Golf on the Hi-Line, part five: There's great golf up north

People who are avid golfers love to get out and travel. They certainly support their home course, and in our area, that’s usually Prairie Farms, Beaver Creek or the Chinook Golf Club, or in some cases, all three.

But let’s face it, golfers love to visit different courses and test their games against unfamiliar surroundings and setting. And Montana offers plenty of that, with currently 119 courses listed in the state’s directory.

But in our area, you don’t need to stay in Montana, or even the United States to get some great golf, and you don’t have to drive far either.

Instead, anyone with a passport can head north out of Havre, and in a couple of short hours can be at a great golf destination … Medicine Hat, Alberta.

In Medicine Hat, you’ll find three championship courses, as well as a championship executive course and two shorter executive courses. Indeed, Medicine Hat, a budding oil and gas city of nearly 100,000 in Southern Alberta, isn’t just Havre’s friendly neighbor to the north anymore, it’s also a great place to play golf.

Plenty of Holes

Medicine Hat has two long-standing 18-hole courses, and we’ll get to those in a moment. But when talking about golf courses north of the border, you have to start with the newly constructed Desert Blume, located just outside the city limits.

The course opened for play in 2009, and has already been named one of Alberta’s top new courses. If you haven’t seen the course for yourself, imagine the badlands area east and west of Havre, with a links-style golf course running up and down the sprawling canyons, and that’s what you’ve got in Desert Blume.

There are very few trees at Desert Blume, and the course does play very much like a Scottish links setup, with plenty of long carries off tee boxes, as well as dense rough, native grasses and lots of fescue. There’s large, rolling green complexes and the South Saskatchewan River tributaries have to be dealt with on many different holes.

What’s not linksish about Desert Blume however, are the elevation changes. The course rises and falls through the bluffs over the river valley several times, and it makes for spectacular views and extremely difficult golf holes. The course also plays long from the men’s tees, has many difficult carries over what golfers call “junk,” as well as water, and due to the wide open area, has prevailing winds which can make for even more challenging days on the links.

As far as nearby championship courses go, Desert Blume is a must-play for avid golfers in our area.

And there’s two more great courses in the city as well.

Medicine Hat Golf and Country Club is an outstanding, 18-hole course, also set in the river valley. The course is well-maintained, and plays much like a tight municipal course. It was established in 1913 and is lined with towering and centuries old Cottonwood trees and is heavily bunkered as well.

Imagine if you will, an 18-hole Beaver Creek Golf Course with more mature trees, and that’s what MHCC reminded me of on my only trip to the course. And though it’s a country club per se, it’s open to the public at very affordable rates.

There’s also Connaught Golf Club with yet another 18 holes for golfers to play. Opened in 1922, Connaught is much like MHCC in that it’s heavily treed, heavily bunkered and has several large water hazards, which come into play on 11 different holes. Connaught doesn’t quite have the elevation changes that Desert Blume or MHCC have, but it’s not entirely flat either. It’s a great track, and with the opening of Desert Blume, which, like Connaught, is also a golf community, the city has three excellent, championship courses to choose from.

I’ve had the fortune to have played all three, and the next time I take a trip to Medicine Hat, the idea will be to play all three in one weekend.

When driving into Medicine Hat from the south, golf fans might also notice a beautiful, and perfectly manicured course just off the famed Trans Canada Highway. That course is the immaculate Cottonwood Coulee Golf Course. While only a par 66, as it doesn’t have four traditional par 5s, everything else about the track screams championship course. It’s one of the more difficult and challenging executive courses around, and minus some length, it plays every bit the part of a fabulously designed championship layout. It has tee shots over water hazards, cavernous bunkers and large, undulating greens. It’s a course well worth the stop, even for the best of players.

Before You Get There

Locals who make annual treks up to Medicine Hat know about the Cypress Hills and about Elkwater. It’s a wild and scenic area and is somewhat of a mountain oasis in the middle of the southern Alberta prairie.

And while Medicine Hat has become a prime golf destination, a stop off at the Elkwater Golf Club is certainly worth it. The 9-hole public course is a 15-minute drive from the beautiful Elkwater Lake Lodge. The course boasts excellent grass greens and challenging shots on every hole.

But what will really get golfer’s heart’s pumping at Elkwater is the fact that they’re likely to share the course with the local wildlife. Much of the course is heavily forested, and it is to no one’s surprise if you see elk, deer and even moose on the course during a summer round.

Yes, between the beauty of Elkwater and all the great golf holes throughout the city of Medicine Hat, a trip to Canada is pretty fun for golfer’s these days. But don’t take my word for it. Go play all the golf you want in Medicine Hat and see for yourself.

Editor's Note: This is the fifth installment in a series of stories on Hi-Line golf courses and courses of interest in our area. The final story, on historic Beaver Creek Golf Course, can be seen in Monday's Havre Daily News.