Friday, March 23, 2007
Israel's Sacred Golf Course Converts Bomb Craters Into Bunkers
By A. Craig Copetas
March 22 (Bloomberg) -- It's a soft 3-iron shot between miracles along the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus of Nazareth walked on water and New York-based Americas Partners LLP General Partner Joseph Bernstein is spending $46 million to build the first 36-hole championship golf course in Israel.
``This is God's proving ground and the most exciting deal I've done in my life,'' Bernstein says of the Galilee Golf Club seaside course atop Mount Arbel. Construction begins after the holy days of Passover and Easter, with celebrated golf architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. sculpting fairways from the ``green pastures'' that inspired the Jewish King David to compose the 23rd Psalm and where the multitudes gathered beneath myrtle trees to hear the Christian savior deliver his Sermon on the Mount.
``It took 10 years to get the Israeli government to approve the deal,'' says Bernstein, whose past real-estate developments include the Crown Building and Americas Tower in Manhattan. ``The project is unique,'' the 58-year-old attorney adds. ``It's like building a golf course on Mount Rushmore, and that doesn't get close to the historical significance of Mount Arbel.''
----------------------------------------------------------------
in re Golf In Isreal . . . I have these scattered observations . . .
Golf itself is sacred, what PG Wodehouse called, if I may paraphrase, "The Noblest Enterprise of Man."
The best golf course I have played this year is The Inn of The Mountain Gods which near Ruidoso, NM, sort of an old Apache Stronghold, and sacred to them. I don't see why we can't play golf in Israel, too.
I have always believed, until the advent of the Antichrist Bush, that Golf soothed the martial tendencies of presidents, and taught them humility.
Again from Wodehouse, an anecdote between The Oldest Living Member of the Club and a young man fallen into the ill-company of lawn bowlers:
When chastised, the young man replied "that bowls is a super game . . . why even when Drake heard the Spanish Armada had been spotted, he said 'We have time for one more game!'"
"If he had played Golf," the Oldest Living Member rejoins, "he never would have gone at all!"
If you see what I mean.
True, it might add a little more hazard to the game than is the norm, but I think the slope factor could be adjusted well enough, and rules "bent-but-not-broken' in order to facilitate the inevitably lengthend break-in-time . . . .
Richmond Golf Club Temporary Rules, 1941
March 22 (Bloomberg) -- It's a soft 3-iron shot between miracles along the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus of Nazareth walked on water and New York-based Americas Partners LLP General Partner Joseph Bernstein is spending $46 million to build the first 36-hole championship golf course in Israel.
``This is God's proving ground and the most exciting deal I've done in my life,'' Bernstein says of the Galilee Golf Club seaside course atop Mount Arbel. Construction begins after the holy days of Passover and Easter, with celebrated golf architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. sculpting fairways from the ``green pastures'' that inspired the Jewish King David to compose the 23rd Psalm and where the multitudes gathered beneath myrtle trees to hear the Christian savior deliver his Sermon on the Mount.
``It took 10 years to get the Israeli government to approve the deal,'' says Bernstein, whose past real-estate developments include the Crown Building and Americas Tower in Manhattan. ``The project is unique,'' the 58-year-old attorney adds. ``It's like building a golf course on Mount Rushmore, and that doesn't get close to the historical significance of Mount Arbel.''
----------------------------------------------------------------
in re Golf In Isreal . . . I have these scattered observations . . .
Golf itself is sacred, what PG Wodehouse called, if I may paraphrase, "The Noblest Enterprise of Man."
The best golf course I have played this year is The Inn of The Mountain Gods which near Ruidoso, NM, sort of an old Apache Stronghold, and sacred to them. I don't see why we can't play golf in Israel, too.
I have always believed, until the advent of the Antichrist Bush, that Golf soothed the martial tendencies of presidents, and taught them humility.
Again from Wodehouse, an anecdote between The Oldest Living Member of the Club and a young man fallen into the ill-company of lawn bowlers:
When chastised, the young man replied "that bowls is a super game . . . why even when Drake heard the Spanish Armada had been spotted, he said 'We have time for one more game!'"
"If he had played Golf," the Oldest Living Member rejoins, "he never would have gone at all!"
If you see what I mean.
True, it might add a little more hazard to the game than is the norm, but I think the slope factor could be adjusted well enough, and rules "bent-but-not-broken' in order to facilitate the inevitably lengthend break-in-time . . . .
Richmond Golf Club Temporary Rules, 1941
