Season’s Greetings!

I hope you are enjoying the holiday season. It is a time of gratitude, and we are thankful for the continued support and spirit you bring to Champlain Country Club.

On behalf of the board of directors, I want to thank you for being a member (or a guest) at Champlain Country Club. We are truly blessed to have the best membership around. This was a tough year for all of us with Covid-19 being a constant part of all of our lives, but it was a nice reprieve to see everyone enjoying the golf course. We all look forward to 2021, and the hope that we can finally return to normal.

Despite all of the restrictions, and outside tournaments that were canceled, our course experienced the busiest season we have ever had. Daily greens fees and cart rentals were well above previous years. As a result, daily cart rentals were almost double what we saw in 2019 causing us to frequently run out of carts. The board was able to purchase six additional carts to add to the fleet to not only ease the wear and tear on our existing fleet, but these carts will also allow us to depend less on renting outside carts during tournaments. We also continue to retire old maintenance equipment and replace it with new equipment, ensuring that our crew has the right tools to maintain the course to the standards to which we have become accustomed. The board is committed to budgeting funds to continue modernizing our maintenance fleet.

The board’s continued efforts to control costs have allowed us to only slightly raise the dues for the 2021 season. We decided to increase the Chits from $50.00 to $75.00 to support the restaurant. On that note,  we are pleased to announce that we have a new restaurant operator, Jennifer Burnor, who operates Fiddler’s Green Mountain Catering. She will be running the restaurant this upcoming season. The Restaurant Committee was impressed by Jennifer’s vision and enthusiasm. I will ask Jen to introduce herself in the next newsletter in order to share some of her ideas with you. I want to take the opportunity to thank Mike and his staff for providing us with great service and food for the past several seasons; it is no doubt a major reason why the club continues to see our membership grow. We have discussed putting together a fundraiser in the spring to renovate the member’s lounge to make it a nice place once again for our members to gather.

2021 is going to be an exciting year at the club, along with our returning members, we have several new faces to welcome and exciting things happening.

  • Chris Saylor and his crew are working on several projects to enhance the course. The monies raised at this year’s Tin Cup will be used to renovate our bunkers.
  • New software, called ForeUP, is being implemented which will allow members and guests to book tee times online, make payments online, and will help us build member profiles to ensure we have the right products available in the shop.

Thank you all for supporting the Club. Have a safe and enjoyable holiday season; let’s all hope this is a quick, easy Winter!

Chris Caster
Champlain Country Club, Board President