Glendale Golfs – Winnipeg

However little money there’s been in it over time, the Canadian Tour’s Winnipeg event has been a relatively stable entity, staged every year since the professional circuit’s reorganization in 1985.

The annual summer visit by Canada’s best golf professionals goes back even farther than that, through the times Dan Halldorson was winning his four Manitoba Opens.

But now the Tour and it’s local tournament, The Players Cup, are caught in the same tempest and while it forges ahead for 2012, the future is murky.

The Canadian Tour is on financial life-support from the PGA Tour, allowing it continue for the 2012 season. Many in the golf business believe the extension of a line of credit of $500,000 or more to pay last year’s bills is just the first step in the PGA Tour taking full control of the Canadian Tour and incorporating it into a feeder system that will be required for the Nationwide and PGA Tours.

The Canadian Tour season will be just nine tournaments in 2012. The fifth stop will be The Players Cup, July 12-15 at Pine Ridge Golf Club, with the usual carrots on the stick — the winner and the tour’s top money-winners to that point will receive exemptions to the RBC Canadian Open in Hamilton.

Tour business is being done differently this year.

Apart from its own Tour Championship tournament in late August, the Tour has stopped operating various events across the country, including the elimination of various levels of cash support to purses.

That includes in Winnipeg, where the sizeable purses of the prior two years of $300,000 and $200,000 came from the Canadian Tour bank.
“Each event is going to be self-sustaining, copying the PGA Tour model,” said Canadian Tour director of business development and communications Scott Pritchard. “We have become risk-averse. We just can’t afford to get into situations of the past. We can’t run that event from this distance and expect it to be successful. At the end of the day, it needs to be a local initiative.”

The full operation of The Players Cup is being taken on by local advertising and branding firm mf.1. Its president, Ryan Hart, had an agreement with the Canadian Tour in 2011 to market and promote the tournament.

Where there is currently turmoil — Hart’s firm and Pine Ridge went unpaid for 2011 for several months and eventually accepted less than full amounts — Hart sees a significant amount of hope for the future.

“The opportunity to work with the PGA Tour brand, and what it can bring to this city, is a huge opportunity for us and for Winnipeg,” Hart said.

The PGA Tour will begin its closer relationship with the Canadian Tour with months of due diligence and observation of tournaments. Even through the lens of the mess left by 2011, Hart sees that brand and expertise as a lifeline for more than just Winnipeg.
It’s certainly what brought him and his company back to the table, willing to take on all responsibility for the operation that will require a budget of at least $350,000.

“I would say that we were extremely challenged towards the back end of last year and the early part of this year as to whether we would be willing to do it again,” Hart said. “A couple of big factors were in play for us.

“No 1, we received a call from the PGA Tour. We had a good, hour-long conversation with them about some of the strategic alliances, as they put it, that would be put in place in this year of due diligence.

“And the opportunity to work with them in the future is one of the things that probably kept us in.

“And second, a groundswell of support and interest from the community. I think word got out that we were questioning our participation and the phone started to ring.

“Some prominent folks in town said, ‘This thing’s been here for 30-plus years and it would be tragic to see it go and where you guys took it last year was a great building block.’ And we’re still looking to reach out to more sponsors in that light.”

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/sports/golf/trying-times-for-tour-149015485.html

Canada’s top junior golfers are headed to Manitoba in June to take on the Minnewasta Golf and Country Club’s challenging 18-hole course.

Minnewasta is playing host to the third of six CN Future Links Championship events in 2012 with the CN Future Links Prairie Championship to be held June 26-28.

The 54-hole stroke play championship will feature the country’s top junior golfers aged 11-18. Players will vie for titles in a junior boys and junior girls division.

“Hosting a Golf Canada event at Minnewasta in our 50th anniversary season is a great honour,” said head pro Chris Worley.

“We’re looking forward to welcoming players to the CN Future Links Prairie Championship. We’ve hosted many PGA of Manitoba and Golf Manitoba events over the years, and our Les Furber designed golf course will certainly yield worthy champions.”

Tournament director Mary Beth McKenna said Golf Canada was excited to bring the CN Future Links Prairie Championship to a unique and challenging golf course like Minnewasta.

“Events like these give Canada’s top junior golfers an opportunity to develop and showcase their talents against elite competition, and Minnewasta will provide a true test of golf come late June,” she said.

The top six competitors in the junior boys division of each CN Future Links Championship will earn exemptions into the 2012 Canadian Junior Boys Championship, which will be contested July 31 – August 3 at Osprey Ridge Golf Club in Bridgewater, N.S.

The junior girls champion from each CN Future Links Championship will earn an exemption into the 2012 Royale Cup Canadian Junior Girls Championship which runs July 31 – August 3 at River Spirit Golf Club in Calgary.

http://www.mordentimes.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=3530363

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Junior Kayla Ketcheson (St. Andrews, Manitoba) led the Quinnipiac women’s golf team at the Brown Invitational at the Rhode Island Country Club in Barrington, R.I. Ketcheson finished the first day tied for 38th with an 88 (+16, 43-45). The Bobcats sit in ninth place after the first day. The Bobcats resume play on Monday, April 9.

“Rhode Island Country Club is very challenging,” head coach John O’Connor said. “The greens were very slick, they played very fast. Everyone played well, but the course prevented a great challenge today.”

Amanda Nagel (Greenwood, Minn.) was tied for 43rd after the first round. Nagel shot a 50 on the front nine, but rebounded down the stretch with a 41, for a 91 (+19) for the day.

St. John’s led the field with a combined 304 (+16), followed by host Brown at 314 (+26). Pennsylvania (320, +32), Dartmouth (326, +38) and Yale (329, +41) rounded out the top five. Fairleigh Dickinson (333, +45), Siena (337,+49) and Boston University (348, +60) fell in in front of Quinnipiac (380, +92).

http://www.quinnipiacbobcats.com/sports/wgolf/2011-12/releases/20120409lx2e2s

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Winnipeg golfers have plenty of room to play, Golf course supply outstrips demand by 10 per cent, according by city report, so getting a tee time should not be a problem.

Alan Shane, the acting chief operating officer for Winnipeg Golf Services, said the city owns 12 of about 25 golf courses in Winnipeg.

Shane, an avid golfer since 1972, said he plays all the courses, though Kildonan Park is his favourite.

“Did you know Bon Hope learned to play golf at Kildonan?” asked Shane, citing J. Alan Hacketts’s book Manitoba Links: A Kaleidoscopic History of Golf. The 18-hole Kildonan Park Golf Course was Winnipeg’s first, he said, opening in 1921, back when Hope and a slew of other stars were working the vaudeville circuit.

It’s a forgiving course, within thin tree lines between fairways making for easy recovery shots. And it’s the most popular of the 12 city owned courses. In 2010, there were 29,500 rounds played at Kildonan, Shane said, almost 6,000 more than second place Windsor Park.

Brian Kostiw, 52, has been playing golf in Winnipeg for 40 years and fondly recalls Kildonan’s par-3, 10th hole with its train trestle bridge looming between tee and green.

“As a kid we didn’t have the strength to go over the bridge, so we’d go under.”

Kostiw, a kid no more, also regularly playes Windsor Park, Wildewood Club, and Rossemere Country Club.

But if you are still a kid, go get your parents, or a friend at least 18 years old, because Shane has a freebie offer.

“Kids 17 and under play for free at Crescent Druve and Harbour View golf courses and on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays between 1 and 5 p.m. when accompanied by a paid adult,” he said, adding both courses are nine hole par 3′s and “absolutely wonderful places to learn golf.”

There are many other golf options in Winnipeg, though some are private so call before you go. The Yellow Pages or websites like scoregolf.com and golfmax.ca list courses in and around the city.

And remember, keep your eye on the ball.

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