Our little golf club has some big plans thanks to a new manager.

Leagues are filling up and tee times need to be booked days in advance since the new Fort Saskatchewan Golf & Curling Club general manager Adam Pederson started letting more people know about our nine-hole gem.

Pederson took over the post last summer, and is the first PGA professional to be manager here.

His first and biggest change to the club is to start shouting about it to other professionals and on social media. “I really want to put this golf course on the map,” he says.

As well as being a professional golfer, Pederson has managed five other clubs around Alberta, most recently at Westlock and at Cattail Crossing in Edmonton.

He says he fell in love with the Fort golf course as soon as he saw it. But he found that his fellow professionals knew almost nothing about it.

Pederson has been spreading the word, working through PGA Alberta and signing the club up for the Golf Canada card program. The association is supporting small golf courses, especially quality courses like Fort Saskatchewan, he says. “We’re trying to give the smaller golf courses more attention.”

Another big change at the Fort club is a new effort to recruit more volunteers. The board is fully supportive, and the effort is working, Peterson says. Volunteers are helping to make some important improvements. “We’ve had nothing but support.”

The Fort club has always been a community club, but new faces help make it more so, he says. “It’s a whole new dynamic since I first came here.”

Look for new groundskeeping equipment, new T-boxes, and a new net for the driving range. The club is also dealing with tree root problems doing damage to a few of the greens.

The results can already be seen as a new golf season begins. The Men’s night is full up, and so is the revitalized Women’s league. Even the Junior program is picking up, with 20 young golfers already signed up for summer. “They’re the future of this club,” Pederson notes.