There may be an icing of snow on mountaintops in view of the golf course but that won’t stop local players from participating in the weekend’s Fall Ball Scramble to close off the season at the Williams Lake Golf and Tennis Club.
“The forecast is not looking the greatest for Saturday,” said the club’s assistant manager Morgan Day Wednesday. “It’s saying 7C and scattered flurries so we’ll see what happens. It’s our usual year-end fun team event. We’ve got 90 people signed up, mostly members.”
For the scramble players are part of a four-person team. Everyone tees off Saturday, Oct. 14 at 12 p.m. “shotgun” with each team designated to a different hole on the course.
“That way they all play at the same time but it’s nice in the fact that everyone comes in for dinner and beverages together at the end.”
Two weekends ago, on Sept. 29 the club hosted its Big Hole Scramble and 136 players participated.
“That was a bit busier than the one we are having on Saturday, but it should be a lot of fun.”
Looking back over the season, Day said the club was impacted “quite substantially” by the wildfires.
“July is our busiest month as far as tournaments and corporate events go so we did lose out on our Gibraltar tournament as well as our RCMP and West Fraser tournaments,” Day said. “It is going to affect our year-end for sure, but since then it’s been pretty good and we’ve had a lot of support from the community. A few companies like West Fraser and Save-On have been holding some corporate nights up here with dinners which has helped quite a bit. We will end up in a better position than we thought we would.”
During the wildfires the course was closed from a few days after the fires started on account of the smoke and stayed closed two weeks straight once the city was evacuated on July 15.
“All of our irrigation is controlled by computer and satellite,” Day said. “Luckily our superintendent Mark Berg dialed back most of the watering program so if there were any problems or breaks while we were gone there were not going to be any issues.
Berg kept the irrigating going on the greens and was able to get his assistant back in town a couple of days before everyone else to start doing some prep on the course before it re-opened, Day added.
“The course made it through the two weeks phenomenally. It was in fantastic shape because it didn’t have any traffic on it for a couple of weeks and gave it a chance to heal and grow. When we came back it was better than when we left.”