If joining the PGA Tour’s network of TPC courses isn’t enough for you, now you have the chance to be an owner. The super-plush TPC Jasna Polana in Princeton, N.J., is for sale, and the owners are taking bids on the 222-acre former estate of a Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical heir. Gary Player was commissioned to build a private course on the grounds surrounding a 53,000-square-foot mansion owned by J. Seward and Barbara Johnson. The mansion was converted into a clubhouse but retains the 17th- and 18th-century stone mantels and other features the Johnsons personally selected from sites across Europe, which means that even though the facility was built in the 1970s, there’s no McMansion feel.
Player’s design, which opened in 1998, is known more for its conditioning and views than the brawniness of its holes. The seniors competed there in the Instinet Classic from 2000-02, but since then it has mostly been the home for high-dollar corporate hospitality befitting the $75,000 initiation fee. Player would call it “the finest course of its type” in the world, but that might not be enough to save the property—which is assessed at $31 million across three parcels—from being converted into an expensive subdivision. The commercial real estate brokers listing the club say 75 homesites could be developed where the course sits under current zoning rules, and more than 2,500 could go in if a new owner was successful in getting the zoning changed.
The 222-acre property is assessed at $31 million. Photograph by Getty Images/Dick Durrance II.
This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
