I had the rare opportunity to play the Fairmont Banff Springs Golf Course (The Stanley Thompson 18) with some international friends. This is a bucket list golf course for many golfers. The course has won many prestigious awards for being not only a top course in Canada but in the entire world. The course is set on the Bow River and you are surrounded by majestic mountains. The pictures will not do it justice as I spend more time gawking at my environment than focusing on my game.
The course is almost 100 years old, so it's a fairly straight-forward design with larger round greens and straight & flatter fairways. The challenges here are the bunkers and keeping the ball between the trees. The highlight hole is hole#4, which is a Par3 called the Devil's Cauldron where you hit down to a green 100ft below you while looking straight into the prettiest mountainside in North America. Watching the ball fly and drift down again this backdrop is amazing. You are really paying for the scenery and location...if you airlifted the hole/course designs out of Banff and placed in the AZ desert it wouldn't garner much attention.
The wildlife around the course is very prevalent. I saw a lot of elk and deer, and then on the 16th tee we saw a black bear cub. We are just glad we didn't run into mama bear!
On the day we played, there was no running water, which meant no indoor toilet use and no hot food. This was disappointing, but I'm sure it's been resolved by the time you're reading this. The other eye-popper is the green fee can range up to over $500 CAD, luckily we had a deal and paid ~$140 US. For $140 US I would play again if I was back in the area.
Overall, this was a very memorable experience and I highly recommend to at least play it once if you're a golf fanatic. read more