COLUMN: Sports Flashback September 23, 2004 – Corporate sponsorship key to golf course development

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/08/2024 (598 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It has often been said that Rome was not built in a day. Over the past 50 years, Steinbach golfers have seen a wonderful transition from sand greens, where a little rake work improved the short game, to lush carpets, which are kept that way through the constant efforts of a greens supervisor, who has become a permanent fixture at the maintenance shed, which doubles as an airport office just off the 17th tee at the Steinbach Fly-In Golf Club.

Over the past 50 years, the Steinbach Golf Club has come a long way from its beginnings on a patch of grass owned by the Chamber of Commerce at the Steinbach fairgrounds.

Because the land north of the fairgrounds on Highway 52 belonged to the Chamber, it came without cost to the golf club in 1954. It took the club just three years to create a playable golf course.

Except for bush on the short par three fourth hole, the entire course was wide open. There were a few trees in the way on three of the holes, and a real danger of hitting it out of bounds on another two, but for an accomplished golfer, the course was relatively easy.

Golfers played on that course for more than a decade before A.D. Penner came up with his vision of a championship golf course and airfield, which is today a reality.

Today, the 18-hole, picturesque Steinbach Fly-In crisscrosses a winding creek, with the front nine tucked into the back side of an upscale residential development.

The finishing hole on the back nine is adjacent to a paved airport runway that was the first phase of A.D.’s dream.

In between the two nines, nestles a fashionable and functional timber frame clubhouse boasting a first class restaurant.

The 18-hole layout is a tribute to the men whose names are on a patrons’ plaque on the monumental rock near the first tee. Without the dozen or so corporate sponsors stepping forward and opening their cheque books, the ambitious vision of A.D. Penner never would have got past the planning stage.

Good things don’t just happen, and too often in the bustle of day-to-day living, the real gems are often taken for granted. The Steinbach Fly-In Golf Course is one of those jewels.

Steinbach may have been dubbed the “Automobile City” way back in the 1950’s, but 50 years later, it is just as well known for its championship golf course and the Mennonite Heritage Village next to it.

Both are reminders of the hard work of earlier generations. That brand new swimming pool next to the golf course and the T.G. Smith arena complex downtown are also helping to make the city a recreation destination rather than just a great place to live, or perhaps, to visit when in the market for a new vehicle.

The original golf course appeared with little fanfare in an era when work and not play was the top priority in the bustling community of Steinbach. The proponents of that first golf club were bothered that smaller communities, like Emerson, Winkler and Carman, all had successful golf courses, while their own community, which they considered much more progressive, did not.

The golf course took three years (1954-1957) to build and was created as a source of pride for a growing community, to be enjoyed by a relatively few golf enthusiasts, and local pilots, who used the fairways as a landing strip.

The Steinbach Golf Club, in 2004, is just as quietly marking its 50th anniversary and only the 55-plus crowd will recall playing on that first Steinbach course.