When it is the middle of January in Connecticut and the ground is covered with snow, I will likely think back to the past week in the Dominican Republic and a dream vacation with my wife, son and daughter and their significant others. We tried our first "all-inclusive" resort vacation -- at Secrets Cap Cana near Punta Cana -- and, for the most part, it really is as advertised, which is to say relaxing and entertaining given that swarms of staff really do everything to make you as comfortable as possible. And you don't have to ever dip into your pocket for a tip, unless you want to.  (We experienced some incidents of extreme service and felt the need.)  Okay, the food doesn't quite rate four chef's hats but the drinks were all from the top shelf and well made, especially if you make friends with any of the dozens of friendly and entertaining bartenders who tend to their craft at inside and outside locations, by the pools and on the beach. (Some of my family members seemed quite taken with a drink called a Dirty Monkey which tasted to me like an alcoholic chocolate milk.)
        There was plenty to do on site, including a smallish but professionally outfitted fitness center, organized activities like beach volleyball and baseball, and a horseshoe pit and bocce court, although urban lovers of bocce will find it strange to throw the balls on the soft sand rather than roll them on a legitimate bocce surface, but no one seemed to care. Some might complain about the two feet wide stretch of seaweed -- actually more like sea kelp -- that washes up onto the beach and also bounces around in the first few feet of water before you step into a clear blue (warm) sea. We thought the seaweed issue was much ado about nothing.  All in all, though, this is a great way to pack away all your cares and woes for a week.
        The three golf courses we played ranged from fun to more fun to tons of fun with relentlessly drop-dead gorgeous views of the ocean and cliffs. I'll let the photos below speak for themselves, except for some brief notes that follow.

La Cana Golf Club

This was a great layout for a warmup round since water was fairly easy to circumvent on the first nine, the Hacienda course, but was both a visual and hazardous presence on the Arrecife nine, especially the last few holes along the ocean. (We did not play the Tortuga nine, which seems to have the strongest presence of sand and a couple of holes with close views of the ocean.). We noted that greens on all the golf courses we played were not cut for speed in fear that the hot summer sun would wreck havoc on the grass. So they were much slower than they would be in season, in winter. Some of the ocean views showed the bluest water I have ever seen this side of a Disney cartoon.
The water just off La Cana Golf Club in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic, was the bluest I had ever seen.
Designer P.B. Dye echoes his famous golf architect father's use of bulkheads at La Cana Golf Club

Corales Golf Club

Corales has scored a major coup by landing a PGA tour event next March, the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship. As you leave the airport in Punta Cana, you pass a billboard promoting the event and featuring a huge photo of PGA star Jim Furyk. The Tom Fazio-designed Corales should be a worthy test of the pros' shotmaking abilities, given the championship tees are set at 7,670 yards and sand and water hazards abound. The ocean views from the three finishing holes, as at La Cana, showed unnaturally blue and green waters. TV coverage of the first PGA Tour event in the Dominican Republic should be a lot of fun to watch.

You know you are likely to have a good day on the golf course when you see something like this just before tee time at Corales Golf Club in Punta Cana.

Even the holes at Corales that don't abut the ocean still manage to get your attention.

The finishing hole at Corales, a par 4, is played over the deep blue sea and then to a smallish green perched above the cliff. It should be fun to watch the PGA competitors finish their rounds there next March.

Punta Espada

We saved the best for last with a goodbye round at Jack Nicklaus' Punta Espada, rated by most followers of Caribbean golf as the best in the islands. I believe it as the course doesn't come close to having a clunker of a hole and it is drop dead beautiful from the first tee to the 18th green (especially the 18th green, which is perched over the brilliant blue waters on the ocean below). Indeed, eight holes play along the ocean and few others are within site, the golf course sitting pretty much above the water at most points. The final three holes may be the most visual anywhere this side of the Irish and Scottish coasts, with the ocean directly behind the long par 3 16th and beside the 17th and 18th, two par 4s that will test your patience and ability to negotiate the fickle ocean breezes. Punta Espada is expensive but I would say worth every penny. And, what the heck, you'll be on vacation. However, if you want to stay forever, most homes are priced above $1 million.

In one view, Jack Nicklaus captures every element -- sand, sea, palm trees -- that exemplify Caribbean golf.
An almost-finished second 18 at Punta Espada is called Iguana, although we saw a few on the finished 18.
The finishing hole at Punta Espada demands a perfectly gauged and struck tee shot over the water and then a deft approach shot to the green (far right in photo)

        I suppose we might have David Letterman’s widely regarded and oft-quoted “Top 10 Lists” to blame for the profusion of “best of” lists. But at least Letterman’s lists were funny. There is nothing funny about Where to Retire magazine’s annual “50 Best Master-Planned Communities in the U.S.” issue.
        In this year’s July/August edition, the magazine’s editor, Annette Fuller, writes that the issue is “guaranteed to bring you many fruitful hours of contemplation.” My minutes of contemplation included checking Where to Retire’s top 50 choices against the paid ads inside the same issue. Marketing to potential buyers certainly doesn’t disqualify a community from a designation of excellence, but it does call into question how the magazine goes about choosing its Top 50.

No Science Involved
        At least Where to Retire makes no claim of science behind its selections; they simply say they were the editors’ choices. (No doubt the advertising director had some input.) And the only apparent research done on the communities was after they were chosen, when a Where to Retire senior writer “spoke with residents at each of our 50 winning communities [and] heard a lot of glowing reports.” Duh. Consider if the mainstream media announced that it checked with its sources only after it published an important story. (Consider also if a resident did not present a “glowing report” to Where to Retire; would it have made the publication?)
        You might say that, like the Letterman lists, no one takes the Where to Retire rankings too seriously. But that is not so. The magazine’s circulation is around 200,000, and it is sold in bookstores, like Barnes & Noble, and by subscription to thousands of couples in search of a retirement community. Unwary and trusting readers could very well look at Where to Retire’s helpful cost of living chart that compares cities across the country and conclude that the rest of magazine is objective. It isn’t, at least not in the July/August issue.
        Many deserving high-quality communities do not make the Top 50 list in Where to Retire; I won’t list even a few of them here because, well, that would be employing my own biases. Suffice to say that of the Top 50 communities listed in the July/August edition, I counted a couple dozen who advertised in that very issue, and others I recognized from past issues. My advice may be free –- contact me if you are searching for a golf home –- but at least I do not accept a marketing fee from any communities I recommend.

No Established Communities Considered
        Lacking any objective criteria for its selections, and the obvious large number of worthy communities left off the list, the magazine’s choices are suspect. The editors explain those choices, in a manner of speaking, in a response to a letter from a reader who asks why they don’t “publicize” more communities than those that are “developer owned.”
        “We cover more closely locales where thousands of retirees are going,” the editors respond.
        Seriously? That implies retirees don’t buy resale homes by the thousands in the many already developed communities across the country. Developer-owned communities, of course, spend more on marketing to get noticed and to sell their properties. Established communities don’t typically have the discretionary budgets to take out a full-page ad for a few thousand dollars in a retirement magazine. In their response to the letter writer, the Where to Retire editors imply that if thousands of retirees are moving to new communities, then they are not moving to established communities, a notion that is demonstrably false yet may be disorienting to some retirees searching for the best possible community.

Pay to Play
        Where to Retire, which claims to be “The Authority on Retirement Relocation,” could be a guiding light for couples looking for the best place to retire. But true guidance requires objectivity. By promoting almost exclusively in its editorial content the communities that advertise in the magazine, and by ignoring the benefits to retirees of well-established, built-out and financially stable communities, Where to Retire does not live up to its claim of authority.
        A more accurate title for this annual list would be “50 Best Master Planned Communities that Advertise in Our Magazine.”