Address

Originally RR5 London then 2835 Sunningdale Road East

Ownership

City of London

Year Built

1958

Architect/Designer

John Innes
John Moffat Senior

Golf Professionals

John Moffat 1958
Bill Fox Sr. 1959-1969
Mike Olizarevitch 1970-2009
Andy Shaw 2010
Robert Vincent 2011-Present

Greens Superintendents

Bill Broome 1958-1961
Hubert Ward 1962-1981
Al Stoyles 1981-1990
John Cowie 1991
Bob Miners 92-97
Don Omerod 98-2004
Brent Hoppe 2005-Present

Significant Tournaments

Oakridge Ford Best Ball Tournament
1975 Fall PGA
Tyson Tour [participation for all 49 years]
Les Thomas Tournament since its inception in 1982

Signature Hole

#12 – Par 3 – 204 yards, one of the best par 3’s anywhere

Underrated Hole

#10 – Par 4 -345 yards, the difficult green makes for many bogies and worse

Top Players

Bill Fox Sr.
Bill Laughlin
Tom McCallum
Bruce Atkins
John Cowie
Rob Mason
Mike Olizarevitch
Lew French
Mel Casey
Dale Tallon
Jeff Overholt
Gil Parkinson
Jeff Van Vliet
Bob Stephan
Andy Shaw
Pete Andrin
Linda Bailey
Ivy Rath
Bill Fox. Jr
Cliff Brown
Dick Harback
John German
Bob Bryant
Susan Garlick
John Grant

Five Best Features 

Great public layout
Affordable
Design of Individual holes
Skilled players
Very Challenging par 3’s

Interesting fact

The majority of the holes on the Traditional remain reasonably intact from opening day in 1958. The one exception is the old 12th hole which used to go from the back tee on Traditional #7 to the green for Quarry #1. When you stand on the back tee for #7 Traditional and gaze through the maze of trees now, it is hard to believe that the hole once went to #1 Quarry green.

The Fanshawe Traditional is the course I grew up on. Originally, when it opened in 1958, the course was operated as a partnership between the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority and the London Public Utilities Commission. Construction of the course filled a need for both organizations. The P.U.C was looking to build a course somewhere in the east end of the City to mitigate some of the pressure on Thames Valley Golf Course which was the only public course in the City and was getting overplayed to the extreme. Fairmont Golf course had performed this function in the past and was a privately operated public course which had operated from 1932 until 1953. Unfortunately after 1953 it was plowed under for houses and became the subdivision known as Fairmont. After that all public golfers were back to wearing out one course, Thames Valley.

In 1955, the UTRCA had land available for a golf course and they were interested in having a complete recreational complex in the area of the new Fanshawe dam to include swimming, hiking, camping, boating……and golf. Although they were heavily involved in the construction and early stages of operation, eventually the UTRCA bowed out as a partner and the London PUC became the sole operator of the Fanshawe Traditional course. In order to get the newly planned course in action, the London P.U.C. purchased 55 acres of farmland belonging to Bill Broome and entered into a lease agreement with Upper Thames for another 68 acres of floodplain land adjacent to the Broome farm. The lease terms for the London P.U.C. can only be described as very favourable for the 68 acres; $3,000 per year for the 1970’s, $4,000 per year for the 1980’s and $5,000 per year for the 1990’s. After that the terms of the lease agreement were adjusted upward. All of the land purchases and construction costs of the Fanshawe Traditional were paid, not out of tax money, but by surpluses generated by the golfers at Thames Valley.

The cluster of good golfers and individuals who ended up working in the golf industry who came from the humble beginnings of the Traditional golf course at Fanshawe is nothing less than phenomenal. It certainly wasn’t due to the quality of the course. The trees were small, the greens were hard, the turf was spotty and in the beginning the traps were non-existent. Groundhogs abounded everywhere, similar to today. I give a lot of the credit to the Golf Pros who worked there at that time. Bill Fox Sr never met an employee that he wouldn’t support or encourage to play the game better. Mel Casey was a good player with a lot of presence and spirit that tended to inspire others. Mike Olizarevitch was like the “Pied Piper” to junior golfers who wanted to be like “Olly”. Future Golf Pros, Greens Superintendents, Ontario Junior champions and quality amateur golfers thrived in this environment. The Fanshawe “Traddy” is a very resilient golf course with awesome natural drainage and a set of tough par 3’s. It has everything you would look for in a property to operate a successful public golf operation. It is just that.

The original design for Fanshawe Golf Course covered an area of 123 acres. 68 of the 123 acres were leased land belonging to the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority. These 68 acres were designated floodplain and made up most of the holes located on the south end of the course near Fanshawe Park Road. On today's Traditional course this includes  #1, #2, #3, #12, #13, #14, #15, #16 and parts of other holes. The remaining 55 acres were purchased by the City of London from local farmer Bill Broome and comprises the northern area of the course close to Sunningdale Road. Today's holes built on this land include #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9, #10, #11, #17 and #18. Typical of many courses back in the day, the farmer/former owner was hired as the greenskeeper. Bill Broome helped to build the course and served as the greens superintendent until he passed away in 1963. Here is an aerial photo of Fanshawe as a farm in 1955 and then the same shot in 1967 when the golf course was completed.

The grade on almost all of the fairways was never changed during construction. John Moffat and John Innes, the designers of the course laid out the holes on the natural contours of the land, using them to best advantage. One exception to this occurred on today's #16 hole. The final steep hill ascending to the green must have been deemed too severe for golfers to climb so John Moffat directed a bulldozer to build a kind of causeway to soften the slope and it is still easy to spot today. Here is John directing the work on May 7, 1956. The background of this photo is interesting. It is easy to see the newly formed Fanshawe Lake [Fanshawe dam was built and opened in 1953] and the bath houses for swimmers in the lake. Swimming in the lake doesn't happen anymore so the bath houses have been torn down.

Sometimes the background of older photos proves to be the most interesting. Here is a photo taken on the same day from a slightly different angle and it shows #13 and #15 greens under construction.

John Moffat fought hard to insure that the new course, lying on a massive gravel deposit, was properly irrigated. He obtained historical rainfall records from the London Airport to help prove his point that a course built on such a well drained site was going to need a good watering system. This is likely why the initial $80,000 construction budget ballooned to $120,000. Below are three photos of the "state of the art", at that time, irrigation system pipes arriving at the course.

Incidently here is another photo of the "Vulture Tree" taken in the same year, 1955, but this time it is taken from the vantage point of Fanshawe Lake. The boat is the hydroplane "Miss Supertest III" with its Rolls Royce engine and otherworldly speed.

Because Fanshawe Traditional was built on a gravel deposit, there were likely to be plenty of rocks to deal with. Accordingly the builders hired a rock picker to go over all of the property once the surface had been roughly prepared. Apparently there were so many rocks that the noise generated from this rock picker by the stones hitting the steel was so loud that no one wanted to be anywhere close to it when it was in operation.

“Before” – major excavation for an irrigation line on Traditional #3.

“After” – the same view today

“Before” – irrigation installation up the hill toward #16 green

“After” – the view today

Seeding the back of #2 Traditional green. The cedars are so small that Fanshawe Lake can be seen in the background with sailboats on it.

The same view today but there is no way to see the lake now that the cedars are a bit bigger.

“Before” – rock picker on #5 Traditional fairway.

“After” – the same view today with the same old oak tree in the background.

Fanshawe’s first of three clubhouses, 1957. It was located against the fenceline directly to the left of today’s #13 Traditional tee. The second was a donated surplus military “H” hut used for housing pilots in training for WWII and it was located close to this one……just a bit to the north and close to both #3 and #13 Traditional tees. It was in operation from 1960-1971. The third is the clubhouse today which opened in 1972.

Unidentified golfer with a pretty good swing is hitting a few balls to warm up in front of the “palatial” clubhouse. Present site of #13 Traditional tee.

Same golfer hitting a shot down #13 fairway although it looks like there is little chance that it will end up in the trees.

The two sprinklers on the left are irrigating Traditional #13 while the two on the right are irrigating #14. Absolutely nothing in the way of trees between these two holes at this point.

Original Design blueprint for Fanshawe Golf Course dated May 4, 1956. John Innis and John Moffatt are identified as designers. Access to clubhouse and parking is off Fanshawe Park Road. Most of the holes remain reasonably intact with the exception of #12. The original #12 green is the one at the extreme upper right corner of the diagram. Today old #12 green is Quarry #1 green.

For all the greenskeepers out there this is the original working drawing that John Moffatt used when installing the irrigation system at Fanshawe. By today’s standards it might seem primitive but 60 years ago for a public golf course to have a complete underground irrigation system was a big deal.

John Moffatt Senior, pictured here, was the main designer and builder of the Fanshawe Traditional Course

Excerpt from “From Rough to Fairway” (John Cowie 2010)

1958 scorecard. Par is 70. #4, today’s Traditional #16 is a par 4.

1959. Par is still 70 but the last hole [Traditional #2] has become a 205 yard par 3.

1960. Yardage has increased to 6,307 and #4 [today’s 16] has become a par 5 played from a tee perched on the hill behind current #15 green. Par for the men has increased to 71 and par for the Ladies is 74. This is the first year for two sets of “Men’s” tees, the white and the blue. Virtually everyone played the blue tees…..the maintenance staff would rarely have to bother moving the white tees because so few players played them. Everyone teed off the tough 18th hole [#2 Traditional today] from the back tee. Lots of matches won and lost on that hole.

Fanshawe's First Junior Invitational, September 2, 1960.

Typical of most golfers, I have a soft spot for the golf course that I grew up playing and that for me was the Fanshawe Traditional. The Fanshawe “Traddy” was built and paid for using funds generated by the golfers at the first City of London course, Thames Valley. It got off to a slow start because most of it was farmland and there were few trees of any consequence to break up the landscape. The trees which were provided by the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority to line the fairways were very small, not much more than saplings, and they provided a stark contrast to the mammoth oak trees that abounded at Thames Valley. The turf was poor in the early days and limited funding for construction  meant that proper tees and traps would have to be built long after the course first opened. In fact the first year that I was a member in 1965 there was only one trap on the course and it was behind #1 green [#13 presently] and it prevented misjudged approach shots from rolling out onto Fanshawe Park Road.

Often the most important events in the history of anything are things that never happened. In 1991 four golf course employees, Mike Olizarevitch, Al Stoyles, Fred Kern and yours truly John Cowie were asked to come up with a design to best incorporate a new piece of land into the design of Fanshawe Golf Course. Fanshawe at the time was a 27 hole course consisting of the Red and White Nines being the old Front and Back Nines of the original layout and the Blue Nine, opened some 25 years later on the site of a mined-out gravel pit. The decision to preserve the Traditional as much as possible just the way it was and to add new holes to the Blue Nine in order to make what became the Quarry Course a “stand alone 18” was supported by all four employees. The other option of constructing more “in” and “out” holes near the Clubhouse so that all nines returned to the clubhouse was not approved. It took a long time for the Quarry golf course to mature into the fine course that it is today [18 years and counting] but the important decision to keep the Traditional as a self-contained 18 hole course, much as it was when it was designed in 1956, was the most important outcome of the recommendations of Mike Olizarevitch, Al Stoyles, Fred Kern and John Cowie. The bottom line is that the decision to build the Quarry as it exists today was foremost about preserving the Fanshawe Traditional.