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John Thomson  

Thomson report

“We do the greens ourselves and we hire a company to do the fairways,” said Brian Reilly the general manager at The Club at Tower Ranch.

He was talking about the aeration of the grass on the beautiful Tower Ranch golf course where it was decided to do the work earlier this year. It is environmentally friendly and getting the most out of every blade of grass.

“The company punches and they come out with those little coils and then afterward there is a process that they go over the coils and break them up so we get all of the good solid nutrients out of those coils and that helps to fill in the holes because we drag afterwards and then what’s left of the useless roots we drag and clean up. Those coils just won’t be there, there may be some up in the rocks but they won’t affect the golf course at all.”

I didn’t realize you could do that job this early?

It is not the traditional time of the year and most courses do it in September, we just made the choice because Sun Rivers Golf Resort in Kamloops also do it in August and that gave us the idea to see if we could make it happen because September is traditionally the second best month of season. June is our first best month and we were hurt with bad weather and I was trying to prepare myself for the best possible September.”

Does September look good?

“September does look good with pre bookings from groups and almost every tee time is appealing because of the weather this valley gets in September.
The edge comes in the heat of the day and there is still a good amount of daylight and that is very appealing. But of course we do get the benefit of others punching and we do get some business from that.”

Do we see a lot of golfers from out town at that time of the year?

“I met with a representative from Tourism Kelowna so they gave me some stats. I was very interested in the July numbers. They said June was slightly up and again you always have to look deeper than what the first line says because as you know from last year, June started a horrific economic situation. In July they couldn’t give me solid numbers, but then again we were dealing with the fires of last year although our own sales numbers are up about 17 points from last July and I am going on a gut feeling. I do get reports from a credit card company that gives us a sense of where a credit a card user comes from and our largest source of outside golfers is still Alberta. That traffic has seen some changes with June slightly down and May was up and quite frankly we don’t have as many tourists as we had in the valley two years ago. We know the heat of July and August also has us competing against the lake and the wives kind of give the golfers time for golf in the morning as long as they are back for family business the rest of the day.”

I think we have to be honest with ourselves because the people who live here also take holidays in those months with the family to go and see grandma and she could live in Regina. That happens and we don’t seem to want to discuss that but it is true, or they go to Vancouver or wherever it is?

I look at Tower Ranch always thinking of the man who had the dream, Stan Tower and to see the finished golf course would have made him very proud. I think if I looked back in my records the first time I talked to Stan was well over twenty years ago. The course opened officially in 2008 is that correct?


“Yes we opened in July 2008. The construction took inside of two years to complete. The golf course is owned by investors from Toronto who are in the golf course construction business, Aberdeen Golf Construction and they have built some of Canada’s more premier golf courses including Tobiano in Kamloops, Red Tail in Ontario to name two. This was their first run at ownership and the consistent weather had a lot to do with it. Thomas McBroom, the designer that Stan had chosen when he was alive, built it with good use of the terrain. It is challenge and that comes with being built on the side of mountain and there are hard hazards that are man made as well in terms of the bunkers and such. The natural grass better known as Fescue
made it somewhat difficult when we opened the doors. We leave the designer to build the course and we are left with the painted canvas from the designer’s portfolio and you have to respond very quickly to what the golfer is telling you and we had to dial it back without losing its character, but make it friendlier for the average golfer. It is a good test of golf and you have to keep the ball on the fairway. This is a golf course that has been massaged and continues to be every day.

We’re scheduled to be open until October 23.”


More John Thomson articles

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About the Author

John Thomson is the Okanagan's pre-eminent business columnist writing his column, Rumours and Things, for over 24 years. Plugged in to the valley's who's who, John keeps his readers coming back for more with his straight talk and optimistic perspective on where we are headed next.

When John is not writing his column, he runs a sixteen year old think tank called the Executive Roundtable and holds his popular "Thomson Presents" quarterly business speaker seminars.

Have a comment, question, or tip for John? 

E-mail John at
[email protected]
or send him a fax at 250-764-8255.

 



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The views expressed are strictly those of the author and not necessarily those of Castanet. Castanet does not warrant the contents.

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