New York Times: Tiger Woods-designed golf course in Asheville stuck between success and failure; construction on hold until at least summer

The New York Times has a long piece on the Tiger Woods saga, and how it has affected his golf course design business. His project east of Asheville, in the Swannanoa Valley, is a mountaintop golf course at The Cliffs at High Carolina. A snippet:

Now, two and a half years later, no dirt has been moved at Punta Brava and Mr. Woods has not visited in some time. His two other designs, in Dubai and near Asheville, N.C., are also troubled; the Dubai course, according to people familiar with the project, has been shelved permanently. The desert sands have started to reclaim the strips of green from the six holes that have been completed. The Asheville project is searching for new financing, and construction has halted until at least this summer. In the nearly five years since Tiger Woods Design was founded, none of the courses have been completed.

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There is evidence, too, that all three developments significantly overestimated the prices they could charge for surrounding real estate, with lavish mansions in Dubai and homes at Punta Brava priced as high as $12 million.

The tarnishing of Mr. Woods’s image has presumably hurt as well. Its impact is harder to quantify, though it probably has been more of a factor for the Cliffs, which based its initial sales pitch as much on Mr. Woods’s personality and reputation as on his athletic accomplishments. Jim Anthony, the project’s founder, does not even play golf. He likes to fish and take long walks with his pedometer ticking off the miles. His vision of the Cliffs was to sell the communities based on a lifestyle of health and wellness and a family-friendly image.