TEEING OFF: Glen Lea celebrates 40 years of family tradition

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This article was published 23/06/2022 (1292 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

They still close the blinds on the east side of Glen Lea Golf Course’s clubhouse every night.

That way the air conditioner stands a fighting chance to keep the building cool when the hot summer sun rises and cooks fire up the ovens. It’s one of many observations Morris Earl made over the 40 years he spent on the property six kilometres east of Brandon.

“It’s still on our closeout sheets,” said Jason Earl, Morris’s grandson who took over as general manager in 2005.

“Grandpa was a good mentor. He showed us a lot of practices back then that I was young and didn’t agree with but still to this day we still use a lot of those practices and theories.”

In 1979, Morris purchased the land from Al Campbell, who had recently shut down the nine-hole Riverview Golf Course, which featured sand greens and relied entirely on rain to water the course. It was a retirement project for the auto body whiz who fixed cars from age 15 to 55 and had just recently taken a liking to golf.

Morris grew up on a farm in Justice and figured he had the tools to carve an 18-hole track. He recruited buddies Dave Cleave and Louis Bach and they spent the next three years reshaping the course, adding a dugout and building proper greens and tee boxes with irrigation running to each one.

In the winter, they’d sit at Central Autobody — which Morris started more than 30 years prior and passed on to his son — scour aerial maps and meticulously plan each hole.

They opened nine holes in 1982 and another nine the following summer. Morris kept working at the course into his 80s and died on May 21, 2019, at age 90. Monday would have been his 94th birthday. For the 2022 season, Glen Lea is celebrating 40 years of memories that all started with a dream, or simply something to keep a hard-working man busy.

• • •

Jason Earl mowed greens and tee boxes before he could drive.

He’d sleep over at his grandpa’s place and get woken up at 5 a.m., for a quick bite, then eight hard hours on the course. Jason quickly learned not to stand around, or at least get caught doing so. That’d lead to a tough task as punishment.

Take four days off to attend Dauphin’s CountryFest?

“I was shovelling cart paths Tuesday morning,” Jason chuckled. “He was just old school like that.”

Jason moved into the pro shop a few years later and was fascinated by the business side of golf. He enrolled in business administration at Assiniboine Community College, and then headed west to Lethbridge College for the professional golf management program. He roomed with current Clear Lake Golf Course head pro Matt Nylen, graduating in 2006.

A year earlier, the opportunity arose to move into management and Jason took it. That was probably a matter of when, not if, as Morris’s work ethic inspired him from the start.

“He was a hard person to work for,” Jason said. “He knew what he wanted and he had high expectations. He demanded a lot out of his workers but at the end of the day, he was the first one to crack a beer with you and tell you stories.

“… When it came to work, it was work, and when it came to fun, he was the best grandpa you could ask for … If we were playing golf, he was always the first one to watch us. If we were playing baseball, hockey, he was always front row.”

• • •

The golf course looks nothing like its original design.

The fourth hole was today’s third, but backwards. A few holes have minor modifications and some are impossible to even picture since the hundreds of trees Morris and his buddies planted have matured.

Today’s seventh hole was the opener, with the old clubhouse behind the current 17th tee. That small clubhouse moved to the current practice green until the new one was finished. Then it became a workshop and was later demolished.

Jason and superintendent Jordan Joye have since tinkered with the 5,650-yard, par-70 layout.

They removed the culverts in the ravine in favour of more aesthetic rock features on the par 3s that cross it, and they aren’t done there.

Jason’s OK with the front 9 measuring nearly 3,000 yards but would like to extend the back, starting with the 11th. Coming off a 240-yard, par-4 10th, it’s currently just 254 yards with no trouble on the right side but the plan is to stretch the tee back to the other side of the ravine, pushing it over 300 yards.

They won’t touch the sixth hole, however, as it’s Morris’s favourite. He aced it once and there’s a memorial bench behind the tee now. It features his photo and a quote he told the Sun’s Mike Jones back in 1984.

“I must have walked the land a hundred different ways, trying to design a course with enough length to make it a reasonable challenge, but not too demanding that it couldn’t be enjoyed by everybody,” Morris said.

Added Jason: “We want to keep that quote as our vision.”

• • •

Golfers can raise a special toast to the club’s history this summer.

Glen Lea teamed up with Black Wheat Brewing to brew an exclusive beer with a custom label. Jason Earl and associate pro Ryon Barnesky met with Graeme Matheson at Black Wheat in February to sample products.

They wanted a light summer beer and settled on a crisp, refreshing blonde that hits the spot after making a birdie or while writing about golf.

The can blew Earl away. He sent a photo of Morris and the logo and Black Wheat designed a sleek, shiny green label with the course logo and layout, along with Morris’s quote.

“There was nothing I could do to improve it,” Jason said. “It was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. I was so impressed. They added the layout in there and I instantly approved it.”

It took six days to sell out their first 200 cans earlier this month and there are more on the way. Black Wheat won’t even sell it to customers directly: They’re only available at Glen Lea.

“It’s our history,” Jason said. “That’s how we started 40 years ago. My grandpa had a vision, he had a dream and a vision and a passion for golf. When I look at that can, it all comes together.”

» tfriesen@brandonsun.com

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