First Open Is An Eye-Opener

My first PGA Tour event was a real eye-opener after I made it to last year’s RBC Canadian Open at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ont., for winning the Titleist and FootJoy Canadian PGA Club Professionals Championship in Port St. Lucie, Fla., the year before.

You learn a lot in a heartbeat about what those guys do and how hard they work. They’re out there beating balls and beating balls and sure, they’re chatting and joking around, but they really grind it out in practice.

The first thing you realize when you first get there is how well the players are treated. It took me a few days to get comfortable with all the people around to look after you.

It’s just the little things. You will walk into the locker room after hitting balls and one of the locker room attendants will ask you if you’d like your shoes cleaned. My first reaction was, `What? What do you mean?’

That’s what I mean by the little things. The locker room has coolers filled with drinks. There’s food and company reps are there to take care of you. It’s eye-opening and it’s hard to take it all in and still stay focused.

I remember taking away from it how much I would like to do it all again just because now, I would know what to expect and I wouldn’t be caught off-guard.

I didn’t want to leave. I’m generally not a big practice guy, but I practiced so much that week because I didn’t want to leave the range.

My buddy Gene Lockerby, who caddied during the Open for me, and I got talking about how there’s very little difference between what I do and what PGA Tour players do in terms of ball-striking. Where there is a big difference is in short game and putting.

I worked on my short game to get it to where I thought it was good, but I quickly found out that I’ve got a long way to go. If I’m successful, maybe I can have another go at it and live the dream once again.

St. George’s Will Enhance Its Reputation

I’ve had the pleasure of playing at St. George’s Golf and Country Club, the site of this year’s RBC Canadian Open, once and that was about eight or nine years ago.

To sum it all up, I would use the word awesome.

Even back then, I heard about the practice facility being small, but I loved it. The golf course itself is incredible and walking up 18, having the clubhouse across the street, is a great experience.

When I played it, I knew about its history and all of the awards it’s received and the nostalgia of the place and it’s all well-deserved. It’s a great facility.

I’ve never played the Hamilton Golf and Country Club and want to one day, but last year, when I played the Open at Glen Abbey, I heard the guys talking about it on the range. On more than one occasion, they said this event should either be at Hamilton or Shaughnessy in Vancouver.

They just loved Hamilton and I would think that St. George’s will come away with the same reputation. The only issue I can see is the logistics of it having the potential for negative, but I would be shocked if they didn’t like the course.

You have to be able to hit every shot at St. George’s. A lot of times, you can play golf courses where it seems like you’re playing the same hole over and over again. At St. George’s, each hole is different with unique challenges, sightlines and looks.

It’s the kind of golf course where, if you’re a member and play it four times a week, you would still not get bored because it offers so many things.

When I played, it was a regular members’ day and it was tough, so I’m trying to picture what it will be like for the Open. That could make it a bear if they want to this year.

St. George’s is renowned for its greens. At the time I played it, they were probably the fastest I’d played and like I say, it was a regular members’ day. I don’t know if it’s still like that, but back then, they were like grease.

If you get on the wrong side of the hole, it’s all defence and I seem to remember even on uphill putts being cautious. They’ll have to place that second shot into the green because if they manage to get it on the wrong spot, they’ll be fighting.

For those reasons, I suspect that St. George’s will definitely earn the respect of PGA Tour players.

Greens Will Likely Roll 11, Rough At Four Inches

Keith Bartlett, superintendent for the St. George’s Golf and Country Club, will be a key man in the weeks leading up to the 2010 RBC Canadian Open. As the Open gets closer, Keith will be contributing a regular blog on GNN, describing his experiences and what goes into preparing the course for a PGA Tour event.

The PGA Tour agronomists arrived last Monday afternoon. We toured the golf course and everything looked good.

The to-do list was very minor, but we had another stressful week of weather and it was hot and humid through the night.

The Pythium disease that I wrote about in an earlier blog is still hanging out. On a few afternoons, the relative humidity dropped and we’d be watering again, so it was a double-edged sword.

It was so hot again that, because we had no play, it allowed us to put some blowers around greens and the divot area on five, which is a low area that wind doesn’t go through. We started blowing across some of these surfaces to cool them down.

A lot of my colleagues are seeing if they can back off on some things to give the plants a break.

The main thing that the PGA Tour agronomists have been having us do is measure green firmness, green speed, speed through the day – is there any significant change? – but from where we were last Monday to where we are today, we’re reaching our targets.

We don’t want the greens to get too fast. They were rolling at 10-and-a-half, the wind was blowing and the ball started moving too fast. They will probably be at 11 for the tournament, but if it gets humid, they may get a little sticky, so we’ll see.

Right now, the rough looks to be about four inches until a senior official takes a look and then, we’ll see.

We have practice rounds and the Mike Weir Charity Classic Monday morning, so the time has arrived and everyone will get their first looks at our preparation over the next couple of days.

Rain, Rain Go Away For This Open

After my first experience at the RBC Canadian Open last year at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ont., I’m hoping that this year’s event catches a break as far as the weather goes.

The rain that we got last year was frustrating because there’s a good chance that it might be my only shot at a PGA Tour event and you’d like it to be 30 C and sunny.

You go to bed on Wednesday night and your nerves are already on edge. You wake up Thursday morning, look outside and realize that we’re probably not playing. Then, you’ve got the whole day to wait, your nerves are still going, and they’re not sure what’s going on.

On the other hand, I’m not complaining. The entire seven days that I was there, I had a smile on my face. My hamstring and gluts were killing me, but I was just the happiest kid on the block.

It’s a part of the game, so you can’t get too frustrated. The rain made a perfect experience a millimetre less perfect, so it went from 100 per cent perfect to 99.9 per cent.

I think what got to me the most was hearing the guys on  the range talking about Canada and rain because it poured the year before at Glen Abbey, as well. I remember thinking I hope this doesn’t have any more effect on the field, with the issues they already have with the date being behind the British Open.

Judging by the field for this year’s Open, it apparently didn’t turn out that way and I’m glad. I wish the event all the best because it allowed me to live out a dream.

I hope it’s 30 C and sunny and I hope for the best field in the world and I hope St. George’s rocks them.

Then, in November, maybe I can earn my ticket back in Port St. Lucie, Fla. It would be especially sweet playing in my own neighbourhoood at Shaughnessy. We’ll talk about Shaughnessy as the site of next year’s Open in a future blog.

Communication Is Key Among All Involved Parties

Joe Murphy is general manager of the St. George’s Golf and Country Club, the host site of the 2010 RBC Canadian Open in Toronto. Murphy will contribute a guest blog each week about operations at the host club leading up to the national championship.

Communication is critical with all of the organizations involved in something that is the magnitude of the RBC Canadian Open.

There are varying degrees of expertise.

Golf Canada is far more experienced at hosting a major golf event, so we certainly look for a lot of direction from them.

We obviously have the experience to host an event in terms of agronomy with our superintendent Keith Bartlett. Our food and beverage people are top professionals as are our golf professionals and their involvement will be on the merchandising side, which we will discuss in a future blog.

One of the committees that I sit on is the eight-person joint tournament committee, which is made up of representatives of Golf Canada and the St. George’s Golf and Country Club and it’s been a good committee, with all of the challenges and potential issues that go along with such an event.

In terms of the actual course infrastructure, the Golf Canada operations people work closely with Keith. They’ve contracted people to come out and build the stands and skyboxes and they have to be careful where they’re driving and punching holes into the ground.

They need a master plan of the course that shows the irrigation layout, or whether there are any wires. You don’t want them cutting phone lines or cutting into irrigation pipes, so Keith has to work closely with them.

Also, Keith works very closely with the PGA Tour and their agronomists in terms of grooming the course, getting it ready, what the height of the rough should be, etc.

Crowd control, such as how they flow through the golf course, was dealt with last fall and into the winter. It wasn’t all firmed up by then, but we had a general idea of what arteries we’re going to use to get the crowds through.

The PGA Tour is involved with pretty much anything on the course, but they tend to focus more on the course set-up and the agronomy, while Golf Canada is looking more at the crowd control, where they’re going to put stands and how they rope the course for spectators and players, etc.

Besides Golf Canada and the tour, we are obviously involved with RBC, primarily from a clubhouse standpoint and corporate hospitality.

I can’t say enough about RBC. They really have been a great partner in terms of the national Open and golf internationally. In relation to St. George’s, they’re been wonderful to work with as we’ve prepared for the Open.

RBC has some other hospitality out on the course, but the clubhouse will be their main spot. Our executive chef, James Saunders, is involved on the food and beverage side of it. He works with out clubhouse manager, Patricia Mann, who does a lot of coordinating with RBC.

James and Patricia work closely with Steve Marshman of Catalyst Sponsorship Consulting Inc., who represents RBC and I stay plugged in.

There are a lot of working parts to the RBC Canadian Open, but all the wheels are turning at full speed as we get closer to the tournament in just a few weeks.

Open Field Strengthens

The field for the RBC Canadian Open at St. George’s Golf and Country Club in Toronto strengthened on Thursday with the addition of two-time tournament champ Jim Furyk, who won back-to-back titles in 2006 and 2007.

Joining Furyk in the field will be Bubba Watson, Ricky Barnes, another former Open champ in Scott Verplank and fan favourite John Daly.

It was also announced that Canadians Jon Mills, David Hearn and Dustin Risdon have been given exemptions into the Open. Hearn and Mills currently sit 13^th and 24^th, respectively, on the Nationwide Tour money list, while Risdon is 70^th.

Showtime Is Now For St. George’s Course Preparation

Keith Bartlett, superintendent for the St. George’s Golf and Country Club, will be a key man in the weeks leading up to the 2010 RBC Canadian Open. As the Open gets closer, Keith will be contributing a regular blog on GNN, describing his experiences and what goes into preparing the course for a PGA Tour event.

I find that this is the most stressful time before the RBC Canadian Open is played in just a few weeks here at St. George’s Golf and Country Club.

The month leading up to the tournament is when things can go bad, so that’s where I lose my sleep. Once I get to advance week and tournament week, a lot of things are out of my control. Then, I’m managing staff on how the PGA Tour wants things set up.

Up until advance week, I’ve got to make sure the course is ready for when their agromists show up and we start working on how we’re going to manage the greens and green speeds and so on. I know the criteria they’re looking for and we need to make sure it’s there to work with when they arrive.

During advance week with the PGA Tour agronomists, we’ll be trying to meet guidelines, but I think there’s a lot of feedback that they’ll accept from me on a few things.

We’re obviously going to have to react to certain situations in those two weeks, but we’ll have lots of people if we need to react quickly. We have the squeegees ready and we’ve got everything ready to go.

For advance week, I want to make sure we have the bunkers prepped, the divots filled and focus on final grooming. We’ve got the seatbelts on and hopefully, the weather cooperates.

Of course, we’ll be trying the best we can to make St. George’s look good for the television cameras that will be covering the event for people around the world. Colour-wise, we’ve picked our products that we’re ready to use in the last week and we want to make sure the plants have the nutrients they need.

I want to make sure we have proper disease management, so it’s a matter of spoon-feeding everything so we can have the control we need to maximize our colour.

One of the looks that I like – and you can see it at other tournaments – is minimal striping on the golf course. Our fairways will be cut 50-50, the traditional way. Even cutting tees, I don’t like cutting them length-wise because, if you don’t get them lined up perfectly, they can look worse, so we’ll be cutting cross-wise.

I want to minimize striping and let the turf show very simply. I like the way golf courses look when they’re simple and not all striped up like tartan pants.

Advance week is coming quickly, but show time is already here as we get ready for its arrival.

Flex Schedule Could Rotate Open Dates

One of the options that has been mentioned in the clamor to get the RBC Canadian Open out of the wake of the British Open has been to move out national championship to Canada Day.

Right now, Golf Canada and RBC are sticking with the line that they’re not overly concerned with the dates and just trying to work with what they’ve got right now, but Canada Day is indeed an attractive option once the PGA Tour starts tinkering around with its schedule for 2012. Read more

Mize Ends Drought In Montreal

Larry Mize won his first championship in 17 years at the inaugural Montreal Championship at Club de Golf Le Fontainebleau in Blainville, Que., on Sunday.

Mize, the 1987 Masters champ, finished the three-day Champions Tour event at 17-under, one shot better than second round leader John Cook, who posted a 68 on the final day.

Dan Forsman (65) and Corey Pavin (67) were three off the pace, while fan favourite Fred Couples shot a 68 to tie for fifth.

Jim Rutledge of Victoria, B.C., came in with a 70 to finish 38th at six-under. Quebec pros Yvan Beauchemin and Daniel Talbot were 55th and 63rd, respectively, while Dave Barr of Kelowna, B.C. was 74th.

After Cook missed a birdie putt on 18, Mize’s eyes became somewhat misty. “I was holding back some emotion,” he admitted. “I teared up a little bit. It’s been a long time. Once it happened, it was hard to keep that emotion back.”

“You know, it’s hard to believe,” added Mize, who knew he needed to go low.

He did just that, reeling off three straight birdies, beginning on the par-five 14th to stay one step in front of a charging Cook. The lone blemish on his scorecard was a bogey on the par-four 12th.

Cook was looking for his second victory in Canada, 27 years after winning the Canadian Open. He had a gift three-foot birdie putt on the driveable par four 16th, but missed. On the closing hole, Cook had another look, but his 25-foot birdie try rolled just by the cup.

“Some of these are harder than others to take,” said Cook. “I just came up a bit short.”

Starting the final day three shots back, Couples birdied his first hole, but gave that back on the second. The 15-time PGA Tour champion had four birdies in a seven-hole stretch starting on the eighth, but just couldn’t get that extra push.

“Larry played an unbelievable round,” said Couples. “He just kept going and going, so that was nice to see.”

The Montreal Quotebook

Fred Couples

“My year is slowing down a little bit lately. I haven’t been playing much. Just like on the regular tour, you know, I do play, and a long time ago, I played well. I played well for a long stretch of time. This year, at the beginning of the year, it was the same thing. I worked pretty hard in the off‑season to get ready for this year.

To win three times, I think it was obviously great, but surprising, but at the same time, I played really, really well and, as of today, I haven’t been playing much and my game is not really all that great, but I’m very excited to be here and to start playing again, so you never know.”

“There’s a lot more left this year, and I believe the only PGA Tour tournament I’m playing is going to be the Canadian Open, so I’ll focus on maybe at least eight more Champions Tour events, which is a lot. I mean, that’s 22 times this year and the most I’ve played since probably ‘82, ‘83, was 20 times, so I’m playing more this year than I have in 25 years, which is odd,.but it’s kind of a mixed year where I still wanted to play the (PGA Tour) a little bit and next year, I think will be totally different. I’ll focus mostly out here, but I’ll play a couple besides Augusta that I love playing.”

Tom Lehman

“(Wednesday) was interesting.  We had three seasons in one day.  We haven’t quite got to winter, but we encountered some spring, summer and fall. “

“Is there a hockey team here? You think of Montréal and you think of hockey, but I grew up in Minnesota, which, again, is a hockey state, and a football state, maybe the Vikings. People don’t understand, people in northern climates, they jam a lot of stuff into those winter months, so I’m not all surprised that golf is big in Montréal. I feel like people that are limited make the very best use of their time and they love to do anything with having to be outside, so I’m not surprised.”

Loren Roberts

“I can’t believe the infrastructure work that’s been done here for a first‑year event. I mean, I heard it’s been sold out here and they are expecting 15,000 a day to come out. “

“I think even for the practice rounds, you’re seeing a lot of people out here. There’s people out here for the pro‑am, so I know that the golf fans here are excited and I really hope the that we put on a really good show. I’ve heard nothing about great things about the golf up here. Unfortunately I didn’t play any of the years in the Canadian Open it was up here. I remember watching Mike Weir beat Tiger Woods (in the Presidents Cup) a couple of years ago.”

Champions Tour Returns To Canada

 The Champions Tour makes its return to Canada on Friday when the Montreal Championship tees off at Club de golf Fontainebleau in Blainville, Que., with a field that includes 24 of the top 28 in the Charles Schwab points race.

Included in that field will be 45-time Champions Tour winner Hale Irwin, 2010 Senior PGA champ Tom Lehman, American Ryder Cup champion Corey Pavin and Loren Roberts, who just won the Dick’s Sporting Goods Open.

The announced field has accounted for 252 total Champions Tour victories and 312 total PGA Tour wins – a combined total of 564 victories across both tours.

Mark Calcavecchia is making his second start on the Champions Tour this week after recently turning 50 and just a year after he set a PGA Tour record by reeling off nine consecutive birdies at last year’s RBC Canadian Open at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ont.

Calcavecchia is hoping for a triple play as far as Canadian championships go. If he won the $270,000 U.S. winner’s share in Montreal, it would be his third win in Canada after winning the 2005 Canadian Open at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club in Vancouver and the 1997 Greater Vancouver Open.

Calcavecchia isn’t the only Champions Tour rookie in the Montreal field. He’ll be joined by fan favourite Fred Couples who won three of his first four starts on the Champions Tour this year.

Dave Barr of Kelowna, B.C., is playing on an exemption and has said he’s hoping for a strong showing this week or he may pass on the Champions Tour qualifying school later this year. Meanwhile, Jim Rutledge of Victoria is coming off a tie for 14^th and another high finish could serve him well in an upcoming tour reshuffle.

Barr and Rutledge will be joined in the field by renowned Quebec professionals Yvan Beauchemin and Daniel Talbot. The Montreal Championship will be televised on the Golf Channel and RDS.

For tournament information, click here.

 

 

The Buzz Is Building At St. George’s

Joe Murphy is general manager of the St. George’s Golf and Country Club, the host site of the 2010 RBC Canadian Open in Toronto. Murphy will contribute a guest blog each week about operations at the host club leading up to the national championship.

There’s a lot of excitement around the St. George’s Golf and Country Club right now. The buzz is pretty strong as the stands go up and the infrastructure is put in place.

The demand for tee times is strong, as is the demand for guest play and we’ve put in some programs to make it an enjoyable experience for members and guests with the rough up to about four inches now.

What we’ve done is make forecaddies per guest group mandatory between the hours of 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. and it’s been so well-received that the members bringing guests want it.

It’s not an imposition at all because it takes the pressure off them a little bit in terms of moving their guests along. The forecaddies carry little irrigation flags and run out ahead of the group and place flags down by the ball so it saves at least a few minutes per hole.

If you add that all of that up, you’re over half an hour faster per round, so the pace of play has been very good this year considering that the rough is long and gnarly and that there’s been a lot of guest play.

It isn’t official yet, but we may keep the forecaddie program. Those types of programs have to be approved, but I’d like to see it continue indefinitely and I think our members would love to see it.

The members have come to the plate in several ways for the Open, which isn’t a surprise since there was initially a 90 per cent approval when we first voted on it in June of 2008, so the first thing is that they’ve allowed it to happen.

As Scott Simmons, executive director of Golf Canada, has said, he’s most appreciative not just because of the club, the board of directors and management, but also the members.

In our particular case, our range closed over a week ago and it will stay closed until about August 1, so that’s about seven weeks.

Secondly, there have been a number of members who have purchased corporate boxes and skyboxes themselves and for their corporate hospitality. If they haven’t personally done that, they’ve recommended or given us leads and referrals to go after other contacts.

Lastly, there are between 250 and 300 members who have stepped up to volunteer at the tournament. I think that’s remarkable considering that represents about 40 per cent of our golf membership.

In more ways than one, the members of St. George’s are stepping up to support the Open.

We Do Have Turf Issues Before The Open

Keith Bartlett, superintendent for the St. George’s Golf and Country Club, will be a key man in the weeks leading up to the 2010 RBC Canadian Open. As the Open gets closer, Keith will be contributing a regular blog on GNN, describing his experiences and what goes into preparing the course for a PGA Tour event.

In preparing the golf course for the RBC Canadian Open, there have been two issues, one being that we had some winter injury on fairways – four, five and nine being the key holes – due to the early ice cover last December.

It wasn’t as bad as I first anticipated in December, based on the amount of ice that I saw when it first formed. We had a great melt on Boxing Day, but the ice that remained was where we had damage and it’s in historical locations.

The question was what to do with it?

Most years, I would say feed it and nurse it back and by June, the poa is back as well as whatever you’ve overseeded. Sometimes, and it’s evident at some clubs this years, it doesn’t always fill in – it’s going to be a season-long frustration and you’ve got to keep working on it.

That was a risk that I didn’t want to take because if I get into June and I have to start sodding those patches, I’m into a problem with the Open being in July.

I made the decision to sod those areas earlier, but then, I also know that sod coming from a sod farm is a challenge to establish in the first year.

I’ve been fighting that and it’s a busy golf course, so we’re just having to make sure we divert traffic around those areas because they are in PGA Tour landing zones. We need to protect divot areas and landing zones from cart traffic in the months leading up to the Open.

The rough is up to about four inches now and some of the poa greens are used to shady locations, but we’ve been through some tree removal and the poa isn’t used to that much sun, so we’ve got to really watch them.

It was a stressful spring with little rain. The poa is shallow-rooted to begin with, but that’s just turf management and we’ve got to manage through it.

We’re well-groomed on the greens, but we’re not super low and I want to make sure we have grass to work with in July.

We’re into our final applications of sand on fairways and tees and greens over the next couple of weeks and we’re doing a lot of grooming, brushing things just to get the bent standing up to get a nicer, cleaner cut.

The guys are being really diligent when it gets hot and dry. They’ll be here until 7 p.m. handwatering to make sure nothing is under stress. If it could somehow stay below 25 C, that would be great, but as we all know, things don’t always go according to plan.

Canucks Step Up To PGA Tour

The only familiar Canadian name at this week’s PGA Tour stop is Graham DeLaet of Weyburn, Sask., who earned his PGA Tour card at Q-school last year, but that doesn’t mean that this country isn’t well represented at the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands in Cromwell, Conn.

Nick Taylor of Abbotsford, B.C. is also in the field after receiving an exemption as the 2010 winner of the Ben Hogan Award as the top collegiate golfer in the U.S.

Also in the field is Derek Gillespie of Oshawa, Ont., who shot a four-under 68 in Monday qualifying and won a sudden-death, four-way playoff with a birdie on the second hole to earn his spot at Gillette Ridge Golf Club in Bloomfield, Conn.

Weir’s A-Game Could Be Perfect At Pebble

Mike Weir goes into this week’s U.S. Open at Pebble Beach with impressive putting statistics, which is comforting considering the slick greens that traditionally characterize the second major of the year.

As for the rest of his game lately, Weir himself describes it as “not good,” but if he can find his A-game, which traditionally features precision over power, the stage could be set for a fine showing at Pebble Beach. Read more

Ken Green Finds Strength In Golf After Tragedies

There are a couple of things that automatically come to mind leading into a conversation with Ken Green, one being how can he possibly return to golf considering the tragic events in his life over the past year and the other being how he can talk so openly about those events to somebody he doesn’t know particularly well.

A year ago, Green was involved in a horrific RV accident in which his brother William, girlfriend Jean Marie and his dog were killed. As a result of the accident, doctors amputated his lower right leg.

Tragedy struck again earlier this year when Green’s 21-year-old son Hunter was found dead in his dorm room at Southern Methodist University. The death was ruled as accidental, but one can only imagine the personal agony of Green, who has already battled bouts of depression, other injuries and financial woes.

Yet, Green, with his prosthetic limb, has played six rounds on the Champions Tour already this year and will play in the inaugural Montreal Championship at Club de golf Le Fontainebleau in Blainville, Que, June 2-4. Read more

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