Rival golf-course operators in Muskoka and southern Georgian Bay could only watch in envy last August when PGA heavy-hitter John Daly attempted to drive a ball through the swirling mist of Horseshoe Falls across the Niagara Gorge to Goat Island in the United States.
Though "Long John" failed in all 20 attempts, he generated a cascade of publicity for both the Niagara Peninsula and his new Thundering Waters Golf Club, a course Daly designed with Canadian architect Bo Danoff.
"How is anyone supposed to compete with a stunt like that?" says Jim Lee, executive director of the Canadian Golf Tourism Alliance, a national marketing association. "That type of publicity is priceless."
For almost a decade, the Niagara, Muskoka and southern Georgian Bay regions have fought for the golf spotlight by opening increasingly luxurious resorts, recruiting celebrity course designers such as Daly, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman, and spending millions of dollars on publicity campaigns. This summer, the battle will escalate with the opening of two highly anticipated public courses. "All three destinations draw on Southern Ontario's huge population base, an almost unfair advantage over the rest of Canada," Lee says.
More than 100 public-play courses are scattered throughout three stunningly varied landscapes encompassing a mix of deciduous and hardwood forests, pristine lakes, valleys and rocky escarpments. Locals and visitors from the Greater Toronto Area, as well as the growing number of golf tourists from elsewhere in Canada and abroad, are almost overwhelmed with choices in what has rapidly become Canada's -- and perhaps North America's -- hottest golf scene.
Even before entering the golf-tourism battle, the three regions stood out as long-established holiday mainstays. Niagara is world-famous for the thundering falls that annually attract about 14 million visitors. Muskoka and southern Georgian Bay, both about two hours from Toronto by car, rank among the most popular -- and priciest -- cottage districts in Canada.
In targeting the golf tourism market, the three destinations are following a path first blazed in Canada by Prince Edward Island in the 1990s. After a concerted marketing effort, annual revenue from golf tourism in Canada's smallest province jumped from about $17-million in the mid-1990s to around $80-million in 2005.
Not surprisingly, other regions of the country were quick to hop on the golf bandwagon, promoting courses in the Vancouver, Whistler and Okanagan regions of British Columbia, in the Alberta Rockies, the Quebec Laurentians, Cape Breton and mainland Nova Scotia.
In Ontario, Muskoka was the first to chase golf travellers, who, according to statistics, spend about 35 per cent more per trip and travel more often than other tourists. Since the early 1990s, a succession of acclaimed courses has opened throughout a ruggedly beautiful district whose cachet seems to grow with each passing year.
The lavish summer homes of wealthy Torontonians and Hollywood celebrities, including Goldie Hawn and Martin Short, adorn the waterfronts of Lake Muskoka, Lake Joseph and Lake Rosseau, the three most coveted addresses.
This July will see the unveiling of the Muskoka Bay Golf Course, a demanding 7,322-yard track carved through typically rough-and-tumble terrain just outside the town of Gravenhurst. Designed by Doug Carrick, Muskoka Bay adds yet another marquee course to a roster that includes Deerhurst Highlands Golf Course, The Rock Golf Club, Taboo Golf Course and Bigwin Island Golf Club.
Golf has been popular throughout the Niagara Peninsula ever since the 1881 founding of the Niagara-on-the-Lake Golf Club, one of the oldest clubs in North America. But it was the 2002 launch of the $27-million Legends on the Niagara golf complex on the outskirts of the city of Niagara Falls that overnight established the honeymoon capital as a rising star of Canadian golf.
Determined to grab the attention of serious golfers, the Niagara Parks Commission recruited two of the nation's top golf architects, Carrick and Tom McBroom, to design two 18-hole championship courses and combine their talents on the facility's nine-hole executive course and practice facility. Together with the opening of the $1-billion Niagara Fallsview Casino Resort in 2004, Legends on the Niagara helped to reignite the slumbering economy of a city that now accounts for 40 per cent of Ontario's tourism industry. And with two more high-end layouts opening to rave reviews in 2005 -- the Rees Jones Course at Grand Niagara and John Daly's Thundering Waters Golf Club -- Niagara tourism officials are touting the region as a golf destination that may eventually rival Myrtle Beach, S.C.
