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.