Foreign firms' drive revitalizes golf clubs.

(From International Herald Tribune (Herald Asahi))

The Asahi Shimbun Japanese golf courses, once the playgrounds of the filthy rich, have been gobbled up by foreign firms and rebuilt as leisure facilities available to the general public

The top owner of Japanese golf courses is now a group led by U.S. securities giant Goldman Sachs, followed by the Lone Star investment fund, also of the United States, according to the trade journal Golf Tokushin and other sources

Goldman Sachs will soon own 110 golf courses, compared with 64 for Lone Star

Just a decade ago, the Nitto Kogyo group, the Tokyu Corp. group and other Japanese operators led the …