FROM THE NEWSROOM

Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday
sinks popular Internet golf forum

New joint venture with On the Green Magazine puts kibosh on popular online hangout

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. (June 3, 2003) - Forgive Art Stipo for waxing nostalgic. The Delaware resident and longtime Grand Strand visitor spent the last two years developing a loyal, online following at On the Green Magazine's Myrtle Beach Golf reader forum. On the morning of June 1, Stipo and hundreds of forum members awoke to discover their beloved cyber world was crumbling around them.

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"One of the conditions for us to make the On The Green/Golf Holiday joint venture happen was that this forum had to go," said Woodward in the post. "Forum members have a nasty habit of writing about whatever they want, naming names, and writing about non-Golf-Holiday subjects. To be fair some of the Golf Holiday members actually like the forum. It's like being able to spy on what actual golfers think. It doesn't matter -- it's over."

Not so fast.

Stipo and Brian Noblin, golf director at Myrtle Beach Golf Desk, are rebuilding the forum using the same Delphi supported engine. Noblin has been heavily involved with the forum in the past year, chiming in about course conditions, pace of play, and other Grand Strand golf essentials. For Stipo, relocating the forum was a no-brainer. After all, he'd seen it happen many times in the past.

"The forum actually started at golfonline.com about four years ago," Stipo said. "Then Bill (Woodward) started a Myrtle Beach forum at coolboards.com, but coolboards folded after about year. Since I knew how to use Delphi, I recommended to Bill that he move the forum there with the link from the OTG Web site."

The notion that Golf Holiday could snuff out a user-driven forum is amusing to Stipo.

"They (Golf Holiday) thought that if they dropped the forum it would disappear," Stipo said. "That obviously isn't the case. Now there may be an even greater element of free speech that we have no ties to the powers that be."

Noblin, who is heading up the move to a new location on Delphi, said getting the word out won't be an issue.

"We've had 180 members register, 60 guests, and 3,872 page views in first 24 hours at the new forum," he said. "They choose to take away a key tool in trip planning and the dissemination of information and it's their loss."

Golf Holiday officials don't see it that way. Bill Golden, Golf Holiday's director of marketing, says the non-profit organization has a responsibility to its members to ensure accuracy at a Web site it has a vested interest in.

"Those things (reader forums) are really good," said Golden. "We don't want to discourage active dialog about the beach. But at the end of the day, we have to look out for our members. There are people who make anonymous, negative posts and it is impossible to gauge what their motives are. But we are completely supportive of the fact that the forum has emerged somewhere else."

"I think the OTG forum closing is simply Golf Holiday performing a hostile takeover," said Tom Aliff, a veteran forum member from Baltimore, Md. "The forum has been 99.9 percent good for Myrtle Beach golf with some rare but usually much needed negativity, which is generated by poor course, hotel or staff issues. It's a real shame that Golf Holiday has the power they do to take away something so important to so many people."

Stipo couldn't agree more. The diehard duffer has been visiting the Grand Strand for 25 years and said he is becoming increasingly disenfranchised with Golf Holiday's modus operandi.

"Golf Holiday ordering OTG to shut the forum down is hostile, especially considering that we are a pro Myrtle Beach Forum," Stipo said. "It has helped Myrtle Beach overall far more than any negative comments."

While Woodward and Golden won't point to any specific comments that led to the decision to shut the forum down, sources close to MyrtleBeachGolf.com indicate a series of negative posts about the Caledonia Golf and Fish Club and a member hotel property set the wheels in motion.

"They didn't want negative comments about their member hotels and member courses and I can understand that," says Noblin. "But the majority of these posts were truthful. People plan these trips (to Myrtle Beach) up to a year ahead of time and they need as much information as they can get, good or bad."

Contrary to recent rumors, Golf Holiday did not purchase ownership in Himmelsbach Communications or OTG Magazine. According to Golden, the joint venture simply entails including the latest edition of the editorially driven OTG Magazine in mass mailings of Golf Holiday's voluminous golf guide.