Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 01:32:00

A future king played it five years after it opened; the crown made it official eight decades later. The Royal Mayfair Golf Club at 9450 Groat Road NW sits tucked into a bend of the North Saskatchewan River below Edmonton's university district, on land once platted as a residential neighbourhood called Mayfair that was never built. Local golfing giant J. Munro Hunter - a Scotsman famous for his length off the tee - laid out the original nine holes, opened on 27 May 1922 with Mayor David Milwyn Duggan hitting the first shot down a fairway leased from the city for 21 years. The transformation came in 1927 when the club hired Stanley Thompson, the architect of Banff Springs and Jasper Park Lodge, whose renovation was so extensive - rerouted holes, reshaped greens, new bunkering across several seasons - that he is widely credited as the course's true designer. The royal connections started early: the Prince of Wales, the future Edward VIII, played with his brother George in 1927, Queen Elizabeth lunched at the club during the 1978 Commonwealth Games, and Alberta's 2005 centenary brought the official Royal prefix - one of only a handful in Canadian golf. Championship history runs through the property too - the 1958 Canadian Open, won by Wes Ellis Jr. with Arnold Palmer in the field, and the 1980 PGA Championship of Canada headline a century of provincial and national events. The riverside setting doubles as the club's event asset: a private clubhouse hosting weddings, tournaments and corporate functions ten minutes from downtown, screened by the river valley's forest so completely that the city disappears from the fairways. Les Furber's later modifications kept the course current without erasing the Thompson character, and the club's original 21-year city lease has rolled forward for a century - the never-built Mayfair subdivision next door became William Hawrelak Park, leaving the river bend to golf and parkland.