SPORTS FLASHBACK 2004: Steinbach golf club swings into 50th year

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 28/07/2024 (356 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Steinbach Golf Club reached the very pinnacle of success with the hosting of the Royale National Women’s Senior Championship earlier this month and everyone involved on the local golf scene can now relax and bask in the satisfaction of a job well done. The hosting of a prestigious championship is the latest in a long line of successes for a golf club that is quietly marking its 50th year in 2004.

This is therefore, an opportune time for the older golfers in the crowd to reflect on the beginnings and maybe reach back and give a few of the builders along the way a pat on the back as well.

It may be known as the Steinbach Fly-In Golf Course, but as a 55-plus duffer who took up the game as a 12-year-old in 1957, I remember laboriously approaching the first tee on two-wheels and two feet.

Going for a round of golf back then for me was an all-day affair, starting with a one-mile bike ride south along Keating Road. Then a short cut across Jake Engbrecht’s pasture, greatly reduced the remaining two miles to town. Beyond the far edge of the pasture the ninth fairway stretched out as a great bike path to the first tee. There remained a quick cycle ride to the BA Station at the corner of Main Street and Highway 12, to rent a set of left-handed clubs.

The cost was an astronomical 50 cents and transportation of the clubs to the golf course and back to the service station after the game was the responsibility of the renter. At the time, all that extra effort seemed worth it.

The golf course was built by an energetic group of sportsmen headed by Edwin Regehr in 1954. The simple nine-hole layout was carved out of a piece of flat grass, which also served as an airstrip for early Steinbach pilots.

Most of the nine fairways crisscrossed the east-west runway and were therefore devoid of trees and any other vegetation, except for grass tall enough to swallow up any number of golf balls. A good game was finding more balls than were lost in this tall grass prairie.

The 50-cent green fees were collected on the basis of the honour system with a registration book in a small metal box located on a post at the first tee.

After my cycle-a-thon, I inevitably forgot this little ritual. In case anyone asked (which nobody ever did) I was ready to claim that I thought the exorbitant cost of club rentals included green fees.

Today’s golfers, with myself occasionally included, are enjoying the fruits of the labor and the sweat equity of those early Steinbach golf club members, who worked so hard to create a new recreational facility for their community.

The new Steinbach golf course was introduced to the community along with the brand new phenomenon of television. In fact, those two stories shared the front page of a May, 1954 edition of The Carillon.

Today, some 50 years later, television watching and more active leisure pursuits like golf are still competing for equal time with the young crowd.

Steinbach golf course construction was started in 1954, but the nine-hole layout was, in a sense, abandoned after a couple of years.

Every potential golfer on a list of 72 were contacted in a kind of a last ditch effort to revive the club in 1957. Edwin Regehr was re-elected president and joining him on the executive were vice-president Ernie Neufeld, secretary-treasurer Ralph Taylor and Bob Loewen, Frank Klassen and Richard Kliewer.

The Steinbach Golf Club forged ahead with plans to provide Steinbach with a good golf course. The fairways were already laid out, the sand putting surfaces were in, and J.R. Friesen donated maintenance equipment to cut the grass.

Golfers played on that “fly-in course” for another decade before A.D. Penner came up with his vision for the championship course, which the Steinbach Fly-In Golf Course is today.