Inverness, Streamsong, & 27 More

Morning folks,

Inverness sold nine days ago for $1,550 a player, the most anyone has paid for a round there in our records, and another threesome is already back on the board at $909. Move on it today: twenty-five of the twenty-nine lots this week end tonight. The Streamsong lot is the other one to look at. It's a single foursome good for the Red, the Blue or the Black rather than three separate auctions, and at $250 a player it's under the $300 an identical lot brought last week.

The Tape

Current Bid and Course Average show the whole-lot total with the per-golfer figure beneath.

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Course Spotlight

Inverness Club (INVR)

Inverness is the club that first let the outsider in the front door. Going into the 1920 U.S. Open, tournament professionals were tradesmen as far as most clubs were concerned, changing their shoes in the parking lot and eating somewhere other than the dining room. Inverness invited the whole field inside instead, to use the lockers and sit down with the members. The players thanked them for it by passing the hat and buying the club a cathedral chime clock. It still stands in the clubhouse, inscribed “God measures men by what they are / Not what in wealth possess. / This vibrant message chimes afar / The voice of Inverness.” The course they played is Donald Ross's, one of only seven of his own that Ross thought worth writing about in his book. George Fazio rerouted four holes of it for the 1979 Open, and Andrew Green has since rebuilt them from Ross's original drawings.

A century later it's still a club you can get into for a day, provided you're willing to pay for it. Ten rounds have sold here, anywhere from $100 to $1,550 a player, and the average across all ten is $925. Tuesday's threesome is already at $909 with a full night of bidding still to come, so it clears that average before the close and keeps going. Expect this one to get expensive.

Market Insight

Six lots on the board sit at exactly $750, which is where the bidding opened and where it has stayed. That's the shape of the whole week: seventeen of the twenty-nine lots have never sold at auction before, so there's no history to check them against and nothing much from the room either. Nights like this get decided in the last hour, so the unknowns are worth a look right at the close.

• Biggest value: The Pelican Golf Club is running -48% vs its $481/player average.
• Running hottest: Kingsley Club at -1% vs its $874/player average.
• Total money on the table this week: $28,303 in current bids.

Results

How last week’s board landed. Previous Average is what the course had been fetching going into this auction, so the sale being measured is not in its own baseline, and Difference is the gap between the two. Every money column shows the whole-lot total with the per-golfer figure beneath.