The staff and crew at the Melville Golf & Country Club is praising the community for the clean up efforts of volunteers this May long weekend.

A rainstorm, that brought freezing temperatures pounded the east-central Saskatchewan region last Thursday night into Friday morning littering the 18-hole golf club with busted trees and branches. Superintendent Carson Dennis said the forecast was originally very welcomed but the drop in degrees was not.

“Honestly, I was excited for the moisture, I think everybody in the province needed it,” he said to Golf Saskatchewan. “I didn’t expect to see what I saw when I got here.”

Trees and branches were scattered all over the course, so a call was put out to the community of just over 4,000 people from Proshop Manager Greg Sastaunik. The result was over 50 people, 14 trucks, eight trailers and countless chainsaws. Dennis said the response was incredible but expected.

“We put the word out to see who could come,” he added. “This is not a one off, anytime we need volunteers they are here but this one is even more special.”

Dennis is in his ninth year at the Melville course, the facility was heavily damaged in a flood in his second year. He said this latest storm was the messiest he has seen the grounds. He praised the membership and attendees for taking their time when they likely had their own concerns with their own properties or homes.

“On a long weekend, the turn out was unbelievable. To see how many people gave up a day of their long weekend to come out here after I’m sure they cleaned their own yards and put in a lot of work at their own home, everyone in town was affected by the storm. It was really special to see everyone come out,” he beamed.

Dennis said there are still a few spots on the course that needs to be tidied up, but the club is ready to welcome golfers again.

Elk Ridge Resort is back to welcoming guests at the northern Saskatchewan facility.

Golf Saskatchewan was invited to the ownerships’ Media Day on May 17 to see the upgrades, take in the gorgeous 27-hole golf course plus enjoy a dinner in the restaurant and spend a night in the lodge.

Director of Operations Ryan Danberg and Head Golf Professional Ryan Wells spoke with media during the day highlighting the newly-purchased property.

Tributes are pouring in across social media this week following the passing of longtime golf professional Bob Pollock.

Pollock was a gifted athlete growing up in Tisdale before relocating to Moose Jaw for work. In 1971 he moved to Swift Current and became the golf professional at Elmwood Golf Course where he held that position for over 20 years. Longtime Elmwood employee Dick Dunlop met Pollock that same year and has been a close friend since. He said Pollock was a huge supporter of junior golf and what is and has taken place over the last half a century in the city and southwest.

“He was very active in the golf profession,” Dunlop told Golf Saskatchewan. “A lot of the kids, like Sheldon (Reinhart) and my son worked for him. Sheldon went up the ranks and all this sort of stuff. Bob was very strong in junior golf; he admired Jeff Chambers and what he’s doing with the juniors. Over the last five or six years when we talked he was always mentioning the junior program. I don’t think a day went by where he didn’t stop by for a coffee in the proshop.”

He also built and became part-owner of the Ross Creek Par 3 Golf Course in Medicine Hat, Alberta. Dunlop added that Pollock’s legacy will live on in the entire area.

“He was very supportive of Elmwood, he headed to Cypress Hills where him and Sharon had a cabin and he was very supportive of golf out there. If you talk to anyone in the area regarding the Cypress Hills Golf Course Bob was there everyday if he wasn’t here at Elmwood,” Dunlop said.

Pollock was 76. You can see his obituary here.

There are big things happening at the Rosetown Golf Club.

Officially opened in 1916 the course has been at its present location since the 1970’s. A large irrigation project was undertaken in the 1990’s and the clubhouse was constructed in 2010 but since then not many significant upgrades have been made to facility, until now.

In 2019 the board met with several golf course design consultants including Dan Philcox and Trevor Dormer and developed a ‘master plan’ for the future of the course. Ryan Wickett is a born and raised Rosetown resident who has played at the course since his junior days. He is now the president of the golf club. He said phase one of their upgrades is complete.

“We looked at a whole bunch of different proposals but what made sense to us was to create two brand new holes on the west end of our property, we had some space down there,” he said. “We created a new par four and a new par three and while we were doing that we dug out a 1.2-million-gallon pond and redid one of our existing par threes. Last year we were down to eight holes but hopefully by mid-June when these greens come around we will be at 11 holes. We used a lot of the dirt that we extracted from the pond to shape this new par four and make sure our drainage is where it needed to be.”

Wickett said the reasoning behind 11 holes is that in future years the course will still have nine in play while upgrading the others. Redoing more holes and constructing a practice green are part of the plans at the club. Wickett added that the course is an important facility for the town and west-central region.

“We want this to be the place in the community that the young people go, the seniors go, the young professionals go hang out. We’ve got our clubhouse in a really good spot this year. The whole community is rallying around it, we’ve had really good financial support from the rural municipalities and businesses. We’ve seen a big uptake with the clubhouse renovations this year already as well,” Wicket explained.

Another positive sign from the Rosetown course is the junior golfers. The club did have a community coach working with younger golfers in the past but that individual has since moved from the town so Golf Saskatchewan’s Manager of Sport Development Steve Ryde is coaching once a week at the club.

“We were looking for someone to run a junior camp for us and Steve has knocked it out of the park,” Wickett beamed. “He’s done an awesome job and he’s really growing the game.”

Ryde travels to Rosetown on Mondays to run the instruction with a couple local volunteers assisting.

Overall Wickett is pleased with the progress at the course. The club will continue to fundraise and phase in upgrades over the next 10 to 12 years. He said with busy weekly leagues and several tournaments planned for the season big things are in the future.

“We’re shooting for the future here and we’ve got a good, strong group that is in it for the long haul. It is a big project and a big endeavor that we’re doing here but we’re trying to get all parts involved and the junior golf is part of that. We feel we have a lot of momentum in Rosetown right now,” Wickett concluded.

Golf administrators from across Saskatchewan had a chance to meet, and converse virtually with members of the government’s Business Response Team (BRT) on Friday morning.

The BRT is the group designated to outline Saskatchewan’s re-open plan since the COVID-19 pandemic started last March.

Course operators on the Zoom call asked for clarification on shotgun start formats, restaurant numbers and rules, the future plans for the loosening of restrictions this summer and more.

If you missed the session you can view it below.

The Royal Regina Golf Club (RRGC) has a new general manager. Born-and-raised Reginan Ryan Pollock was announced as the replacement for Brian Dueck this week.

Pollock, 41, has been involved with all sports through out his life in the Queen City and has a Kinesiology degree from the University of Regina with specialization in sports and recreation administration. He started his working career in the Alberta Junior Hockey League where he learned all sides of the sports management platform.

“I ran our sales and marketing, prepped for game days, I did all our social media and website, you wear so many different hats at that level. It was my first opportunity to put those skills to use, learn some different methods and some different ways of going about a lot of things essentially learning to run an organization or a business,” he said to Golf Saskatchewan.

After a five-year stint in Alberta Pollock returned home to Regina taking on a position with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, a tenure he would have for nine years in several roles. He said the decision to chase the head job at the Royal was a strenuous choice.

“I was really motivated and excited to apply and investigate it a little bit,” Pollock explained. “I put my name forward and went through the process and through the process I got more enamored by the way things were operating. The process was so smooth and well communicated that it made me feel so comfortable and confident in being able to make the decision. It’s an opportunity for me to put a lot of things I’ve learned to use.”

Pollock was a member at the RRGC for five years, so he understands the mystique of the “home of golf” in the province. He said the correlation between the legendary status of the Riders in Saskatchewan and the century-plus history of the Royal there are similarities between the two iconic institutions.

“There are definitely some natural connections there,” he added. “I’m a big brand person, I believe in everything we do and conduct ourselves as leaders in the club is all about representing that Royal brand. It’s an exciting chance and I’m looking forward to being an integral part of it.”

Pollock will begin the job on June 1.

Golf courses across Saskatchewan are seeking some assistance from Mother Nature in the form of moisture to spruce up their facility during a busy start.

Down in Estevan at TS&M Woodlawn Golf Club the dry conditions are some of the worst superintendent Bob Currie has seen in his 15 years at the course. The club has produced a promotional video asking golfers to “do your part, take care of your cart” to help the grounds crew keep the course intact.

“We’ve talked about this for some years about the amount of cart traffic that happens,” Currie said. “Now that golf is so popular courses are very busy and we are very low on water. That takes away a lot of the tools away from me to manage some of the traffic that happens. We’re basically just trying to not go backwards in forms of establishing turf.”

Currie said a common mistake made by golfers, likely not by fault is spreading out the usage with carts.

“This probably sounds kind of funny to a lot of people but drive on the best-looking grass you can find,” he explained. “It’s the strongest, it can handle the traffic where the stuff that’s already tired can’t handle a lot more.”

Currie encouraged walkers on the course to have the same mindset, if an area looks troubled due to lack of moisture avoid the location if possible.

The spring golf season is now complete for Kade Johnson and Roman Timmerman.

The pair competed in the 2021 Men’s NCAA Division II Midwest/Central Regionals from May 6 to 8 at the Shoal Creek Golf Club in Kansas City, Missouri.

Johnson, the Great American Conference Player of the Year finished his final college event in a tie for 63rd at 19-over par. The Yorkton product started with an 81 in round one followed by scores of 73 and 78.

Timmerman, a junior who will return to Southern Arkansas University for his senior season next year finished regionals in a tie for 17th place. The Saskatoon student-athlete carded back-to-back rounds of 71 before closing with a 75 to finish plus-4.

Timmerman also earned All-GAC Second Team honours this season.

The Saskatchewan duo became the first players in the Mulerider program since they entered the NCAA in 1996 to compete in multiple postseason tournaments.

It is news the membership of Weyburn Golf Club (WGC) has been waiting to hear. The course announced last week on their Facebook page that they will install a Rainbird irrigation system on the front nine holes this year.

Club Vice-President Marshall Bakken has been playing the WGC for a couple decades and been on the board for four years. He said the news that the club will go ahead with the first phase of the renovations is very exciting.

“This has been talked about for probably 15 years,” he told Golf Saskatchewan. “For the membership base this has been smoke and mirrors, talked about, talked about with nothing really happening. This was one of my goals in joining the board was to get this project off the ground and finally get it to happen.”

The project is expected to take about 40 days and will see the work done in August and September with a couple of holes being affected at a time during the construction. The new system will include HDPE pipe with approximately 300 sprinkler heads on the front nine of the course.

The club was busy last year and saw a revenue increase that allowed them to save some money for the project however the WGC still needed a loan. The membership needed to vote on borrowing the funds but was passed unanimously at their annual general meeting in March. Bakken said the excitement is evident and the course will see benefits for decades.

“We’ve been so dry down here the last couple years, with last year how busy golf was and our irrigation system giving us issues the last five to 10 years, especially the last few we’ve put a lot of man hours in to fixing it. With the dry conditions you lose green fee players and members because they do not want to play a course that is dried out. I think financially this is really going to help. Having constant irrigation on the course is going to be huge for our membership and green fee players,” he said.

There are several courses to play in the Weyburn area including TS&M Woodlawn in Estevan, Golf Kenosee, Whitebear First Nation, and Avonlea’s Long Creek. Bakken said he’d like to see a day where the WGC can be compared to Woodlawn again in the future.

“I compare us to Woodlawn and that course is in great shape since they’ve done their renovation in 2011 with a new irrigation system for Bob (Currie, superintendent) to utilize. You jst see the improvements they make there year after year and at the end of the day their membership has grown substantially because of that. I’d love to say in 10 years we’re comparable to Woodlawn for sure,” Bakken added.

The cost of the entire 18-hole irrigation system is estimated at $1 million which is why the board and membership decided to bite off a smaller chunk. The key now is to work this season raising funds. Bakken said they will sell the sprinkler heads and provide recognition on the course plus a tiered system of sponsorship that will be displayed in the clubhouse.

The goal is to have the whole course redone with a pumphouse in the next three to five years.

Kidsport is an organization that allows children to get into sports even though there could be financial barriers.

May has been designated by the Government of Saskatchewan as “Kidsport Month.”

“Sport and recreation play such an important role in the health and well-being for children and youth,” Parks, Culture and Sport Minister Laura Ross said in a news release. “Participation in sport at a young age teaches life skills that will help our children in all aspects of life and has positive effects on both their mental and physical development. Thank you to KidSport for allowing children in our province to participate by assisting with financial barriers.”

Golf programming falls under the mandate of the Kidsport funding program. The organization won’t fund tournament entry fees or golf camps, but lessons and equipment purchases are eligible.

For more information on applying to Kidsport for funding, confidently of course can be found here.

In 2020, even with COVID-19 restrictions and the different look of many organized sports, KidSport Saskatchewan granted $656,050 to assist 3,751 children and youth in province to get off the sidelines and into the game. That’s in addition to the over $13 million raised and more than 150,000 kids helped since KidSport in Saskatchewan started in 1995.

“We’re grateful for the continued support of our partners, sponsors, donors and volunteers who help us to eliminate the financial barriers associated with participation in organized sport,” said Jerry Shoemaker, Provincial KidSport Committee Chair. “By giving kids the chance to experience the power of sport, we are providing them with the opportunities to learn skills and lessons that can help them throughout their lives.”