Victoria : Features
Golf Island
By James McCarten
Aug 21, 2008

To most, it’s probably just another painting on the walls of the clubhouse at Cordova Bay Golf Course, a venerable public oasis of generous fairways and vexing greens that has helped satisfy Canada’s off-season golf jonesing for nearly two decades.

The picture depicts a solitary golfer amid a billowing, ’70s-style swirl of colour, his perfect posture, blue windbreaker and bucket hat making him the spitting image of… my father.

Eerily, it was at Cordova Bay—nestled quietly away in a sleepy suburb between Victoria and Sidney, B.C.—where I played my last round with my dad before his death in 2002, on one of those brisk March days when the dewy grass and the crisp ocean breezes remind one of the joys of being alive.

Golf courses are funny like that. Spend enough time on one, and it becomes a massive storehouse of memories, good and bad, recent and distant. With a season that often runs 12 months a year, the fairways of Victoria and southern Vancouver Island are bountiful storytellers.

Cordova feels like an eccentric throwback to an earlier, simpler time. Three bucks gets you a handful of range balls, which you can fire out of a sunken, concrete-clad driving range reminiscent of a bomb shelter. The course itself alternates between reachable par-5s, long, uphill par-4s and straightforward one-shotters, all rolling out in front of the player with most of the trouble visible from the tee. And from November through March, you can play it for less than $50—a modest increase over the $32.10 players paid when the course first opened some 18 years ago.

While Cordova has remained largely the same, the golf scene in Victoria and the surrounding area has undergone a dramatic evolution. A colossal, Whistler-style resort on the edge of town, complete with one spectacular Jack Nicklaus golf course and a second that’s now under construction, is now luring visitors from further afield than ever before.

Further west, to attract a restless tide of visionary baby boomers, developers are preaching an impressive, 21^st-century awareness of sustainability and environmental stewardship as they slowly transform central Vancouver Island’s remote, rugged west coast and spruce-carpeted peaks into North America’s newest golf utopia, again featuring the inimitable mark of the world’s greatest golfer.

An Island tradition

Change, of course, is inevitable, and golf is no different. At Olympic View Golf Club, a rugged, 18-year-old layout west of downtown Victoria, new tee boxes are sprouting up in spots to make room for the modern era’s oversized drivers and long-flying golf balls.

General manager Randy Frank demurs when asked whether he’d rather be working elsewhere in Canada, where a 16-week blanket of snow would offer a respite for one of the hardest-working pros in the country.

“You get to play your winter golf [here], that’s for sure,” Frank beams, standing on the new back tee for the rolling 17^th—a beefy downhill par-4 framed by dense stands of timber, with a gorgeous rock waterfall as a backdrop to a narrow green.

“Four months off would be good, but I sort of like working year-round. You take it when you can get it, and if the sun breaks out you can head right out the door.”

Not long ago, the Canadian dollar was worth 63 U.S. cents and Victoria lived for the American golfer with bargain-basement green fees and the promise of year-round play.

Indeed, with its bald eagles, vistas of Washington state’s Olympic Mountains, and a claim to fame as the first B.C. course to host a young Tiger Woods, Olympic View has over the years cultivated a decidedly American feel.

These days, however, the two currencies are nearly on par and players from neighbouring provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan are revelling in the joys of Vancouver Island’s shoulder season.

Today’s playground of the nation

Yellow shirt, plaid pants, green jacket, Golden Bear: there’s no mistaking the homage to Jack Nicklaus in the gilded plaster bruin that greets golfers at the entrance to the opulent Westin Bear Mountain Victoria Golf Resort & Spa.

What was supposed to be a few houses surrounding a quiet golf course for former NHLer and now Tampa Bay Lightning co-owner Len Barrie and his buddies has evolved into a sprawling behemoth. The specs: a 160,000-sq.-ft. clubhouse and swank Westin luxury hotel (with a pro shop and world-class spa in the basement), a $2.5-billion luxury housing development, five restaurants, and a state-of-the-art fitness facility.

Panache, the fine-dining enclave on the resort’s main floor overlooking the 18^th fairway, features one-of-a-kind à la carte sides like lobster-infused mashed potatoes, crispy biscuits of Cambozola macaroni and cheese and piping-hot French onion soup poured right at the table, cup-of-coffee style, over an island of bread into a bowl lined with cheese and caramelized onions.

But the crown jewel is the golf course, a 7,212-yard Nicklaus masterpiece that’s as much a challenge for veteran players as it is accessible to the rookies.

Spacious fairways with generous landing areas, large, rolling greens and judicious bunkering make Bear Mountain an eminently playable course, but those defining Nicklaus characteristics—elevation changes, ever-present water and Muirfield Village-style riverbanks contoured to siphon away a misplaced tee shot—are what make it difficult.

And if the opening hole of the new Valley 18, slated to open next year—a towering par-5 that stretches invitingly out from behind the original 18^th green—is any indication, Bear Mountain isn’t done getting better.

Just be sure to bring enough ammo: the tongue-in-cheek ball dispenser once installed at the par-3 11^th, a perfect replica of the devilish 17^th island green at TPC Sawgrass, has disappeared.

“We got a lot of complaints,” grins gregarious Bear Mountain pitchman Steve Howe, the resort’s head of business development, just before cranking one of his own into the drink. “People said it was too intimidating.”

The future is bold, but is it green?

One of the true joys of the game is that, even at its most trying moments, the best courses allow players to lose themselves in the glory of their natural surroundings. My father knew this better than most, which is why in his later years he would jump at every chance to play amid the wilds of Vancouver Island.

On a rugged tract of diamond-in-the-rough land, hard by the edge of the Pacific Ocean, a Connecticut-based developer is meticulously carving out the next generation of West Coast golf destinations near the surfing Mecca of Long Beach, between Pacific Rim National Park and the sleepy fishing town of Ucluelet on the Island’s forbidding west coast.

Wyndansea Oceanfront Golf Resort, which is tentatively slated to open its doors in 2012, will be home to the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club of Canada—one of only about two dozen exceptional courses around the world to carry the gold standard of the Golden Bear.

“Jack was the only one we approached,” says Stephen Duke, Marine Drive’s vice president of business development.

Anchored by a five-star “eco-luxury” hotel known as 1 Hotel Vancouver Island, the 370-acre resort and condominium development—the brainchild of Connecticut-based

Starwood Capital Group and Marine Drive Properties Ltd.—will boast a host of amenities, including a full-service spa, fitness facility, deep-water marina, and a restaurant and wine bistro serving the region’s finest locally sourced products.

Nine holes of the 18-hole course have already been cleared, including the signature par-3 15^th, where visitors and prospective buyers are invited to hit range balls across a vast expanse of coastline to a cliffside green site, the churning Pacific’s soothing soundtrack in the background.

Duke tells the story of an event last summer attended by Nicklaus and a group of straight-laced potential property

buyers who went weak at the knees in the presence of the golf legend. “When it comes to talking about property, they’re all very investor-oriented,” says Duke. “But they sit down and turn into children when Jack Nicklaus starts talking about golf. They were all getting autographs—shirts, hats, whatever. They melt in front of him.”

Towering stands of spruce, cedar and lodgepole pine line the future fairways, while near the water’s edge, windblown hemlock give the property a feel reminiscent of legendary California oceanside links like Cypress Point or Pebble Beach.

Once he saw the property and its potential, Nicklaus himself broached the idea of making Wyndansea part of the Jack Nicklaus Golf Club stable—a testament to the area’s rare character and his hope to turn it into a rarified golf experience.

“Golf is a perfect excuse to bring man and nature together,” Nicklaus said during his visit to the property. “Why in the world would we want to go out on a piece of ground and do anything but enhance it to allow people to enjoy nature, and bring a game to it that can be played with nature? That’s what we want to do.”

It’s a philosophy my father embraced as well, one that will hopefully continue to allow future generations to commune and coexist with the great outdoors as they celebrate the greatest game in the world.

Is the future of the golf resort being built on Vancouver Island?

Sustainable golf may be an oxymoron, but the developers behind Ucluelet’s Wyndansea are lauding everything from local timber harvesting to LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification in an effort to position their new property as one of the greenest golf resorts on the planet. These highlights from Marine Drive Properties may even get David Suzuki out for a round.

> low-emission adhesives, sealants and paints in all construction
> local and regional building materials
> high-performance plumbing fixtures
> organic cleaning products
> a commitment to harvest wind, tidal and solar energy
> modern geothermal technology that uses sea water and underground heat for climate control
> low-speed electric vehicles for residents and guests
> organic fertilizers and natural pest control on the Audubon International-endorsed golf course
> recirculated storm water
> wetlands and vegetated areas to filter runoff