The new owners of the Meadow Lake Golf Course want people to know it’s not a private course. Tom Waters and his wife, Gerlinde, purchased the course from longtime owner Peter Tracy last August. This year they’ve set about making it a place that’s friendly to locals and visitors alike.

They’ve completely remodeled the pro shop, extended the patio at the bar and snack shop and have started both mens and womens summer leagues.

Waters is originally from Froid and owns Big Toy Storage in the valley. He was considering selling the storage business. The couple owned a spec house at the resort and were going to sell it when the real estate agent told them the course had just gone up for sale.

The storage unit sale didn’t go through, but they bought the course anyway, Waters said.

The 140-acre championship course and pro shop are a separate business from the resort.

Since then they’ve been working hard to keep the course in great shape. They have 27 employees and the coronavirus crisis has made it a challenging time. While the focus has been on locals, Canadian visitation is about 75 percent part of the business and the borders remain closed between Canada and the U.S.

“We’re grateful to the Columbia Falls community that came out and supported us,” Gerlinde said.

The couple is no stranger to hard work.

Gerlinde is a native of Austria. She came here to study English in some 40 years ago, fell in love with an American and they settled in Whitefish. But her previous husband passed away and in order to make the mortgage on her modest Whitefish home, she moved to Culbertson and started a catering business to feed oil field workers. She said she worked 20-hour days, getting up early in the morning to cook breakfast, lunch and dinner and then finally, finishing the day well into the night with a shopping trip to buy the next day’s food.

She met Waters in a hardware store while she was shopping for a Taser for self-protection.

“She wanted a pink one and they only had black ones,” Waters said with a laugh.

The two hit it off and Waters, who has a background in plumbing and utility work, helped her get her commercial kitchen up and running.

The two were married about 18 months later.

Tom Waters said he’s always liked the Meadow Lake course.

“It’s one of the prettiest courses in Montana,” he said.

He said he has no plans to change the course itself. It’s challenging enough as it is — more than half the holes have water hazards, narrow fairways, or both.

He said someday he’d like to have a Canadian-American tournament.

On the evening of June 19 the course will host a social at 6 p.m. with reduced rates. On June 24 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The course will hold a ribbon cutting for the new pro shop with dignitaries from the Columbia Falls and Whitefish Chambers attending. The event will include hors d’oeuvres and beverages.

For more information, visit www.meadowlakegolf.com