A reputation made at an ugly, old trailer park
SPECTATOR GOLF
ALBERTON — Tom McBroom recalls he was both appalled and tremendously intrigued with his first tour around the property near the end of Dunmark Road that he would be asked to make into a championship golf course.
That was 25 years ago, and McBroom was not long into his career as a golf course architect when he toured the property that was the Dunmark trailer park.
“It was really ugly, that old trailer park, but I could see through all that,” said McBroom. “You could tell that was good ground for a golf course.
“There was great movement in the land, it had the lake and had the marshes and a little bit of woods.”
McBroom’s initial designs for the development, which were on display at Heron Point Golf Links’ 25th anniversary party last Saturday at the golf course, revealed that there was to be housing on the road leading in to the golf course and behind the park lot. Even more surprising is that part of 16 and 17 had to be built on land leased from an adjacent farmer.
“We couldn’t fit the golf course on the property they had,” McBroom explained. “It just wouldn’t have been a championship golf course. And the housing idea died 20 years ago because of lack of water.”
McBroom said the nature of the land meant that he had to jump through hoops to get permission from the Ministry of Natural Resources to proceed.
“The biggest came when we wanted to build the 13th hole in the marsh,” he said. “They assumed we wanted to fill it in. We explained that we wanted to build a tee on one side and a green on the other and then a bridge through the marsh. They thought that was a great idea.”
That proposal may have paved the way for golf courses building in marshy areas to this day.
Nothing could have prepared McBroom and his crew for what they would encounter when they hopped on their bulldozers and actually started creating the golf course, however.
“Remember, it was a trailer park so we kept running into crappy old septic beds — not licensed beds or anything built to MOE standards,” he says.
“The smell was awful. Thank heavens I didn’t have to be there every day and put up with the crap.”
Heron Point opened to critical acclaim in 1992, but within just a couple of years, was struggling financially and was purchased by ClubLink.
Its reputation was enhanced when the Canadian Masters had a seven-year run there on the Canadian Tour and the players, virtually to a man, heaped praise on it.
McBroom has become one of the top golf course architects in Canada and was inducted into the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame this spring. He admits he still has a warm spot in his heart for Heron Point.
Whole-in-one: Aces in the area include two at Chippewa Creek: Jim Smith on the 168-yard sixth on the Red Falcon nine with a five-hybrid, and Keith Schumacher on the seventh hole of the White Hawk nine with a three iron.
Garry McKay is a veteran, awardwinning golf journalist and a former sportswriter with The Hamilton Spectator. garrymckay1@rogers.com