Here's the rest of the story..........
Oops, they did
it again: Walters
Golf officials admit
conditions not as good
as they've long claimed
By Chris Baldwin,
West Coast Bureau Chief
LAS VEGAS (July 5, 2005) - Faced with increasingly vocal golfer complaints and
TravelGolf.com stories detailing the woeful conditions at some Walters Golf-owned
courses, officials from the company are admitting for the first time that everything is far from immaculate at their high-priced Las Vegas tracks.
Walters officials detailed conditioning problems on the greens of their
Desert Pines Golf Club that is touted in its advertising as "The Pinehurst of Las Vegas."
<TABLE cellSpacing=10 cellPadding=0 width=170 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD height=53>
<TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=10 width=150 bgColor=#660066 border=0><TBODY><TR><TD bgColor=#ffffff>•
TravelGolf.com rejected $84,000 deal to shill for Walters
•
Stallion Mountain: The worst, most overpriced course in Las Vegas
•
Industry hypocrites bring down Vegas golf by staying silent on Stallion Mountain scam
•
Vegas hotels continue to recommend Stallion, Desert Pines despite criticism of conditions
•
A fake concierge sham: Las Vegas golf desks serve Walters Golf, not the customer
•
Challenge to Billy Walters and his shills: Tee it up with us and let the truth be told
•
Desert Pines' lack of maps is dangerous and aggravating, says reader
•
Lousy greens ruin day at Desert Pines Golf Club, reader says
•
Another sweetheart deal for Las Vegas' Billy Walters</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
Andy Anderson, Walters Golf's director of business development, e-mailed a customer with this report on Desert Pines on June 24: "FROM TEE TO GREEN THE GOLF COURSE IS PERFECT RIGHT NOW WE ARE STRUGGLING WITH GREENS 1, 2, 3, 6, AND 10 THEY HAVE A FUNGUS THAT IS BEING TREATED DAILY I AM TOLD BY THE SUPERINTENDENT THEY WILL BE BACK TO 100% BY MID JULY"
This follows an admission from Desert Pines Golf Club General Manager Jim Anderson in a letter to the Better Business Bureau of Southern Nevada that the course's greens were "going through a transition period" in mid-April and "They don't look as good as we would like." TravelGolf.com obtained this letter from Jim Kissick, a Kentucky golfer who filed a formal complaint with the Better Business Bureau over Desert Pines' course conditions, prompting Jim Anderson's response letter.
The Andy Anderson e-mail was given to TravelGolf.com by a regular Las Vegas golfer who e-mailed the Walters official inquiring about Desert Pines' fitness for play.
That's twice in the last three months that a prominent Walters Golf official has admitted problems with Desert Pines' greens. This marks a complete departure from Walters Golf's long-held company line that all its courses are in great condition, a sentiment captured by
endorser Jack Sheehan who called Walters'
Stallion Mountain Country Club "a golf course in outstanding condition by even the highest standards."
Stallion Mountain is the course whose substandard conditions were documented in photo galleries taken almost two months apart by TravelGolf.com (
March 23 and
May 13).
Even faced with that overwhelming visual evidence, Walters Golf continued to deny any course condition problems, insisting there was no validity to TravelGolf.com's stories or the flood of reader complaints. Only now Walters officials have come out and said there are problems at Desert Pines in two separate written correspondences.
The about-face seems to mark a sudden shift. Some might even construe it as a new customer-service commitment from Walters Golf. Yet, there are inconsistencies in Walters Golf officials' admissions. Golfers who asked about playing Desert Pines immediately and who suggested they were ready to pay the $165 fees, were not told about any course problems. Instead, they were encouraged to make reservations.
For shortly after Andy Anderson's e-mail describing a fungus on five greens that would not be back to 100 percent until mid July, a golfer called and asked about playing Desert Pines' greens now and was told, "It's in excellent shape,'' by Group Sales Coordinator Judy Lasso.
"They're working on it,'' Lasso continued. "But it's coming along real good. The greens are in good shape."
Lasso was the third Walters official to admit that Desert Pines' required work, though what Andy Anderson described as "fungus" became her "the greens are in good shape."
Then again, Kissick -- the Kentucky golfer who
contacted the Better Business Bureau -- paints a picture that leads you to believe Walters Golf simply did not have a choice but to admit at least a little something.
For Kissick and other golfers who recently played Desert Pines say its greens were that bad.
"We got up to the first green or second green and there wasn't any grass on it,"Kissick said." I'm not kidding. They had overseeded it and put on some of that holding seal on to make sure the seeds didn't blow away and that was it. You were putting on concrete."
Kissick said that Desert Pines' greens were like this throughout the front nine of his mid-April round. After reaching the turn, Kissick and Richardson went to the clubhouse and asked for a refund. A refund was refused, prompting Kissick's dealings with the Better Business Bureau.
As a result of the BBB inquiry, Desert Pines issued the 18-hole rain checks (good for one year) it had originally offered Kissick and Richardson in lieu of a refund. Kissick still feels, however, that a complete refund is warranted considering the shape the greens were in.
Another golfer who played Desert Pines Golf Club in May nearly echoed Kissick's comments on the green.
"Once on the course I was impressed with the fairways,'' Michael Ledet
wrote to TravelGolf.com about Desert Pines. "The grass was rich, thick and well manicured. Divots were mostly filled. The greens, however, were another story. The 'patched' areas looked more like construction zones with poorly fitting bricks of new grass that had been recently set in.
<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=240 align=right border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=20> </TD><TD width=220><TABLE cellSpacing=1 cellPadding=3 width=220 bgColor=#660066 border=0><TBODY><TR vAlign=top><TD width=234 bgColor=#ffffff><A href="http://www.vegasbbb.org/complaint.html"" rel=nofollow>
Southern Nevada BBB
Feel you've been wronged by a golf course in Las Vegas? The Better Business Bureau may be able to help. Submit an online complaint <A href="http://www.vegasbbb.org/complaint_form.html" rel=nofollow>
here or contact the BBB by phone at (702) 320-4500, by fax at (702) 320-4560 or by e-mail at
info@vegasbbb.org. </TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>
"These areas were totally unplayable. The aeration had also been so recent that on many greens it was nearly impossible to get a true roll. On one occasion I watched as my downhill four-foot putt zigzagged towards the hole, its path bouncing from one aeration hole to the next.
"I would estimate about 1/3 of the greens were in good shape, 1/3 were acceptable and 1/3 were unplayable," Ledet continued. "I might expect these kind of conditions at a local municipal course, but not at a resort destination charging $165 and I would almost certainly expect them to warn me of the conditions BEFORE I made the tee time."
In his letter to the Better Business Bureau in response to the agency's inquiry on Kissick's complaint, Desert Pines General Manager Jim Anderson wrote that even though the greens "didn't look as good as we would have liked" they were "putting/rolling fine."
"With the exception of those few greens on the first 9 that had been seeded,'' Jim Anderson continued in his letter, "the majority of the greens are excellent, especially those on the back nine."
The month after this letter, in an e-mail to another golfer, Walters Golf's director of business development, Andy Anderson, named five specific greens at Desert Pines Golf Club that have "a fungus."
Remember, this is the course advertised in Walters Golf literature as being known as "The Pinehurst of Las Vegas." That's
Pinehurst, the course world renowned for its greens.
Of course, Walters Golf still charged its full regular rates for Desert Pines, even as two company officials admitted greens problems. Kissick paid $135 to play it, Ledet put down $165.
Some things apparently never change.
National Golf Editor Tim McDonald contributed to this story.
<!-- -//--->
<!--
--><!--
/images/comments/comment-this.gif --><STYLE type=text/css><!--#readercomments { font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 9px; color: #000000; width: 100%; background-color: #FFFFFF; text-align: left;}#readercomments thead td { font-weight: bold; color: #000000; background-color: #EBE2C0; font-size: 12px; font-style: italic;}#readercomments th { font-weight: bolder; color: #163F80; padding-top: 1px; padding-right: 1px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 5px; background-color: #F5EFD6; font-size: 12px;}#readercomments td { padding-top: 2px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 5px; margin: 2px; font-size: 10px; background-color: #F9F7ED;}#readercomments tfoot td { font-weight: bold; font-size: 14px; padding-top: 5px;}#readercomments a { color: #154179; font-size: 10px;}--></STYLE><SCRIPT language=Javascript> /*** lounches the reply/edit popup*/function reply(replyType, quote, id, urlToSend){ var url = '/addcomments.php?runpath0=comment&runpath1=frontend&runpath2='; if(replyType == 'reply') url = url + 'replypage'; else url = url + 'editpage'; url = url + '"e=' + quote; url = url + '&url=' + urlToSend; url = url + '&id=' + id; newwin = window.open(url, 'commenteditreply'," height=512,width=508,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,copyhistory=no"); newwin.focus(); //openwindowlink(url, 'commenteditreply', 450, 500);} </SCRIPT><TABLE id=readercomments><THEAD><TR><TD colSpan=3>Readers Tee Off</TD></TR></THEAD><TBODY><TR><TD align=right colSpan=3>
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--
-->
called Glenda. And she told me she's has someone looking into it, re: a block of tee offs for the Fri Morning. She asked me if i could get a # for her re: how many are serious on playing. I told her 12 was my guess?
ffice
></o
