course review: Pemberton Golf and Country Club, Pemberton, British Columbia

Time for a little compare and contrast exercise. Pemberton Golf and Country Club, located a 25 minute drive north of Whistler, BC, in the Pemberton Valley, provides us with the oppotunity to compare and contrast the virtues of Pemberton GCC with that of Furry Creek GCC. I won't waste your valuable time reiterating the experience at Furry, for you can well waste your time quite well by yourself reading it below.


Hitting my second shot on a par 4 at Pemberton GC. Notice the glider in the background.

• At Pemberton GCC, walking, is optional!
  
• At Furry, youze gots to ride dawg. Put some spinners on dem wheels and style!
  
• At Pemberton, the green fee is $55, and the marshals are nice to you. Actually happy to see you. Happy you've chosen their course. Happy that you're spending your dough at their gin joint. At Furry, you're down a c-note and up to here with attitude before you've but titanium to surlyn.
  
  I'm quite up for the occassional fleecing, but fleece me nicely, or I ain't never comin' back.
  
• Happily, you won't get fleeced at Pemberton, unless that is you've encountered a bit of a chilly morning and need to avail yourself of one of the fine outergarments avialable in the homey proshop. But here's a cool thing about Pemberton and the valley in which it lies. It's a lock that you'll have temps at least five to eight degrees higher than those forecast for the lofty heights of Whistler Village. You might wake up to frost on the window in Whistler, but don't worry about any nippy delays when you arrive in Pemberton.
  
• At Pemberton, the first hole eases you into the round with a dogleft left par five, reachable in two if you keep the ball down the right, giving yourself a view of green around the tall stand of pines that punctuate the left center of the fairway.
  
• At Furry, it's sink or swim from the ski jump first tee. Careful you don't break your leg on the way down. Good thing you have that cart to get you to the ambulance.
  
• At Pemberton, the tees, fairways and greens are finely maintained bent grass, and while the attention to detail could be taken up a notch, I think those who own and manage Pemberton know it's place in the BC golf world.
  
• At Furry, they too know they're place in the BC golf world, and Iron Fist is more than happy to tell you about it.

Now that we've compared and contrasted, Pemberton left me with a few sharp memories that I'll carry with me. One, Pemberton makes golf fun, the way it should be for the average player. Some short par fours, a couple that can be reached from in one, and the freedom to spray the ball a bit, go find it, and hit it again. Keeping it in the short stuff isn't always what my game, and perhaps yours is about, so you can still post a respectable score even if you haven't hit it like the Funky one. Second, the 10th hole is bordered on the left by a small airport, which provided golfers with a spectacular glider display all afternoon long. So if you're not playing well, look to the sky, and perhaps you'll be entertained.

Four! (Maybe I shoulda yelled 'two'!") The airport ran along the left side of the 10th hole at Pemberton GCC.

Pemberton GCC is semi-private, which gives the place a homey feel. The staff, each and every one we encountered, were friendly and fun. they didn't allow us to bring our own cooler along either, but at least they had a laugh about it with us. It's the kind of place you can get around in about four hours, and you'll never have to worry about the stroke-per-dollars-spent ratio. You'll even feel welcome in the clubhouse for after-round pitchers, while you settle your bets and talk about playing there again the next day.

Pemberton Golf and Country Club provides a lower-cost, but higher enjoyment alternative to most of the venues found in and around the Whistler area.

While Pemberton GC may not share the high degree of maintenance found at neighbouring Big Sky GC (though Pemberton GC is no goat track by any means), what it does share is the same spectacular valley scenery. There is something truly impressive about seeing your ball rise and fall against a mountainous background - it provides you with a totally different perspective on your ball striking.

course review: Furry Creek Golf and Country Club, British Columbia

Let it be known, for the record, that I have mad skillz.

That is, I am very good at getting mad at the skills that I so obviously lack on the golf course. I'm hitting it as far as I can hit it, under the most control that I can muster, busting it out 270 without falling down, and on occasion, when I pure one and the planets align just so, I can get it out there close to 300 - downwind, with the aid of a hard fairway.

So my long game is there, in some manner of form. My game from 150 in, it's another animal. A super-furry animal of sorts. And quite often, if there is a creek available, I'll want to either jump in it, or deposit a selection, not limited to balls, into said creek.

Which brings us, oddly enough, to the spectacular, yet gloriously stupifying Furry Creek Golf and Country Club. Locating the creek at Furry is not an issue. You could call the Howe Sound backdrop a creek if you so desire, but the drive from the clubhouse to the first tee reveals the creek in question. Furry Raging Torrent of Doom might be more appropriate. The rage of the creek echoes in your ears as you hit from the ultra-elevated 1st tee at Furry, as you attempt to negotiate a 160-foot drop to the fairway below. Something that I, with all my mad-skillz yo, did not achieve in a traditional manner. Two swings and two lost balls later, I found myself dropping a ball at the base of the mountain, pulling 8-iron from 160 on this shortish 339 yard par 4 starter. Nutin' like a smooth, and perhaps generous 7 to start a round.


Furry Creek Golf Club, second green, overlooking Howe Sound. That's me, crouched down, overlooking a bogey putt. I actually made that one.

Allow me to provide you with some insight into my golfing personality - I have a growing grouch on any course sporting the motorized buggy, and the wildly inaccurate geographic position systems they sport. So, two strikes against Furry right off the bat. As I soon found out however, for Furry I'll make the strict exception for the mandatory use of cart policy - but I'll blame that on the dopey architect decided the only possible routing would see the 5th green and the 6th tee nearly 1 kilometer apart. The thought that the cart path system itself at Furry could be hired out for go-cart joy-riding crossed my mind more than once. Take the govenor off that buggy and you really might have something.

Furry is an establishment falling in the highish end golf facilities in the Greater Vancouver area, one that at times will please your eye, while at others frustrating your golfing soul - for both it's design and it's service. It's rare that a course with such a backdrop can leave you wanting more - more from the course, and more from those who are there to serve you during your round.

Try to ignore distraction on the golf course as I might, I am one who has graduated from the Colin Montgomerie school of hearing and sensitivity, and invariably I am negatively affected by less than optimal displays of customer service and eittiquette that I encounter during a round. Case in point at Furry Creek was the resident course marshall, referred to hence forth as Iron Fist, a man who for some reason decided that the first tee was the time to hurry along our two foursomes, of which I was a member of one. Here you have nearly $1000 in revenue standing on the first tee ($89 green fee, plus the $25 breakfasts we dined on prior to our tee time = $115 x 8 = $920), with nary another car in the parking lot, Iron Fist grudgingly snapped cerimonial pics with a couple of digital cameras, muttering constantly about keeping up the pace.

Yea, sure, no problem. What ever happened to "play well!" and "have a nice round"?

I'm all for pace of play (read the soon to be posted round review - working title "Mississippi Burning" - for direct evidence), but jeepers, we've yet to strike a single shot in anger (and oh, there was anger during the loop), and I'm all ready feeling stressed. That, and we had two coolers of "beverages" confiscated by said marshall, who not-so-merrily informed us of the course's policy on alcohol. Yet more stress for yours truly. Not that I should worry, as I was accompanied by no less than three officers of the law, who could surely handle the iron fist of the dreaded marshall. But stressed I am nonetheless.

My stress, and lack of solid play was soon alleviated by the company of a half dozen chaps who I gather with annually, whose charming personalities freshen the most dire occasions with outbursts of foul language and school-girlish giggling that could put a smile on even the most jaded course marshall. Well, the most jaded course marshall excluding the joker at Furry. Present company, and the golf course itself was enough to bouy me from the depths of dispair. Furry Creek is a freakish marvel of nature and dirt engineering. Who ever it was who thought that this piece of real estate, lob wedged between the Rockies and the Pacific is either far smarter than I, or dumber. Perhaps both, because if asked for my opinon on the potential site that now boasts Furry, I'd have told that person to go launch themselves off the edge of the Sea-to-Sky Highway before attempting to build anything this ridiculous.

Furry measures barely 6000 yards from the tips. But as the old saying goes, length isn't everything. Unless you're thinking of a career in the adult-film industry - but even then, you've gotta have stamina. And stamina is something that Furry has in spades, 'cause this Mistress will give you some seri-ass rug burn.

The round at Furry was punctuated by the sudden approach of a storm that brought cold rain that quickly turned to small, yet surprisingly powerful hail as I teed it up on the 4th hole. I'm always telling anyone who will listen (and that's really not that many people), that I play better in the rain - but not this kind of rain. No one plays better in this kind of rain. It was a hard, cold rain. Straight down, big drops, hard. peppered with small pellets of hail. Delightful. There was no option of turning back however, as before we teed off, the Iron Fist, perhaps too happily informed us that if we tee off, we waive our right to a rain check. So it should be noted that when you make your decision to hit that first tee shot at Furry, you're there for the long haul, regardless of the conditions. A policy I found a bit on the harsh side, one most likely instutued by Iron Fist himself.

Now, back to the 4th. The 4th is an ample 566 yard five-par, under normal conditions would be a three shot monster due to it's narrow and undulating nature played that much more difficult due to the soaking conditions. The second shot on this hole revealed an interesting, not often seen feature, an "aiming pole" - a black and white striped stick protruding from the center of the fairway, approximately 200 yards from the green. A fixture on a half-dozen holes at Furry, I paid heed to these markers as best I could, which sadly was not as well as I should have on most occassions.


Playing partner Cam Marshall hits on the par 3 14th at Furry Creek, aka, the Happy Gilmore hole. His ball landed in the very bunker in which Happy and Bob Barker duked it out. Sadly, all my memories of the hole will not be good ones, as I hooked two balls into the Pacific for a smooth six.

I both hope and worry that my experience at Furry Creek was not representative of those experiences had by others venturing to this course. On a day that is perhaps less than sopping, and on a day that Iron Fist is on holiday at Alcatraz, you'd be hard pressed to find any course, anywhere, with more eye-candy than Furry.

Let it be said, Furry Creek is a be-yatch of a golf course. And I ain'ts gots dem mad skilzzzzz to handle it yo. When we playing it again? Let's just call ahead to make sure the Iron Fist isn't marshalling that day.