A diamond in the rough
Yellowknife Golf Club is the stuff subarctic dreams are made of
Daron Letts
Northern News Services
Published Friday, October 25, 2013
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
In 1948, Yellowknife was a rapidly-growing mining settlement at the dawn of a post-Second-World-War gold boom. Life was hard for these approximately 3,000 pioneers.
Arnold Enge stands at the tee for the 13th hole, with the 12th fairway behind him. Enge designed the course's 1999 expansion. He said he imagines grass-covered fairways, a new clubhouse and conference centre overlooking Long Lake and other potential improvements. - Daron Letts/NNSL photo |
The community at the time was only accessible by plane or boat, electricity and running water were rare, and golfers merely had nine holes on their brand new golf course.
Designed by John Anderson-Thompson and Sandy Scott and built by 50 volunteers, the original Yellowknife Golf Course featured nine sandy fairways and oiled-sand "greens." The fuselage of a crashed DC 3 served as the first clubhouse.
The golf club has come a long way in 65 years.
The annual Midnight Sun Golf Tournament attracted another large crowd of competitors from near and far this year, and the course hosts many corporate team-building events and charitable tournaments to raise funds for a number of local causes each summer.
The club has 35 leased golf carts, 28 seasonal employees, 340 members and climbing, a proper clubhouse and pro shop, and has played host to a long list of celebrities, including professional Canadian golfer Dave Barr and other prominent sports personalities.
The oily greens, which left sticky stains on the pants of golfers for the first 47 years, have since made way for artificial turf greens, skirted in all but three cases by a few metres of natural grass.
The 13th green is being revamped this month as part of an improvement project, $30,000 of which is being funded by a grant from the Department of Industry, Tourism and Investment. Capital City Construction is installing a perimeter fence along the 13th hole and a large boulder has been installed near the entrance gate, on which a plaque will be affixed.
The club incorporated as a not-for-profit co-operative in 1998, then underwent a major million-dollar expansion in 1999, as members vied for tee times on the nine-hole course. Course designer and former club president Arnold Enge scrapped the 8th hole and added 10 new holes to create the course that exists today.
Trees were cleared, sand was dug and spread across the soil to make the fairway, and the Folk on the Rocks site was nudged over by about 30 metres. Tee boxes and a driving range have been built, yard markers installed and formal rules governing the mats from which golfers shot their balls instituted.
"One of the big things that we wanted to do in the last few years, which we've done, is open the club up more to families," said Andy Couvrette, who served as club president from 2005 until earlier this year. "Community involvement more than anything else is the big push we've been trying to make."
Men's and ladies nights have seen increased play, he added.
City councillor and former club board member Cory Vanthuyne, who joined the club in 1982 at age 12, learned about discipline and perseverance on the Yellowknife course. He was taught how to play by the late Ray McDuff, then a Sir John Franklin High School teacher and volunteer golf instructor, and club members Brian Yeo and the late Charlie Cassaway.
"I had a love and passion for the game of golf instantly," Vanthuyne said. "I essentially lived out there in the summers."
Vanthuyne grew up and worked at Con Mine, then in 1994 went back to school to follow his childhood dreams at the Professional Golfers Career College in Temecula, California. He graduated three years later with a business degree, volunteering as an instructor at the golf course between semesters. In the summer of 1996, he was hired as the club's first full-time golf pro, during which he helped established a formal junior program for young golfers. During those two winters he played professionally on the Golden State Tour in California.
Other accomplished young golfers that developed at the club include Cole Marshall, Guy Kennedy Brendan Matthews and Andrew Quirke.
The club continues to focus on developing young players, to ensure the club thrives for many more decades to come. The junior programs held on Monday this past season opened the course up for free to golfers aged 12 and under, including free lessons.
This weekend, the club's new president, Robert Redshaw, and the 10 other members are scheduled to meet with strategic consultant Ali Kincaid to set out the club's priorities for coming years.
"We're looking at it more as running it as a business," Redshaw said. "It's a fairly large business and we have to run it like that and be more serious about how it's organized. What we're doing is setting a basis for our future."
Memorable moments in the history of the Yellowknife Golf Club
* In the late 1940s, CP Rail brought renowned Canadian golf course architect Stanley Thompson, creator of the course at Banff Springs, to Yellowknife to see the new course. According to oral tradition, Thompson described the early course as "very interesting."
* The annual Midnight Classic Golf Tournament began as the Midnight Marathon, during which competitors teed off at midnight and played for as long as they could. In 1970, Sandy Hutchinson made club history by playing 171 holes in 33-and-a-half hours. In the 1980s, the tournament corresponded with Raven Mad Days. Downtown revellers would bus or cab to the golf course after bar close to continue the party alongside the golfers who were scheduled to tee-off until 3 a.m. Local band Northbound Freeway played Hank Williams tunes and other classic covers into the wee hours. A breakfast followed at the club after the last golfers finished sometime around 6 a.m. Awards, which often included airline tickets as prizes, were announced later in the morning.
* Tony Sunderland was the lone golfer on the course between 6 and 6:30 a.m. on June 18, 2004 - the morning a CF-18 fighter jet dropped a live AIM-7 Sparrow missile on the driving range. The 226-kilogram, medium-range weapon, which was equipped with explosives but was safetied, fell approximately 450 metres before skidding across the driving range, smashing into pieces, and coming to rest on the 10th hole. Almost immediately, RCMP ushered staff member Guy Kennedy from the clubhouse and evacuated Sunderland from the fairway, while shutting down Highway 3. Military personnel later exploded what remained of the missile where it lay, leaving a one-metre-diameter crater in the sand. A five-centimetre depression can still be perceived on the 10th hole.
* Black bears visit the course on occasion In 2007, on men's night when the course was cleared in preparation for a shotgun start, a young staff member was picking up balls from the edge of the driving range net while listening to headphones when he almost bumped into a bear. Bystanders jumped in their cars and drove onto the course honking horns to scare the bear off.
Source: Yellowknifer archives, Cory Vanthuyne, Guy Kennedy, Arnold Enge
