Kananaskis Golf Course reopens Thursday, 5 years after flood

In 2013, Calgary golf course architect Gary Browning was asked to assess the damage to the iconic Kananaskis Golf Course, several days after the flood.

Browning eventually took on the job of rebuilding and redesigning the course, which reopens Thursday after a complete overhaul that the province says came with a final price tag of $23 million.

The province expects to recoup $18 million through Ottawa's disaster recovery program.

Browning spoke to The Homestretch about the project on Tuesday.

Q: How bad was the damage in 2013?

A: It was actually worse than I'd expected.

If you hadn't seen the damage before, you wouldn't believe it.

I described it once before as Mother Nature delivered blunt force trauma to Kananaskis.

It was the worst of the worst. There were holes that were completely unrecognizable. Others that weren't damaged too badly — but for the most part, 32 holes of the 36 were devastated.

I went out to just actually try and reassure the guys that maybe we could bring  this back somehow, some way — that it was too important to Alberta and to the golfing public. That we had to bring it back.

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Q: Why take on the task of rebuilding and redesigning it?

A: Well I'm a golf course architect. This was an iconic design.

And I had no idea I would perhaps be involved with the restoration. I just went out to meet with the guys out there that I knew very well over the years, and wanted to — like everybody else in Alberta — see how bad it was.

Q: How did you rebuild?

A: You just had to roll up your sleeves and get to work.

It was not an easy task. It was daunting from the get go.

The debris that was littered across this golf course — the damage that Mother Nature had wrought in such a short time, was unbelievable — with six, seven, eight feet of material sometimes deposited on the fairways, of gravel, mud, [and] silt debris. [There were] trees scattered around the golf course, thousands and thousands of trees, like pick up sticks in eerie directions. Ponds that were completely silted shut. No more water.

It was a daunting task, to say the least.

But we did — we rolled up our sleeves, got busy, and every day, it got a little better.

Q: Kananaskis was designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. How close is the redesign to the original?

A: That was also part of the daunting task to be honest  —  to respect that integrity of Robert Trent Jones Sr. He did just  a marvellous job of routing this golf course.

Everybody that's ever played Kananaskis knows that it's a visually stunning golf course — the big bowl design, the white sand, those large, wildly undulating greens. Everything about it was nothing short of spectacular — and here I am, commissioned to restore this mess if you will into what was once an iconic masterpiece.

I just decided that I was going to try and really be respectful about what was there, but to give it a more of a timeless look — one look that I called looked like it had been there a hundred years.

A bit like Stanley Thompson's Banff or Jasper — something like that — where you couldn't really put a date on it.

Q: What did you change?

A: We decided that in today's golf market, we had to absolutely make it a fun experience to play for the average golfer.

We still wanted to provide a stiff test for the scratch golfer, which I'm not — but we wanted to make it a stiff test for those guys — and to not break the back or the spirit of you or I the average player

We widened some landing zones. Mother Nature helped us — she took out some trees.

Q: You're hitting the first ball at the reopening ceremony Thursday morning. Are you nervous?

A: That inaugural shot is far more stressful than anything I've experienced in the last five years.

With files from The Homestretch