More reasons to escape

The Pulpit opened in 1990. The first hole offers views of Toronto’s skyline. The bustle of Canada’s largest metropolitan area seemed distant 34 years ago.

The Greater Toronto Area has developed into one of North America’s most densely populated regions, surpassing 4 million residents in 1993, 5 million in 2005 and 6 million in 2017. Population estimates predict the GTA will surpass 7 million residents by the mid-2030s.

A horseshoe-shaped protected greenbelt prevents the GTA from sprawling into Caledon, where The Pulpit and The Paintbrush, which opened in 1993, combine to form The Pulpit Club. The Pulpit’s opening hole sits 40 miles northwest of the CN Tower, the 1,815-foot-high centerpiece of the Toronto skyline.

Clubs such as The Pulpit Club exist to provide escapism. They are places where people who spend large portions of their daily lives surrounded by pavement and glass can connect with green space. The concept of country clubs emerged in the early 20th century because the land they occupied rested comfortably away from crowded industrial hubs. The separation eroded following World War II and land formerly known as “country” is now congested in major metropolitan areas.

Longridge Partners, an investment firm founded by Mackenzie Crawford and John Clark that manages Canadian real estate holdings centered on natural features, purchased The Pulpit Club from the Devil’s Pulpit Golf Association in 2020. The club was founded by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott, the pair responsible for creating the board game Trivial Pursuit.

The Pulpit Club’s physical assets, which include more than 450 acres at its two courses, fit what Longridge Partners seeks in real estate investments. Families, in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, desire what made country clubs appealing in the early 20th century.

“One of the reasons why we invest in properties with superior natural features is that connectedness with nature increases your environmental consciousness,” Crawford says. “With your environmental consciousness, you will have greater prioritization and greater appreciation for natural properties.”

The sale resulted in operating changes straying from established private club norms. Crawford took over as club president. The Pulpit Club no longer has committees, instead relying on the board and managers to shape the club’s future. “We just make decisions,” Crawford says. “What does management think? What does the board think? And we just act within our powers.”

The Pulpit Club represents a modern example of how golf land in the country evolves. For starters, one of the club’s two courses, The Pulpit, isn’t viewed exclusively as golf land anymore. In Ontario, green space becomes white space in winter, yet the desire for escapism doesn’t halt when temperatures dip.

The manager most responsible for accentuating The Pulpit Club’s appeal as green space away from the city possesses a deep connection to the land. Superintendent Rob Wright grew up racing down hills on the first and 10th holes. Those races occurred when snow covered fairways and roughs. “I do recall snowboarding down that hill at one point and it didn’t end too well,” he jokes.

Wright also recalls playing golf and, more important, observing the maintenance of the club’s 36 holes. His father, Ken Wright, served as The Pulpit Club’s original superintendent. When Ken retired in 2015, Rob was prepared to lead the maintenance of two contrasting high-end courses designed by Dr. Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry. The Pulpit is a parkland-style course where members entertain guests; The Paintbrush is an inland links where member play dominates the tee sheet.

Since Longridge Partners purchased the club, the parklike aspects of The Pulpit are entering the forefront, with club leaders shunning clubhouse and restaurant additions to invest in outdoor amenities. Rob’s team now maintains more than six acres of cross-country ski and showshoe trails plus a groomed toboggan run. Hiking and tractor rides are among the non-golf activities during the golf season. “We’re trying to integrate the beauty of this area and its proximity to the city,” Crawford says.

The club doesn’t have the same vibe it did throughout the 1990s and the first two decades of the 2000s. The average age of a club member has dropped by 10 years since the sale, according to Crawford, who touts removing a rigid dress code as one of his group’s bold moves. A reputation as an outdoor escape separates The Pulpit Club from other facilities in the competitive GTA private club market.

“We said what we probably could win at is being this destination for outdoor enthusiasts where you prioritize time spent outdoors and time spent with others,” Crawford says. “We can offer them more than golf while still offering excellent golf. That’s what we have definitely proved.”

Rob considers the evolution a major positive for the club and his team. “By having a vision and welcoming not just golfers and golf enthusiasts but outdoor enthusiasts, bringing in family and kids, that’s really the backbone to golf and that’s how it’s going to keep living and growing,” he says.

Preparing and polishing landscapes for non-golf activities fits the superintendent ethos, which Rob Wright describes as “we’re always innovators, we always like designing new things, we’re never one to take the foot off the gas and stop.”

Sharing The Pulpit’s and the region’s winter outdoor beauty with others invigorates the team Rob leads. Snowmobiling, hockey, skating and watching his children sled on the same hills he did as a child are among Rob’s winter pastimes. Members of his team share similar passions.

“I’m a year-round individual,” he says. “All of these things we’re accustomed to doing, we’re now getting to deliver it to our membership. That was an easy transition, and it’s all hands on deck for us, which we are accustomed to being anyway.”

Evolving to an outdoor-centric club produced a significant financial reward for The Pulpit Club.

Revamped membership models restocked coffers, infusing the club with more than $15 million for infrastructure improvements, according to Crawford. Course enhancements include a completed bunker renovation and ongoing irrigation system overhaul on The Pulpit. Increased capital, Crawford adds, allows the club to reduce its environmental impact by investing in pricey equipment such as GPS-guided sprayers, hybrid mowers, electric car charging stations and an autonomous range picker.

“Something like electric car charging stations … we don’t need electric car charging stations,” Crawford says. “But if we told people that we were going to be that type of club, we needed to get those stations. We didn’t specifically say we were going to get them, but we said we were going to be that kind of club and that’s what people signed up for — and we followed through on it.”

A few endeavors that didn’t require six- or seven-figure investments are further solidifying The Pulpit Club’s status as an eco-motivated club while generating goodwill among the membership. The turf team identified 10 acres of non-golf green space to establish wildflower plots. The space supports 24 bee hives. Bees travel as far as three miles to pollinate at The Pulpit. The club sells locally sourced honey in the pro shop and the kitchen staff incorporates it into select menu items.

A bigger animal species creates a bigger stir at The Paintbrush. In the mid- to late-2000s, Rob, Ken and Jayson Griffiths, a former assistant and the current director of agronomy and grounds at The London Hunt and Country Club, determined The Paintbrush lacked two elements associated with a true links course: water-adjacent property and sheep. “We can’t do one, but we knew we could do the other,” Rob says.

Using sheep to help maintain wayward areas at The Paintbrush failed to resonate with the previous owners. Rob methodically and tactfully pitched the concept to Longridge Partners more for marketing than for environmental purposes. Sheep could expand the authenticity of The Paintbrush. After multiple rounds of careful pitching and plotting, Rob helped introduce a herd of sheep that graze on five acres at The Paintbrush and two acres at The Pulpit.

“The true idea wasn’t to be environmentally conscious,” Rob says. “It was for aesthetics. It’s what The Paintbrush is, so why not have sheep grazing off to the side like they would in Scotland or Ireland?”

Introducing sheep yielded a public relations bonanza. The club designed a black sheep logo as another option beside The Pulpit and The Paintbrush logos. “It’s been the most-talked-about item,” Rob says. “They can’t keep it on the shelves and it’s on everything from sweaters to head covers to bags.” The sheep extends to event branding, with the club introducing a Black Sheep Tournament. The tournament sold out in less than five minutes last year.

The sheep are also producing unintended — and overwhelmingly positive — environmental and playability consequences.

“The areas they maintain receive no inputs from us,” Rob says. “We don’t fertilize them, we don’t re-seed them, we don’t spray anything in there, and all these areas come back rejuvenated beautifully. The fescue in these areas is wispy; they are perfect. We’re trying to figure out ways to how we can expand this.”

A year before his team introduced sheep to the club, Rob observed a less-domesticated animal scene on The Pulpit’s eighth fairway that epitomizes golf’s value as green space. First, Rob noticed a pack of coyote pups roaming the fairway. Then he saw the mother trailing her offspring.

“Watching them play makes you stop, look at it and realize this is a special place,” Rob says. “Being in nature and observing that wouldn’t happen if these green spaces weren’t real.”