Welcome to Alberta,
Swing Through Nature
by Brian Kendall
Fairways framed by distant Rocky Mountain peaks; greens edged by glacier-fed lakes and towering evergreens; tees offering endless vistas of prairie sky.
Whether it’s a business trip to the booming oil capitals of Edmonton and Calgary or a long-awaited mountain vacation that leads you to Alberta, Canada, be certain to take your clubs along for the golf of a lifetime. Alberta offers an almost overwhelming selection of more than 275 golf courses unsurpassed anywhere in the world for natural beauty, diversity and challenge.
|
With so many options, it’s hard to know where to begin. But a popular choice, especially with first-time visitors, is to start in Calgary and then follow a route known as the Alberta Rocky Mountain Circle Tour, stopping at several of Canada’s top-rated courses along the way. The tour winds through the Canadian Rockies with visits to Banff and Jasper before completing a circular return to Calgary via Edmonton and Red Deer.
Calgary, remembered as the site of the 1988 Winter Olympics, has emerged in recent years as a sophisticated metropolis of skyscrapers, corporate head offices, shopping complexes and such popular hotels as the Fairmont Palliser, the Delta Bow Valley and the Delta Airport Hotel.
The first tee-off on the Circle Tour is at The Links of Glen Eagles, a 10-minute drive west of Calgary. Ravines, escarpments, natural grasses and spectacular views of the Bow River Valley and the mountains beyond are integrated into the design of a course Golf Digest rated one of Canada’s three best new layouts of 1999.
Also voted one of Canada’s top new courses by Golf Digest is SilverTip, an hour or so away in the mountains above the town of Canmore, approaching Banff. Opened in 1999, SilverTip has a stunning collection of holes, almost every one offering views of the surrounding peaks. SilverTip, by the way, was named for a rare and beautiful type of grizzly bear.
A short drive past increasingly majestic Rocky Mountain peaks brings the traveller through the gates of Banff National Park to the famous resort town of Banff. Massive mountains bookend Banff’s bustling downtown to the north and south, while surging through the town’s heart is the jade-coloured Bow River. Banff is renowned as the home of the Banff Springs Golf Course. An essential stop for every golfer, the breathtaking valley design is the handiwork of Stanley Thompson, Canada’s most revered golf architect. Opened by the Prince of Wales in 1929, the 27-hole facility features one of the most photographed holes in all of golf, the par-three Devil’s Cauldron, which Thompson set beside an impossibly picturesque glacial lake.
Looming like a fairy-tale castle on the cliffs overlooking the golf course is the Fairmont Banff Springs Hotel, a property that has come to symbolize Canada as surely as a Mountie and Niagara Falls.Many of the hotel’s 770 guest rooms feature panoramic views down both the Bow and Spray River valleys.
Leaving the Banff Springs behind, the Circle Tour follows the Icefields Parkway on a 287-kilometre route that snakes through the heart of the Rockies, past ancient glaciers and countless snow-topped mountains, through three deep river valleys and finally into Jasper National Park, adjoining Banff National Park to the north.
It was at the Jasper Park Golf Course that Stanley Thompson first made his mark. Opened in 1926, his stunningly beautiful layout flows with the natural contours of the land. Thompson startled the golf world by clearing gaps through Jasper’s forest to point golfers toward greens aligned with distant mountains, and by whimsically patterning his bunkers after the snow formations on their peaks.
Adding to the idylic setting is the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge, a woodsy yet luxurious retreat that offers lodgings in 446 chalets, cabins and cottages, all a short stroll from the restaurants, lounges and shopping arcade found in the central lodge.
Perhaps the greatest pleasure of golfing in a national parkland is the rare opportunity to play so close to nature.Few courses in the world rival the Banff Springs and Jasper Park for animal life. Bears, elk, big-horn sheep, mountain goats, wolves, coyotes and eagles are frequently seen at both courses.
The 362-kilometre journey east from Jasper to Edmonton, Alberta’s capital city, is a memorable ride through mountains, foothills, and finally wide open and gently rolling countryside.
About a half-hour west of Edmonton is Cougar Creek, a course nestled in a forest of spruce, birch, poplar and aspen. Cougar Creek presents a championship test in every sense, with water hazards and generous bunkers waiting to snare the errant shots of golfers at almost every hole.
Even closer to Edmonton is The Ranch Golf and Country Club, the site of four Canadian Tour events. The Ranch’s front nine is links-style in design, while the closing holes are more traditional, with tree-lined fairways and numerous water hazards. The par four 18th was voted the toughest hole on the Canadian Tour.
And just minutes from Edmonton’s west end is Blackhawk Golf Club, a spectacularly situated new course due to open in the summer of 2003. Blackhawk, set on the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, features unobstructed river views and plunging elevation changes.
Not far upriver from Blackhawk is the downtown heart of Edmonton, Alberta’s capital city. Edmonton is famous for its natural beauty, friendliness and the incredible West Edmonton Mall, the world’s largest shopping and entertainment centre, with over 800 stores and services, as well as a five-acre indoor waterpark, a casino and an amusement park. Popular Edmonton hotels include the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald and the Delta Edmonton Centre Suite Hotel.
The final leg of the Circle Tour includes a last tee-off in Edmonton before continuing south to Red Deer on the return to Calgary.
Located within Edmonton’s southern limits is the new Jagare Ridge Golf Club. Winding through lovely Whitemud Creek Valley, Jagare Ridge offers a memorable selection of risk-reward holes in landscape ranging from wetlands to old-growth forest. Particularly nasty is the wellbunkered 480-yard par four 16th hole which plays slightly uphill.
Red Deer, an energetic city of 60,000, is located 149 kilometres south of Edmonton, about midway to Calgary. Twenty minutes or so north of Red Deer is Wolf Creek Golf Resort, a 27-hole links-style layout that ranks among Canada’s very best facilities. Enormous waste bunkers, undulating dunes and unmaintained rough make this a worthy test for even low-handicappers. From 1990 to 1999,Wolf Creek hosted the Canadian Tour’s Alberta Open.
In addition to acclaimed Wolf Creek, the Red Deer area offers several more courses to tempt golfers reluctant to end their road trip and make the return to Calgary. There’s Alberta Springs with its stunning log clubhouse; Lacombe’s tree-lined fairways and lightning greens; Pheasantback’s tumbling, links-style layout; Pine Hills’ forested setting; Ponoka’s challenging links; and River Bend’s slick and contoured greens.
Like every stop on Alberta’s fabulous Rocky Mountain Circle Tour, the choice is almost overwhelming.
