I write this the day after the U.S. Government announced that fully vaccinated Canadians are welcome to cross our northern borders and begin again, after 18 months, to spend money at American stores, hotels…and golf courses. Golf clubs as far away as Myrtle Beach are celebrating, given the Canadian penchant for starting their golf seasons in February.

The impact of the decision will be even greater in northern New England. During a recent monthlong stay in Vermont, I played more than a half dozen golf courses within an hour of the border. Most of their clubhouses fly Canadian flags alongside Old Glory and accept Canadian dollars. Indeed, the closer you get to the border, the greater the percentage of revenue from Canadian golfers, according to club owners. Ski resort Jay Peak, just five miles from the border and a little over an hour from Montreal, is home to the best golf course of the dozen I have played in Vermont (my review of the course here). The opening of the border just in time for the ski season will be a tremendous boon to revenues at Jay, and come the spring, the 10,000 annual rounds of golf played there in the last two years will likely double. (Look also for a rise in annual membership fees from the current ridiculously low $700 per season for weekday play.)

No one may be happier to see renewed Canadian traffic than the owner of Alburg Golf Links in the town of the same name, an hour east of Jay Peak but also about five miles from the border. I played golf at Alburg in early September (see my review), my second visit there in the past few years, and after the round I chatted with the golf pro who told me the club was for sale, along with 200 adjacent acres of land. (The golf course itself sits on about 225 acres, some with commanding views of Lake Champlain.) A ridge line runs through the attached property where some future homes will look down to the lake. About 1,700 feet of waterfront property is included in the sale.

Lake Champlain is in full view, if not in play, on the first hole at Alburg.

Alburg is 45 minutes from Burlington, VT, and Plattsburgh, NY – both with functional commercial airports – but the most important proximity is Montreal, about an hour away and home to 4.2 million in the metro area. I toured the Alburg property with the real estate agent who has the listing and I saw tremendous potential as a second-home golf community as well as a weekend retreat for some of those 4 million Montrealers. Cabins along parts of the golf course and single-family homes on the adjacent property would be an attractive mix; to a developer’s delight, the town of Alburg does not impose regulations on what you can build on its land and its published planning document almost begs for anything tourist related.

The entire 425-acre property, golf course and adjacent land, is listed for $2.5 million. The only home sits at the property’s highest point, with beautiful views of the golf course and the lake. For the buyer of the entire property, it is available at $495,000; I had a tour of the house and that seems like a more-than-reasonable price.

The only home on the golf course at Alburg LInks has views from its back porch (shown) of Lake Champlain and wraparound views of the golf course.

Yes, the Alburg Golf Links property is remotely located and, yes, the golf season is short, about mid-April to end of October, but with seas rising and threatening the coasts, with wildfires driving people away from the Pacific Northwest and California, with summer temperatures (and the seemingly more intense hurricanes) becoming intolerable for many retirees in Florida, Vermont could very well be the next retirement hot spot in the U.S. Along with your golf clubs and perhaps a boat, bring a warm coat and consider taking up ice fishing. Contact me if you would like more information on Alburg Golf Links.

by Steve Benz

I have been thinking a lot lately about hybrid tees -- “combo tees” as they are often called -- that have become popular at many courses. Combo tees typically use a combination of member tee markers and senior tee markers to produce a total course length under 6,000 yards. The objective is to add practicality to the USGA’s “Play It Forward” initiative. Playing it forward makes the game more enjoyable by playing courses more in line with one’s ability to hit drives and irons a certain distance, regardless of age or physical limitations.

Typically, golf’s traditional tees have been color coded, with men’s member tees usually being white (6,100 - 6,400 yards), blue (6,400 - 6,800 yards) and black (tips) beyond 6,800 yards. Many courses have now added senior tees, often gold colored, at lengths around 5,600 yards. Men’s combo tees are now filling the gap between 5,600 yards and 6,100 yards. In most cases, these combo tees, a mix of white and yellow tees, allow for more holes to be reached on a par 4 with irons rather than fairway woods or long hybrid clubs, as well as shortening par 3s or 5s to more manageable distances. Similarly, women’s tees have traditionally been designated red and typically range from about 5,100 yards to 5,400 yards. Some courses have been adding an additional set of women’s tee markers to bring combo distances closer to 5,000 yards or less.

An interesting trend developing at many courses, particularly in Florida, is to move away from the color-coded tee markers all together and instead designate them by Roman Numerals, largely to reduce men’s gender stigmas from playing the red tees as their age and physical limitations increase. Under such set ups, the back tees become I, blue II, white III, white/yellow IV, yellow V, and red VI. Some courses have also developed a VII, which shortens the traditional red lengths even more to accommodate women with shorter distance capabilities. Although tees continue to be rated separately for men and women, this move from traditional color-coded tees, and adding combo tees, are now making the game more enjoyable for especially those men that have an aversion to teeing off from red markers.

Is your current of future club joining the combo tee initiative, both for men and women? Is the club moving away from traditional color tee markers? Your retirement golf decisions might depend on how the clubs you visit handle this issue. All of us will eventually care about the set up of golf courses if we are able to play golf well into our 80s or even 90s.

Combo tees (whether designated as yellow/white or Roman Numeral IV, for example) can present challenges as to who is eligible to play from those tees, especially in club competitions. Some clubs base competition eligibility on age or a combination of age and handicap (and use handicap index over the last 12 rolling months or the current handicap index). Age alone is perhaps the most inappropriate criteria since it is often not the primary factor in how long one hits a ball or his/her skill level. Age plus handicap is an improvement on using age alone, but selecting the “age plus handicap” total can be misleading. Additionally, with the advent of the World Handicap System, handicap indices change daily and become an administrative challenge to the club golf staff; therefore, staff will institute a cut-off date in advance of an event.

More important, these methods of calculation may act counter to the concept of “playing it forward” or having fun. We all know 60-year-olds who have a handicap of 20 but have lost distance over time. Assuming they play combo tees regularly at their club, the fairest tees for them to play in a competition – and fairest to the rest of the field -- would be the tees they play all the time, the combo tees. Some will say that it does not matter what tees you play in a club event because your index will be adjusted accordingly. But it is far from a perfect adjustment. Consistent use of the same tees, both in casual rounds and club events, is the best criteria to use in an event since the index earned is consistent.

One other alternative is to allow the golfer, regardless of age or skill level, to play in club competitions from the tees they enjoy the most. This typically works well if the golfer plays from those tees regularly and, therefore, develops an index based on those tees. Clubs are now using a minimum percentage of time played from a set of tees to determine eligibility for those tees in competition (over their last 20 rounds on their course…easy to determine from the USGA downloadable app on your phone). This percentage is usually more than 50% and often 75% to prevent gaming or cherry-picking tees depending on the competition format. In the case that the competitor has played some rounds on shorter tees and doesn’t meet the 20-round threshold, the golfer would play from the longest set of tees used in their last 20 rounds on their home course.

This alternative is consistent as it (1) encourages a “move it forward” approach, (2) avoids cherry picking tees for certain events depending on the format, and (3) is consistent with developing an index based on the set of tees you normally play. As most of us know, simply using a course handicap adjustment for tees not normally played can often create anomalies that golfers may use to their advantage in declaring which tees to play in a club competition.

Steve Benz is a member at Shadow Wood Golf Club in Bonita Springs, FL, where he serves as the Handicap Committee Chairman as well as a member of the Golf Committee. He is also a member at Barrington Golf Club in Aurora, OH near his summer home and recently became a member of its Handicap Committee. Retired in 2017, he is “simply an avid golfer who enjoys all aspects of the game.”