The Monterey Peninsula, home of the famous Pebble Beach Golf Links and its resort properties, is set to see another golf resort development as a result of a $25.2 million sale of a hotel site at Bayonet and Black Horse, a 36-hole golf facility in Seaside, California, to SKDG Capital.
The transaction closed this month as Kiran C. Patel, a Tampa, Florida, physician, founder of medical schools and philanthropist, took possession of an 81-acre site long envisioned for a 330-room hotel and townhouses. Troon Golf of Scottsdale, Arizona, will manage the golf facilities as well as food and beverage, golf course agronomy, and sales and marketing for the two championship courses, the company confirmed in a press release.
“We’re very excited,” said Pat Jones, director of golf at Bayonet and Black Horse, adding that renovation of Black Horse into an easier, tourist friendly layout is on the drawing board. Major champion and architect Tom Watson has walked the courses in recent weeks to survey potential changes, but Jones said Watson has not been contracted. Bayonet is also expected to see some changes in turf.
Watson designed, along with the late Sandy Tatum and Robert Trent Jones Jr., the Links at Spanish Bay in the 1980s for the Pebble Beach Co., operator of the famed eponymous course, Spyglass Hill, and the recently opened Tiger Woods-designed par-3 course called The Hay in memory of longtime Pebble Beach pro, the late Peter Hay.
The two courses were built by the Army at Fort Ord – Bayonet in 1954, named for the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, and Black Horse in 1964, named for the 11th Cavalry Regiment. Both have been considered tough layouts, with Bayonet playing host to the PGA Tour Qualifying School over the years, and as the site of the PGA Professional National Championship in 2012 and 2018 and the Senior PGA Professional National Championship in 2015.
Known for its narrow playing corridors lined with oak and cypress trees, steep, penal bunkering and concrete greens, Bayonet has long been considered the most difficult test of golf on the Monterey Peninsula, and led many aspiring pros to reconsider their careers. Fresh cement at the 18th tee once was etched with what could be considered last words: “Here lies the body of a PGA Tour qualifier.”
The par-72, 7,104-yard course has retained its famous bite even after a 2008 renovation by architect Gene Bates, who improved the course’s playability and strategic options.
With captivating views of the Monterey Bay, Black Horse’s 7,024 yard, par 72 layout has rolling, fescue-framed fairways, bunkers with distinctive, serrated edges and contoured greens.
When the 7th Division of the Army was moved to Fort Lewis, Washington, as part of base closures in the early 1990s, the golf courses were sold for $11 million to the City of Seaside, which leased the operations to BSL Golf of Houston, Texas. BSL made major renovations and irrigation improvements, but relinquished its operations and abandoned development plans to the city in 2005 to settle a legal dispute. The city then sold the hotel site and entered into an agreement for operations to Seaside Resort Development Group of Tucson, Arizona, for about $20 million.
Headed by Donald R. Diamond and Richard Fitzgerald, the new ownership made new plans for a hotel, but the area formerly a driving range above the course parking lot and clubhouse languished as a sand pit. The property has stunning views of Monterey Bay on clear days. Diamond, who developed large residential subdivisions around Tucson and was the benefactor of a medical center there, died in March 2019 at the age of 91.
In the same vein as Diamond, Dr. Patel is a major philanthropist and community leader. A cardiologist, he has founded medical schools and clinics that bear his name in Tampa and India. He is also a major contributor to the University of South Florida.
Patel began buying health care companies in the ’90s, acquiring a struggling Medicaid provider called WellCare, which he sold in 2002 for more than $100 million.
“From earning $3,000 a month in my first practice to $100 million, I can say I have achieved a true American dream,” he said in a speech at the University of South Florida. He noted that his success was buying properties and enterprises laden with debt and turning them around.
“Bayonet and Black Horse, and the former military base they were built on, have an incredible history in the Bay Area,” Patel said in a release. “We are thrilled to be partnering with Troon…to enhance and improve the golf experience at these two iconic golf courses, while concurrently developing a new hotel on the property.”
The city of Seaside continues to own the golf course acreage and receives about $200,000 a year in lease revenues. In addition, luxury residential lots are being developed and sold on the golf course by Shea Homes, with prices about $1.9 million.
With special reporting by Alex Hulanicki in Monterey.
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