Tiger Woods has "begun construction on what appears certain to be his first ever completed golf course at Diamante, a high-end real estate enclave in the Mexican resort town of Cabo San Lucas," according to Eamon Lynch of GOLF magazine. Ground was "broken on the course -- to be called ‘El Cardonal,’ the original name of the former ranch on which it sits -- last month and it is expected to open in the spring of '14." The team at Tiger Woods Design recently "made a scouting trip to some courses in Southern California, including Riviera and Los Angeles Country Club." Woods has said that those "classics will influence his work at Diamante." Diamante CEO Ken Jowdy declined to reveal the financial terms of Woods' deal, but said that they are "partially based on sales of the real estate component around the course." Woods had previously signed "three highly publicized course design contracts, but all of those projects ran aground during the global economic collapse." His first U.S. design was “planned at The Cliffs at High Carolina," near Asheville, N.C. That development was announced in ‘07, but Cliffs Communities "went bankrupt and now lists liabilities of up to $500M." Woods in '08 also was involved in a golf course project in Dubai. His most recent project was "slated for a spectacular oceanfront site at Punta Brava, near Ensenada in northwest Mexico." That was announced after the 2008 U.S. Open, but Lehman Brothers three months later "filed for bankruptcy and sank much of the golf real estate industry with it." The Punta Brava project "has been stalled ever since" (GOLF.com, 10/21).
