Since we’re starting our road trip later this week, homeward bound to Calgary, we decided to stop in at the Canadian Automobile Association‘s office in Owen Sound to pick up some travel books to help us map out our trip. We got Tour Books for Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and the Dakotas. Having a GPS is great, but it is so nice to have a reference to the interesting places we are driving through, so we can see where we’re going, find out some of the history, and make plans in advance to stop. So we’re going to start thumbing through these, probably starting tonight! See? Membership does have its privileges!

Canada Day Celebrations at Cobble Beach

I’ve been talking about it now for the better part of a week, so you probably know that we entered the 1st Annual Canada Day Invitational Golf Tournament at Cobble Beach. With the entry fee we got a practice round included, and today was the day for us to give that course, designed by golf course architect Doug Carrick, a long-awaited test drive!p

Friendly Service

The service at the golf club is excellent.  The young assistant pro’s were very friendly. One of the fellows had been working in the shop when we were on our first reconnaissance mission there and recognized us right away.  He said, “You are the one I talked to on the phone about the tournament!”

Everything is computerized and once you’ve paid there is no showing receipts to the cart managers or the starter.  How cool is that? It’s something that I absolutely have to give them five stars on. You don’t know how many times the flimsy little tickets seem to get stuck somewhere in your wallet on the way to the cart pickups – some golf clubs even hand out sticky payment ribbons you need to attach to the car to prove you’ve paid and manage those – IN ADDITION TO YOUR RECEIPT!!! How inconvenient is that? Cobble Beach has it all figured out!

Cobble Beach #1 Hole. It had rained the night before but this was the only water that had not drained from the cart paths.

We stopped at the range and the putting green before going to the 1st tee. The grass on the fairways is quite spongy, so you really have to pay attention or your club will just slide along the grass instead of managing to get the ball in the air!  It took us a little while to get this figured out.

The Greens

The staff members we talked to (and each of them) told us to make sure we spent most of the time preparing for our game ON THE PUTTING GREEN.

They were right.

The greens are very large and undulating and FAST.  The greens are in perfect condition.  Absolutely!

Ruth teeing off on one of the many holes that face Owen Sound. First class tee boxes.

The par threes aren’t too long, but a lot of them had a bunker right in front.  You would have thought Jack Nicklaus had designed the course for the number of bunkers that surrounded the greens! The shorter the par 4’s, it seemed, the more difficult the greens.  I did manage to get a birdie on the 8th hole and I was pretty excited as the ball landed four feet from the pin. But then it rolled eight feet by, leaving me a very lucky one putt!

The Marshall came by a couple of times and we had a little chat with him, the cart girl was around a few times too, but the GPS on the cart had already advertised hamburgers, so we’d already had our taste buds set. The bathrooms were well marked, and there are codes to get into them, and they were just as beautiful as the ones in the clubhouse that I talked about last time.

Our day was sunny and warm and without any wind.  How amazing was that? Our lunch after golf was on the patio overlooking the 9th and 18th greens as well as the beautiful Owen Sound.  I had my first Ontario hamburger with fries which was very good.  We took the shortcut home and that saved us a bit of time.  Oh, yes, we had nothing to do at home but relax on the patio.

We are still sorting through what Ruth wants to take and what she’s going to leave in the cottage.