Pine Ridge Golf Club

The prairie province of Manitoba is not exactly overflowing with quality golf courses but the 18 holes at Pine Ridge Golf Club, just outside Winnipeg, are certainly worthy of inclusion in the upper echelons of the national rankings.

Within a few years of formation in 1912, one of the club's early committees decided to appoint Donald Ross as course architect and so Pine Ridge is one of only several Canadian designs – Essexand Rosedale are two of the others – to bear the stamp of the great golf course designer.

For a fee of just over $500, Donald Ross remodelled the original Tom Bendelow course by adding eleven tees, over a hundred bunkers, six new greens and four brand new holes.

Opened for play in 1921, the Ross layout is routed over gently rolling terrain and it extends to a modest 6,622 yards from the back markers, with many of the tree-lined fairways doglegging left or right across the landscape.

Although there are five par threes on the scorecard, the first one-shotter is not encountered until the 148-yard, uphill 7th hole, played to a green surrounded by four bunkers. Back-to-back par three holes follow around the turn; the 9th uphill then the 10th downhill.

The remaining short holes are played on holes 14 and 16; the former featuring a well-protected punchbowl green whilst the three-tiered putting surface of the latter is definite three-putt territory.