Interesting to hear through the grapevine that Ontario and Quebec-based golf giant ClubLink Corp., now under the control of real estate mogul Rai Sahi, has apparently parted company with a couple of key executives.
Longtime turf and course development vice-president Jim [photopress:blair.jpg,full,alignright]Molenhuis, as well as member services VP (and former Fairmont director of golf) Murray Blair, are both history. Blair only joined the company in 2005, coming over to address some concerns about member issues. By all accounts he’d done an admirable job. Maybe Molenhuis worked himself out of a job, especially since the company seems unlikely to be developing new projects in the near future.
I have no idea what the circumstances are beyond perhaps Sahi putting his own stamp on the company. Interesting to add that Ryan Beauchamp, the super at ClubLink flagship Glen Abbey, has also departed. He’d been a driving factor in the improvement of course conditioning at the Abbey.
I’ve put out some inquiries and will report back on what I hear.
A bestselling author and award-winning columnist, Robert Thompson has been writing about business and sports, and particularly golf, for almost two decades. His reporting and commentary on golf has appeared in 
The structure that Clublink is milking members for will not last. Anyone that can drop $70-80K for a membership has seldom accepted being treated like a door mat and for the record, this is the ONLY area of my life I get treated this way (never been married).
I was lead to believe that I own the right to play top rated courses and that is the reality BUT with a caveat – they forgot to mention – only as a last result AFTER they are unable to ram another tournament through.
So here is the deal, buy an asset, pay for its upkeep and get to use it when a group of day renters aren’t chewing it up – then get a song and dance around why you have to drive to Huntsville to get the t-time you want.
Oh, by the way, the money that is generated on the asset you are to have access to and don’t – you get none of it!
Sounds fare to me – how long do these morons think it will be before someone gets so pissed that they register a domain name like “clublinksucks.com and .ca” and begins to get a nice little collective communication site going and maybe perhaps set a general meeting with a few lawyer members who are also fed up (do the legals for free) , mix in some guys that are sick of this garbage and who knows what may happen…..hmm….publicly traded company…hmmm.
I was to have a little fireside chat with Mr. Blair last year and have made 5 calls to “Member Services” this year and heard nothing back – perhaps a meeting with Mr. Blair may be in order to uncover the ways to unhook myself from this disease – where can I find him?