GolfCommunityReviews.com had its best year ever in terms of readership in 2009.  Buoyed by a late Christmas present on December 28, when 1,600 Tiger Woods scandal-obsessed readers clicked over from an NBC Sports blog site, we racked up a total of nearly 40,000 “unique” visitors to the site last

Our visitors read nearly 500,000 pages of our original content last year.

year and doubled that in total visits.  The NBC site “Out of Bounds” had referenced our own coverage of l’affair Woods and its potential impact on the upscale Cliffs Communities in the Carolinas.  Woods’ face is all over billboards in the Asheville area, promoting the Cliffs High Carolina project whose course the golfer is designing.

        We were most gratified that our readers accessed nearly a half million pages of our totally original content.  Before the Woods-skewed lofty December figures, the universally great golf-playing months of August and October produced the largest number of visitors, demonstrating that a loop around the course provokes dreams of a permanent home on the course.  January was the worst month for traffic to the site, perhaps because we are all trying to figure out how to pay for holiday presents and when a six-figure investment in a new home is farthest from our thoughts.  November, for similar reasons perhaps, produced the second-lowest readership, when strategies on how to pay for a vacation or permanent golf home give way to strategies for how to pay for those upcoming gifts.

        These are ambiguous times for those considering a home on the course.  Prices for southern golf homes are at their lowest in over a decade, but so too is the value of the home we must sell before we

I am working with couples from CT, CA and MI attracted by the low prices for southern U.S. golf properties.

can move to that dream home on the course.  Currently, I am working actively with couples from Connecticut, California, Michigan and elsewhere who understand there may be no better time than now to consider a move.  In some cases, their primary homes’ values are 50% less than what they were at peak; in a few cases, their homes are worth less than they paid.  But they know this is a great time to look at properties in the southern U.S.  And it doesn’t cost anything to look.

        Contact me and we can begin to look together and build a plan for you, even if a move is years away.  There is never a fee or obligation for my services.

        Happy New Year and best wishes,

 

Larry Gavrich

Founder & Editor

        The following golf course review of West Palm Beach Golf Club was filed by Elliot deBear, a devoted reader of GolfCommunityReviews.com and frequent golf traveler.  Yesterday we posted Elliot's golf course review of a newly renovated par 3 in Palm Beach.  We thank him for his thoughts and photographs.

 

by Elliot deBear

        On a recent visit to Palm Beach Florida, I played the new/old West Palm Beach Municipal Golf Course.  The course was originally opened in 1947 and designed by Dick Wilson, his first solo project.  It is a classic Florida track that had seen better days since Arnold Palmer won the last PGA tour event held at the course, The West Palm Beach Open in 1959.

        Mark McCumber, a past PGA pro and architect, was brought in to rebuild the course early in 2009. Working with old photos and Wilson’s original course drawings, McCumber set out to duplicate the original plan and look.  He put in new fairways and new Tiff-Eagle greens.  Out went 50 years ofWestPalmclubhouse overgrown scrub areas, Brazilian pepper plants and Australian pines, and in came new oaks, pines and palm trees.  McCumber also enlarged the white sand waste bunkers that frame every hole and snake their way throughout the entire layout.  They serve as a substitute in terms of eye appeal for the lack of any water bodies around the course and, somewhat, as a distraction from Interstate 95 adjacent to the club.

        While the course, which reopened in November, is wide open, significant winds whip through the layout and can cause wood and mid-iron shots to move 20 yards off target.  The new fairways are terrific and have a turf feel; the greens are smooth and roll true.  The course is easy to get to from I-95 (only a couple of minutes) and, at $37 to $45 per round, is a good deal.  From the tips, the layout plays to 7,002 yards, but with the winds it is better to play from the blues at 6,506; the course plays longer than that.

        When Arnold Palmer helped reopen the course on November 16th, hitting the ceremonial initial drive down the first fairway, he said, “it really does have the look of an old style Florida course.”  I agree; West Palm Beach Golf Club really does have the style of a ‘50s throwback.  Even the scorecards are printed in a sepia brown color. 

         There are certainly better and more beautiful tracks to play in and around Palm Beach, but it was fun to peg it up on a nice piece of history.

 

Note to our readers:  Happy New Year one and all!

WestPalmWasteBunker

Waste bunkers thread their way throughout West Palm Beach Golf Club.

photos by Elliot deBear