A golf road trip to a course you and your buddies have never played is always exciting in my opinion. You get some travel time to a part of your world you may never have been before and you experience something new as a golfer by playing the course(s) you mapped out.
I recently joined some golf buddies for an Alberta road trip to Coal Creek Golf Resort, about 45 minutes south east of Edmonton.
Now we drove up from Red Deer so the trip was closer to two hours but it was so worth the drive.
This Sid Puddicombe design which opened less than five years ago will give you all you want out of a links-style golf course if that’s what your heart desires.
“My personal view of the golf course is the variety of holes,” said Coal Creek Head Professional/Clubhouse Manager Jamie Driscoll. “I think as a whole the four par three’s here are some of the best around. You have a little elevation changes, you’ve got some water beside some and you have a basic one.”
One aspect of this links course is your depth perception. You can see the 150 stakes but your eyes tell you they are much closer. Driscoll says if you can figure that out you will do well. One issue we noticed was the course needed to be loaded onto our yardage devices before hand and for those who don’t have them it would have been helpful if yardages were posted on the sprinkler heads.
Another feature of the course which stands out right away are the fifty-plus bunkers which are filled with black sand as a tribute to the coal mining operation which was originally on the site.
The colour comes from copper slag, the glasslike by-product left over after a metal has been separated. It is brought in from Grand Forks, British Columbia and then mixed in with sand. Having been in a few bunkers that day I can tell you it plays like regular sand and I am just as dreadful getting out of it.
You will also find other tributes to the local history around the course like old equipment which was used back in the day and the water hazards are where strip mining had taken place.
There was a little bit of dirt moving done to form some of the mounds covered in Velcro-like fescue grass but for the most part, what you see at Coal Creek was there decades ago.
There is also a Chambers Bay-like solitary tree which sits above the 18th green. The tree is where the original homestead was located. Driscoll refers to it as the Joshua Tree from U2 fame.
The course measures out to 7,207 yards from the tips but there are four other tee boxes for various levels of player and something new this year as this course can be a beast, especially if it’s windy.
“I created a combo-tee this year combining the blue and the silver tee and that seemed to really help the speed of play because at the beginning people thought it (the course) was too hard and you just have to play the proper tee box,” said Driscoll.
Coal Creek was the host for the Alberta Junior Golf Championship this year and the golfers were served up a solid, four day challenge from the silver tees which play at 6537 yards. Driscoll says the course could host a MacKenzie Tour event with it’s length which is something he would love to see down the road one day.
“For spectating we are very good course, friendly, there are enough cart paths or people can walk in the fescue and on the back nine there are enough cross-walk areas where people can watch,” he said.
Coal Creek also has a developing RV park with full services on forty sites right now with the plan to top it off at 148.
Even though Alberta for the most part has suffered through a very dry year, this public links course was not dry at all thanks to two very large retention ponds on site. The greens were great speed and contained some breaks which you might see better after a few rounds at Coal Creek.
Pricing was very reasonable at Coal Creek and what you are playing is worth every nickle in my view.
So if you are looking to hit the road this year or next spring, Coal Creek should be on your bucket list of places to play.
