Lillooet’s golfers have formed a new society, the Lillooet Sheep Pasture Golf Club, and have an agreement in place to manage the local golf course from May 1 to Oct. 15 this year.
The club will be leasing the course from its owners, the Jones family.
Club members will be responsible for running the course this year, including mowing fairways, maintaining the greens, changing irrigation pipe and running the pro shop 12 hours a day, seven days a week. If the club’s budget calculations are right, it will be able to generate enough income to cover hiring some part-time staff to do some of that work.
The one thing club members have not signed on for is caring for the course’s woolly inhabitants. Jones family member Christine Bone will be in charge of the sheep.
The golf club has 90 members, but more than 125 people took out tags last year for their annual green fees for the course, located eight kilometres from Lillooet on Texas Creek Road.
Club secretary Marguerite Parker told the News the golf club will be holding the line on registration fees, with green fees and annual course fees at the same dollar value as last year. The club has dropped the 25 per cent fee discount age eligibility from 65 to 60 this year. In another change, the club is now accepting Visa, MasterCard and Interac.
This year’s golfing season tees off with the Gumboot Open on May 5, with Ladies Night starting May 8 and Men’s Night beginning May 10.
“It’s up to the general membership to come out and support us and we’ll see how it goes,” said Parker. “If anybody wants to help us, please come on out.”
The Lillooet golf course was developed and opened as the Sheep Pasture Golf Course in 1985. At that time, it was one of two sheep pasture golf courses in the world. The other was located in New Zealand.
