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So how's this economic recovery working for you?  Yeah.  Me, too.  And it's working just about that well for golf courses all around the country.  Witness the bankruptcy of well-known and highly respected golf resorts like Sea Island and Reynolds Plantation.  So why should anyone be surprised when little known golf courses in out-of-the-way places suffer, too?

I built Hidden Fairways to feature exceptional golf courses in out-of-the-way places, so I suppose that by definition I have chosen at least some at-risk courses.  I mean, if a course has no major population center close at hand, it could well be left out of the party when its clientele begins to consider travel of any distance at all a luxury.  It's important that Hidden Fairways courses provide something very special to continue to draw a survivable amount of play.

And then one gets to the old "chicken or egg" question.  Do course conditions begin to go downhill when fewer golfers show up?  Or do fewer golfers show up when they find course conditions going downhill?  I suspect a case could be made for either.

This Spring has seen some distressing action within the Hidden Fairways family.  Ironwood, as I've written before, is undergoing a change for the better with new owner, Steve McIntosh seeming to get things back on track.  Hopefully, his deal with the previous owner will proceed smoothly and he'll move ahead with his plans.  One of the newest Hidden Fairways courses… RiverWatch, outside Sparta, Tennessee… hasn't fared quite as well.  They shut down for a winter break and haven't reopened as the current owner searches for a buyer.  I sincerely hope one is found.  RiverWatch is a beauty and it would make me very sad to see it vanish.

The toughest blow, though, came this week when I visited one of my favorite courses on the planet.  I was returning from a photo shoot at The Ledges, a wonderful private club outside Huntsville, Alabama and decided to drive thru Rising Fawn, Georgia and stop by Canyon Ridge (pictured above) to visit Doug Amor and take some new pics of the course.  When I called, Doug warned me that the course was not in good shape.  That was a bit of an understatement.  The greens are still excellent, but the tee boxes and fairways are baked out and weedy.  As beautiful as the property is, and as much as I love Rick Robbins' design work, I wouldn't add the course to Hidden Fairways if this were my first impression of it.  As it is, I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping an angel will drop out of the sky and save the day.  The course's financial problems have been going on for a while, but it really does seem as if the owner has simply decided to let it go now.  The course superintendent was let go at the end of last year and given that radical move, the resulting decline is to be expected.  It's my sincere hope that this amazing course becomes the Rocky Balboa of the golf course world, and returns to its championship condition.  We'll see.  I hope to have some better news to report next time I visit Rising Fawn.  In the meantime, I guess I'll just enjoy this wonderful economic recovery.