Quebec Guide and Deals

Hips start swiveling with grace at White Sands Golf Course & Practice Centre, where golfers hone their form at a nine-hole executive course, extensive practice facilities, and academy classes. On the 1,477-yard course designed by Graham Cooke, golfers can choose from three tee options and finish rounds in less than two hours. To gear up for the water hazards and serpentine sand bunkers that stud the fairways, players can sharpen their technique at the extensive White Sands practice facility. Here, 30 fibre mats and 42 grass tees await along the driving range, and players can work on their victory half smiles after chipping out of the practice sand trap onto a green.

White Sands Golf Course & Practice Centre is also the site of the Graham Gunn Golf Advantage School, whose head is a member of the European Senior Tour and spent a decade as head professional at the Carleton Golf & Yacht Club. Gunn teaches clinics and offers private coaching for students who don’t want to be overheard asking how long you have to sit on a golf ball before it hatches.

Dunnderosa Golf Club’s par 3 course lets golfers swing and putt their way through tree-dotted hills that look out on the scenery of nearby Gatineau Park. With greens that are reachable in one shot on every hole, the course invites players who are still seeking out their first hole-in-one or trying to arouse jealousy in their driver by spending more time with their short irons. Dunnderosa Golf Club also features Dunn-D’s mini-golf course, which wreathes around a central waterfall for 18 holes of tricky putts and scenic landscaping. Lined by brick rails and peppered with rocky obstacles, each hole presents geometric challenges, forcing players to carom balls around 180-degree turns and steer them through craggy outcrops before sweeping them into holes positioned on devious slopes. The mini-golf course’s front nine is designed to be accessible for players with reduced mobility, offering a competitive venue for clubbers of all ages and those intent upon playing with their shoes tied together.

After a three-year renovation by renowned course architects Graham Cooke and Stan Brigham, Gatineau Club de Golf unveiled a sleek new course layout in 2010. The site boasts championship-calibre credentials, including a total distance of more than 7,000 yards from the back tees and large bent-grass greens that punish poorly struck approaches with treacherous putts. Generous fairways reward precise bifurcation with excellent lies, but players guilty of errant drives will be pleasantly surprised to find plenty of room to make a bold go at the green. Water makes its omnipresence known as early as the 395-yard second hole, where players must tee off over a pond, negotiate with a creek that crosses the fairway 100 yards in front of the green, and avoid the water that buttresses the green to the left and rear. The 18th hole makes a 90-degree dogleg right around a massive reservoir and a pond stretching alongside the entire right length of the fairway, demanding the same precision as the moat around a driveway.