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Course Review: Royal Mayfair (Edmonton, Alberta)

Course Review: Royal Mayfair (Edmonton, Alberta)

Designer: Stanley Thompson (with alterations by Les Furber and Ted Locke)

Overview: Mayfair is the blue blood club of Edmonton, mirroring the likes of Rosedale in Toronto or Capilano in Vancouver. As such it has a fine history and a classic Stanley Thompson course that has been tinkered with in places over the years, first by Les Furber and more recently by Ted Locke. Where it excels the elements of Thompson’s genius surface. Unfortunately where it falters is in recent changes, both heavy-handed ones by Furber (with his atrocious use of waste bunkers which are the antithesis of Thompson’s style) and the reworked 10th hole, which is a blight on an otherwise fine golf course.

The closing hole at Royal Mayfair.

Birdies: 

  • Despite significant changes, there are some interesting elements to the course which would appear to be part of Thompson’s original concept for the course. The long fours, in particular 7, 12, 17, are all quite fine, and though there’s little elevation in the course, the best holes have some interesting movement in the fairways.
  • While I’d say the longer two-shot holes still offer much of Thompson’s perspective on design, the shorter par fours also captured the imagination and presented a wider shot variety. Of particular interest are the 6th, 13th and 15th.

The reworked 11th, with bunkering that has nothing in common with Thompson’s work.

 

Bogeys:

  • The 10th, a dogleg right around a massive holding pond, is an awful mess and really out of sync with Thompson’s work, as is the 11th, a long par three with a bank that rolls into the holding pond. Neither hole looks like Thompson’s work – though I understand the 10th has long been a problem.
  • There’s no doubt the 18th is a tough hole. But did Furber have to turn it into a Pete Dye hole from central Florida when he made his changes? Now it is all about awful unnatural ponds and water fountains. That has little to do with Thompson’s vision of golf – though the setting of the green (which also appears to have been rebuilt) underneath the outdoor patio is one of the best in Canada.
  • There are some awkward holes at Mayfair (the third, for example) that are now protected by trees designed to try to recapture shot values that have long since disappeared.

 

Final Tally: It would be fascinating to see what Royal Mayfair could become if the club decided to make the fundamental changes that would undo many of the renovations of recent years. Right now it has the bones of a terrific course, but the aesthetics falter and the recent changes (10, in particular) are pretty questionable. The question I was left with as I walked off the 18th is what would Mayfair be if they brought in an architect prepared to remove Furber’s horrific embellishments and put Thompson’s vision back?

 

 

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Robert Thompson

A bestselling author and award-winning columnist, Robert Thompson has been writing about business and sports, and particularly golf, for almost two decades. His reporting and commentary on golf has appeared in Golf Magazine, the Globe and Mail, T&L Golf and many other media outlets. Currently Robert is a columnist with Global Golf Post, golf analyst for Global News and Shaw Communications, and Senior Writer to ScoreGolf. The Going for the Green blog was launched in 2004.

3 CommentsLeave a comment

  • Rob, come back in the spring, it looks better when the snow’s gone.:-) I like Furber’s use of variety, he wasn’t brought in to restore, he was upgrading, modernizing a good private club. From what I’ve heard the member’s like it.

  • There’s no way anyone – member or not – can like to play #10. Awful hole, simply awful. And while the 18th isn’t Stanley Thompson, it is a great risk reward finishing hole and a fun place to watch the carnage that wreaks havoc on most who play the hole.

  • Robert, that 7th hole at Streamsong, does it fit the rest of Doaks holes? He said it doesn’t because he wanted it different than the other par 3s, so can’t Furber also do different things for the sake of variety?

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