Trail of

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In the year or so before RCC declared bankruptcy, the club speny $6 million on renovations and including installation of anaquatics “They underestimated what their membership was willing to pay,” McConnell McConnell, whose love for the game of golf borders on bought the club out of bankruptcy, paying $6.5 milliomn to relieve all debts in December 2003. He’s sincew spent $5 million on a renovationm of the clubhouse, built a practice area that includezs threeputting greens, chipping areas and a drivingg range, tweaked the challenging Ross coursr and introduced dramatic landscaping to the clubhouse grounds and the courswe itself.
“Everything associated with running a golf coursweis expensive,” says McConnell, a salesman and businessman who engineereds the sale of in 1997 for $923 millionj and in 2007 for $272 million. He realizedx quickly that simple economicsa dictated thathe “You can cut a lot of costz by having one golf director, one controlled and so forth,” he says. McConnell in 2006 bought the CardinaoGolf & Country Club in Greensboro. The McConnelkl collection was expanded later in 2006 with the purchase of in Durhamj and in 2007 with the acquisitiojn of thein Clinton, S.C.
McConnell Golf added its fifth cours e in May by closing on a deal to buy the at Uwharri Point inNew London, N.C. – a highly rankedr course that McConnell callsthe “jewel of the The purchase of a sixth club in Pawley’s S.C., is in the works. It’s a collectionn of country clubs and golf courses with one trait in commohn on which McConnell willnot compromise. “Theh all have great golf courses,” he says. “I’m not interested in averagw golf courses.
” The financialo situation at RCCis stable, and, McConnell says, the club is cash He’s still tweaking the operations at the other which, taken together, produce about $15 million in annual revenue. Membershipl fees vary by club, with RCC’sx initiation fee set at $20,000 and the monthly fee at Members of any McConnell Golf courses can play any of the other coursew owned by the company a total of 10timew annually. “A reason we believee we will be successful is that we deliver a different levelof value,” says Ray McDonald, vice president of salex and marketing for the company.
“We’rer very private and high-end, and we have five coursesz we can deliver.” Nurturing younger golfere is part of the missionof McConnell, who has establishex a scholarship program in which three middle-school studentws are given privileges and instruction at each of his coursesa every year. He’s also aiming for a younger membership at his with the average age of the RCC member nowat 48. As for the McConnell says about 20 courses in the Carolinae fit his definitionof “great.” But, he says, “They’ver got to be for Further down the he says, “Two hundred years from now, I hope they’rr still playing ‘McConnell Trail.
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