More than 100 golfers gathered in Osoyoos over the weekend for a shotgun tournament at the Osoyoos Golf Course. (Dale Boyd / Osoyoos Times)
By Dale Boyd
Osoyoos Times
Over 100 men competed at the Osoyoos Golf Club for a shotgun tournament over the weekend.
Overall tournament winners were Roger Gilhespy of Chilliwack (scoring 147 for the weekend) and Phil Simms of Osoyoos (scoring 129) walked away with $175 each.
Local golfer Lonnie Mader joined the tournament for the second year in a row, and while he didn’t rise high in the rankings, he was happy to get some time on the tee without any rain.
“I started with a par and ended with a par, but everything in between wasn’t,” Mader laughed.
Dick Harris, leader of the club’s ambassadors, was working hard along with a team of volunteers who aim to make everyone visiting the club have a great experience. “Members or guests, we greet them with the most welcome they’ve ever had at a golf club,” Harris said.
There are about 22 total volunteer ambassadors, four working at the tournament, bringing golf carts right up to cars and making sure all golfers have their needs tended to before they leave the parking lot.
“We just try to help them any way we can to make sure when they leave our club they feel they’ve had the best golf experience they have ever had,” Harris said.
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Starting out small, with ambassadors originally working weekends, the volunteers are now at the golf club seven days a week manning a kiosk and getting golfers ready to hit the links before they even step foot on the course.
“Whenever we see a car pull in it’s almost like we stalk them, we are there when they open the door and say ‘can we help you with your bags sir?’” Harris said. “We’ve had a lot of great comments. The team we have are really great people.”
His love of the local course drives him to take the club to the next level with the ambassador volunteers.
“This course here is championship rated, beautiful clubhouse and the membership is very reasonable compared to others in the area. It’s just a great place to be and we want to promote it,” Harris said.
Spending money in advertising and other promotions is no replacement for the word-of-mouth from satisfied golfers, Harris said.
“Having someone go back to Vancouver or Maple Ridge or Calgary and say ‘man, did we ever play at a nice course, they treat you like royalty there.’ That’s the best advertising we can get,” Harris said.
More than 100 golfers gathered in Osoyoos over the weekend for a shotgun tournament at the Osoyoos Golf Course. (Dale Boyd / Osoyoos Times)
