Don’t be discouraged by the name. Blue Devil Golf Club is neither hellish nor marked by an abundance of water hazards. Rather, the large number of sand traps will cause you the most difficulty while playing this course. And even then, the sand traps are rarely a problem along the fairway, only becoming a problem when they are grouped tightly in front of the green.
Blue Devil opened in August 2012 and was designed by Calgary-based Browning Horrocks Golf Design, the golf architects who designed Mckenzie Meadows. Thirteen holes were completed before 2009. The course remained unfinished until it was purchased by the company that owns Links of GlenEagles and HeatherGlen. The clubhouse and Blue Devil’s nine-hole Lil Devil golf course opened this summer.
Blue Devil is a links-style course with gentle rolling hills but without the hard, sandy turf of a true links course. There are a couple of benefits to the course’s design: the hills offer a nice challenge and make it more difficult to see and avoid the bunkers, but if you hook your ball, the slopes on either side of the fairways will typically bounce your ball back toward the centre — unless you’ve hooked it onto an adjacent fairway. The regular turf means you won’t need to change your style of play by shooting low and letting the ball bounce and roll to accommodate a hard links-style fairway. As a links-style course and a very young golf course there are only a few small clumps of short trees along the edges of the fairways.
Most of Blue Devil’s 18 holes are long, straight par 4 or par 5 holes with few surprises. For the most part, you’ll need to persistently drive long, straight shots. Keeping straight will help you avoid most of the sand traps, at least until you’ve reached the green. If you come up short on your approach or overshoot the green you’ll run into problems with sand and occasionally water.
There are only a couple holes that will trip you up. Hole six is a hard right turn around a pond. If you’ve got the distance, you can reach the green in one stroke, but the distance is deceptive and you’ll probably end up in the drink. You can play safe and drop your shot on the fairway to the left and cost yourself one or two strokes.
Hole 15 offers another tempting shot across the water to the green for an easy on — especially tempting after playing the majority of the very long 629-yard par 5.
Blue Devil is neither frustrating nor tedious but is consistently challenging and continually enjoyable — though it did take me several strokes more to complete the course than I normally do on a typical round of golf. It’s a course I know I’ll return to again and again as a staple of my summer golf games.
The course is located south of Highway 22x, in the valley at the end of 194 Ave.
Course rates start at $69 per person on Monday and Tuesday, $79 on Wednesday and Thursday and increase up to $89 over the
weekend.