Riviera Reporter
Riviera Reporter
THE FRENCH RIVIERA'S ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEWS MAGAZINE
THE FRENCH RIVIERA'S ENGLISH LANGUAGE NEWS MAGAZINE

Golf Fee and Golfy

They sound the same, but what is the difference between Golf Fee and Golfy, both “advantage” cards for golfers? 

Golf Fee Card

Golfy offers two cards that can be used for green fee discounts at 130 courses in 8 countries: the Indigo (€39) gives you 25% off, the Platine (€169) 30%. I paid for the latter, and so the card paid for itself very nicely a few times over. You were also able to collect “yards” on the card the more you played, and these could be transformed into free rounds, or in the case of my mate Steve, into another posh new driver that he can’t hit straight.

Golfy have now lost their foothold in the Alpes-Maritimes and the Var, and the green is clear for Golf Fee to step up to the mark. So what do they offer?

Available through an outfit called Plaisir Golf (www.plaisirgolf.fr) the Golf Fee card currently costs €119 per year, saving €30 on the “normal” price. There are various benefits including reduced fees for lessons from pros who are members of the scheme but the real interest centres around the big discounts offered by “partner” clubs. Golf Fee’s headline offers are as follows:

On the local 18-holers: up to 50% off at Esterel Latitudes and St Maxime, 34% at Biot and 25% at St Donat.

On the local 9-holers: 25% of at Provençal and 20% at Victoria, both “Sophia Satellite” courses.

Regular players on these courses who are not members will soon save back the cost of the card, but only if the discount prices apply to the times and days they usually like to play. So before signing up for Golf Fee go to the clubs you use and see precisely what they are offering, and how long those special prices will last.

Perhaps la crise has forced local courses to look at getting more butts on buggies. We’ll see. I remember realising I was living in a really foreign country a couple of years back when I asked a golf director how he was coping with falling revenue from lower green fee numbers. He replied that he was putting up the price.

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