Port Clements’ golf course has a mud bog for a water trap.
It’s also got soccer nets on the fairway, a grease pole on hole two, and all the greens get weed-whacked, not mowed.
A hand-drawn course map calls it “Rustic, but free.”
Linda Berston and her sister Sharon Buckley built the entire 11-hole, par-three course with about $50 in materials.
Berston says a good golfer can play the whole course with a single club and finish in around 90 minutes.
But while the first four holes are set up for kids or seniors or anybody learning, Berston says even an avid golfer can expect to lose a few balls in the woods behind hole 10 or the creek that snakes around 11.
“This course will beat ya,” she says.
Berston has lived in Port Clements for 46 years. One day in 2020, she was walking her dog around the rarely used Community Park soccer field and wondered, “Why can’t we have a little golf course here?”
Soccer isn’t as big in Port Clements as it used to be. There are fewer kids in town and people tend to play in nearby Tlell.
There is a Thursday night pick-up group, and Berston said the soccer nets will always stay put regardless. The golf course criss-crosses the field to make it a fairway, but all the holes are outside the field lines.
“Soccer does trump the golf course,” Berston said.
“It was there first.”
The golf course has three posted rules.
First, don’t drive any balls at the playground. Second, yield to village workers, walkers, and soccer players.
Third, and most important, is to have a good time.
“It’s a fun course,” said Susan Hammond, who successfully drove a ball through one of the soccer nets the last time she played through.
Susan and her husband Herb, former Tlellians who now live most of the year in the Slocan Valley, have played the Port course every summer with for the last three years.
Because it’s built around a well-drained soccer field, the course can be played year-round. Berston said she and Florida Froese played it one winter when there was a bit of snow on the ground.
But the course has had its challenges.
First, COVID-19 threw things for a loop.
In the summer of 2020, Berston filled all the holes with pool-noodle rounds and set up mini-golf style divots and bumpers instead — all to reduce the risk that people would get each other sick when they reached a bare hand into a cup to grab their ball.
Silly as that seems now, Berston said Port’s “bumper golf” course was one of few COVID-safe sports people could play in Port during the worst of the pandemic
A more lasting problem is vandalism in the secluded park.
The first tee markers were bright orange and yellow fishing buoys, but they disappeared along with some flags. So Berston switched from buoys to brightly painted log rounds for the tees.
Berston also had to remove the course chalkboard after someone used it to write filthy messages (and sign his own name).
Still, the course has grown from six to nine and now 11 holes.
Volunteers and public works staff have put up hand railings to help golfers up a couple steep sections.
Berston would like to see more people come out and play, adding that some local golfers use it to practice their short game before going down to play the hot course on Haida Gwaii: the Willows Golf Course in Sandspit.
Berston plans to leave some old clubs at the Port Clements Museum for people to borrow if they don’t have their own.
About the only thing that hasn’t improved since she and her sister Sharon started the course four years ago is Berston’s own golf game.
“It’s just as awful as ever,” she says, laughing.