THE Orchard Golf and Country Club is, by my reckoning, one of the most undervalued golf clubs in the country.
The shares, which once hit a heady P3 million during the height of the golf boom in the 1990s, were trading at less than P100,000 last year but have recovered slightly to just under twice that, as per the web page of club share broker G&W Clubshares.
I was in a meeting with Nilo Famy of the Orchard when he lamented that the club was tremendously undervalued. Based on assets alone, the club was worth easily a million pesos per share at book value.
This is remarkable, because the Orchard is one of the most progressive clubs in the country. It’s home to two of the best golf courses in the Philippines, and is one of the most profitable clubs in the land.
It’s one with a social conscience, too. One of the great initiatives of The Orchard is its devotion to preserving and enhancing the environment. It’s all the trend to spearhead environmental programs these days but The Orchard has been at it for years. It has expanded many of the lakes and streams and has built new catch basins, in an effort to quarantine enough water to make the club less reliant on ground water in the dry season. It has increased the acreage of the club’s environmental-sensitive areas, in an effort increase the habitat range of the area’s indigenous fauna.
The club’s regulars are witnesses to increases of sightings of an increasing number of bird species, snakes and monitor lizards as a result. In 2015 the club was recognized for its efforts when it won the Asia-Pacific Golf Group’s Custodian of the Environment Award. This award is presented annually to a deserving club in recognition of its effort to maintain a balanced and sustainable environment on a golf course. The Orchard has also been a recipient of a certificate of recognition from Zero Carbon Resorts, a European non-governmental organizations, for its continuing effort to lower the carbon footprint of the Philippines’s tourism sector.
The Orchard is one of the most junior-friendly in the country. It has adopted a resolution that grants the members’ grandchildren playing privileges at the club. The club also offers juniors what amounts to associate membership for just a thousand pesos. It holds regular clinics for juniors and never fail to host several tournaments a year for the golfers of the future. Juniors are not second-class citizens here. They are encouraged and nurtured. The hugely successful Superal clan is its most famous junior exponents.
The Palmer and Player courses are consistently regarded as two of the best golf courses in the country. The Palmer Course played host to the world’s best golfers, when it was chosen as the site of the 1995 Johnny Walker Championships. That field had more star power in it than most Professional Golfers’ Associtaion tournaments outside of the Majors.
The two courses are markedly different; the Palmer was designed as a classic Parkland track, while the Player was envisioned as an inland links layout. The Orchard’s management subsequently accentuated that difference by planting different grasses on either courses’ greens; the Palmer’s greens are covered with tifeagle, a micro-Bermuda that tolerates our weather very well, while the Players are planted with Seashore 2000, a variety of paspalum that was specifically bred for greens’ surfaces. This presents golfers with two distinct greens that must be approached differently for optimum results. They are a wonderful challenge for both members and their guests, especially when the Founders Cup, the club’s annual member-guest tournament and one of the largest such tournaments in the country, rolls around.
Both golf courses are always in superb condition; a wonder since the Orchard hardly ever closes its golf courses for maintenance. Because of this and the reputation of the club for being an excellent tournament venue, the club plays host to hundreds of outside golf tournaments a year. They are heavy contributors to the club’s bottom line.
Kudos, therefore, go to the club’s management. President Conrad Benitez leads the club with his passion for the game. He is an avid golfer who plays at the Orchard twice a week. Like everyone else, he must text for a tee time with his golf buddies. No special favors here. Benitez has been recognized for his leadership in the golf industry. He was recently named to the list of the most powerful men in golf by Asian Golf Monthly and continues to work actively in the industry serving on the boards of the Federation of Golf Clubs, as well as the National Golf Association of the Philippines.
The club’s general manager, Rene Garrovillo, gets the bulk of the credit for how well the Orchard is run. After leaving a career in banking, Garrovillo took the reins at the Orchard and the club has been all the better for it. He’s brought in good people with the right attitudes, and all of them working together have made the club what it is today.
It is, therefore, unfathomable why The Orchard’s share values continue to languish. I purchased my share for less than a hundred thousand pesos. It was such a good deal, I had to pinch myself. I couldn’t be happier with the investment. In the last year, the club has accepted over 150 new members, and more aspiring members are posted on the bulletin boards around the club each month.
Given all that and the fact that the club’s shares are trading for a fraction of the club’s assets, it’s easy to see why The Orchard Golf and Country Club is the best value in Philippine golf. If you’re looking for a golf club to call home, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better club than this. Best to hurry, though. The share values have climbed steadily in the last year. The cat might just be out of the bag and someday soon, the club will no longer be the value leader it is today.
Image credits: Mike Besa