STRAIGHT DOWN THE MIDDLE

Contributing writer
Gary Larrabee

Three years ago, after 43 issues, economic factors forced North Shore Golf magazine to shut down. It’s been missed.

Now, Lynn-based Essex Media Group and publisher Ted Grant have come to the rescue. North Shore Golf magazine is alive once more to deliver all the best local golf coverage to everyone from Winthrop to Salisbury, from Haverhill to Winchester.

At the front of this inaugural issue, editor Bill Brotherton shares with you what the mission of the reborn North Shore Golf magazine is all about. From this column each issue, you’ll get my perspective on the North Shore golf scene and beyond, focusing on the people and their involvement with the game; something I’ve had the privilege of doing through various media vehicles for the past 45 years.

I’d like to make this column as interactive as you wish it to be. Simply let me know what you think about what I’ve written and, please, fire off suggestions for future columns. I just might share it with readers. In fact, if the response merits it, I would like to use space in my column each issue to print your views. Contact me at gary@garylarrabee.com and we’ll be on our way.

Much has happened in North Shore golfdom in the past three years. The biggest news, of course, was the announcement from the United States Golf Association and Salem Country Club that the revered Peabody club would be hosting the United States Senior Open in 2017, the club’s sixth USGA championship spanning 85 years. This event is expected to draw 100,000 fans to Salem CC and provide more than $20 million in economic impact to the area. We’re just nine months away from the 38th annual national championship for golfers age 50 and older, set for June 26 to July 2. General Chairman Bill Sheehan and Executive Director Eddie Carbone have the club in excellent position to serve as the hub of the golf universe for a special week next summer.

Golf courses, public and private, have shut down throughout the country due to over-saturation caused in large part by the Tiger Woods boom. We had not lost a single layout over this 5 – to 10-year stretch – until now. Bill Flynn’s Lakeview golf course, a nine-hole executive course in Wenham that opened in the 1930s, will be shutting down at the end of the year.

It was sold by the Flynn family for more than $2 million to a local developer who will build luxury condos on the Main Street (Route 1A) site. Perhaps the adjacent Wenham Country Club, an 18-hole semi-private operation, will benefit. The Flynn golf empire includes the highly successful Far Corner 27-hole course in West Boxford and the 18-hole public Windham Country Club just over the border in New Hampshire.

This is a marvelous time to bring North Shore Golf back to life. Here are a few examples:

• The aforementioned 2017 United States Senior Open at Salem.
• The emergence of terrific young players, such as Boston College junior Katie Barrand of Beverly and Myopia; Stephen Dilisio of Swampscott and Salem CC, a freshman at Duke; the Turner brothers from Gloucester and Bass Rocks, Mark (a junior at St. John’s Prep and recent participant at the USGA Junior Amateur) and James (recently Prep graduate and recently-crowned New England Amateur champion); and Charlie May of Topsfield, Ferncroft and Elon College in North Carolina, who played in the 116th United States Amateur at Oakland Hills in Michigan.
• The ever-growing appreciation for the impact the late Danvers resident Bill Flynn had on the game in these parts and beyond, as evidenced by his being inducted into the Massachusetts Golf Hall of Fame in October and being honored both by the New England PGA and the PGA of America organizations this fall as their 2016 Deacon Palmer Award recipient, named for Arnold’s father.
• The departures this year of pros Bill Safrin from Myopia after 37 years, Toby Ahern from Ferncroft after 25 years, Tom and Jean Waters from Essex CC after 23 years and the retirement after a half-century in the business of Lynn native Paul Barkhouse (Woburn CC).

So here we go with the new North Shore Golf magazine. Tell us what you want us to write about, to take photos of, to feature in print and on the website. Let me know what you think of this column; what I can do to make it better.

It’s great to be back.