McCleery Golf Course, Thurs October 17, 2024
Thanks to a Cohen-Cousin wedding we headed to California and since we were on the west coast we realized we had not had the chance to discover Vancouver, Canada. That's when we decided we would golf all the Canadian Provinces and Territories. There are 13 of them. Two down, we golfed in Toronto years ago, and 11 to go!
There are three public golf courses that are owned by the city of Vancouver. We played McCleery. There are also, Fraserview and Langara. All can be found and booked on this one central website. Each are about a 20 minute drive from downtown Vancouver.
Golfing is very popular in this area, hence the need for three courses, so book early. You can book up to one week in advance. The costs are reasonable, at $68.00 a player (as of Oct 2024). It's a very walkable course and they offer club rentals that come with a pull cart.
We were greeted by a very enthusiastic pro shop employee named Rico, who was in his "2nd Act" and loving his job working at the golf course! He may have been biased, but he felt that McCleery was the most beautiful of the 3 courses. It certainly was well manicured and landscaped. For the amount of rounds seemingly played, it was in excellent condition - considering it was October!
Canadian architect Ted Baker designed McCleery Golf Course to offer a target-style golf challenge. The fairways were narrow and each lined with robust amounts of trees of just about every species (or so if seemed!). Fall foliage was very much on display, so a beautiful time to play. Because of the narrow nature of the course, it was challenging with lots of water featured on many holes. It is a self-proclaimed bird sanctuary, with even the course logo featuring a crane-like bird! We were told during certain times of the year bird watchers (non-golfers) come to the course for bird peeping. The Tee-boxes are numbered, rather than colors. 1 is the "tips" and 4 is the "forward".
The back-nine is more challenging than the front! Hole 10 is the 2nd most challenging, although we thought it was the most and Hole 13 has the best view of the entire course and a great place for a photo-op!
Thank you Vancouver for a wonderful trip! For those that enjoy walking/hiking around nature, we also recommend visiting Stanley Park to walk or bike around the seawall that is 6.2 miles /10 kilometers and a must get to is Capilano Suspension Bridge and Nature Walks. It was a blast!
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