[George Pazin]

Our friends up north don't do a very good job of promoting themselves. I'm not sure if they can learn from us Americans, or we can learn from them!

At any rate, I'd like to propose we start seeking out, playing and discussing some of the modern courses in Canada. It's too late to play this year in much of Canada (I'm guessing), so, in the meantime, can anyone share some info on Copetown Woods?

http://www.copetownwoods.com/

It's tough for me to leave home, with the world's best 20 month old waiting at home for me (sorry Henry Moore - I'm biased), but I hope to venture up north to play some of the courses built by our Canadian friends next year.

[Jeff_Mingay]

George,

Copetown Woods was designed by Dick Kirkpatrick, who posts here occasionally.

I haven't see the course, but I know it isn't far from Hamilton Golf and Country Club. I'm headed up there in a few weeks and just might ask Dick to take me around Copetown Woods, if I have time. I'd like to see it.

Dick's been in the business a long time. He's done work with a number of architects, including RTJ.

Hopefully Dick will chime in to tell us a bit about Copetown.

[Robert Thompson]

George: Our own Dick Kirkpatrick did the work at Copetown Woods, which is located just outside Hamilton. It is a very successful public course (more than 30,000 rounds per year) and an interesting track on land that is not the most inspiring. It is nicely priced and seems to have found a strong client base. In fact, at around $60, a lot of other courses could learn a lot from it.

If you are interested, George, you are always welcome to come north, hang with Ian Andrew and myself, and we'll find a way to show you some great golf. A group of guys, including Paul Turner and Redanman, came north last fall to play St. George's, Toronto and Hamilton, and I think I can rightly say they came away very impressed.

A lot of the good golf in Toronto, like most cities, is private, but with some time, much can be arranged. As you know, we are having a gathering of Canadian GCA types (now that we have Montreal guys coming, it can't be just Toronto) on Dec. 2 and maybe we can dream up something for Toronto like Ben Cowan-Dewar did for Banff and Jasper a few years back that would kind of be like the spring GCA gathering in the U.S.

Just a thought. Come on up George! And I know Ian and I hope to get to Pittsburgh to see Oakmont next year or at least I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

[Matthew MacKay]

As per Robert's post, we'd be thrilled to have GCA folks up for a visit.  The Toronto area is brimming with good to great golf...it's difficult to generate much discussion about it here on the site because so few people are exposed to it.  Any threads on Canadian golf are generally limited to about 10 people.  I'm happy to see that this number seems to be growing bit by bit.

Copetown is a very well priced public course that has some very good holes.  I think it seperates itself from many other local courses with respect to its generaly firm conditions and the wind that blows through the property.  

[Dick Kirkpatrick]

George:
Copetown Woods is my first design of a full length course and I am very proud of it.
As Robert noted, the green fees are under $60 a fee of which we designed and set the budget for construction to accommodate. I use a formula that for every $1M invested the fee can be $10 and without giving away the total budget, I can say we accomplished this task. When I walked the property with the environmental constraints maps, along with electric power line and gas line easements, I knew I had a difficult routing. On the plus side, the soil was very sandy and in fact our agronomist (Corrie Almack) was in touch with the agronomist for Sand Hills, and we found that some of our sand was identical to Sand Hills. We mined the best sands and used it for the rootzone material on the putting surfaces.The course is seeded to L-93 on the greens, a mixture of L-93 and Prominent bent on the fairways and tees and a mix of fairly common fescues for the rough areas. I used a small amount of Highland bent in the fescue mix to prevent golf balls from "nestling" down in the fescue.
The course plays hard and fast, is extremely walkable, and I would play it more often if it were not so busy.
I would be happy to personally play/tour the course with members of GCA. If some of you guys come up for golf in the Toronto area, we could set up a rotation with Copetown included.

[Andrew Cunningham]

Dick did do a good job considering the crapy "broccoli" patch he was given to work with.  The course is very tight in spots and several of the holes are pretty short by today's standards but for the aforementioned $60 primetime Copetown offers good value for your buck.  From an ROI stand point this project would be one to emulate.  From the signs on the driveway coming in, the upgraded carts, excellent service, and the wonderfully designed Victorian style clubhouse, this project was planned and executed better than any I have seen in the last five plus years.  If I was shopping around to buy a course now or in the near future Copetown would top my list.

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