Snow cover warms up Fairmont Jasper course
Winter damage hit top-ranked resort course hard last year
Last year, Mother Nature riddled the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge golf course with scars and blemishes as all the winter freeze-thaw cycles took their toll.
Always ranked No. 1 by SCOREGolf magazine as Canada’s top resort course — and No. 4 overall in the latest ratings — it was like drawing a moustache and devil’s horns on the Mona Lisa. Complete sacrilege.
In total, seven greens and 23 individual tee decks all had to be resodded. Not this year. “I’m very happy with the way we came out of this winter,” said Jasper’s new course superintendent RJ Cloutier, who has come aboard from Vancouver Island’s Morningstar golf course.
“Unlike last year, we had a lot of snow that stayed this winter. There was no melting, no real thawing; just a solid insulating blanket atop the turf.
“When there is lots of snow cover, you sleep a lot better. It’s when you are constantly wondering what is going on under the snow that you don’t sleep well,” said Cloutier, 41, who started working on golf courses when he was 15 — seemingly destined to be a keeper of golf courses.
One would think there would be a tremendous difference getting grass to grow in B.C., where you can golf 12 months a year, as opposed to a mountain course like Jasper, where they hope to get in a good six-month season of golfing.
Yet Cloutier said, “There really isn’t that much difference. Insect and disease pressures are similar and growing grass is an art form based on science. A good turf manager is always adapting techniques to ever evolving conditions on a property and every property has many of its own set of challenges to overcome to deliver premium playing conditions.
“For me to move to a new property, it is just figuring out how the grass and the soil react to different inputs that are based on the science.
“It’s kind of like a doctor playing with different medications to get the right balance for you.”
Whatever the concoction, it’s just what the doctor ordered on the course Stanley Thompson designed nearly 90 years ago.
The greens are back to being like the felt on pool tables; the fairways are lush.
A graduate of Michigan State’s turf grass management program, Cloutier said what differences there are between working the land on Vancouver Island and the mountains at Jasper obviously begin with the latter’s condensed growing season.
“You try and recover from the winter, then you deal with a little summer stress and then you are already getting the course ready to go to bed again.”
Cloutier, who likes everything neat and tidy, has already put his own finger prints into Jasper.
He has lowered the mowing heights for the fairways, greens and the rough and given the fairways more definition.
“The members are the ones who notice those changes the most and they are particularly giddy,” said director of golf Alan Carter.
“The place looks great. Now all we need is a little heat.”
“We just want to grow some quality grass and have tournament conditions for our guests,” Cloutier said of a course that never shouts but always whispers.
“That’s what we are striving to achieve and I think we are well on our way to achieving those goals.”