Burnaby Mountain Senior Men’s Golf Club: The First Fifty Years 1 Cover: August 12, 2020, Guido DeVita, Alan Oloman, Moe Jones & John Lewis getting ready to tee off on Hole No. 1 in the 2nd round of the Covid-19 delayed Spring Handicap. Photo by Wes Hastings 2 Inside Cover: Aerial of 1st Fairway. Aerial photos by Wes Hastings and Alex Ludeman. BURNABY MOUNTAIN SENIOR MEN’S GOLF CLUB THE FIRST FIFTY YEARS A HISTORY: 1970-2020 Table of Contents Opening Remarks 4 Part I: The Recent 13 Years: 2007-2020 5 Introduction 6 Burnaby Mountain Golf Course and Facility Improvements 7 Applying for Membership in 2020 and Moving Forward 14 Golf Software 15 Rules of Golf 17 World Handicapping System 18 Burnaby Mountain Golf Course Personnel 20 The BC Cancer Prostate Research Annual Golf Day Fund Raiser 21 The Golf Community & Golf Environment 22 Burnaby Golf “Reach-Out” Program a Major Success Story 24 Part II: The First Thirty-Seven Years, A History: 1970-2007 25 *Plus Updates and Modifications Introduction 26 Prologue 28 Chapter One Burnaby Mountain: A Course Record 31 Chapter Two The Founders and the Traditions 36 Chapter Three Birdies and Bogies of Burnaby Mountain* 48 Chapter Four Trophies and Champions: 1970-2020* 53 Appendix A Golf: The Royal and Ancient Game 73 Appendix B Club Presidents, Captains and Meritorious Service 77 Award: 1970-2020* Appendix C Constitution and Bylaws of Burnaby Mountain 83 Senior Men’s Golf Club* Acknowledgements 93 Burnaby Mountain Senior Men’s Golf Club: The First Fifty Years 3 Moe Jones Opening Remarks Moe Jones, Club President 2020 It is a pleasure for me to introduce you to our club history, especially at this time as we celebrate our 50th anniversary. We can be very proud of the fact that for over 50 years, many men have enjoyed the game of golf and each others’ company here at Burnaby Mountain. I know you will be thoroughly engaged as you read this history. We can all agree that the inspiration and dedication of the charter members continues through our membership to this day. Thanks to Phil Boase for his vision and contribution of the Club’s history. I want to recognize and thank Don Buchanan and Tom Grieve for their many hours of work to produce this publication. Thank you to Leslie MacDonald of Golf Burnaby, the City of Burnaby Marketing & Communications Department, and club members Ron Pound, Brian Strom and Dennis Houle for their editorial contributions to the 50th anniversary history document. Finally, thank you to Golf Burnaby for their support over the years to make our Senior Men’s Golf Club one of the most sought-after clubs in the Lower Mainland. 4 PART I: THE RECENT 13 YEARS: 2007-2020 Burnaby Mountain Senior Men’s Golf Club: The First Fifty Years 5 Introduction The Recent 13 Years In 2020, the Burnaby Mountain Senior Men’s Golf Club celebrates 50 years of operation. To commemorate this milestone, the Board of Directors of BMSMGC determined that a 50-year history of the Club should be produced. Don Buchanan and Tom Grieve were asked to take on this project and happily agreed to do so. First Edition Our work was vastly simplified by the previous efforts of Phil Boase who had produced an excellent 37-year history of the Club in 2007. That document serves as the foundation for this one. We have updated it with the names of tournament and event winners and runners-up and of Club Presidents and Club Captains. Latest Edition Our work then was to update Phil Boase’s work with a history of the signal developments of the Club and Burnaby Mountain Golf Course over the past thirteen years. These have been significant. The golf course and the Burnaby Mountain facility have witnessed major improvement over this time. Membership in the Club has grown and significant new developments in our operations have occurred – most notably the recent introduction of a new software program to manage our events and to keep track of scoring and handicapping. Also, significant changes to the rules of golf have come into effect and, most recently, a new World Handicapping System is in the process of being instituted. An Unlikely Year A most unlikely impediment to our celebration of the Club’s 50 years is the current catastrophic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. This has dramatically affected our golf season – not to mention our lives and our world! The Spring Luncheon and Silent Auction had to be cancelled, but mercifully our delayed season recommenced in early May. And although we need to maintain two meters separation from each other, refrain from handshakes or high fives, initially drive alone in our carts, never touch a flag or a rake or our playing partners’ balls, wait for our prizes, and initially go home without an aprés-round beer, we are golfing again. The Board of Directors now zooms for our meetings, a shortened schedule has been devised, we’ve gone from 15-minute to 12-minute to 10 minute tee-time intervals (we have 104 golfers for our August, September and October draws), and life goes on. 6 David O’Connor Assistant Director, Golf Operations David has over 38 years of diverse golf management experience throughout western Canada, which includes experience in many private, public, and resort operations. He currently manages our staff of over 120 and continues to work on Golf Burnaby’s future- focused organizational goals. He looks forward to continued growth of the brand and experience at Burnaby’s four golf locations. Peter Sorokovsky Superintendent, Golf Course Maintenance With a Master’s degree in soil science (UBC), Peter oversees golf course maintenance, turf operations and capital improvement projects. He is the Director of the Western Turf Grass Association, providing and promoting research and education within the industry. His extensive knowledge and experience are evident in the continued improvement of turf health and playability on Burnaby’s golf courses. Leslie MacDonald Administrative Officer, Golf Course Systems & Services With extensive experience with the City including working on the front lines in the golf division and a BA (SFU), Leslie oversees the business unit information and reporting, the administration staff, and the servicing/programming of the golf course management, Online booking, and POS software. In addition to assisting our club with our weekly draws and tee sheet templates, Leslie enjoys researching and utilizing new technologies and procedures to enhance the golf experience. She and her team are currently looking at newer, more effective systems. Burnaby Mountain Senior Men’s Golf Club: The First Fifty Years 7 Burnaby Mountain Golf Course and Facility Improvements Thanks to the Burnaby City Council (and Burnaby tax payers), Dave Ellenwood (Director of Parks), the advocacy of David O’Connor (Assistant Director, Golf Operations), and the on the ground work of Peter Sorokovsky (Superintendent, Golf Course Maintenance), BMSMGC members have been the beneficiaries of extraordinary improvements in Burnaby Mountain Golf Course and its facilities since 2007. Those who have played the course since the early 2000s can testify to the dramatic improvements in the greens, tee-boxes, sand traps, cart paths, the driving range and, most notably, the drainage on our course. Burnaby Mountain is now one of the best maintained courses, with perhaps the best year-round playing conditions, in the Lower Mainland. Peter Sorokovsky has overseen all these improvements. Peter started his golf career at Predator Ridge at seventeen years old. He moved on to Northview, first as an irrigation technician and then as Assistant Superintendent in charge of drainage from 1998 to 2003. During this time, he continued his studies, achieving a MSc in soil science from UBC in 2005 before being hired by Burnaby Golf in 2007. On January 3, 2020, with a break in the weather after three days of brutal cold rain, this writer went out and played 18 holes on Burnaby Mountain and barely got my golf shoes wet. The fairways and greens were in excellent shape. Ten years before, the course would have been unplayable. Peter explained that this very positive change was due for the most part to a new drainage system, slit or grid drainage (as opposed to the old herring-bone system), that was installed first at Burnaby’s Riverway Golf Course in 2007 at a cost of $750K and then at Burnaby Mountain GC fairways from 2009-2013, with work continuing into the present. In the Winters of 2015 and 2016 all the greens underwent the installation of slit drainage. All the trenching and laying of pipe was done by hand: two days of work and about $7000 per green. Capital expenditure at Burnaby Mountain of some $1 million on all this new drainage was rewarded by an increase in green fee players from 30 a day to 130 in the winter months. Conditions were improved by substantial capital expenditure over the last decade on top dressing with sand and deep tining to improve aeration. Annual expenditure on materials (mostly fertilizer and sand) is about $150K per annum on Burnaby’s golf courses. In late 2019 alone, some $35K was spent on 800 tons of sand spread over Burnaby Mountain’s fairways and greens. 8 Improvements to our facilities also saw the construction of a new two-tiered driving range in 2010, which expanded the old 24 stall range to 64 stalls. Capital expenditure of some $4 million on this new facility included new slit drainage on the range, new fencing, and new training equipment, with the addition of swing speed analyzers at a number of stalls.