Foremost Golf Club still seeing a steady stream of golfers

foremostgolfclub.ca photo The Foremost Golf Club will be serving golfers from the porch at the start.

By Justin Seward

Commentator/Courier

The Foremost Golf Club is considered to be one of the oldest clubs in the area and teed off for another year on Good Friday to start another golf season.
It had been a quiet start to the season with the colder weather, says golf club director Sandy Karl.
Despite the cooler spring temperatures, community support has not been an issue as of late from the villagers and surrounding area.
“It’s amazing how many people we’re getting after school and the evening when it gets a little warmer,” said Karl.
The golf course is operated by the board and relies on their website or sending out posters to nearby courses with all their scheduled tournaments to get golfers to travel to Foremost.
“We’re just a small golf course,” she said.
“Mostly we’re here to take care of our members and outside visitors.”
The membership base is close to 200 for a few years, she added.
Younger golfers have still come out to hit a round after the junior program defunct more than five years ago.
“What happened is baseball picked up in Foremost,” said Karl.
“Everybody went to baseball instead of golf and that’s what happened. We’re still getting lots of golfers …we have quite a good group of high school kids that come out golfing.”
While it would be a tremendous opportunity to house not only a junior program but other golfing initiatives, the course simply does not have the funding nor the staff to provide the extra activities.
“We just have our girls that work inside and they do everything,” she said.
“They cook, clean, take memberships, take green fees. We don’t have that extra person out there that could do that extra promoting besides our volunteer directors.”
The course hires people to run the clubhouse and maintenance crew.
Players come from local area to as far away as Lethbridge and Milk River.
“They say how awesome our greens are and for a small course it’s very challenging,” she said.
“We have raised greens, so for people that are used to running their ball up on the green. It doesn’t work like that in Foremost.”
The tournament season for the golf club began on May 11 with the Fun Mixed Opener. The Sherry Hirsche- 3 Lady Scramble is on June 8, Canada Day mixer on July 1, HALO’s Charity tournament on July 6, Rattler on July13 -14, Seniors Open on Aug. 10, Par 3 on Aug. 17 and the Frosty Open to wrap up the season on Sept. 14.
“That’s our major income for the whole year to run the course is all those tournaments,” said Karl.