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World No. 5 Brooke Henderson won’t be the lone Canadian at the U.S. Women’s Open in early June after all. Noémie Paré, the 2020 Quebec Women’s Amateur champion, will join Henderson at the Olympic Club in San Francisco after grabbing one of two berths available last week at a qualifying tournament in Massachusetts.
Paré, 23, of Victoriaville, Quebec, will play as an amateur as she makes her LPGA Tour debut in the major, but she is no stranger to the pro game. She won the women’s division of the Bromont Invitational, a mini-tour event in her home province in 2019.
The graduate of Barry University in suburban Miami, Florida, and member of Canada’s national amateur team, paced her berth with a 5-under-par 65 in the opening round of the 36-hole qualifier at Dedham Country and Polo Club, her lowest career score in competition. National team coach Tristan Mullally said her intense preparation paid off. “She shifted her practice to match the shots required for that venue and felt like she had an advantage before she even teed it up,” he said.
Mullally described Paré as a late bloomer who 18 months ago was usually shooting in the mid- to high 70s: “She has really progressed this past year, growing skills but also a belief in herself.”
Megan Osland also will be in the field after finishing as runner-up at a qualifying tournament in Florida in late April. It will be the second start in the U.S. national championship for the 27-year-old lefty from Kelowna, British Columbia. Osland, who plays mostly on mini-tours and had a four-year full-time stint on the second-tier Symetra Tour, also played her way into the major in 2019.
A fourth Canadian entrant is possible, too. Amateur Tillie Claggett, an Alberta teenager who relocated to Texas as a child and attends a high school there, is an alternate for the field after sharing fourth place at another qualifier. She’ll get in if enough players already in the field drop out. It wouldn’t be her first LPGA Tour event. The long-hitting 17-year-old was invited into the Volunteers of America Classic last December in her adopted state after winning a prestigious junior tourney.
Members at Oakdale Golf and Country Club in Toronto are voting to decide whether to play host to the RBC Canadian Open in 2023 and 2026. Votes from paper ballots and online forms are due Tuesday by 11:59 p.m., Eastern time, according to an e-mail sent by the club to members last Friday.
A yes vote would give Oakdale its first opportunity to stage the national championship in the club’s 95-year history and fill two gaps in the Canadian Open’s schedule in the next five years.
The 2026 hosting would coincide with the 100th anniversary of Oakdale, a private club in Toronto’s northwest corner that was formed by Jewish immigrants who were refused entry into the city’s established clubs in the 1920s. The family-oriented club, which also offers tennis and swimming, has about 600 families in its membership.
The 2020 and 2021 Canadian Opens were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its related public-safety restrictions. St. George’s Golf and Country Club, another classic course in Toronto, was set to be the venue in those years and has deferred its hosting duties to 2022. Members at Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ancaster, Ontario, have agreed to take on 2024, reprising its 2019 staging when Rory McIlroy took the title in his Canadian Open debut.
If Oakdale comes on board, only 2025 would remain unaccounted for through 2026.
The championship, which is part of the PGA Tour, has been moving around of late after being played for much of the past four decades at Glen Abbey Golf Club, a public-access facility in Oakville, Ontario, that is slated to be redeveloped for housing.
Have a favourite Canadian golf memory? Maybe Mike Weir’s win at the 2003 Masters. Or Sandra Post’s victory in the 1968 LPGA Championship to make her the country’s first major champion? Or perhaps George S. Lyon’s Olympic gold in 1904 if your memory is really good?
Whatever the choice, the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and Museum wants to hear your opinion. With the help of golf leaders, historians and members of the media, the hall has drawn up a list of the 50 most “influential moments” in Canadian golf history as part of its 50th anniversary celebrations. The list is to be presented online and the public is invited to pick their favorites, with the top 10 vote-getting moments showcased in a virtual gala on June 8.
Michael Gligic and his wife, Natasha, celebrated their third anniversary last week and announced they are expecting their first child this fall. “Baby Gligs coming October 2021,” tweeted the PGA Tour player from Kitchener, Ontario.
A photo accompanying the tweet showed Gligic with his arms around his wife’s belly, Natasha holding ultrasound images of the baby and their Nova Scotia duck tolling retriever dog, Decker, at their feet. Dogs are a big part of their life as well. Natasha operates online dog-accessory business Walk in the Bark from Jupiter, Florida, where they make their home now.
The Gligics join a baby boom among Canadians on the PGA Tour. Mackenzie Hughes, Adam Hadwin, Nick Taylor, Roger Sloan and their respective spouses all have started or added to their families within the past two years.
Gligic, a 31-year-old who joined the tour in 2020, has work to do before the big arrival to keep his card for the 2021-22 season. With one top-10 finish this season, he was No. 120 on the FedEx Cup points list entering the Wells Fargo Championship last week, needing to hold that position at least to extend his full-time playing privileges.
Highly acclaimed Cabot Cape Breton will be open only to women for a few days beginning at the end of May as the Inverness, Nova Scotia, resort joins in the global Women’s Golf Day celebration. The resort is offering a package that includes two nights of accommodation and two rounds of golf, one on each of its Cabot Links and Cabot Cliffs courses, both ranked among Canada’s top five. The May 30-June 1 event, part of the global movement to get more girls and women in the game, precedes Cabot’s official season opening on June 1.
In another initiative to make golf more inclusive, Cabot is teaming with Black Lives Matter Golf and Nova Scotia’s SchoolsPlus program to host a tournament and a junior clinic at the end of June for Black, Indigenous and other people of color.
An Ontario course temporarily closed last week, ending a rogue opening that defied the province’s ban on golf during the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A statement from the Bridges at Tillsonburg said “threats and fines” prompted the course to cease operations, but the public club remained defiant.
“The government has overstepped with its arbitrary and illogical closing of golf courses,” the statement said.
Golf was included with other outdoor activities that were shuttered by the Ontario government in late April in an attempt to curb escalating COVID-19 case numbers, despite a lack of evidence showing the game was a disease spreader during the first and second waves. The Bridges took tee times anyway for more than a week, facing fines of up to $10 million. Police initially just monitored the course but eventually started handing out tickets for $750 to $1,000 to players as they exited.
“The opening was not about making money,” said the statement on the course’s website. “It was in protest of unreasonable measures.”
The Bridges plans to donate the profit from its short-lived opening to charity.
The ban is set to expire May 20 and the provincial government has shown no indication it will relax it earlier despite lobbying by various industry groups that contend golf is safe.
Alberta tightened its public-health measures last week in its own attempt to combat a soaring COVID-19 caseload in some of its regions but golf was spared. Indoor sports and outdoor team activities were ruled off limits, but outdoor recreation facilities including golf courses were permitted to stay open.
The province’s golf season had already launched before the provincial government announced the new measures, with high-profile courses such as Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge beginning its year on May 1. Another icon, the Stanley Thompson course at Fairmont Banff Springs, is scheduled to open May 14.
The lingering pandemic and related lockdowns have claimed more high-profile tournaments in Ontario. The USGA announced it will not hold two local qualifying tournaments in the province for the U.S. Open this month, nor will it stage a final qualifier that was scheduled for June 7 at Rattlesnake Point Golf Club in Milton. The organization cited Ontario’s stay-at-home order and course closings in its decision, which followed the cancellation of the PGA Tour’s RBC Canadian Open in Toronto for the second consecutive year.
Meanwhile, Le Journal de Montréal reported that Club Laval-sur-le-Lac has given up on co-hosting the men’s Canadian Amateur in August because “it was impossible to organize it safely” amid the pandemic. Governing body Golf Canada told the newspaper it is exploring alternate options to go ahead with the event, including the possibility of shifting all play to the other suburban Montreal co-host, 36-hole Saint-Raphaël, or finding a new second site.
The board of directors at tony Beacon Hall Golf Club in suburban Toronto is evaluating another purchase offer for the property. This one would see each member of the private club pocket $1 million.
The Globe and Mail reported that Harlo Capital, a Toronto-based real estate private-equity fund, offered $260 million for the club’s 200 acres. The company’s intention would be to either develop the land with housing or flip it, the newspaper said.
The club’s 260 members narrowly turned down an earlier offer of $250 million from another developer.
The 18-hole Beacon Hall in Aurora consistently ranks among Canada’s top 15 courses but, like a few other Greater Toronto Area clubs, it has become a target of developers eager for land in a scorching housing market.
Top: Noémie Paré qualified as an amateur to compete in the U.S. Women's Open at the Olympic Club.
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