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The Legend leaves an impression

Even though The Legends at Warman, Saskatchewan's latest upscale golf course, will open in May, it's already made a very positive impression. The new 7,300-yard track, located off Highway 11 just north of Saskatoon, will be attracting the best amateur golfers in the province July 19-22.

"It is very exciting to be hosting the 100th Saskatchewan Men's Amateur in our first year of operation," says Jody Dueck, head professional and general manager. "We plan on making it the best Amateur ever."

Originally from Laird, Saskatchewan, Dueck has been a fixture of the Saskatoon-area golf community for the past 12 years. In 2003, he became a member of the Canadian PGA and obtained a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Saskatchewan. In 2007, Jody completed his Teaching and Coaching Certification and achieved his CPGA "Class A" status. As part of the CPGA, he spent three years as an apprentice at the Saskatoon Golf & Country Club and one year as an associate professional at Riverside Country Club in 2007.

"Our goal is to present members and guests with the utmost level of service while allowing you, the golfer, to enjoy your time and leave you with a positive lasting impression," says Dueck, who joined the Warman Golf Club as head professional in the spring of 2008. He'll be getting some help from CPGA assistant professionals A.J. Nolin and Craig Prentice, head chef Keith Whiteand and Keith Bell as Superintendent.

The old Warman golf course has been turned into a light industrial, housing and RV Park. The location of the new course provided an opportunity to expand the operation to a new 18-hole facility to keep up with the growing bedroom community of 6,000.

Garth Keays from Golf Shape Construction of Tisdale, who has built courses around the world, designed and built the course. The course is unlike anything around here with its links style, lots of fescue grass, plenty of trees and water hazards to enhance the beauty.

"To score well here, hit the ball long and straight," says Dueck. The back tees play 7,300 yards and the greens average 6,000 square feet, testing golfers with subtle breaking bent-grass.

"Since no one has really played it, it is tough to tell what the easiest or toughest holes are, but I would say the 4th and 18th, two par 5's might be the toughest since water comes into play on both. Holes 8 and 16 will probably be the easiest since they're two shorter slight dogleg par 4's," says Dueck.

Off-course attractions at The Legends include excellent food in the new restaurant with a fabulous view of the course. With it's location so close to the city, the Legends has already attracted a share of local corporate and community tournaments.The town of Warman is considered one the fastest growing communities in Saskatchewan. You get the best of both worlds in Warman, quiet community living with the highlights of the big city next door. www.golfthelegends.com

CPGA of Saskatchewan review

The recent CPGA Buying Show and Awards Banquet was a great event. It's an annual chance for golf course operators in Saskatchewan to see all the new and exciting products that golf manufactures and companies have to offer for 2011 season. The winners from CPG Awards Night are listed as follows:

1. Graham Coulter Trophy – Professional of the Year Jamie Windjack – Moonlake GCC

2. Assistant of the Year - Davidson Matyczuk – Willows GCC

3. Teacher of the Year - John Gaudet - Chinook GC

4. Junior Promoter of the Year - Jeff Chambers – Elmwood GCC

5. Facility of the Year - Willows GCC

6. Sales Rep of the Year - (Tie) Ken Rodgers - Acushnet Canada and David Semko - Fletcher Leisure Group

7. Bill Taylor Trophy – Sportsmanship Mark Patterson - Harbor GC

8. Scott Knapp Trophy - Player of the Year Dean Brown - Royal Regina GC

The NEW testament of golf

So, you want to have more fun playing golf. Your aspirations to the hot the PGA Tour have faded into the distance and you want to rid your self of the seriousness of the game. Well, you now have an option.

Flogton or Project Flogton - say it slowly - is a pet project of Scott McNealy, the Chairman and Co-Founder of Sun Microsystems and the Alternative Golf Association based out of Palo Alto, California.

Flogton, the reverse of "not golf", throws away the rule book and shortens the time that it takes for a duffer to finish a round. There are several versions of the game but they do allow mulligans, gimmes and bumps. A bump, by the way, is picking up the ball and moving it to any point that's not closer to the hole, mulligans, gimme's and bumps.

If you Google "Flogton" you will find more than 9,000 references and growing interest from the media and the golfing mainstream. (www.flogton.com) Time will tell if it catches on and if the golf clubs around the world will allow a mulligan per hole. Bring it on!

Ace of Carts locally owned

2011 is right around the corner and with that ushers in a brand new golf course in Warman: The Legends. Ace of Carts wants to be one of the first to congratulate The Legends on the upcoming grand opening and to say we are excited to be a partner with this new course!

Who is Ace of Carts? Ace of Carts is a locally owned and family operated company that is the distributor for Club Car products in the province. Over the past four years Ace of Carts has established a pristine Club Car Tournament rental fleet, constructed a new state of the art environmentally friendly sales and service facility in Saskatoon, and services the needs of the golf industry. The sale, service and customization of private golf cars, commercial utility vehicles, transportation vehicles and industrial solutions with the rugged Club Car XRT 4x4 line up of utility vehicles has rounded out our commitment to stellar service for Saskatchewan.

How did Ace of Carts partner with The Legends? Ace of Carts and The Legends have become partners with the addition of 2011 Club Car Precedent vehicles for their golf course. The Legends has become Saskatchewan's first golf course to utilize the state of the art vehicle management system called Visage. New Course, New Vehicles, New Information Management System!

How does the VISAGE system work? VISAGE is the leader in golf car management systems: It operates on satellite imagery a lot like "Google Earth". The main system then communicates with the cars and keeps track of the cars using WI-FI, cellular and satellite communications.

What is unique about The Legends and its partnership with Ace of Carts? The Legends is the first golf course in Saskatchewan to utilize this system! It is in a very unique group of courses being that they are in an exclusive group of the first 500 courses using the system in the world! We are very pleased to be working with The Legends in this first step, and look forward to where this technology will take us well into the future!

What is Club Car & VISAGE to The Legends customers? Club Car and VISAGE together have created an extremely powerful tool for the customers at The Legends. Visage allows them not only complete GPS mapping of the course, real time distance to the bunkers, distance to the greens and distance to the pins, and any other important land marks it allows for ordering food and beverages from the comfort of the car, it allows them 2 way messaging to the club house in the event of questions, or problems, and finally the VISAGE RT+ system The Legends has installed will allow the customers to see a 3D fly-over of the hole they are playing!

How about this – At the end of the round, The Legends customers will have the ability to email their score cards to an email address of their choice! The VISAGE system on the Club Cars, will enhance the customer experience by notifying customers if they leave a play area, helping control vehicle speeds in parking lots, sharp corners or around sensitive areas!

This system can order food? The Legends will be able to offer its customers a comprehensive meal menu in comparison to any one not using this system! Simply put, the customers will be able to browse the menu as they golf all from the comfort of their golf car on a roof mounted 10" Touch Screen monitor, and when they are ready to order they simply make their selection and order it all from the touch screen menu. Their orders will be sent to the food/beverage facility and be hot and ready when the customer drives up!

What is Club Car & VISAGE to The Legends? Club Car and VISAGE is a complete in-depth fleet management tool! It will help the course maximize play times, show in Real Time (RT) where all their vehicles are on the course, allowing them the ability to keep vehicles out of sensitive areas, and slowing vehicles down in areas of high traffic. To me the most exciting feature is the complete diagnostics of the systems on the vehicle. The Legends will have the ability to see state of charge, if the cars are on chargers and essentially how the vehicles is "feeling" or performing. Having the ability to control the golf cars around the golf course safely and efficiently, will also lower the cost of golf car repairs.

Again because Visage is offered as a rental a new feature was added 30 days ago at no charge. The feature that was added is GPSI will be sending a weekly report to the Legends golf courses informing them of any golf cars that have battery or electrical issues.

What does this mean for tournaments? The Legends now has the upper hand when hosting tournaments. It can track scores in real time from the cars during the tournament, and the ability to broadcast the tournament scores in the club house on any T.V. How cool is that? Real Time Leader boards, T.V. Score coverage of a tournament at your course! Pin placements can be done instantaneously and can be saved for each day of the week as well as for future events.

What does this mean for the Superintendent? The people mowing fairways can now become more efficient because they no longer have to get off their mowers to pull stakes. The course can now be roped off electronically through the Guardian Feature of Visage which eliminates roping off the course. Wear patterns from golf cars can also be seen allowing for less course maintenance. With the click of a button, the cart path only feature can be turned on and will allow for less turf damage to the course when wet weather occurs.

Pretend its summer

Go to this link and I promise, even if you're not a golfer, you won't be able to stop. Watch out for #18!

Interesting points

1. Eighteen holes of match play will teach you more about your foe than 18 years of dealing with him across a desk. - Grantland Rice
2. Golf appeals to the idiot in us and the child. Just how childlike golf players become is proven by their frequent inability to count past five. - John Updike
3. It is almost impossible to remember how tragic a place the world is when one is playing golf. - Robert Lynd
4. If profanity had any influence on the flight of the ball, the game of golf would be played far better than it is. - Horace G. Hutchinson
5. They say golf is like life, but don't believe them. Golf is more complicated than that. - Gardner Dickinson
6. If a lot of people gripped a knife and fork as poorly as they do a golf club, they'd starve to death. - Sam Snead
7. Golf is a day spent in a round of strenuous idleness. - William Wordsworth
8. If you drink, don't drive. Don't even putt. - Dean Martin
9. If you are going to throw a club, it is important to throw it ahead of you, down the fairway, so you don't have to waste energy going back to pick it up. - Tommy Bolt
10. Man blames fate for all other accidents, but feels personally responsible when he makes a hole-in-one. - Bishop Sheen
11. I don't say my golf game is bad, but if I grew tomatoes they'd come up sliced. - Arnold Palmer
12. My handicap? Woods and irons. - Chris Codiroli
13. The ardent golfer would play Mount Everest if somebody would put a flag stick on top. - Pete Dye
14. I'm hitting the woods just great; but having a terrible time getting out of them! - Buddy Hackett
15. The only time my prayers are never answered is playing golf. - Billy Graham
16. If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball. - Jack Lemmon
17. It's good sportsmanship to not pick up lost golf balls while they are still rolling. - Mark Twain
18. Don't play too much golf. Two rounds a day are plenty. - Harry Vardon
19. Golf and sex are the only things you can enjoy without being good at either of them. - Jimmy DeMaret
20. May thy ball lie in green pastures and not in still waters. - Ben Hogan
21. If I hit it right, it's a slice. If I hit it left, it's a hook. If I hit it straight, it's a miracle. - All Us Hackers
22. The difference in golf and government is that in golf you can't improve your lie. - George Deukmejian
23. Finally....Golf is a game invented by the same people who think music comes out of a bagpipe. - Lee Trevino

Must score on Par-3s

If you are an amateur - or if you prefer a duffer - your best bet for helping the scorecard is on the par 3s. Here are four sure fire ways to par the par 3s consistently:

The two-tier chip - If your ball is on the second tier of a green it requires a different strategy than just trying to lob the ball. Lobbing the ball will probably not get it close to the hole. The best option is to play this shot with a five or six iron, back in your stance, and let it roll across the green and up onto the second tier.

Throw a penny onto the green - Greens are often surrounded by bunkers so a good sandshot is imperative. Place a ball on top of the sand over the penny. Swing your sand wedge so that you can send the penny out of the trap onto the green. That's the proper method and will train you to become a great payer.

Hitting crisp pitch and chip shots - Every time you hit a pitch or chip shot there is one thing that you must do - point the butt end of the club toward your body. This makes sure your hands are forward and will not cause a flipping motion. From there, take the club back with a little break of the wrists and then pull through with the arms.

Tee off strategy - Always tee the ball up on par 3 holes as it reduces resistance from the turf. For the same reason use a broken tee. Tee the ball higher for the longer irons and lower just off the ground for the 7 through wedge. Use an old divot as an aiming point by teeing up your ball just behind it.

Shivas Iron Society tees off

For many golfers, the modern golf magazine is an endless parade of repetitive stories about the best driver, the best ball, the top 100 courses, celebrity trivia and golf tips. With this in mind, the Shivas Irons Society has launched The Journal, a veritable treasure of good writing and good tales.

The Carmel, California.-based Shivas Iron Society was organized in 1992 "to explore golf's beauty and mystery, and to provide opportunities for personal and social transformation." It's named after the mystical golf professional who was introduced to us in Michael Murphy's classic novel, Golf in the Kingdom. The Journal is the latest effort on this non-profit society whose activities include sponsoring at-risk youth in golf endeavours.

The bi-annual journal – a membership is about $85 US – typically includes short stories, poems, drawings and full plate reproductions of photos and artwork. It's goal is to foster and honour high quality and thought-provoking art and literature on golf, it's history and the contribution of golf to personal development. In short, the quality of The Journal is a tribute to the game. www.shivas.org