; and Indian Wells Country Club in Indian Wells, California. Bermuda Dunes has been used every year of the event and Indian Wells every year until 2006, but the roster of courses from which the event has chosen the other two courses to be played has evolved over the years. In 1963, Eldorado Country Club, also in Indian Wells, California, replaced Thunderbird Country Club. From 1964 until 1968, La Quinta Country Club in La Quinta, California replaced Tamarisk Country Club, but in 1969 Tamarisk Country Club rejoined the event and alternated annually with Eldorado Country Club until 1986 (Tamarisk Country Club's last turn being in 1985).

An evolution towards courses more suited to modern professionals began in 1987. From 1987 until 1994, and again from 1998 to the present, a course at PGA WEST in La Quinta, California (the TPC Stadium Golf Course in 1987 and the Arnold Palmer Private Course thereafter) became a permanent member of the roster; from 1995-97, Indian Ridge Country Club in Palm Desert, California replaced PGA WEST. To make room for a new permanent member, Eldorado Country Club and La Quinta Country Club alternated from 1987-89 (Eldorado being used in 87 and 89), after which Eldorado Country Club was dropped from the roster. From 1990-2003, Tamarisk Country Club and La Quinta Country Club followed a "1-2" alternating arrangement, where Tamarisk was played the first year and La Quinta CC the next two; this pattern was deviated from when Tamarisk was used in 2004 (a La Quinta CC year by the pattern), although the 2005, 2006 and 2007 events were then played at La Quinta CC. In early 2005, a local charitable foundation gave its new course, The Classic Club in Palm Desert, California, an Arnold Palmer-designed track, to the tournament, making the Bob Hope Chrysler Classic the only event on the PGA Tour that owns its own facility; The Classic Club took the place of Indian Wells in 2006.

The 2008 course rotation will consist of SilverRock Resort in La Quinta, La Quinta Country Club, the Arnold Palmer Private Course and The Classic Club.

The tradition of choosing the tournament's "Classic Girls" from among the area's collegiates began in those early years, with the earliest tournaments having a celebrity dubbed "Classic Queen." The earliest titleholders included Debbie Reynolds, Jane Powell and Jill St. John. The queens of the 1970s included Barbara Eden and Lynda Carter.

The Classic's biggest draw, both then and now, was the celebrity pro-am competition which attracted some of the era's biggest celebrities. According to the BHCC official website, those celebrities included:

Bing Crosby
Burt Lancaster
Kirk Douglas
Phil Harris
Desi Arnaz (one of the founders of the aforementioned Indian Wells Country Club)
Ray Bolger
Hoagy Carmichael
Dwight Eisenhower (the first US President to play in the pro-am)
The first tournament was won by Arnold Palmer with a final score of 338, or 22 under par. The record would stand for the next twenty years.

Bob Hope, who was possibly Hollywood's greatest golfer, added his name to the tournament in 1965 and became the Classic's Chairman of the Board.

The 1970s saw stars like Frank Sinatra make their debuts. Gerald Ford played his first pro-am in 1977, making him the second former president to play in the tournament.

History was made at the tournament in 1995 when the pro-am team of Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Bob Hope and defending champion Scott Hoch teed up for the tournament's opening round. The event marked the first time a sitting president - Clinton - had played during a PGA tour event and perhaps the first time three presidents had ever played together.

For 2007, the purse and 1st prize are $5,000,000 and $900,000 respectively.

Its long history has made the event synonymous with golf in the Coachella Valley. Additionally, the allure of Hope's name, even after his death, has convinced the Hope estate, tournament organizers and corporate sponsor Chrysler to include the legendary entertainer's name on the tournament for as long as a substantial portion of its proceeds are given to charities.

The tournament's format is also a tough sell for many players, such as Tiger Woods, who has never played there. It takes place over five days, four of which include celebrity players. That means rounds take far longer and the presence of so many spectators out to catch a glimpse of their favorite TV, film or music star, can turn even an early round into a far more informal endeavor, which many golfers don't appreciate.

If you are planning a large golf outing in California, be sure to contact the golf course to see if they have enough golf rentals to accomodate your group. Otherwise, all California golf club rentals and California golf equipment rentals can be delivered directly to the hotel prior to your outing. Contact a golf club rental company to reserve rentals for your tournament.

Below is a list of the host golf courses for this years golf tournament in La Quinta, California.

The Classic Golf Club
Silver Rock Golf Resort
La Quinta Country Club
PGA West

Planning a Golf Vacation

Planning a Golf Vacation

Planning a golf getaway? Maximize your time on the course by taking a few simple steps.


Call on-staff golf pro in advance.
The key to traveling comfortably is traveling light. You don't need to bring along every club you own. Instead, research your course ahead of time, and decide which clubs you can't live without.

Rent top-of-the-line clubs.
You can also try renting golf equipment. Renting gives you the opportunity to try out the latest models and technology. Many specialty golf rental companies will deliver the clubs to the airport of your choice.

Reduce back strain with wheeled bag.
When traveling by air, keep your clubs as protected as possible. Opt for a hard side travel bag, preferably with wheels. If you're shipping your clubs in advance, choose a company that specializes in shipping sports equipment.

Use golf travel packaging company.
For stress-free travel planning, let a golf packager do all the work. They can set up lodging, transportation and tee times, and leave you free to focus solely on your swing.

Reference:
Fine Living

Sony Golf Open - Honolulu, Hawaii

The Sony Golf Open in Hawaii is a professional golf tournament on the PGA Tour, and is part of the tour's FedEx Cup Series. It has been contested at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu, Hawaii since the event's modern-day inception in 1965. Starting in 1971, the tournament was held in either January or February. Currently, it is held in January, the second overall event and the first full-field event on the PGA Tour schedule.

The Sony Golf Open in Hawaii attracts 144 of the world's greatest golf professionals to the Waialae Country Club on the island of Oahu. The event is the largest charity event in Hawaii and has raised over $7 million dollars for the local non-for-profits since 1999.

In just ten years, the Sony Open has emerged as a leader in charitable giving in the state. With a significant start of generating $256,000 for 43 charities in 1998, tournament charity proceeds now surpass the $1 million mark annually benefiting more than 100 not-for-profit organizations. In 2008 the charity is poised to hit $8 million in total charity grants benefiting over 250 charities.

Global impact of the event reaches over 450 million homes in some 200 countries via multiple national and international broadcast networks, and contributes an estimated $100 million in marketing and economic impact to Hawaii’s. One of the most international events on the PGA TOUR schedule, the Sony Open showcases international golf talent and camaraderie against the backdrop of Hawaii’s natural beauty to the world. In 2007 the Sony Open debuted live event coverage to China and India, and distributed the telecasts to over 150 other countries around the world, making it one of the most internationally-televised golf events in the world!

For information on where to stay for this tournament, here is a link to the Hilton Hotel & Golf Resort. All golf club rentals and golf equipment rentals can be delivered directly to the hotel prior to your outing. Contact this golf club rental company to reserve rentals for this tournament.

The Story of the Waialae Golf & Country Club

The Golf Course was opened for play on February 1, 1927.

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel and Waialae Golf Course were built by the Territorial Hotel Co. as part of a promotional program to develop luxury travel trade to Hawaii. Matson Navigation Co. built the luxury passenger liner Malolo as part of this program. The hotel and golf course lands were leased from the Bernice P. Bishop Estate.

Mr. Seth Raynor, world famous golf architect, and his associate, Mr. Charles Banks, designed and supervised the building of Waialae. Their outstanding work is reflected on many of our holes.

The par three 13th is designed from one on the Biarritz Course in France.
Waialae's 8th hole is paterned after the famous Redan hole on the North Berwick Course in Scotland.
Our unique 16th hole is similar to the 6th hole of the National Course at Southhampton, Long Island.
The 10th Hole introduces features of the 17th or Road hole at St. Andrews in Scotland.
Local players were able to use the course, and by payment of annual fees for play became "privilege card holders" in the Territorial Hotel Company's Waialae Golf Club. In 1930, a group of these Waialae players formed a private club within the Waialae Golf Club which they called Waialae Country Club. Waialae Country Club dates from September 29, 1930 when this group was formally organized and By-Laws were adopted. It enlarged a small service building close to the main clubhouse, installed showers, and had its own clubhouse where the swimming pool is now.

The great depression of the 1930s severely reduced travel and resulted in bankruptcy of the Territorial Hotel Co. Matson took over the obligations and interests of the Territorial Hotel Co. which included the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, the Moana Hotel, and Waialae golf Club. During these years play on the course was mainly by local privilege card holders, most of whom were members of Waialae Country Club.

In August of 1941, fire destroyed the Waialae Pavilion which was used by Waialae Golf Club for dining and dancing, and Matson decided to turn the golf course and remaining buildings over to Waialae Country Club. Before this plan was consummated, the United States had entered World War II, the military had requisitioned the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, and numerous military defenses had been installed along Oahu's coastline including the golf course at Waialae.

Waialae Country Club was incorporated on September 30, 1942 and became lessee of the golf course acreage and a small section of land owned by Matson on which the old Isenberg home (later The Pavilion) had been located. The military built a replacement for the Pavilion because of the heavy use of the course by military personnel during the war.

The old Waialae Country Club clubhouse was destroyed by fire in 1952, but through the ingenious conversion of the military structure into kitchen and dining facilities, and the building of new locker rooms, Waialae was again in full operation within twenty-four months after the fire.

Tennis courts, swimming pool and added parking units were completed in 1958 and Waialae became a Country Club in fact, as well as, name.

No major physical changes were made in the golf course layout until 1954 when the 15th hole was lengthened from 320 yards to 435 yards.

However, in the early 1960s major reconstruction on the front nine was necessitated in order to provide beachfront areas for the Kahala Hilton Hotel and the Kahala Beach Apartments. Holes number 1 and 9 were relocated completely from the green, hole number 2 retained the same green but the hole played from mauka to maki instead of along the coast, and a new tee was required for number 3.

At about the same time the Bishop Estate withdrew land where the 7th hole and much of the 6th hole were located for the Kai Nani subdivision, and this required a realignment of the 5th, 6th and 7th holes. The 7th hole had originally run along the beach in a Diamond Head direction but as a result of the subdivision was relocated inland.

Along with the golf course work, a new Pro Shop and a new golf cart storage building were built on the mauka side of Kahala Avenue.

The First PGA Tour Hawaiian Open Golf Tournament was held in the fall of 1965. Hawaiian Opens (under various sponsorships) have been held at Waialae since 1928.

Extensive work continued on the golf course between 1965 and 1970, with the conversion of all greens from bent grass to tifdwarf, and the installation of an automatic sprinkler system throughout the golf course.

During this period much time was spent in finalizing lease agreements with Bishop Estate and with Sheraton Hotels who had in 1959 acquired Matson's hotel interests and two acres of Matson land where the swimming pool and tennis courts are located. Long-term lease agreements were concluded in 1970.

The Club was now in a position of being able to develop plans for a new clubhouse. Construction work commenced in the summer of 1971, and the new clubhouse was opened on September 1, 1972. Financing was through purchase by members of transfer certificates.

The main Clubhouse was renovated in 1980, and in 1981 renovations were completed at the Golf Pro Shop. The expansion and renovation of the Men's Grille were completed in June of 1983.

On December 19, 1983, a fire completely destroyed the cart shed/club storage building located next to the Golf Pro Shop. Fortunately, the Golf Pro Shop itself sustained only minor damage. A modern and spacious cart shed/club storage building was constructed during 1984 with many fire-safety features.

Numerous capital improvements to the various Waialae facilities over a ten-year period (1984-1994) were projected, and therefore the membership approved an assessment of all members in February of 1985 on the basis of their access to Club facilities and in relation to the dues structure. One of the first capital improvement projects undertaken was the installation of a computerized irrigation system for the golf course, with accompanying reservoir and pump facility. Omnicourt surfacing was installed on the tennis courts in October of 1985, and renovations to the tennis shower and locker rooms as well as swimming pool were accomplished.

The Waialae golf course is a par 72 championship course with yardage of 7,125 from the back tees. The course rating is 72.1 from the regular tees.


Reference:
http://www.sonyopeninhawaii.com/index.html

Mercedes-Benz Golf Championship - Maui, Hawaii

The Plantation Golf Course • Kapalua Golf Resort, Maui

The Mercedes-Benz Championship is the opening event of golf's PGA Tour season. The field is restricted to golfers who won an event on the Tour in the previous season. It is played the first weekend in January, and has been at Kapalua Resort's Plantation Course in Kapalua, Hawaii, since 1999. The event was played in Las Vegas, Nevada from the event's inception in 1953 until 1968, first at The Desert Inn Golf & Country Club until 1966, and then at Stardust Country Club. After that, it began a 30-year relationship with La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, California, which lasted until the event was moved to its current location in Hawaii.

The par 73, 7,411-yard Plantation Course, is the course of the champions, site of the PGA TOUR Mercedes-Benz Championship each January featuring an elite field of previous year's PGA TOUR winners. The field has included golf greats such as Tiger Woods, Vijay Singh, Justin Leonard, Ernie Els, Davis Love III and many more. The grand scale of the course designed by Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore unfurls across natural geographic formations and pineapple plantation fields that take your breath away.

The Ritz-Carlton, Kapalua is a great luxury golf resort to stay at while attending the tournament. All golf club rentals and golf equipment rentals can be delivered directly to the hotel prior to your outing. Contact this golf club rental company to reserve rentals for this tournament.

For Tee Time reservations before and after the tournament visit http://www.kapalua.com/hawaii-golf/plantation-golf-course.php

The tournament schedule is as follows:

Monday, January 1, 2007
Practice Round - Day 1

Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Practice Round - Day 2

Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Pro-Am

Thursday, January 4, 2007
First Round

Friday, January 5, 2007
Second Round

Saturday, January 6, 2007
Third Round

Sunday, January 7, 2007
Final Round



Blog reference:
http://www.kapalua.com/hawaii-golf/pga-tournament/

http://www.bizzspotlight.com/2007/06/kapalua_resort_in_maui_hawaii.html

Donald Trump and the first International Golf Club Rentals Company

Trump the Golfer

Trump plays to a 5 handicap and has been a member of Winged Foot since he was in his 20s. As a student at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School in the late 1960s, he began playing at public courses such as Cobb's Creek in Philadelphia. His recent building boom has given him more of a taste for developing world-class courses than playing them.

"I've made a lot of money on the golf course, not from playing golf but from being on the course with people I made deals with," he says. "Golf is an amazing business tool. You can learn a lot about a person's personality."

Trump is all business when it comes to his real estate, casino or beauty pageant holdings.

But golf is "a labor of love," says Carolyn Kepcher, his former co-star on The Apprentice who split with her ex-boss in August after, among other things, helping to operate three of his courses, including Bedminster.

Money talks in pro sports. Trump ranked 94th in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans last year, with an estimated net worth of $2.9 billion. (He disputes the magazine's figure, saying he's worth "much more than twice that number.")

Trump is also eying the British Open or Ryder Cup for his planned Trump International Golf Links in Scotland. The 36-hole resort is scheduled to open in 2008 on more than 1,000 acres of prime dunes land along the North Sea coast.

The History of the Trump Organization

Statistics:
http://www.trump.com/
http://www.trumpgolf.com/
Private Company
Founded: 1974
Employees: 15,000
Sales: $8.5 billion (2003)
NAIC: 531110 Lessors of Residential Buildings and Dwellings; 531120 Lessors of Nonresidential Buildings (Except Mini-warehouses); 53139 Other Activities Related to Real Estate; 23311 Land Subdivision and Land Development; 721110 Hotels (Except Casino Hotels) and Motels; 721120 Casino Hotels; 713210 Casinos (Except Casino Hotels); 713910 Golf Courses and Country Clubs; 713990 All Other Amusement and Recreation Industries


Company Perspectives:
Donald J. Trump established The Trump Organization in 1980 as the umbrella company for all of his real estate operations and corporate affiliates. In addition to the numerous luxury residential real estate developments in New York City, Mr. Trump's holdings include superior office buildings, hotels, casinos, golf courses, recreational facilities, a modeling and talent agency and an international beauty pageant organization. The quintessential businessman, Mr. Trump has always been committed to taking a personal and direct involvement in all aspects of his projects.


Key Dates:
1934: Fred Trump revives the Brooklyn housing business.
1947: Fred Trump begins work on the huge Shore Haven complex in Brooklyn.
1968: Donald Trump joins the family business.
1974: Donald becomes president of The Trump Organization.
1983: Trump Tower is completed in Manhattan.
1988: The Organization buys Taj Mahal in Atlantic City.
1990: The Trump empire temporarily collapses under $2 billion debt.
1995: The Trump casino business goes public.
2000: The Trump National Golf Course opens.
2003: Donald Trump inspires the creation of the 1st international golf club rental company:
International Golf Rental & Sales
2004: Donald Trump stars in the hit reality television show, "The Apprentice."


Company History:
The Trump Organization presides over the assets of the Trump family and serves as the umbrella for the many business interests of the flamboyant realtor Donald Trump. These assets consist of prime residential and commercial properties in New York City, including Trump Tower; the Trump International Hotel and Tower; the office building at 40 Wall Street in Manhattan; Trump World Tower, near the United Nations in New York; and other luxury residential real estate. Other Trump Organization assets include interests in a Florida resort, a skyscraper in Seoul, South Korea, a string of golf courses, and the Miss Universe Organization, which runs the Miss USA, Miss Teen USA, and Miss Universe beauty pageants. The Trump Organization also owns a 56 percent interest in the publicly traded company Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc. This company owns and manages three casinos in Atlantic City, New Jersey, as well as several other gaming establishments. Donald Trump established a high-profile business empire in the 1980s that almost collapsed under a mountain of debt during the 1990-91 recession. Although forced to divest himself of some properties, he remained an important presence in Manhattan real estate development. The star of a popular television reality show, "The Apprentice," in 2004, and author of hit business books, including The Art of the Deal and How to Get Rich, Donald Trump's public persona was a key element of his business empire. Even his critics agreed that having his name on a property added significantly to its value. His successful marketing earned him the nickname "the human logo."

Father Fred Trump's Career: 1927-74
Fred Trump represented his life as a climb from poverty to riches, but in his muckraking biography of Donald Trump, Wayne Barrett reported that the elder Trump's father also was engaged in the real estate business, and left a comfortable estate to his widow and children on his death in 1918. Fred Trump built about 300 houses in the New York City borough of Queens from 1927 to 1932, when the market dried up in the depths of the Great Depression. His career revived in 1934, when he was able to acquire a list of serviceable mortgages from a bankrupt Brooklyn realtor. Financing from the newly created Federal Housing Administration enabled Trump to build many more Brooklyn homes, typically selling for $6,000 apiece. During World War II he built FHA-backed housing for naval personnel and shipyard workers near Virginia and Pennsylvania shipyards.

Between 1947 and 1949 Trump completed Shore Haven, a 1,314-unit apartment complex of six-story apartment buildings on a 14-acre site in southern Brooklyn. An even larger development, 2,000-unit Beach Haven, followed. His biggest project was Trump Village in Coney Island. Consisting of 4,600 Brooklyn apartments in seven 23-story buildings--five of them cooperatives, two rental--it was completed in 1965. This one was constructed with state, rather than federal, funding and essentially ended Fred Trump's career as a builder. Previously said to have padded his costs to obtain excessive FHA mortgage money, he was now accused in public testimony of having fraudulently lined his pockets with state funds. Trump ultimately returned $1.2 million and, his reputation under a cloud, was unable to obtain funding for further large residential projects he had planned on the sites of former Coney Island amusement parks.

Donald Trump joined the family business in 1968 upon graduation from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. By 1974 he was president (with his father as chairman of the board) of an assortment of Trump entities, laying claim to the management of 48 privately held corporations and 15 family partnerships. His principal job was managing the apartments, whose number varied between 10,000 and 22,000, according to different estimates. The value of the Trump empire was estimated in the early 1970s at $200 million by Fred Trump and between $40 million and $100 million by other sources.

Acquiring Manhattan Real Estate: 1974-88
Donald Trump was determined to take the enterprise into Manhattan. As head of the Trump Organization--which at the time had no legal existence--he took out, in 1974, an option (with no money down) to purchase railyards along the Hudson River north and south of Midtown, which were owned by the bankrupt Penn Central Transportation Co. Trump planned to build a huge residential complex on the 76-acre northern segment, but opposition by West Side resident groups made the plan unfeasible until the 1990s. He persuaded the city to build a new convention center on the 44-acre southern segment. Although unable to win the construction contract, he collected a $500,000 broker's commission.
Trump also was interested in Penn Central's decaying Commodore Hotel, on East 42nd Street just east of Grand Central Station. Eventually a deal was reached in 1976 whereby a state agency received the property and leased it for 99 years to a Trump entity, which would share in the profits with the city. Trump, who obtained an unprecedented 40-year tax abatement from the city--the first ever granted for a commercial property--then lined up a construction loan guaranteed by his father and the Hyatt Corporation, which became the joint partner. The shell of the hotel was enclosed in a chrome-and-mirrored-glass facade. Completed in 1980, the rehabilitated structure opened as the 1,400-room Grand Hyatt Hotel.
Trump's signature building was the Trump Tower, built on the northeast corner of 56th Street and Fifth Avenue. Assembling lots, purchasing air rights, and securing rezoning enabled him to put up a 58-story office, retail, and residential complex with a six-story atrium shopping mall and a sawtooth exterior shape of 28 different surfaces, cascading in a bronze-and-dark-glass sheath. The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, which owned the land and helped obtain financing from Chase Manhattan Bank, was Trump's joint partner. Completed in 1983 at a cost of $201 million, the building was a hit. By 1986, 251 of the 268 condominium apartments had been sold for a total of $277 million. The partnership retained ownership of the retail and office space and won a ten-year tax abatement in court. Trump installed his family in a penthouse double triplex and bought out Equitable in 1986.

Following on Trump Tower's heels, the 36-story, Y-shaped Trump Plaza residential cooperative at Third Avenue and 61st Street was completed in 1984 at a cost of $125 million. More of a problem was 106 Central Park South, a 15-story apartment building Trump bought in 1981 along with the neighboring, 38-story Barbizon Plaza Hotel (for which he paid only $13 million but received a $65 million mortgage loan). He envisioned a huge condo on the combined sites, but was unable to oust the rent-regulated tenants, who were protected against eviction. When Trump offered to house homeless people in vacated apartments, he was slapped with a tenant harassment suit. In the end the tenants stayed, their building's facade harmonized next to that of the refurbished Barbizon, which became Trump Parc, with 340 condominium units advertised in 1986 at between $180,000 and $4 million. In 1985 Trump paid $72 million for the St. Moritz, the aging hotel across the street from Trump Parc that also faced Central Park.

Trump's last Manhattan hotel purchase was the Plaza, the French Renaissance landmark at the southeastern corner of Central Park, one block east of Trump Parc. He purchased it from the Bass Group in 1988 for a staggering $393 million, or $500,000 per room, making it the most expensive hotel purchase in history. Trump received a $409 million loan from Citibank, and personally guaranteed the $125 million equity portion. Simultaneously, he sold the St. Moritz to Australian magnate Alan Bond, reportedly for $100 million more than he had paid for it.
Trump's option on the northern segment of the Penn Yards had expired in 1979, but after other developers failed to build on the site, he purchased it in 1985 for $115 million. Trump's "Television City" plan for the site included an agglomeration of five buildings extending to a height of 150 stories and a landscaped platform supporting a collection of 8,000 apartments, two office buildings, open space, and parkland above television and film studios, a retail mall, and a massive parking garage. It died in 1987, when NBC decided to renew its quarters in Rockefeller Center. The successor, the 14 million-square-foot "Trump City" development project, did not win the needed city approval.

Atlantic City and Other Ventures: 1980-90
Trump's first investment in Atlantic City came in 1980, when he (with his father) purchased 98-year leases on properties bordering the Boardwalk. After the projected casino was licensed in 1982, Holiday Inns Inc.'s Harrah subsidiary agreed to invest $50 million in a partnership. Trump was responsible for the construction of Harrah's at Trump Plaza (soon shortened to simply Trump Plaza), a 39-story casino-hotel that opened in 1984. Harrah's originally managed it, but in 1986 Trump borrowed $250 million to buy out the company's interest. He had bought the Hilton Corp.'s casino-hotel for $320 million in 1985, which opened as Trump's Castle Casino Resort. An addition to the Castle, a 14-story Crystal Tower of luxury suites, was completed in 1990.
Even these deals paled beside his plan to take over Resorts International, the troubled casino company that was the largest landowner in Atlantic City, and its unfinished Taj Mahal, the world's largest casino. Outbid for voting control of the company in 1988 by television talk show host Merv Griffin, Trump nevertheless obtained his objective--the Taj--for $280 million. He issued $675 million in junk bonds to pay for the acquisition and completion of the casino, which opened in 1990. He spent another $115 million in 1989 to buy two more properties flanking Trump Plaza. One of these was the Atlantis, a 500-room hotel-casino without a gaming license. He renamed it the Trump Regency. The other consisted of the Penthouse, a half-built hotel-casino, and its parking garage site.

Trump indulged his lavish lifestyle by purchasing Mar-A-Lago, a 118-room Palm Beach mansion in 1984, and in 1988 acquiring the world's second largest yacht, a 282-foot-long craft that he renamed the Trump Princess. He docked the craft next to Trump's Castle to entertain high rollers. In partnership with Lee Iacocca, he also paid $41 million for a 32-story residential condominium, which he named Trump Plaza of the Palm Beaches, in West Palm Beach. In 1983 he purchased the New Jersey Generals, of the struggling U.S. Football League, as the opening gambit in a scheme to move the team into an indoor, publicly financed stadium in New York City to be called the "Trumpdome." The league and the stadium proposal folded in 1987. By his own estimates in court papers, Trump lost about $22 million on the venture.

Trump's interest in another glamour business--aircraft--resulted in his purchase of bankrupt Eastern Airlines' Boston-New York-Washington shuttle in 1989 for $365 million. He paid for this with a Citibank loan that accepted as collateral the airline's aging jets and $135 million in equity (backed only by Trump's personal guarantee). Renamed the Trump Shuttle, this venture required $85 million in capital and operating costs in its first year alone. By then he had also paid $23 million for a fleet of helicopters he dubbed Trump Air. Trump also moved ahead with the construction of the Trump Palace, a 55-story residential condominium building on a site at Third Avenue and 69th Street that he had bought in 1985.

Restructuring: 1990-92
When the U.S. economy fell into recession in 1990, Trump's highly leveraged business empire threatened to collapse. Entities of the Trump Organization, or Donald Trump personally, had incurred more than $5 billion in debt--$8.8 billion, according to one source--of which almost $1 billion had been drawn solely on Trump's personal guarantee. Big New York banks had financed $3.75 billion worth of debt. They reduced their risk and collected fees by syndicating the loans to some 70 other banks, including British, French, German, and Japanese institutions. Most of this money was recovered after subsequent restructurings, but some $600 million to $800 million may have been lost. Forbes magazine had estimated Trump's worth at $1.7 billion in 1989, making him the nation's 19th richest man. But two years later it assessed his worth at minus $900 million, making him a heavy contender in the world's poorest man category.

An August 1990 bailout pact allowed Trump to defer almost $1 billion in bank debt, but required him to make certain payments on more than $1 billion in additional bank debt. It also gave the banks second and third mortgages on nearly all of Trump's properties. In return for being released from his personal guarantee on about $960 million of debt, Trump gave up ownership of the Trump Shuttle and all but a small stake in the Plaza. Also lost was the West Palm Beach building and the Trump Princess. Trump Air was dissolved and its helicopters sold to pay debts. The Mar-A-Lago was turned into a club. Even Trump's Boeing 727 jet was repossessed (but later repurchased).

Temporarily unaffected was $1.3 billion in casino bonds, but in December 1990 the casinos and property group of the Trump Organization defaulted on a $50 million loan used to fund the Taj Mahal. Trump subsequently agreed to cede half of the casino to bondholders as part of a 1991 restructuring, known as a prepackaged bankruptcy, in which new credit agreements were legally authorized.

During the first part of 1991 the Trump Organization negotiated with creditors of the other casino holdings concerning a revision of the debt. A crucial, mysterious $3.3 million payment on the Trump's Castle debt was traced by a reporter to Fred Trump, who apparently auctioned some of his Brooklyn and Queens apartments to raise the funds. Otherwise, however, Trump could count for help in this quarter only on his own stake in his father's estate, which bankers estimated at a maximum of $150 million. Fred Trump had, according to a biography of Donald Trump by Harry Hurt, turned over the management of his estate to Donald's younger brother, Robert.

Like the Trump Taj Mahal Casino Resort, the Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino and Trump's Castle Casino Resort underwent prepackaged bankruptcies in 1992 to restructure their huge bond debts. Trump Plaza bonds and debt were converted to lower-interest bonds and four million shares of preferred stock for the creditors. In exchange for a reduction in the interest rate on the Trump's Castle bonds, the creditors received half the equity in the property.

Resurgence: 1994-97
Trump also lost the Penthouse and Trump Regency to banks but leased them with options to buy. He reopened the Penthouse--renamed the East Tower--in 1995. He also won a gambling license for the Regency, which was renamed Trump World's Fair. He then exercised his options and bought both properties back for in excess of $200 million. The Trump World's Fair and Plaza East (in the East Tower) casinos opened in 1997.

Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino went public in 1995 as Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc., selling ten million shares of common stock at $14 a share. A secondary stock offering in April 1996 sold 13.25 million shares at $32.50 a share. This company also included a subsidiary that opened, in 1996, a gambling riverboat, named Trump Indiana, on Lake Michigan at Gary, Indiana.

In April 1996 Trump Hotels & Casino acquired the Taj Mahal for $40.5 million, plus assumption of its debts. The company, through Trump Atlantic City Associates, issued more than $1.1 billion in new mortgage notes to redeem the Taj Mahal's $780 million in mortgage bonds due 1999 and the Trump Plaza's $340 million in mortgage notes due 2001. Five months later, Trump Hotels & Casino acquired the money-losing Trump's Castle (renamed Trump Marina in 1997) for about $490 million in stock, a transaction that included the assumption of about $314 million of the hotel-casino's debt. The acquisition raised Trump's stake in the public company to about 40 percent. Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts grew to six casinos with the integration of the World's Fair and East Tower properties into Trump Plaza in 1997.

Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts was now an awesome agglomeration of Atlantic City properties. Revenues reached $976 million in 1996, but the company lost $65.7 million, mostly because of an extraordinary $59.1 million charge for redemption of notes and the writeoff of deferred financing costs. The company's underlying weakness--a long-term debt that reached $1.7 billion in mid-1997--caused the stock to fall below $10 a share by the end of the year.

Trump's plan for the northern segment of the old Penn Central railyards received approval in 1992 in scaled-down form. The proposed development, renamed Riverside South, now was to consist of 5,700 apartments, 1.8 million square feet of office space, 350,000 square feet of retail space, and parking for 3,500 cars. Trump did not have the financing to develop the property, but in 1994 he signed a joint venture agreement with a consortium of Asian investors, led by two of Hong Kong's biggest developers. He was said to have received a 30 percent stake in the project, with responsibility for constructing and managing the 18 buildings and seeking regulatory approvals, while putting up no cash. According to one source, however, he had no actual equity in the project and would begin to get a share of the profits only after the developer syndicate recovered its investment, plus interest. The first two Riverside South buildings began to rise in 1997, and by 2004 eight of the projected sixteen buildings had been completed.

Again in 1994, Trump's relish for high-profile deals was evident when he formed a joint venture with two foreign investors who had paid $42 million for the Empire State Building. Trump became general partner, but his stake in the venture was unclear. In any case, other realtors had 81 years remaining on a lease of the landmark building that gave them almost complete independence from the owners, who would receive only an annual rental of under $2 million during the life of the lease. In 1995 Trump bought 40 Wall Street, a 72-story office building. He paid less than $8 million for the property, but it was 89 percent vacant, and the remodeling he envisioned would cost at least $100 million.

The Trump International Hotel & Tower, a slender 52-story structure at the north end of Columbus Circle that was formerly the Gulf & Western office building, was converted to luxury residential condominiums, with a Trumpian bronze-and-dark-glass outer skin. Trump Organization units were in charge of construction, sales, and management but provided little or no cash. Aside from fees for these services and the use of his name, Trump received a penthouse in the building and a stake in the hotel's restaurant and garage. Work began in 1995 and was completed in 1997.

In 1996 Trump bought the Miss USA, Miss Universe, and Miss Teen USA pageants from ITT Corp. and then sold half of the property to CBS, which was broadcasting the pageants. He said he wanted to create marketing tie-ins to raise their visibility, possibly including an agreement for a top modeling agency to hire the winners and a new line of Miss Universe cosmetics backed by a major beauty company. Trump sold his half-share in the Grand Hyatt Hotel to the Hyatt Corp. in 1996 for $142 million. This enabled him to extinguish the remainder of his personal indebtedness. Forbes estimated his worth at $1.4 billion in October 1997--up from $450 million the previous year.

On to New Heights: The 2000s
Through the late 1990s and early 2000s, Trump projects were rising in New York, sometimes despite protests. The Trump World Tower, on First Avenue in Manhattan between 47th and 48th Streets, was touted as the world's tallest residential structure. The 861-foot tall building dwarfed other residences in the neighborhood, to the dismay of some longtime area denizens. Trump prevailed in a lawsuit brought by the neighborhood association, and the $400 million structure went up. Trump World Tower consisted of 372 luxury apartments priced between $1 million and $11 million, though one sold for $38 million, a record for a New York apartment. Another Trump structure caused neighborhood ire, in a case that went all the way to the New York State Supreme Court. The 31-story sixth tower of Trump's Riverside South project was built only inches away from the historic Chatsworth, a landmarked 13-story apartment house on West 72nd Street. Residents of the Chatsworth tried to stop the sixth tower from going up, and in 2003 appealed the state supreme court's decision against them.

The attacks of September 11, 2001 that brought down the World Trade Center did not stop Trump and others from erecting conspicuous structures in New York. The terrorism issue did, however, force the Trump Organization to reconsider plans for a massive project in Chicago. The Trump Organization had thought of building the world's tallest building in the city, but instead planned Trump Tower Chicago as a more modest skyscraper, which would be the city's fourth tallest. Terrorism insurance also became a big issue after September 2001, complicating financing for high-profile buildings. In 2001, the Trump Organization hoped to swing a $950 million mortgage from Deutsche Banc Mortgage Capital in order to buy the 50 percent portion of the General Motors Building in Manhattan it did not already own. (Trump and Conseco, Inc. jointly bought the building in 1998, with Conseco putting up $211 million and Trump only $11 million.) The deal cooled over the issue of insurance risk in the wake of the attacks. A dispute with Conseco over profits from the General Motors Building led a court in 2003 to order Trump to sell his interest.

In the 2000s, the Trump Organization also moved in altogether new directions. Donald Trump was an avid golfer, and he became a golf mogul as well, building the spectacular Trump National Golf Course in Westchester County, New York, in 2000 (http://www.trumpnationalwestchester.com/html/welcome.asp). Membership in the Trump National club cost $300,000, and the course was studded with lavish features, including a giant waterfall on the 13th hole. Trump also built luxury golf villas adjoining the course. Trump went on to build golf courses in:

West Palm Beach, Florida (http://trumpinternationalpalmbeaches.com/public/welcome/welcome.asp)
Bedminster, New Jersey (http://trumpnationalbedminster.com/public/home.asp)
Los Angeles, CA (http://trumpnationallosangeles.com/html/home.asp)
Canouan Island, The Grenadines (http://www.canouan.com/)
Aberdeen, Scotland (http://trumpgolfscotland.com/default.asp)

The Bedminster course, built on farmland formerly owned by automobile magnate John DeLorean, also accommodated 11 cottages and an equestrian center. The golf courses were a new approach to luxury housing, as well as recreation. A fourth course, Trump National Golf Course Los Angeles, was in the works in 2004. International Golf Rental & Sales, Inc. works with great golf resorts like these. When large golf outings put a strain a golf course like Mr. Trump's rental inventory , http://www.golfrentalandsales.com/ helps to supplement their rental supply by bringing in extra sets of clubs the day before the outing and picking them up after the outing is through. High quality golf course's are able to maintain the same premium quality they demand when they use golf club rentals from IGRS.

Because the Trump Organization was a private company with no obligation to post financial information, and because many factors made the health of a real estate portfolio hard to evaluate, it was difficult to pin down concretely how well Trump's empire was doing in the early 2000s. Trump had clearly put behind him his missteps of the early 1990s. He had buildings named after him all over Manhattan, and he claimed in 2004 to own at least 50 percent of all the New York buildings with the Trump moniker. His net worth was estimated at between $2 billion and $6 billion, though this was unverified, and some real estate rivals put their own estimates of his worth much lower. Clearly, the Trump name had enormous strength. Sources quoted by Time magazine (April 12, 2004) acknowledged that the Trump logo added some $100 per square foot to the value of a building. Trump claimed that his name on his Westchester golf course brought him $300,000, while without the Trump stamp, membership would go for only $25,000. Donald Trump had long been known in the press as simply "The Donald," but by the early 2000s he had acquired another nickname, "the human logo." Akin to Martha Stewart and Oprah Winfrey, Trump was able to extend the cachet of his name into a far-reaching realm. He came out with a Trump Visa card in 2004, as well as his own brand of bottled water, Trump Ice. His biggest publicity coup was his starring role in the 2004 NBC reality show, "The Apprentice." Trump gave a gaggle of contestants business challenges, firing the worst performer every week, until the final contestant won a coveted job with the Trump Organization. This gave Trump huge media exposure, and helped earn him an estimated $5 million advance on his 2004 book, How to Get Rich.

Trump's wide exposure seemed like it could only help his branded real estate projects. On the other hand, Trump's publicly held casino and gaming company struggled all through the early 2000s. The company lost money year after year, and its stock sank to $2.50 in mid-2004, compared with a one-time high of more than $35 shortly after the company went public. The casinos were loaded with debt, and hampered by well-heeled competitors. Both Harrah's Entertainment and Park Place Entertainment Corp. owned Atlantic City casinos, and these companies spent lavishly to refurbish their properties, while some slot machines at Trump's casinos did not even have stools. Trump managed to restructure some debt on the casinos in 2001 to get more favorable terms. But by 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts had a market value of only $41 million, down from more than $500 million in 1996, and it was possible that angry creditors would force the company into bankruptcy. Trump promised to pay more attention to the casino business once his television stint was over. If he managed to save the business, it would not be the first time he had emerged from a seemingly impossible situation. Meanwhile, he churned out real estate development projects. In 2004 these included the Trump Tower at City Center, in White Plains, New York, and a mixed hotel and condominium project in Toronto, the Trump International Hotel & Tower.

Principal Subsidiaries: Trump Sales & Leasing Residential Real Estate; Trump International Hotel & Tower; Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts, Inc. (56%); Trump Golf; Miss Universe Organization (50%).

Principal Competitors: The Lefrak Organization; Harrah's Entertainment, Inc.; Tishman Realty & Construction Co. Inc.; Caesar's Entertainment Inc.

Note that there are adverse articles of the Trump organization's pursuits:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/32728-trump-entertainment-board-needs-to-boot-the-donald#comment-105813/

History:
https://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/The-Trump-Organization-Company-History.html

Jets, golf, yachts, beer: CEOs rake in extras

Free golf! beer! Free boat outings! Free taxes!

Even as CEO pay has increased, their perquisites, from personal flights on the corporate jet or yacht, to cars and drivers, to country-club fees and home alarm systems, have persisted.

The perks mean free stuff for a crowd that could afford to pay its own way. After all, the median 2006 total pay for the CEOs at 386 Standard & Poor's 500 companies analyzed by The Associated Press was $8.3 million.

In 2006, the group's total amount of "other compensation" was $169.2 million. Besides all the cushy perks — which are considered taxable income by the government — many companies picked up the tab for those costs, too.

For the first time this year, investors got a better look at all this extra stuff. New proxy rules required companies to disclose perks that cost more than $10,000, a much lower threshold than the previous requirement of $50,000, or 10% of total annual compensation.

FIND MORE STORIES IN: CEO

Some of the year's biggest perks came in the way of payments for executives' taxes. Public Storage Inc. (www.publicstorage.com/) covered CEO Ronald Havner Jr.'s $2.6 million in taxes on his bonus payments, which included $3 million in cash and $786,500 for performance-based compensation.

Alcoa Inc. (www.alcoa.com/) disclosed for the first time that it paid hundred of thousands of dollars to its top executives to cover the taxes on company-paid relocation expenses, country club dues, spousal travel and life insurance.

Johnson & Johnson's (www.jnj.com/) William Weldon received $2.3 million on dividend equivalents on Certificates of Extra Compensation that the company awards executives. The certificates "provide deferred compensation paid at the end of an employee's career," the company said in its proxy filing.

Weldon choose to defer payment on all but $900,000 of the money.

Showing up in the most proxies were CEOs' personal use of company jets. The year's top frequent fliers include Michael Jeffries, chairman and CEO of retailer Abercrombie & Fitch Co., who took $776,723 worth of flights on the corporate jet.

But Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc. (www.starwood.com/) former CEO Steven Heyer may have lapped him. Starwood paid $866,178 for Heyer's travel between his home in Atlanta and the company's offices in New York. The company said it does not consider the air travel, car and driver in New York and stays in New York hotels a personal benefit or a perk.

Other notable goodies were company products. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. (www.goodyear.com) executives can get up to two sets of tires a year. Reynolds American Inc. executives get free cigarettes and chewing tobacco. Anheuser-Busch Cos.' CEO gets free beer.

Executives at International Golf Rental & Sales Inc. enjoy the ability to test drive any and all of the sets of their choosing. On top of that, where ever they go, they have full sets of rental golf clubs waiting for them. How is this possible? Think about it, they need to know their product and they need to know that it works. Now that's what I call a company perk.

Executives at Brunswick Corp. (www.brunswick.com/) can use the company-manufactured boats for marketing, hosting civic events, personal use and "to enhance product knowledge." That's part of a program that "encourages active participation in boating on the part of company officers," according to Brunswick's proxy.

The company valued Chairman and CEO Dustan McCoy's boat use at $222,678 in 2006, including coverage for his related taxes. Executives also can get company products worth $15,000 a year.

Executives at some companies can also get cash for their unused vacation time. Among them is Ronald Sugar, chairman and CEO of Northrop Grumman Corp., who got an extra $49,347 for that. Sugar's total pay, including that payout, was $18.64 million.

While few companies are moving away from perks, there are a few scaling back — a bit. Ford Motor Co. executive vice president of the Americas Mark Fields will no longer use company aircraft for his personal trips home on weekends. In its proxy, Ford said that compensation for such trips totaled $517,560 in 2006.

He won't be slouching, however, since the company will pick up the tab for him to fly commercial — including in first class.

Reference source:
http://www.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-06-09-ceoperks_N.htm
http://www.golfrentalandsales.com/

How To Plan a Successful Business Meeting at a Golf Course

From Rob Hard (at About.com),

The golf event is a favorite of nearly every corporation and organization. And why not? For corporations, a golf event allows hosts to have a captive audience with decision makers for as much time as an entire day. For non-profits and associations, it also serves as a key activity that creates opportunities to interact with their membership or even raise a significant amount of money for the cause.

For event planners, planning business meetings at a golf course is a nice professional challenge. The following provides some guidelines for a one day program.

Difficulty: Average
Time Required: Planning should begin about three to six months prior to event.
Here's How:

Identify the maximum number of attendees. Golf events are popular, and players who have participated in past events always enjoy returning. However, there are some good guidelines to consider:

An 18 hole course can handle a maximum of 144 players, but that will create long delays in play and limits tournament formats.
72 players (18 foursomes) will create a nice pace of play.
Player count should include at least one corporate representative in each pairing, which will impact the total external guest count.
Account the non-golfing staff who will be present at the event, as this will impact overall costs.
Narrow a golf site location. For most golf meetings, an event planner will select a course in the community where the guests already live. Whether public or private, golf courses and amenities are differ, so keep the following in mind:

Consider guest travel times to/from the course.
Inspect the clubhouse locker rooms, banquet and meeting facilities.
Inspect the course and confirm that the club has sufficient equipment, golf rentals, and carts.
Confirm the club's course maintenance schedule.
Get to know the club sales manager, catering manager and golf pro.
Develop an event agenda. It's critical to make sure that the narrowed golf site has dates that work for you and your guests. Then, the event should create an agenda that works. Group tee times are usually held with an 8 a.m. or 1 p.m. start time; 1 p.m. is the most popular. A sample itinerary may include the following:

9:30 a.m. - Registration & Breakfast
10:30 a.m. - Welcome Remarks & Business Meeting
Noon - Putting Greens Open, Box Lunch
1 p.m. - Shotgun Start
4:30 p.m. - Cocktails & Hors D'oeuvres
5:30 p.m. - Awards Ceremony
Select the food and beverage. Catering costs can quickly add up when you're looking to provide enough food and beverage for an entire day of activities. The following tips will please the guests and keep costs in check:

Choose a continental breakfast buffet and upgrade with breakfast bars; order extra bottles of water charged on consumption.
Choose box lunches with multiple sandwich options.
Cover all beverage cart expenses and make sure carts are fully stocked, including liquor and snacks.
Plan reception food as a theme; for example, BBQ or Italian.
Cover reception "bar" expenses on consumption, up to three hours.

Make the business meeting a highlight. While it's fun for everyone to have a golf outing, it's vital that the meeting planner emphasize the importance of business content. Ironically, most invited guests expect to hear a relevant presentation, while some hosting executives try their best to avoid any formal meeting. The following ideas may help satisfy both:

Have the hosting executive deliver opening remarks for a maximum of 15 minutes.
Invite the company CEO or another C-level executive to deliver an update.
Hire an outside motivational speaker.
Recognize everyone in attendance.
Select the tournament format. The most popular golf format is the Scramble, which allows each player to tee off and then play is continued from the best tee shot. This continues until the ball is holed. Another popular format is Best Ball which allows all players to play their own ball, but only the best score in a foursome is recorded.

Add contests and prizes. Golfers really enjoy competing for prizes. Of course, upon arrival, all golfers should receive corporate gifts from the host company:

Popular merchandise includes sleeves of golf balls (place those on carts), golf shirts, and golf accessories.
Include special event contests, such as longest drive (par 5 hole), shortest drive (par 5 hole), closest to the pin (first par 3 hole in the back 9), and longest putt (use the putting green for this).
Purchase tournament prizes and gift certificates to the golf shop.
Identify a low score gag gift (e.g., tennis rackets).
Confirm your budget. It's not unusual for a golf meeting with 100 or so attendees to cost anywhere from $15,000 - $30,000. Expense items will include the following:

Green fees per person.
Food and beverage.
Tournament gifts and prizes.
Hole-in-one contest insurance.
Signage and promotional materials.
Guest speaker honorarium and fees.
Gratuities.
Invite guests. Online event registration forms are becoming more popular for inviting and registering golfers for golf meetings. Important information on the invitation and RSVP includes the following:

Clearly state the date, time, and location.
Provide an event agenda.
Include RSVP contact name, phone, and e-mail.
Request for golf club rentals if needed, left or right-handed. If the golf course doesn't have enough rentals, contact http://www.golfrentalandsales.com/. They rent golf clubs out nationwide. Their rental golf clubs are superb.
Request for handicap information, if available.
Determine the pairings. Luckily for the event planner, the inviting hosts are the ones who will put the final foursomes together. Still, a good event planner should understand the following considerations:

Pairings in a Scramble should consider player handicaps.
VIP guests should be placed at holes 1, 18, 2, and 17 (closest to the clubhouse at start).
Pairings are due to the golf course 24 hours prior to event; course should understand and anticipate the possibility of significant changes on morning of event.
A host player should be with every foursome.
Tips:

Invite 72 or 108 players. Depending on the course, 18-holes of golf will take more than 4 hours. The golf club sales executive will advise that their 18 hole course can handle 144 maximum players; however, it could take up to an additional hour of play and your guests will not enjoy the painfully slow pace of play, and they will be frustrated by beverage cart delays as well.

Avoid 27 hole courses. Typically, these courses allow for more players, but usually offer an 18-hole championship course with a 9 hole fun, yet challenging course. Depending on the course, 18-holes of golf will take about 5 hours. If you're planning a larger event with more players, it's best to find a 36-hole course that includes two championship courses.

Rely on a private club membership discount. Most executives already have a club membership, and their standing at the club will help with negotiating flexibility with fees, tee times and other services.

http://eventplanning.about.com/od/eventplanningbasics/ht/golfmeeting.htm/
http://www.golfrentalandsales.com/

Golf Greats Chris DiMarco and Camilo Villegas celebrate Tim Tebow's Heisman Honor

Gainesville, FL
Chris DiMarco and Camilo Villegas, former Gator golf standouts, celebrated Florida sophomore quarterback Tim Tebow’s (Jacksonville , Fla.) winning of the Heisman Trophy at the Merrill Lynch Shootout on NBC on Sunday afternoon. Mark Calcavecchia, UF’s all-time money leader, won the event with his partner, Woody Austin.

The duo struck the storied Heisman pose as they were walking up the 18th fairway on Sunday at the tournament in Naples. DiMarco and Villegas paired up for a five-way third-place tie. The two have been teammates only one other time, taking another third-place finish in June at the CVS Caremark Charity Classic.

While at UF, DiMarco was a three-time All-American, the Southeastern Conference Player of the Year in 1990, and the 1989 SEC Tournament individual champion. After 18 seasons on the PGA Tour, he is second on the all-time money list of players from UF, behind only Calcavecchia, with three Tour wins. DiMarco was named the Rookie of the Year in 1994 and was a member of the 2004 and 2006 U.S. Ryder Cup teams, as well as the 2003 and 2005 U.S. President’s Cup squads. DiMarco is most notably known for sinking the clinching putt at the 2005 President’s Cup.

Villegas was a four-time All-American in Gainesville, earning a school-record eight wins, and was a member of the 2001 NCAA Championship squad as a freshman. He owns four of the best three-round tournament scores by par in Florida history and shot 62, twice, for the top round by a Gator. Villegas also owns the school record for career (71.21) and single-season (70.77) stroke-average marks. Villegas won his first professional event at the Coca-Cola Tokai Classic on the Japan Golf Tour in September. Known on Tour for his fitness and fashion, Villegas was named “Most Ripped Player on Tour” on a list that included Tiger Woods, in the June 2006 issue of Golf Digest and People magazine named him one of the world's hottest bachelors.

Calcavecchia earned his 13th-career PGA Tour victory with the win at Naples and the first since the 2005 Bell Canadian Open. He has six top-10 finishes in 2007, with a scoring average of 70.58 for the year. He was a member of four U.S. Ryder Cup teams (1987, 1989, 1991, 2002) and has won 24 professional events since 1982. Calcavecchia was a first‑team All‑SEC selection for Florida in 1980 and is the highest-grossing Gator of all-time, hauling in more than $22 million in over 26 years as a professional.

http://gatorzone.com/story.php?id=13109&sport=golfm&html=golf/men/news/20071210104100.html

Picking the perfect Golf Course for your outing

If you were to planning a golf event for a large corporate outing, what do you look for in a golf course?

Below is a brief list of things that I think would be inportant. Please give your input as to what carries a lot of weight and what doesn't.

Conference center availability
Experience in large golf event management
Maximum/minimum participants required
Golf course rental fees
Amount of rental golf sets, rental golf clubs, or golf club rentals available

These are just a few off the top of my head. Please add some that may be more applicable!!

Thanks,

Trevor
http://www.golfrentalandsales.com/

GolfRentalAndSales.com Press Release

New Club Rental Service Offers Suplemental Help to Golf Courses

ATLANTA , GA. – International Golf Rental & Sales Incorporated (IGRS, Inc) announced today that it is expanding to serve all of the United States. Low inventory is not longer a worry for golf courses around the country. This innovative service allows golf courses to reach out to their IGRS rental partner to help supplement their large corporate outing and tournament rental needs, without the hassle of committing to a major inventory investment.

The new service was formed in early 2006 after noticing the huge dilemma that golf courses and corporations faced when putting on large golf outings and tournaments. The company’s founder noticed that many golf courses normally only needed a limited amount of rental clubs and didn’t have to make a major investment in new clubs each year. Only when abnormally large outings came to their course was there a need for extra equipment.

“We don’t try to replace a golf course’s rental inventory, we only try to help supplement it when large outings put a strain on their supply,” says Trevor McCandless, President of IGRS, Inc. “With our extensive inventory, partnering golf courses never have to turn away large outings or scramble to find sets from miles around. With one call or email, we can serve all of their rental club needs.”

Golf courses from all around have taken the proactive approach of this service, allowing their clients to choose top of the line golf clubs for their outings. The TPC of Michigan recently rented over 50 sets for one of their larger outings. With IGRS, Inc, they were able to have the clubs shipped directly to their golf course the day before the outing. At the end of the day, the golf clubs were picked back up by IGRS and its carriers.
IGRS, Inc adds top of the line and innovative clubs to their collection everyday. Whether catering to a large golf resort in upstate New York or the local links in your neighborhood, IGRS provides a service that has long been missing in the golf industry.

For consumer information on rental and sales please go to http://www.golfrentalandsales.com/.



Fact Sheet

International Golf Rental & Sales, Inc. (IGRS) was formed in 2006 by Trevor McCandless.

The purpose of the company was to help supplement golf course rental inventories in times of supply strain.

Since its initially launch, IGRS has been able to serve hundreds of clients in the United States.

Each and every golf item that IGRS carries is 100% original. All equipment is either "new" or in "like new" condition. Each item goes through an elaborate process of quality control before it is even posted to be rented by one of IGRS’s members.



FAQ

How do we get the clubs?
Select any available set from our name brand selection. You can rent sets on either a daily or weekend basis. Sets are delivered to your golf course.

How long will it take to receive the clubs after you receive my request?
As soon as we receive your request, we check our inventory to confirm the availability of the item you requested. If available, you will receive your item on the date specified. If the item is not available, we will contact you. We encourage you to place orders 2 to 5 days before the rental date, but understand the nature of business travelers and accommodate last minute orders.

Who is charged for item rental?Item rental, shipping and insurance fees can be charged to either the golf course or the corporate client. Charges occur on the date an item is delivered.

Do I have to pay to have them picked up when I am finished?
For each item ordered, there is a round-trip shipping fee of $19.95.

What if the item we're renting becomes dirty or breaks?We hope you care for our items as if you were borrowing them from a friend, and that you'll return the item in much the same way you received it. We understand that there will be some everyday "wear and tear" and there is no additional fee assessed in these instances. However, if the item is abused, broken beyond everyday "wear and tear" or lost, your account will be charged a reasonable repair or replacement fee. Some items, however, are not easily replaceable and a fee, up to full retail value, may be charged.

What if we want to keep the clubs?
If you fall in love with a club you have rented and want to buy it, we may give you a chance to buy it. If you have a club you are interested in purchasing, email us at info@golfrentalandsales.com, and we will consider the sale. Several factors will be considered to determine a price for this item including age of the item, condition and/or limited availability in the marketplace. Not all items are available for purchase. If you agree to our price, it will be billed to your credit card on file for your convenience.