Caughnawaga golf club.

Our History

Beginning as a 9-hole course created by Angus Patton, CGC became an 18-hole course in the early 1970s and by the end of that decade expanded to 27 holes.

"My father loved playing golf but in order to do so he had to travel to places like Chateauguay and Valleyfield," said Angus’s son Andrew, who along with sisters Carrie, Cheryl and brothers Louis and Jimmy are the second generation of Pattons now running the club. "He used to play at the LaSalle course which wasn’t too far away but in the latter part of the ‘60’s it closed. So, he decided to build his own course."

For the first two years the CGC was equipped with lights on five holes so Angus and other avid golfers could play long after dark. The concept was a novel idea but unfortunately short-lived, thanks to our minute menaces of summer.

"There were just too many mosquitoes," said Louis Patton. "The little buggers made it impossible to play after the sun went down." So, needless to say because it was impossible to play, boom, boom -as the early ‘80s hit song goes- out went the lights.

Like Expo, which thrives during the summer months, so does the CGC course. The club’s ground crews begin preparing the playing fields "as soon as the snow is off the ground". The spring clean-up starts by clearing leaves, branches and other debris from the links. As Louis Patton told The Eastern Door, it’s like cleaning a big yard, only this yard has lots and lots of trees.

"We generally close sometime in October," says Jimmy Patton. "But last season we were really lucky. We went well into the month of November. We can only hope we get the same type of weather this year."
In between opening and closing the course, the CGC is a buzz of activity. Approximately 35 support staffers of ground crews, starters, cooks, canteen and bar workers are kept busy from the early morning hours until the sun sets. After dark John Bartley and his 19th hole staff are still in motion catering to the late night set.

There are approximately 250 golfers who have club membership cards. Between the members, outsiders who come to play and the two or three tournaments that go on each week, the tees, fairways and greens are put to perpetual use during the day.

The highlight of the 1999 season was the Inter-club Class-A championship hosted by the Caughnawaga club on July 4. If you think the Americans were the only ones celebrating that day, you should have been at "Patton’s". A standing-room only crowd was on hand to see Caughnawaga’s dazzling dozen put on a show. The A-team, which consists of 10 players and two alternates, delighted the huge gallery by winning the event by one stroke on the 18th and final hole. When the final putt dropped and the Caughnawaga crew edged runner up Beloeil 42-41, pandemonium reigned supreme.

"It was definitely the highlight for the club this year," said A-team member Andrew Patton. "The gallery around the 18th hole looked like something you’d see on the PGA tour. It was spectacular."

By winning the event the A-team moves up from group 3 to group 2 in the 21-group Montreal region "Ryder Cup" playdowns. Next season the CGC team will compete at Whitlock Golf and Country Club against Beaconsfield, Laval-sur-le-Lac and host Whitlock. In group 3 play this year, BeauChateau finished in third spot with 23 points and the Country Club of Montreal from St. Lambert brought up the rear with 10.

The senior inter-club contingent from CGC will host their 55-years-old and over "Ryder Cup" event in 2000 after finishing second to host Valleyfield this year. Caughnawaga with 38, were seven points behind the winners. Joliette was third with 36 points followed by Saint-Hyacinthe who had 31.
"It’s been a good year," Andrew Patton stated. "Our A-team, the seniors and our juniors have played extremely well. And we can’t forget this year’s club captain Fred Kirby. He runs all the competitions, he oversees the teams and he’s our valuable liaison with the Quebec Golf Association. It’s a tough job with a lot of tough decision-making and he’s doing a great job representing our club."

There are six other people that Patton would like to thank for the clubs success and they’re some of the founding members of the CGC who have passed away. Engraved on a glorious memorial stone located just outside the clubhouse, the names of George Cross, Louis "Hambone" Beauvais, Nick Besner, Clarence Saylor, Bill Ducross and John Zachary will go down in CGC immortality as Angus Patton’s industrious golf course heads into the next millennium.