Grand Niagara

In 2005, five years after his first Canadian course opened for play at Royal Oaks in New Brunswick, Rees Jones and design associate Keith Evans ventured north of the International Boundary to lay out another public golf facility at Grand Niagara Golf Club. It’s universally accepted that they accomplished their goal of creating a fair, challenging and interesting layout that’s not short of visual excitement.

Set within a large 350-acre parkland property, the course is imbued – in the words of the architect – with a “neo classic, old-style look” which is ready for both the modern player and his or her modern equipment. With rolling fairways routed alongside the Welland River, water plays a strategic part in proceedings at several holes. Sand also forms a major hazard, protecting many of the elevated greens.

Feature holes on the front nine include the par four 5th, where a creek intersects the fairway as it doglegs left to the green, and the long par three 6th, which plays to a two-tiered green that’s fronted by a large bunker to the front right side of the hole. On the inward half, the 16th is a strong par four that requires precision off the tee to avoid the long bunker complex that flanks the right side of the fairway.