{{ubiquityData.prevArticle.description}}
{{ubiquityData.nextArticle.description}}
The RBC Canadian Open has added another classic course to its rotation, confirming that Oakdale Golf and Country Club in Toronto will play host to the national championship in 2023 and 2026.
The addition of Oakdale means the tournament now has a host club for four of the next five years, and organizers at Golf Canada hope the gap in 2025 can be filled by St. George’s Golf and Country Club.
In recent times, the Canadian Open often locked up host venues just a year or two in advance but the Oakdale announcement, made last week on a Zoom call, signals longer-term planning.
“We’ve always had a vision to have an extended runway,” Golf Canada chief executive officer Laurence Applebaum said.
The 2023 event will mark Oakdale’s debut in staging the Canadian Open, which has had 36 host clubs in its 117-year history. The 2026 edition will coincide with the private club’s 100th anniversary.
Tournament director Bryan Crawford said holes from each of Oakdale’s three nine-hole layouts will be used to create a “composite course” that can be stretched to 7,460 yards, the longest in Canadian Open history. The course will go through a trial run when it holds the Monday qualifier for the 2022 Canadian Open.
Oakdale joins St. George’s (2022) in Toronto and Hamilton Golf and Country Club (2024) in Ancaster, Ontario, in a three-club rotation that Applebaum said could be expanded to four clubs in the next five to eight years.
St. George’s had signed on to host in 2020 and 2024, but the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the 2020 and 2021 Canadian Opens, so the west-end Toronto club is taking on 2022 instead. Since it had agreed originally to two dates, it may be up for taking the 2025 opening.
“Hopefully that’s a viable option,” Applebaum said.
Ontario golf courses reopened last weekend after more than a month of being closed as part of the provincial government’s controversial measures to curb the spread of coronavirus.
Golf, tennis and pickleball were among the outdoor activities shuttered on April 16 as COVID-19 cases soared to record levels in Canada’s most populous province. The suspension was to expire May 24, but then was extended to June 2.
However, last week the government essentially dropped the extension and allowed Ontario’s 800 courses to welcome golfers again, just in time for Canada’s Victoria Day long weekend. Premier Doug Ford said COVID-19 caseloads and hospitalization rates had dropped enough and vaccinations are rolling out quickly enough to loosen restrictions and chart a “slow and measured reopening of the province.” About 15 other outdoor activities got the green light, too, but safety protocols still must be observed.
The golf closing had angered golfers and those in the golf industry, who said the game proved last year during the pandemic’s first summer that it could operate safely, pointing to a record number of rounds played across Canada without any reported outbreaks of infections related to golf. Many medical experts backed the golfers and even Canadian standout Brooke Henderson weighed in on the subject, arguing golf is safe.
Michael Caan made quite a splash at his home course in Pitt Meadows, British Columbia, shooting 59 and then leaping into a greenside pond to celebrate. A video of the triumphant moment of his career-best score later went viral on social media.
Caan, a 27-year-old teaching professional and competitor on the Vancouver Golf Tour from nearby Coquitlam, achieved golf’s magic number by rattling in a 30-foot eagle putt on the par-5 final hole at Meadow Gardens Golf Club.
He knew the putt was on the right line but doesn’t recall seeing it actually go in, Caan told TSN. Euphoria took over as he rushed to make his Poppie’s Pond-style leap.
“I just kind of blacked out,” he told TSN’s Bob Weeks. “I sort of lost control of my body.”
Rebecca Lee-Bentham of Toronto has qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open, bringing to four the number of Canadian entrants in the biggest event in women’s golf. Lee-Bentham earned one of the three berths available at a qualifying tournament in Texas.
The 29-year-old will join compatriots Brooke Henderson, amateur Noémie Paré and Megan Osland in the field at San Francisco’s Olympic Club. The tournament begins June 3.
Lee-Bentham stepped away from the game in 2016 but returned to competitive golf in 2019, now playing mostly on the developmental Symetra Tour. She is seeking a return to the LPGA Tour, where she competed for a few years but not since 2016.
Henderson took a three-week vacation after winning the Hugel-Air Premia LA Open in late April and did what many people do during their time off to unwind – she hung out at home and binge-watched TV.
The 10-time LPGA Tour winner watched The Last Dance, a documentary series on basketball great Michael Jordan’s career, especially his final season with the Chicago Bulls. She knew little of Jordan beforehand – perhaps because he left the Bulls in 1998, a year after she was born – but the series made her aware of his mental toughness.
“It was just really eye-opening seeing all that he went through and how he pushed himself and also his teammates,” Henderson said at a news conference last week before returning to action at the Pure Silk Championship in Virginia.
Henderson added that Jordan’s mindset provides inspiration for her own career.
“Physically you have to be ready and in shape and everything, but mentally you have to persevere and really get in the zone or into a state of mind where I can compete at the highest level,” she said.
Royal Bank of Canada is open to extending its title sponsorship of the RBC Canadian Open beyond 2023, said Matt McGlynn, the bank’s vice president of brand marketing.
Canada’s largest bank took over as title sponsor of the national championship and PGA Tour event in 2008. McGlynn said last week that the bank remains happy with the arrangement, and when it comes time to negotiate the next title sponsorship contract that would begin in 2024, “We’re going to be there.”
Canadian Jon Mills, a former touring pro who’s now the head coach of the men’s team at Kent State University in Ohio, has been named coach of the year in U.S. college’s Mid-American Conference.
Mills of Belleville, Ontario, took over the program in 2019 following the retirement of legendary Herb Page. He led the Golden Flashes to one tournament victory and three other top-three finishes this year. They wrapped up their season last Thursday at the NCAA regionals.
U.S.-based Golf.com has ranked Cabot Cape Breton’s two courses as the best public-access layouts in Canada. Cabot Cliffs tops the website’s Canadian list, while sister course Cabot Links, the original 18 at the Inverness, Nova Scotia, resort, follows at No. 2.
The website ventured outside the United States in its new ranking of the best courses you can play to include courses in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean and Bermuda. The Cabot courses are both within the top 12 of Golf.com’s overall top-100 North American public list.
Five other Canadian courses made the larger list as well: Banff Springs, Jasper Park and Blackhawk in Alberta; Highlands Links in Nova Scotia; and Muskoka Bay in Ontario.
Top: Oakdale Golf and Country Club
E-Mail JEFF