November is always a month of reflection for the golf season gone by.
As with most years, I did not play much for a guy so involved in the game. In fact, the number of scores I entered into my handicap tracker was the same as 2023 — 22. My low round was a 73 at Fairmont Banff Springs and my high an 87 at Brantford Golf and Country Club. I’m a 5-handicap and like everyone in that range, I card a wide range of scores.
In addition to that 22, there were a few nine-hole rounds at courses not in Golf Canada’s scoring centre, two scrambles and one outing I’ll detail below. So in all, I got out close to 30 times. One of the most fun days of golf I had was a nine-hole, two-person team game at Stonehenge Golf Club in Bowmanville, Ont. Twenty years ago, I lived near that course and I still enjoy its layout. I return for an annual game with the fellas from my fantasy hockey league. We are surely one of the few leagues that still does an in-person draft. It’s an important tradition because it’s the one time a year some of us see each other in person. I’ve come to enjoy the golf as much as the actual draft, and this year my high-handicap partner and I won with a 3-under 32. He likes to talk about the 10-foot birdie putt he made on the last hole for good measure. I like to remind him about all the other shots.
But as I contemplate my 2024 golf calendar, the day that sticks out the most occurred at Sagebrush near Merritt, B.C. That track was on the top of my list of Canadian courses I wanted to see. Those whose opinions I value equally had provided contrasting verdicts. Some loved it and others thought it too extreme. I needed to see it for myself. That was part of the reason we filmed our Top 100 countdown videos there. I do have some pull around here.
The June day before a colleague and I visited Sagebrush, we were accompanied around the Ridge Course at Kelowna’s Predator Ridge Resort by Richard Zokol. Zokol, the PGA Tour winner whose official title there is golf and real estate specialist, didn’t play due to a nagging injury. Ever the affable host, however, he led us around the layout that Doug Carrick designed, offering insight and lines off tees we mostly missed.
Zokol was both the visionary behind Sagebrush and a co-designer of the course along with Albertan Rod Whitman and American Armen Suny, a brilliant agronomist who was a superintendent and a general manager at some big-time U.S. clubs before turning to architecture. It opened in 2009 with an invite-only membership model akin to places like Redtail in London, Ont., and Goodwood northeast of Toronto. It was poorly timed, given the plunging economy, and the club suffered through several tumultuous years of lawsuits, countersuits, closures and ownership changes. Zokol hasn’t been involved with Sagebrush since 2012, but he’s kept a close eye on it over the years and has played there regularly since it reopened two summers ago. It is now owned by a venture capitalist company led by Vancouver’s Andrew Knott. Zokol’s parting words about Sagebrush to us were these: you won’t believe a golf course was built on that site.
Zokol is one of my favourite people in golf. When I was a young writer he would occasionally email or call me out of the blue, with either compliments or constructive criticism. It meant the world to me to know a Canadian Golf Hall of Famer was reading my work. He’s very passionate and knowledgeable about the sport and its finer details. While we spent a lot of that day swapping stories and discussing Zokol’s dozen years at Predator, we inevitably talked about Sagebrush.
Roughly four hours later, my colleague and I were driving on B.C. Highway 5A along Nicola Lake towards Quilchena. We rounded a bend and up ahead I remarked that something on the steep hillside opposite the water looked like a bunker. “That can’t possibly be the golf course,” I said.
When the entrance to the club suddenly appeared before us we realized it was, and I started to wonder what we were in for. We took some time to freshen up and check email and then set out for a game at 5 p.m. We were encouraged to play the first seven holes, break for dinner, and then continue for as long as daylight would allow. The location and time of year provided such freedom.
Sagebrush’s first hole is a short, climbing par 5, but it is not necessarily indicative of what’s to come. Smartly, the design trio routed much of the course across the hillside, not up and down it. The dropshot par-3 fourth runs counter to the opener, with the rest of the holes built along ridgelines. The same strategy is largely employed on the back nine. That means there are plenty of fairways that pitch one way or the other, sometimes severely, which places a huge importance on hitting their proper side. To find safety on the third hole, for example, you must hit the high side of a hill and let your ball trundle toward the centre. The 16th, where the landing area is hidden, is similar.
Club selection is also vital. The par-5 fifth entices you to wail away with the big stick in hopes the plunging fairway will leave you a short club home. But if you play too aggressively, your ball can easily ricochet into a sagebrush-filled native area. Hitting two balls there, I found it better to play conservatively off the tee and more aggressively into the green.
As advised, my colleague and I stopped for dinner after seven holes. The picturesque setting and wonderful four-course meal with various wine pairings kept us far too long, which meant by the time we set back out to golf, we had to hurry to see all the holes. We plopped balls down in the middle of the eighth fairway and determined we’d hit only tee and approach shots. No time for chips or putts. And that next 90 minutes was the most fun I’ve had on a golf course in years. Whereas we’d begun in calm conditions, the winds picked up and the ground game became even more important. The 11th through 13th, tucked into a corner of the property, instantly became one of my favourite three-hole stretches anywhere. A long, brutish par 4, followed by a short and devious par 3, followed by a downhill and reachable par 4. It’s prior to 13 where golfers can stop at The Hideout, a place to eat and drink and even pull something out of a pond there with fishing rods available.
Oddly enough — or maybe not at all — the pace with which we had to play led to a solid stretch of ball-striking for me. I didn’t think about stance or swing and that beget one good drive after another. Be an athlete, I had told myself after struggling at Predator Ridge. I hit the big stick on the narrow par-4 17th and the extreme tailwind and firm turf took my ball all the way to the putting surface. We finished in the gloaming and found dozens of golf balls on the 18th green. Evidently, some well-lubricated guests had partaken in some fun from out back of the lodge.
That day of golf, and the next day of filming, have stayed with me all summer. I should stress that we got extremely lucky with the weather. Cloudless skies yielded unobstructed views of Nicola Lake and the vast surrounding ranchland. In harsher weather, I could see Sagebrush being a bear. But golf’s an outdoor game and the course has plenty of width and awesome fairway contouring to help you along. Zokol and his team were determined to build a minimalist-style course despite the severity of the site and they succeeded. The land dictated the design, as is the case at all the greats.
Golf is a game often associated with a number recorded. But the best day I had on the course this year was one that did not deliver a score. Rather, it was a day of simply hitting balls around an awesome course in an amazing setting.