A group of well-wishers and longtime members of Sault Golf Club came out to celebrate and honour the club’s 100th anniversary Monday night.
A flag raising, close to the site of the club’s original first tee, was followed by a bagpiper who piped the crowd across Queen Street to the present-day first tee, where longtime members Richard Evoy, Thel Schiefele and Frank Donnelly all teed off for the club’s centennial.
“It’s a wide range – we have our former golf professional, we have a member who’s been here for 63 years, and we have one who’s represented our golf club throughout the country,” said Sault Golf Club Director Andre Litalien. “What better honour than to have those three people do that tonight.”
Another avid golfer, 97-year-old Reva Ovens, was also on hand for a ceremonial putt.
Ovens joined the club 50 years ago, when she was 47 years old.
She expressed gratitude just for being able to be to celebrate the club’s milestone.
“It’s wonderful that I’m still alive to do it,” Ovens said.
She has officially retired from the sport, having golfed for the last time when she was around 90-years-old, in her estimation.
“I’m just here to celebrate,” Ovens told SooToday. “I only wish I could be out there, but I know I can’t.”
Ovens, who has golfed with friends across North America, is now a lifetime member of the Sault Golf Club.
She said it was the fun that kept her coming back to her local club all those years.
“The fun - just plain fun,” said Ovens. “I only wish I had of taken more lessons, but I didn’t. I did it my way, and I had lots of fun.”
“I golfed as much as I possibly could, and that was almost every day. It was quite a few days, anyhow.”
The golf balls from Monday’s ceremonial tee-off have been autographed and will join some other items, such as a pin flag and present-day scorecard, in a time capsule that will be buried during a dinner-and-dance event July 19 – the date of the original charter of the Sault Ste. Marie Country Club.
“We will bury it somewhere - we’ll get a plaque commemorating that event,” Litalien said.
Centennial celebrations get underway June 1 with an ‘outing’ – an old term used for a golf tournament – using the original nine holes of the Sault Golf Club that have been retraced for the event.