Sagebrush Golf Club

The verdict

Sagebrush is one of those courses architecture enthusiasts talk about in hushed tones. It was the vision of Richard Zokol, the British Columbian who won twice on the PGA Tour, who teamed with the architect Rod Whitman and the agronomist Armen Suny to build a minimalist, walking only course on a remote bench of high desert grassland above Nicola Lake. When it opened in 2009 it was immediately named Best New Course in Canada and spoken of in the same breath as Sand Hills in Nebraska and Sutton Bay in South Dakota, the modern American minimalist benchmarks it so clearly admired.

Then it nearly vanished. Financial trouble forced the club to close, and for the best part of a decade Sagebrush sat as a celebrated ghost course, mowed and remembered but unplayable. Its reopening in 2021 under new ownership, this time welcoming public play, is one of the better recent stories in Canadian golf. For the traveling golfer it means a course that was once an exclusive members dream is now, at least for now, a round you can actually book, set in landscape unlike anywhere else in the country.

The holes worth the trip

Whitman built Sagebrush to be walked and to be thought about. The fairways are wide, often shared, and tumble over natural contours of bunchgrass and sage, so the course rarely dictates a single line. Instead it rewards the player who reads the angles, choosing the side of the fairway that opens the green and accepting that the bolder line usually carries more risk. The greens are big, bold and full of movement, the kind that make the approach and the recovery the real defence rather than length or rough.

The setting does a lot of the work. At elevation above Nicola Lake, the air is dry and the turf runs firm and fast through the summer, so the ground game is alive and a well judged running shot is often the smart play. There is a wonderful variety of short holes and reachable par 5s, and the routing makes full use of the rolling benchland, with several greens perched to take in the lake and the surrounding hills. It is dramatic without being tricked up, a course that trusts the land and the player.

What you take away is the rarity of it. There is very little golf like this in Canada, a true minimalist, strategic, walking course in remote high country, and after the years it spent closed there is a sense of occasion to simply teeing it up. It rewards a return visit, because the more you understand the angles the better it gets. Pair it with a wider British Columbia trip and it becomes the centrepiece round.

Where to stay nearby

Sagebrush is remote by design, and part of the appeal is staying close and letting the place slow you down. There is lodging associated with the club, and the nearby Nicola Valley and the city of Kamloops give you further options within easy reach, from ranch country inns to full service hotels. Staying on or near the property buys the best access and the chance to play more than once.

Because it sits in the interior of British Columbia rather than on the well worn Whistler or Okanagan resort trails, Sagebrush works best as a destination in its own right or as the high point of a wider BC road trip that might fold in the Okanagan wine country courses and the bigger resort names. For a certain kind of golfer, the trek to a reborn minimalist masterpiece is the whole point.

Looking for a base? See our recommended hotels and lodges around the Nicola Valley and Kamloops.