National Pines is facing an uncertain future.
Details remain foggy, but the celebrated golf course, located in Innisfil near Barrie's border and which has hosted multiple Canadian Tour tournaments and other high-level amateur events, will soon be reaching a fork in the road.
Whether golf will continue to be played on its 100-plus acres remains to be seen. ClubLink, the golf course operator, is nearing the end of its long-term lease and has not indicated whether it plans to renew it.
A call into the King City-based company was not returned, but rumours have swirled around the Canadian golf community for a few years that the property is for sale and that ClubLink will not be renewing its lease.
For what it’s worth, ClubLink walked away from Bond Head, another of its former courses about halfway to Toronto on the west side of Highway 400, a few years ago.
A source recently said National Pines will remain open for play next season, but that nothing is guaranteed beyond 2024.
Adding to the uncertainty is that selling a golf course and turning it into housing or commercial development is not easy, especially one with environmental restrictions such as National Pines.
Canada’s punitive capital gains tax regulations also complicate any potential transaction.
If this is the end for National Pines, it has been quite a run. Though it has since fallen off, National Pines was a fixture on SCOREGolf magazine’s biannual Top 100 ranking when it first opened more than 30 years ago. (Full disclosure: your humble scribbler was an editor at that magazine for about 15 years and still occasionally contributes to it as a freelancer.)
Though he was not the original owner, the late Eugene “Geno” Boccia is credited with establishing National Pines’ presence in the area and growing it such that any discriminating golfer has it on their must-play list.
Boccia passed away in 2009, about five years after he turned the club over to ClubLink to lease. The Boccia family still owns the property.
Jeff Boismier, former National Pines GM, still thinks back positively on his time in Barrie and working for Boccia.
“I remember … we used to say it was 20 to 25 minutes north of Wonderland,” Boismier recalls of the unofficial marketing slogan to attract Toronto golfers that the course would trumpet that took a few liberties on the actual distance between the big city and Barrie.
“But it was the most enjoyable time of my career and Mr. Boccia was a great man to work for ... I loved Barrie, too. It is a great sports town.”
Thomas McBroom designed an imaginative track. During the design phase, he brought legendary ball-striker Moe Norman to the property to hit balls off the dirt before there was even seed in the ground.
“Moe just nailed the ball every time … exactly where we asked him to hit it,” McBroom told me back in 2011 for a story celebrating the club’s 20 anniversary. “The way he hit the ball assisted us on how we laid out the course.”
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was common to have multi-tiered, severe putting surfaces until common sense drifted back into fashion by the turn of the century. National Pines' tough greens and its lack of executive-class clubhouse are likely its only faults.
“I do (wonder) ‘what-if’ … whether we were ever able to put a proper clubhouse in place,” remembers Boismier, “but it’s great property…rolling farmland (typical) of that area.”
Boismier, who left National Pines in 2004 and opened Muskoka Bay near Gravenhurst the following year, retains hope that the course could remain open.
“It was the most enjoyable time of my career, 10 years,” he remembers. “I’d love an opportunity to come back and finish it off, but … it would require putting the right people (to take over).”
Six years ago, National Pines hosted the Ontario Championship, a one-off stop on the Canadian Tour after it hosted back-to-back tournaments on that circuit a decade earlier. It was won by Kramer Hickok, who two years later ascended to the PGA Tour and remains there with many other players from that week, including Chad Ramey, who won a PGA Tour tournament in the Dominican Republic last year.
PGA Tour stalwart Jason Bohn, who now plays on the senior circuit, set a course record (63) while playing in a pro-am at National Pines about 20 years ago, a mark that was broken at the 2007 Canadian Tour Championship by Bryon Smith, who fired a 10-under 62.
Local player Jeff Clarridge is credited with an eight-under 64 from the course’s gold tees. Though he now works as an equities trader, Clarridge grew up and honed his game at “The Pines,” eventually earning a golf scholarship and winning the Toronto Star Amateur.
There are other stories of National Pines helping young golfers from the area, opportunities that could soon fade away.
