McLaren said he originally got the idea from his parents.
“The two of them would go out to small town courses around Regina, Fort Qu’Appelle or Indian Head,” McLaren explained. “(They would) play nine holes of golf and then stay at the local cafe for lunch and try to make a date of it, so I got the idea to try a few small town golf courses myself, and one thing led to another.”
Each summer, McLaren said he chooses a collection of golf courses to visit.
“I pick out parts of the province or I set out patterns of where courses are sort of close to each other,” he explained.
McLaren said he counted more than 200 golf courses around the province when he started first set the goal, and he continues to discover new ones.
“The way I count it, there are 212, I think,” he said. “But that being said, I actually just discovered a new one last week. We were driving back from Spiritwood to Blaine Lake and came across a regional park that had a nine-hole, artificial-turf course that I’d never heard of.”
McLaren said he’s nearing the end of his journey, and only has three courses left before he can claim to have golfed every course in Saskatchewan.
“I have done 209 of the 212 that I know about,” he said. “The three that I have left, I have plans in the near future to golf two of them in Saskatoon. There’s still one private course in Saskatoon that I’m working on getting on, but it hasn’t come about quite yet.”
The private course that is proving to be achallenge for McLaren is Riverside Country Club.
After golfing at more than 200 courses in the last five years McLaren said he’s seen it all, and a lot of the courses came as pleasant surprises.
“There’s probably more hidden gems than I could list,” he said. “The nine-hole course at Willow Bunch is fantastic. When you get up north, you run into all kinds of beautiful courses, because it’s so lush and green up there.”
But one golf course did stand out to McLaren as the best hidden gem in the province.
“My favourite – and this really is a hidden gem – is Loon Lake,” he said. “It’s a nine-hole grass course south of Meadow Lake Provincial Park but north of Lloydminster and North Battleford.”
McLaren said he’s ranked each golf course he’s been on.
“I call it the ‘Ian McLaren Completely Arbitrary Ranking System,’” he said. “It’s the condition of the course, it’s the challenge of the course, it’s the aesthetics, it’s how it’s laid out. The only two things I don’t factor in are the weather and how I was golfing on that day.”
McLaren said Madge Lake was the most difficult course he’s visited during his project.
“The number of times that you hit down the middle and you think ‘Oh that’s a good shot,’” he said. “You really need some local knowledge, because it turns out that down the middle fades off, (and) next thing you know you’re standing next to a black bear in the woods.”
McLaren said the course at Portal, which sees golfers tee off in Saskatchewan and putt in the United States, was also a unique and enjoyable experience.
“It’s the only time I’ve left Saskatchewan, I think, since COVID,” he said.
“It’s on the ninth hole, and the tee box is in Canada, and it’s a little, short par three. You actually park in America as well… depending on the time of the year, (your ball) can actually land an hour different from where you hit it.”
Unless you have a group of four people, most golfers get paired up with someone else, but McLaren said that hasn’t been an issue at most courses.
“Most of the smaller courses have no problem letting one person go out,” he said. “I’ve gotten paired up with people, and I think it must be something about Saskatchewan – I’ve never been paired up any time that I’ve ever golfed with someone who I didn’t get along with great.”
With all the time he’s spent golfing, McLaren joked that he should be a professional by now.
“You’d think I would be right?” he joked. “Everyone says ‘Well if you do something a lot, you must be good at it,’ but I had a buddy that went through Grade 8 three times, so that doesn’t really work out.”
