Sarnia said:
If any of you are golfers, what courses would you recommend that are easy to get to from Downtown Toronto? The one that I really fancy trying is Glen Abbey. It's not exactly cheap, but it does sound like a great course.
Please let me know if you have any opinions about which courses would be worth playing.
You'll need a car to get to Glen Abbey from downtown Toronto, as it is quite a bit west of the city though, if you can tolerate the inconvenience, you might be able to get away with a combination of GO train and taxi from the GO station. Angus Glen (which has recently hosted the Canadian Open) would also be a good choice but you would also need a car and GO train would probably not be a practical option given the schedules for Markham bound trains.
Royal Woodbine is a very good "shotmaker's" course -- narrow and lots of water -- that is a stone's throw from the airport. The only decent publicly accessible course within Toronto itself is Don Valley. It is a municipally run course but, from what I understand, a very good course and great value. It's actually on the subway line. Those are my suggestions if you don't want to stray too far from downtown.
There are a handful of private clubs in the city and, if you are a member of a club in the U.K., you may want to see if there are any reciprocal arrangements between your club and one of the Toronto clubs or whether the head professional at a local club has contacts with club professionals in Toronto.
However, if your spouse likes golf and if you are going to be here for a couple of weeks, you might want to consider renting a car and making the 2 hour drive north to Muskoka to spend a couple of days trying a couple of the new courses there. The courses are spectacular and have been carved out of the wilderness. The Rock, Deerhurst, Rocky Crest, Bigwin Island, Taboo are a few of the name ones up there. They probably all have websites that will show you what the course is like. Many of the resorts (e.g., Deerhurst, Delta hotels) have packages where you can play one course, stay the night and play another course the next day. For example, see attached link:
http://www.muskokagolftrail.ca/golf.html. These course will be much more memorable and unique than what you find in these parts because of the geographical features of the Muskokas.