Paradise Canyon sees early flurry of visitors and feel back to normal operations

By Lethbridge Herald on April 21, 2023.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

Paradise Canyon Golf Resort have had their tee-sheets opened for a couple of weeks now, despite what they feel is a late start.

“It’s one of the poorer springs we’ve had weather wise,” said Matt Barkway, the club’s executive professional.

“We opened on April the 7th, which isn’t terrible. It’s a week past when we would open on average. Typically we look for the last Friday in March. But after back-to-back years of mid-March openings it feels really late. We essentially lost out on three weeks and with the snow this week, it’s pushing four weeks behind. The course has wintered fine, everything’s going to come out perfectly fine, it’s just it feels really late for Lethbridge.”

Barkway said every time it’s nice, everybody is getting on the course as much as they can.

“Especially with all the snow and what not in Calgary, basically from just north of Lethbridge all the way up through,” said Barkway.

“I don’t think it quite extends up to Red Deer but most of that stretch and then out to the east. You know plenty of golfers from out of town still needing to come down just to get on a course at this time of year.”

The course does expect out of town players early on in the season.

“Like essentially we’re going to get two to four weeks of everybody from Alberta and Saskatchewan heading out this way to get their first couple of rounds in (and) anybody that wants to get started and that’s pretty typical. We’ll beat Calgary by two to three weeks , and Edmonton by four to five weeks and Saskatchewan by four to five weeks.”

The course feels it’s the first full year out of COVID, barring any setbacks.

Barkway said it should be fairly normal, operation wise.

“It feels good,” said Barkway.

“You can see it in a lot of our suppliers right now. Things like our power carts, for example … long story short all the parts and everything coming from overseas and what not, they’re all starting to catch up and operate on little bit more normal timelines. Like pre-COVID, you do a club fit and you order a set of clubs, it’s five to 10 business days. And then with COVID and the lockdowns, it became three weeks to six months for stuff, and some of our clothing and what not just never showed up and it was a little bit chaotic for everyone just with the lockdowns across the board. But now everything shows up in a pretty reasonable time.”

Barkway said “really good” when it comes to memberships this years.

“All that’s trending is exactly where we want it to be,” said Barkway.

“It’s a little bit different. We’re not a private course where everybody pays in February or at a specific time. They kind of pay as they start golfing.  Like I don’t really judge those numbers until almost basically the end of May. By that time, most people are going to have a membership or round of some kind bought. We’ll  still take them after that, but pretty much everybody’s playing by sometime in May.”

Barkway expects to retain a good chunk of golfers who discovered or rediscovered the game during the pandemic this year.

There will be a lot of charity events hosted at the course this season and the list can be viewed on their website.