Big Sky Golf and Country Club - Canada

Big Sky Golf and Country Club is located in British Columbia's Pemberton Valley, some 20 miles north of the Chateau Whistler Resort. Opened in July 1994, the course is on flat land, at an elevation of 600 feet, roughly 1,600 feet lower than the ski village at Whistler, which allows for golf from mid-April through mid-October. Designer Bob Cupp transformed a marshy site that had previously been used to grow seed potatoes, building a dyke around the course to facilitate irrigation. Cupp routed the course around seven lakes that are linked by the serpentine Green River and other creeks. The granite, snow-capped face of 8,450­foot Mount Currie towers above the south end of the course.

Capilano Golf and Country Club - Canada

Capilano Golf and Country Club, set in coniferous West Vancouver, is a scenic course of the first magnitude, with a matchless view of the Vancouver skyline from the first tee. Designed by Stanley Thompson, the course owes its establishment to A.J.T. Taylor, an investment broker born on Vancouver Island in 1887. Taylor purchased 6,000 acres across the inlet from Vancouver, and then began selling lots to well-to-do individuals in Britain. Taylor was able to use the financial resources of Guinness Brewery, a major investor in the property, to arrange for the building of the Lions Gate Bridge as the link to West Vancouver. The bridge, at the time the second-longest suspension bridge in the world after the Golden Gate, was opened by King George VI in 1939, the same year as the Capilano club­ house. The course was designed seven years earlier by Thompson on Hollyburn Mountain, west of the Capilano River. Thompson did a masterly job of routing the course along the hillside, with the first six holes descending 300 feet in elevation. The clubhouse, built on the high ground to resemble a Norman-style chateau, was the site of the wedding reception of Pierre and Margaret Trudeau in 1971.