Yes, Donald, you’ve been well and truly trumped by Parsinen

Thursday 7 July 2011

DONALD Trump's luxuriant thatch may be endangered this week if the American tycoon gets a sight of the Barclays Scottish Open, which is being staged at Castle Stuart.

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Alan Campbell

Superlatives are likely to be thrust on the Moray Firth venue, while Trump’s controversial course some 100 miles away on the Menie Estate remains a work in progress.

If Trump isn’t tearing his hair out, he should be. Castle Stuart only opened for business on July 13, 2009, yet less than two years later it is staging a major European Tour event. One that features Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and six of the top 10 players in the world rankings.

With Sky and the BBC both televising the tournament, it will receive world-wide exposure. Money couldn’t buy the favourable publicity Castle Stuart is almost certain to attract this week, whereas the headlines have gone in the opposite direction for Trump’s course near Balmedie in Aberdeenshire.It may yet be the world-beater that he is trumpeting, but it has been preceded by bombast and bitterness.Contrast this -- and more and more people are -- with the way Mark Parsinen, the man responsible for Castle Stuart, has gone about his business. Tact and diplomacy are his calling cards, and when he constructs a course he chooses shovels, not the bulldozer. He has already been largely responsible for the exquisite Kingsbarns course near St Andrews, before selling his 50% share to help fund the project that became Castle Stuart.Aged 62, he is three years younger than his fellow-American Trump, but other than a shared passport and a desire to build great golf courses the two have almost nothing in common. Their paths crossed, with some acrimony, when Parsinen inadvertently raised The Donald’s hackles.Finding a suitable stretch of links land for the post-Kingsbarns project was proving difficult and Parsinen looked at some 20 sites in Scotland before settling upon Castle Stuart. One of these was the Menie Estate, and some years later Parsinen recounted the tale to a journalist, pointing out that the land Trump subsequently acquired hadn’t ticked all his boxes.“My wife and I took a trip from Aberdeen up the coast,” he now recalls. “We were just walking for a few days on the properties that looked interesting, farmland basically. At the time I didn’t know part of it was Menie Estate. We were only on it for 15-20 minutes.“I remember telling the journalist that although it was beautiful it wasn’t for me because of the topography. Donald Trump was offended when this appeared in the press. He began to take it very personally.“I have an apartment in New York, which is only a block or two from his offices. He had one of his lieutenants ask what I was thinking about saying that. I explained about the topography of links courses, which he didn’t seem to understand.“When I came to Inverness to do this project, I moved into a farmhouse on the site and didn’t go home to California for two and a half years. I think if you add up all the time Donald Trump has been at his golf course it’s probably less than two weeks.”Ouch. And whereas a typical Trump course is renowned for signature holes and man-made water features, Parsinen makes the most of the attributes of the land, moulding the natural contours into the finished product. The result, in tandem with architect Gil Hanse, is a course which has already been awarded overseas destination of the year by an American golf magazine.The opportunity to stage a major event arrived far quicker than Parsinen could have imagined. The Scottish Open contract with Loch Lomond was torn up when the members bought the course last year, and in January it was announced that Castle Stuart had beaten off competition from the Renaissance Club in East Lothian to stage the tournament.The event gives the highland economy a timely boost at a time when the nearby RAF air bases and Fort George are under threat of closure. “The fact that it is happening this year is a bit surprising to us but, gosh, when somebody asks you to do it, you do it,” says Parsinen.The American has already had R&A chief executive Peter Dawson on the premises. Just to plant a seed, you understand.Asked if he would like to see Castle Stuart stage the Open Championship, Parsinen replies: “What would you think? The times are changing and I wouldn’t see it as an unrealistic dream.”As he points out, he didn’t take the Trump approach and tell Dawson his course deserved the Open. “I just said that if we do a really good job, I’d like to think we’ve earned the R&A’s consideration.”If it ever happens, somebody will have been well and truly trumped.

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Yes, Donald, you’ve been well and truly trumped by Parsinen

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