The Barrhead Golf Club will celebrate 35 years of being in its current location just southwest of town with a fundraising tournament this Saturday, May 25.
The 18-hole tournament will begin at 1 p.m. The entry fee is $100 per person.
General manager/head pro Danny Grant said the Barrhead Golf Club was originally established in 1966, but the actual course was originally located where the Paddle River Golf Course is today.
The impetus for moving the Barrhead Golf Club was that the club members wanted to play on an 18-hole course, said Grant. Also, the original location used to be all sand greens.
“It wasn’t feasible at the time to convert to grass greens,” he added.
This is backed up by the May 1, 1984 edition of the Barrhead Leader, which carried a story on the grand opening of the new Barrhead Golf Club three days earlier.
The story quoted club treasurer Nancy Gurevitch, who said they wanted to move the course because the members were “tired of putting in dirty sand.”
Grant noted that the Barrhead Golf Club has always been considered as a not-for-profit society, which means any money it generates is put back back into the course.
Because this is a not-for-profit, however, that means golf club members had to do a lot of door-knocking after construction began in the fall of 1981 in order to pay for the project.
Gurevitch is quoted in the Leader as saying the construction of the course cost $270,000, while the clubhouse cost another $400,000. Notably, that would only provide for a “shell” of a building with a basement and no inside walls.
The not-for-profit society was aided by contributions from the Town and County of Barrhead, as well as numerous fundraisers, donations and some personal loans.
Volunteer labour was used to do much of the work out at the course, Grant indicated.
While there were undoubtedly many people who were involved in the project, most credit judge Ed McCallum for getting the ball rolling.
Grant noted that McCallum wrote nearly 200 letters to obtain equipment and money for the project.
He also apparently helped out with the physical labour and saved the volunteers money by handling much of the legal work associated with the construction.
When asked how the course has changed over its 35-year history, Grant said, “I’ve been here 15 years and … every year something evolves at the golf course, whether it be the campground or whether it be the maturing of the golf course.
“You know, trees that were knee high back when it opened are now towering. I always hear the old stories about that,” he added.
Besides the fact that the clubhouse is no longer the shell it started out as, the members have also modernized the local 25-stall campground.
“It was modernized … in the last few years. It was just sort of a rustic cutout at one time, with no power or anything like that,” he said, noting the stalls now have power and a complimentary fire pit.
There’s nothing particularly special planned for the anniversary tournament, although it will surely bring out many older members of the golf club as well as present-day members.
“Our winters are so long people are just anxious to get out and play golf,” Grant said.
About 90 players are signed up so far and there’s room for several dozen more, as the course tops out at about 144.
“That pretty much fills the golf course,” he said.
As noted earlier, this is a fundraising tournament, and the proceeds from the tournament will be going towards some roofing work that is needed at the clubhouse.
Anyone wishing to enter may call the Barrhead Golf Club at (780) 674-3053 for more details.
