#felling his biennial new suit

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NHL Quinn Hughes. Style icon. Norris Trophy winner. 🏆 #NHLAwards

[thisdaynews]

Curse of the Ryder Cup? The iconic venues overlooked on the golfing calendar

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Curse of the Ryder Cup? The iconic venues overlooked on the golfing calendar

Le Golf National was a popular venue for the 2018 Ryder Cup

They stage the biggest golf events in Europe, but what is the long-term legacy for the courses that hold the Ryder Cup? Why do they disappear from relevance soon after being centre of the golfing world?

These are questions worth considering in the week that Le Golf National plays host to the French Open for the first time since the continent’s thumping victory over the United States just over a year ago.

One thing is for sure, this autumnal running of the oldest national Open in continental Europe will not be as grand as the French Opens that preceded the 2018 Ryder Cup.

The tournament has been shifted from a prime position in the schedule at the end of June and is now worth only £1.4m compared with the £5.6m purse that was played for last year.

Swedish stars to host new mixed event

Make no mistake, there will still be significant golf on show. The scramble to keep cards and qualify for the Race to Dubai finale is intensifying.

And the likes of Martin Kaymer, Jose Maria Olazabal, Thomas Bjorn and Jamie Donaldson add some stardust.

But when Alex Noren won 15 months ago he beat a field that included defending champion Tommy Fleetwood, Spanish giants Jon Rahm and Sergio Garcia, US star Justin Thomas and Ryder Cup stalwart Ian Poulter.

This week Bjorn returns to the scene of his team’s tumultuous victory as one of the main playing attractions rather than chief strategist for an extraordinary European triumph.

That 17½-10½ win generated lifelong memories and scenes to inspire future generations. The course – set up perfectly to suit the home team – and the prime location near Paris played huge parts in creating an iconic week for European golf.

But it feels as though Le Golf National may follow so many venues that staged home matches for Europe into relative obscurity. Courses that were once staples on the circuit have faded from significance.

Gleneagles is no longer part of the European Tour

The Belfry hosted the Ryder Cup on four occasions between 1985 and 2002 and whatever you think of the course, which does have its critics, the layout in the English midlands became a big part of the fabric of European golfing history.

But the Brabazon Course has not staged a Tour event since the 2008 British Masters. Celtic Manor in south Wales disappeared from the schedule in 2014, four years after its Ryder Cup.

The K Club, which hosted the 2006 match in County Kildare, was the continuous home of the European Open between 1995 and 2007. It then disappeared from the calendar other than in 2016 when it held the Irish Open.

Gleneagles staged the 2018 European Team Championships and this year’s Solheim Cup but its deal to hold tour events expired the year before putting on the 2014 Ryder Cup.

Only Valderrama (1997 Ryder Cup) in southern Spain has remained a regular stop for the continent’s leading players in the wake of holding one of the biennial jousts between Europe and the US.

So the portents are not good for Le Golf National, especially at a time when the value of the French Open has somewhat diminished.

Initially the French Federation signed a 12-year deal that would have taken them through to 2022 with the tournament being guaranteed to be worth a minimum of 3m euros.

This crashed with the loss of prime sponsor Alstom, but for 2016 the European Tour landed a more lucrative deal with Chinese conglomerate HNA. The five-year agreement worth 25m euros seemed to secure the event’s top-level status.

But that deal fell through leaving this historic tournament no longer able to justify a place in the tour’s elite Rolex Series. So now it sits in this October date, somewhat detached from the limelight it once commanded.

“The change of date is acceptable, the biggest tournaments should have the best dates,” Pascal Grizot, president of France’s 2018 Ryder Cup committee, admitted to L’Equipe last year.

But the official questioned why the European Tour did not do more to support the tournament. “Why didn’t they decide to help the French Open and the federation as we were extremely loyal for the Ryder Cup?” he asked.

The simple answer comes down to money, like with so many other former Ryder Cup venues. There is cash generated to put these places on the map but it disappears once the objective of staging golf’s biggest event has been satisfied.

It could prove a similar story for Le Golf National. According to next year’s schedule the French Open will move back to high summer, but there is no word on which course will stage the tournament nor the size of its purse.

Places that instantly resonate with golf fans everywhere; The Belfry, K Club, Celtic Manor, Gleneagles and now potentially Le Golf National are not just venues that have carved big places in the game’s folklore.

They also provide proof that business reality leaves little room for preserving and nurturing that golfing history.

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[mikemortgage]

5 Happening Cultural Destinations to Visit in 2019

HONG KONG — Hong Kong There’s never really a sleepy year to visit Hong Kong, but 2019 is particularly ripe for visitors. Spearheaded by the dynamic entrepreneur Adrian Cheng of K11 and New World Development, the rejuvenation of Tsim Sha Tsui harbourfront is just the starting point. The city’s iconic harbourside walkway, Avenue of Stars, has just received a much-awaited makeover that’s the brainchild of Cheng and visually conceived by James Corner, the landscape architect responsible for the High Line in New York. It sees the addition of design-driven rest areas, kiosks featuring homegrown brands, hand prints from Asian film stars and interactive digital elements. Featuring Hong Kong’s first wave energy demonstrator that produces electricity for the Avenue, the place is turned into one of the most sustainable promenades in Hong Kong. This is just one part of Cheng and his company’s grander urban revitalisation plan, Victoria Dockside, a new art and design district which will fully open in the third quarter of this year that has been transformed from a go-down terminal, and will include the flagship museum-cum-retail complex K11 MUSEA, luxury residences K11 ARTUS and the already functioning K11 ATELIER modern workplace, as well as the most hotly anticipated global hotel opening of the year, the Rosewood Hong Kong. This urban bolthole will feature a mix of short-stay rooms and suites and long-stay residences, alongside eight F&B outlets and a wellness offering. A little further afield, the long-awaited Herzog & de Meuron-designed M+ building in West Kowloon Cultural District is set to open its doors, and visitors will finally be able to set foot in one of the world’s best museums for modern and contemporary art.

Copenhagen The Danish capital has become a mecca for foodies, but there’s lots happening in Copenhagen this year that isn’t related to gastronomy (unless you have a taste for bamboo). The Copenhagen Zoo will this year welcome a duo of pandas to its custom-built Panda House, a yin-yang shaped enclosure that’s being designed by starchitect Bjarke Ingels, who worked on the newly reopened Noma. He’s also involved in another big-ticket opening across town, an ambitious green project called Copenhill that will be a sustainable waste-to-energy plant, but also include a rooftop artificial ski slope and the world’s tallest climbing wall. Reinvention is truly the name of the game in Copenhagen, where Enigma, a “museum of communication”, will be fully unveiled since its move into a shared post-office space. Originally an archive featuring artefacts like old telephones, it’s now an institution that explores the meaning of digital communication through formats ranging from intellectual debates to robot rentals for kids. Of course, don’t forget to put Noma 2.0 on your list, too.

Sharjah The emirate just 20 minutes from Dubai is hosting the inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial come November through February of 2020, with claims to be “first major platform for architecture and urbanism in the Middle East, North and East Africa, and South and Southeast Asia”. If you can’t wait that long, from 7 March till 10 June the Sharjah Biennial is exploring the theme of producing art in an era of fake news. This month, Sharjah is hosting the IWAS World Games, one of the most important qualifier events in the run-up to the Paralympics. The hospitality scene is also ramping up – recent launches include the stunning luxury conservation project Al Bait and the safari-style eco-lodge Kingfisher Lodge, with two more major new builds set for completion this year: Al Badayer Oasis, situated some 40 minutes from the city centre, is described as a luxury desert adventure, while Fossil Rock Lodge is set in an archaeologically significant area for adventure and exploration.

Berlin The city is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall on November 9, and there will be a plethora of events in the run-up to that date, from historical exhibitions to artistic interpretations and of course, parties that celebrate nothing more than the spirit of freedom since the symbolic structure fell. While the opening Bauhaus Festival was last month, there are plenty of other happenings throughout the year that will celebrate the German university that had such an enduring global influence on art and architecture. The Humboldt Forum is also opening in the reconstructed Berlin Palace right in the heart of the city, and will house the Ethnological Museum of Berlin and the Museum of Asian Art. Touted as the German equivalent of the British Museum, it will be an important addition to Berlin’s already thriving cultural scene, and will focus on showcasing Berlin’s role in the world arena.

Los Angeles The museum on the tip of everyone’s lips this year in L.A will be the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, paying homage to the industry this city is best known for: filmmaking. Pritzker Prize winner Renzo Piano has the honour of designing the structure, which will be unveiled in late 2019, and debut exhibitions will include a retrospective of the work of Hayao Miyazaki, the Japanese filmmaker behind Totoro and Spirited Away. The hotel scene is also hot – the Park Hyatt is landing in DTLA, while Palihotel opened a hotel in Culver City last month and will add a boutique property in hipster Silverlake later this spring. On the food front, mod-Mex maestro and Final Table judge Enrique Olvera, whose restaurant Pujol is number 20 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, is introducing his first West coast restaurant this summer in the Arts District.

Writer: Christina Ko

Hong Kong-based writer and editor Christina has covered the luxury scene for over a decade. She writes on topics ranging from beauty and wellness to arts and culture. Formerly the editorial director of Prestige Hong Kong, she now contributes to various publications including Hong Kong Tatler, SCMP, Discovery and Silverkris, as well as working with clients such as Louis Vuitton, Dior, Estee Lauder and Lane Crawford.

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Chance Communications Karen Liang karen@chancecomm.com

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