It’s a major anniversary for a golfing institution in Saskatchewan.
The Royal Regina Golf Club is celebrating 125 years this weekend. To mark the occasion the club is holding a number of events, both on the links and off.
Ryan Pollock is the club’s general manager and he says the anniversary is quite an achievement.
“We’re looking forward to a really good weekend of events celebrating this incredible milestone for our club — the first golf club in our province dating back to 1899.”
Festivities began with an opening ceremony on Thursday at the first tee which included an RCMP rifle salute.
Golf activities began on Friday, with match play pitting teams led by the general manager and the president against each other — an event that dates back to the early 1900s at the club. Over 100 members were scheduled to play.
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A full day of golf on Saturday includes an all-members group photo at the 18th hole green, as well as social events including a barbecue burger lunch.
A gala will be held on Sunday evening, and will include invited guests from the province, city, and RCMP. An anniversary print from renowned artist and Royal Regina member Wilf Perreault will be unveiled at the gala.
The Royal Regina Golf Club is just one of six golf courses in Canada to have “royal” as part of its name. According to their website, the golf course has relocated three times and has been at their current location — west of Lewvan Drive and south of 11th Ave. — since 1901.
A major point of pride for the golf course has been its longtime association with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Parts of the current location were previously used by the then-North West Mounted Police as their original training grounds.
“There’s some incredible history and connections here on the land with the RCMP,” Pollock said. “This land was originally theirs and was donated to us in the early days of our club.”
When he appeared on the Greg Morgan Morning Show in July, Pollock said the Royal Regina was known as the “home of golf in Saskatchewan.”
“Summer took its time to get here — the course was just waiting to pop,” Pollock told Morgan, adding the course is currently “in fantastic shape”.
“Everything’s lush, everything’s extremely green. The conditions are really, really good right now.”
The club has 797 members, and has been full for the last three years. The reason for the capacity limits is to ensure members have access to the tees and so the course doesn’t become too busy for members to be able to play.
“We really embrace the combination between sport and social, and I think that’s what really helps with our members. People that come here know that everyone’s welcome, they can come and enjoy the sport and then enjoy that social aspect that many of us crave as part of these outings as well.”
Pollock said golf was among the first recreation activities to reopen to the public in Saskatchewan when Covid-19 restrictions began to lift.
“We’ve been reaping the rewards of that, and hopefully can continue to grow,” he said.
Pollock said a lot of the work for the anniversary events was done by a committee of club members.
“They’ve put in a lot of effort and time to organize those celebrations,” said Pollock.
“They take a ton of pride in our history and being able to make sure that our club is celebrating and being put in the proper fashion.”
With files from Kaleb Sebastian
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