Alberta Golf (Kananaskis) – The final event on Alberta Golf’s championship summer schedule is in the books. It was a gorgeous day at Kananaskis Country Golf Course for the Alberta Interclub Championship.

In the women’s competition Turner Valley Golf Club won the low gross division.

The men’s team from Silver Springs Golf & CC won the low gross competition.

Vulcan Golf & CC won the men’s net competition while the women from the Lacombe Golf & CC won low net.

FULL LEADERBOARD

Alberta Golf (Calgary) – Earlier in August at Golf Canada Calgary Centre, Jade Carter, Easton Hopkins, Justine Leon and Jalen Apedoe won their age categories at the Shaw Charity Classic Drive, Chip & Putt contest presented by West Island College. The four champions had the experience of a lifetime Sunday during the final round of the Shaw Charity Classic at Canyon Meadows getting inside the ropes access with the leaders and a trophy presentation from this year’s champion Wes Short Jr.

WATCH:

ALBERTA JUNIOR GOLF ROADMAP

One of the many initiatives that Alberta Golf is looking to unveil in 2019 is the establishment of a pathway to help junior golfers navigate the road to post-secondary education. This pathway will be called The Junior Golf Roadmap.

“Our goal is to help clarify the competitive pathway for players in Alberta” said Jennifer Davison, Director of Sport Development and High Performance. “We often hear from families that there is confusion surrounding the idea of playing competitively in the province and where competitive golf can lead them. We field questions that range from beginner opportunities, all the way to post-secondary opportunities. The Junior Golf Roadmap will help clarify the routes that players can take.”

Golf Canada already has a junior competitive pathway but Alberta Golf wants to create one that is Alberta-specific for the players in our province.

To develop The Alberta Junior Golf Roadmap consultation with families is invaluable to find out what struggles they had in guiding their players through junior golf and beyond.

The de Graaf family from Edmonton is one of those families. Marlene de Graaf knew her son Ethan had promise in the sport of golf when he was young, but had no idea how to get him started. She didn’t know how to set him up for success when it came to finding a scholarship in the U.S. or get him on the radar of a Canadian University.

“By the time Ethan was 15 or 16 we had no idea what options were available,” said de Graaf. “The feedback we got from coaches in the U.S. was ‘Ethan looks like a great player but we’re done recruiting for this year; we’re recruiting into 2019 & 2020’. We realized we should have started this process when Ethan was in grade 9.”

The de Graafs realized they were too late to find a U.S. school for Ethan but not too late for here in Canada. Ethan is happily playing in his first year at UBC but they remember all the questions they had when he was young. Those questions included: ‘ how do we find out about tournaments, which tournaments should we choose, how do you find a coach, what should our budget be, how do we find college recruiters and what exactly is an order of merit’? They would love to see this new roadmap help other families in the future.

“As one of the older parents who’s been through it, I’m having parents come to me in the same position I was five years ago asking, ‘ what do we do, how does this work’ ?” said de Graaf. “It was really frustrating when you’re new to the golf community to actually know how to get into all of these things, so a junior golf roadmap will definitely help families that are new to golf or new to golf in Alberta.”

Annabelle Ackroyd just graduated William Aberhart High School in Calgary.  She is heading to the University of Minnesota this fall. Her father Carson says the process to find the right post-secondary option for his daughter started in grade 10.

“It’s important to have somebody to provide some counsel and direction on what kind of events you need to play in,” said Ackroyd.  “It’s important to find out what events post-secondary recruiters are going to be at and how to approach them. Information on how early on you need to start would be incredibly helpful to any family that’s looking to get into that area.”

Which brings us back to Alberta Golf and their plan to give families the tools to get their players to where Ethan and Annabelle are in a much smoother manner. Coaches will be discussing some of the requirements needed to play post-secondary golf. There will be a big focus on the under-15 bantam level so it’s not overwhelming for parents and so that they don’t think they are going to make unfixable mistakes.

“Expanding our offering at our championship events for juniors will allow for an open dialogue between the players and the association,” said Davison. “Our goal is to be a resource for these players and to help them find the information they need to make the best decision for their future.”

Alberta Golf wants to take the pressure off of families and steer the focus away from just being competitive. They want to make families aware that there are also post-secondary opportunities for players that are more education-focused and not all about high performance golf. It’s a roadmap no different than in hockey. There are recreational players and competitive players and the goal is to make sure that the roadmap feels inclusive to everybody versus just being for highly competitive players. With input from families and key stakeholders in the industry Alberta Golf is striving to provide a clear roadmap for what has historically been a challenging process.

Alberta Junior Golf Roadmap

This article was originally published in the 2019 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

Alberta Golf (Red Deer) – 12-year-old Jayden Brar of Calgary was eligible to compete in this year’s Alberta Novice Boys championship but instead decided to test his skills one age level up in the Bantam category. The defending Novice champion who plays out of Priddis Greens Golf & CC won the Bantam Championship by 2 strokes over Kye Krall with an impressive final round of even par 72 at River Bend Golf Course in Red Deer.

Jayla Kucy of Camrose had a one shot lead heading into the final round of the Bantam Girls Championship but Brooke Frerichs from the Glencoe Golf & CC took down the title with the round of the tournament shooting 1 over 73 to win by 4 strokes over Kucy.

VIDEO: Interviews with the winners:

The Novice Girls champion is Edie Nicholson of The Pinebrook Golf & CC while Tate Bruggeman of the Derrick Golf & Winter Club shot a final round 68 to win the Boys Novice title.

FULL LEADERBOARD

PHOTO ALBUM

Alberta Golf (Red Deer) – Round one is in the books at the Alberta Bantam Championship after a sunny but gusty day at River Bend Golf Club in Red Deer. Kye Krall of the Inglewood Golf & CC leads the Bantam Boys Championship after a 1 over round of 73.

McLennan Ross Alberta Tour’s Tour Championship winner Jayla Kucy of Camrose continued her solid play shooting a 7 over 79 to lead the Bantam Girls Championship.

In the Novice Boys Championship Tyler Kidd has a 5 shot lead after an impressive round of even par 72.

The final round starts at 8am Tuesday morning.

Final Round Tee Times

Full Leaderboard

By Dunc Mills:

The 24th season for the McLennan Ross Alberta Junior Tour came to a breezy, but very successful conclusion this afternoon at Wolf Creek Golf Resort. For decades, Wolf Creek has been ranked in the very upper echelon of golf courses across the nation, and today’s weather showcased just how challenging “The Wolf” can be when the wind blows.  Ninety-seven of the best junior golfers in Alberta were on hand from Grande Prairie and Wabasca to Lethbridge and Medicine Hat and scores of locations in between. When the scorecards were all turned in, we had two very deserving Tour Champions.

Jayla Kucy captured her second consecutive Tour Championship at the tender age of 13, as she also looks to repeat her 2018 Alberta Golf Bantam Girls Championship coming up next Monday and Tuesday at River Bend GC in Red Deer.

Jayla Kucy – Girls Champion

Kucy fired a steady round of 80 in very difficult conditions to become the first back-to-back girls’ Tour Champion since Kaitlin Allan about a decade ago.  Kucy continues to play ‘above her age’ but I’m not even sure what that means any more when a 12-year-old made the field this week for the CP Canadian Women’s Open!  Seven years ago, Jaclyn Lee of Calgary won the Tour Championship and she continued to develop and is now on the LPGA Tour. I’m far from predicting that level of success necessarily for Jayla, but nothing would surprise me. Brynne Davies of Earl Grey in Calgary was runner-up with an 88 and she will also be in the field next week for the Bantam Championship, which is very promising news as the next wave of junior girls comes up through the ranks.

On my way to the course this morning, I wondered what the winning total might be, considering the quality of the field we had in attendance, but also knowing that Wolf Creek can be a very daunting challenge when the wind picks up.  It’s plenty tough when it’s dead calm!  I thought 71 might do it, but as the wind speed ramped up over the morning, my self-imposed projection rose to somewhere in the mid-70s or perhaps even higher.  It was tough out there!

But form held.  Cole Bergheim of Red Deer GCC has been on a heater lately, capturing the gold medal at the Western Canada Summer Games last week in Swift Current with a 54-hole total of 214. He then qualified for the Tour Championship with a road trip to Nanton on Tuesday this week where he won with a 73.  Bergheim offset an early double-bogey with a spectacular eagle-3 on the par-5 6th hole, paving the way for his winning total of 1-over 71.

Cole Bergheim – Boys champion

Cole Ruelling of Lewis Estates and Christian Hansen of River’s Edge in Okotoks tied for second, each with 4-birdie efforts of 73. Mitch Desjarlais of Broadmoor and Jace Shannon of Forestburg finished T4 on 75.  Shannon won his age group for boys born in 2005 and later, enabling him to leap from third to first in the season-long Titleist Order of Merit standings and take home a great prize package from Titleist.

Other Order of Merit winners included Brynne Davies in the junior girls’ division, Jarrett Bossert of Broadmoor in the flight for boys born from 2000-02 and Camrose’s Rory Wutzke in the flight for boys born from 2003-04.

TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP PHOTO ALBUM

TOUR CHAMPIONSHIP LEADERBOARD

In deep diving into the overall tournament stats on the website, it was interesting to note that the hardest hole today in relation to par was the short 339-yard par-4 4th hole, playing to a robust average score  of  5.61.  In contrast, the par-5 sixth hole played to a stroke average of only 5.49 while yielding two eagles. The 4th hole gave up only ONE birdie and 16 pars while beating the players into submission with NINETEEN  of the dreaded ‘others’.  Ouch!

We will do a more in-depth analysis soon in a Year In Review format, but for today, let’s just enjoy the good feelings and fun that permeated the banquet room in the clubhouse after the round.  The course beat some of these kids up pretty good, but Wolf Creek has humbled some of the world’s best young tour pros in the past as well, so these juniors have nothing to be ashamed about from their efforts today.  It was a pleasure to be out there watching these young people.

Power of the Public Golfer

By: John Gordon

The game of golf can be confounding. Hit down on the ball to make it go up. Aim right to make a shot go left. And so on.

Just as confounding in many ways is the history of the game itself.  While its convolutions can be unraveled by students of the game, many casual observers are flummoxed. Golf’s recent gyrations have led to misleading headlines announcing the game’s imminent demise.

Time for some historical perspective. Like everything else in this world, golf has proven cyclical over the last 600 years or so. Even in relatively recent history, say the last century, golf has ebbed and flowed in response to social, economic and political tides.

In Alberta, for example, there were only nine golf clubs in 1919, the year after the end of the First World War. A mere 17 years later, there were 66, according to a report quoted in James Barclay’s seminal book Golf in Canada: A History. Eighteen years after that, there were only 37. Now there are more than 300.

Not long after, another golf boom struck only to be followed by a bust in the 1970s. The ‘80s and ‘90s were a dream for the golf industry, from which it was rudely awakened by the recession of 2008. It can be argued that the industry has never quite rebounded from that blow, but to say it is on life support is to be ignorant of golf’s history and resilience.

Murray McCourt is the general manager of The Ranch Golf and Country Club just west of the Edmonton city limits. Now a PGA of Canada Executive Professional, he has been in the golf business for almost 30 years. He’s seen golf flourish thanks to the cash that flowed during the province’s boom. Things are quite different now, he says.

“We’re not nearly as busy as we were then but we are managing to keep our head well above water. Like every business, we had to take a hard look at our business model, our revenue streams. We had to get leaner, but we couldn’t cut our quality of service. We had to get creative,” McCourt said.

The Ranch now is a totally public course, one that McCourt says may be the “…busiest tournament course in Alberta.”  There are no members as such, but there are men’s and ladies’ leagues. Like The Ranch, McCourt says to be successful, golf facilities must continually evolve.

But is it an “evolution” or more so a case of “back to the future”?

Remember those “600 years” mentioned earlier? That’s how long ago the game was first played over what now is known as the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland. It was, and remains, a public course. Today, all seven layouts at St. Andrews, including the Old Course, are public courses. While there were (and still are) no members, there were “golf societies,” organized groups that played regularly on one or more courses.  Then along came the proliferation of “private” member clubs, most noticeably on this side of the Atlantic, and with them the now-detested “elitist” tag for the game itself. Public golfers were demeaned as the “great unwashed,” “trunk-slammers.”

Now “back to the future” we go.  Golf societies are on the rise across the country, as are the number of golf facilities, many of them previously private, open to the public golfer.

“There are numerous diverse groups [in Canada] that have organized themselves to play golf,” said Calgary’s Leslie Dunning in her acceptance speech after being elected president of Golf Canada last year. “As we identify these groups, we will reach out to build relationships with them…It is our aim to create relevancy to more golfers.”

Establishing that relevance is easier said than done, says Dave Stockton, Director of Member Services and High Performance Sport for Golf Canada. Golf Canada currently has about 270,000 members, the vast majority of whom belong to private or semi-private clubs. About 17,000 of those are public players. According to Stockton, Golf Canada’s research indicates there are about a million golfers in the country who play at least 25 times a season and that’s the organization’s target.

Of that pool of a million, Stockton estimates about 350,000 play at some sort of competitive level, whether that be tournaments, leagues or other events, and thus should be tracking an official Golf Canada handicap factor. The remaining 650,000, he says, are recreational golfers “who play a more social form of golf with friends, family or regular playing partners.” They may not adhere strictly to the Rules of Golf and don’t see the necessity of an accurate handicap factor.

But, Stockton emphasizes, a Golf Canada Gold membership offers many more benefits including incident protection that covers up to $2,500 reimbursement for damaged, lost or stolen equipment such as clubs and range finders; reimbursement for damage up to $1,000 if you break or damage a window; and up to $2,500 for damages caused by a golf cart accident. Plus other benefits that make a membership relevant to all regular golfers—maybe even more relevant to those who don’t necessarily know where their next shot is going or are accident-prone or forgetful.

Like other industry insiders, Stockton acknowledges the latest paradigm shift in golf. “I don’t think people are necessarily leaving golf. I think they are leaving the traditional golf club membership model for more public golf.”

As a result, there are more options for the public golfer, ranging from public courses like The Ranch to innovative concepts like VIP Golf and Play Golf Calgary. (It should be noted that all encourage their clients to purchase a Golf Canada Gold membership.)

Loosely inspired by the “one membership, more golf” concept developed by ClubLink, which owns multiple courses in Ontario, Quebec and Florida, Rob Wilson came up with the VIP Golf idea 15 years ago. He purchases “tens of thousands of greens fees” at about 100 courses in Alberta and B.C., and then resells them to his VIP Golf members at “substantial preferred rates” that can range up to 60 per cent off the rack rate.

The result is the proverbial “win-win-win” scenario, he says. VIP Golf is thriving, its members get great value at outstanding courses, and the courses themselves receive income from carts, retail sales, and food and beverage purchases.

A VIP Golf membership can also serve as a “gateway to membership” at a specific course, says Wilson, when a golfer wants to sample the experience at several clubs before settling on a home club.

Somewhere between the strictly itinerant public golfer and those who are attracted to something like VIP Golf are those intrigued by models such as Play Golf Calgary. In fact, says CEO Scott Atkinson, “we try to bridge that gap, to create a relationship, a sense of belonging that a lot of golfers seem to want. It’s actually a basic human instinct.”

Play Golf Calgary is comprised of The Links of Glen Eagles, Blue Devil Golf Club and its Lil Devil short course, HeatherGlen Golf Course and Serenity Golf Club. All are accessible, at various levels, through the purchase of a Play Golf Calgary Card or by opting for a Multi-Course Membership.

Atkinson, a past-president of the National Golf Course Owners Association of Canada, says there is a continual push within Play Golf Calgary to meet the demand for programs that tend to reflect those at traditional member clubs such as match-play and other leagues, junior camps, tournaments and social activities for card-holders, their families, friends and colleagues.

“We’re not trying to be the traditional private club. That calls for a whole other financial commitment, among other things. What we are trying to do is provide a setting where they can enjoy the game in a social way. We want to be the best of both worlds. Ultimately, our goal is to create golfers.”

A 2015 report by Golf Canada and the PGA of Canada said there were 2,346 golf facilities in this country of which only 220 were private. There were 312 facilities in Alberta at that time, 23 of them totally private. Among the remainder are semi-private clubs, those which may offer memberships but also welcome public play.

Certainly, public golf may not be for everyone. But golf itself certainly is.

Power of the Public Golfer

This article was originally published in the 2019 edition of The Alberta Golfer Magazine. To view the full magazine, click here.

Alberta Golf (Calgary) – Alberta Golf has partnered with Junior Achievement Canada for a week long camp at Silver Springs Golf & Country Club.

The camp breaks down barriers and gets youth on a private golf course for an entire week to learn golf and business skills as well as learn the value of teamwork and working together with new found friends.

Junior Achievement has been active in Canada for 64 years and is the world’s largest charity teaching youth about business and personal finance.

Junior Achievement hopes to partner with more golf courses in the coming years across the country.

FULL STORY WATCH:

JUNIOR ACHIEVEMENT PHOTO ALBUM 

Alberta Golf (Canmore) – 28 teams paired up Monday and Tuesday at the Canmore Golf & CC for a fun and competitive Rec Series event.

The weather was incredible for the Ladies Team Classic which saw the home course duo of Kelly Smith and Mary-Anne Kamenka take the title with back to back net rounds of 66.

Mary-Anne Kamenka & Kelly Smith

Interview with the winners !

FULL LEADERBOARD 

LADIES TEAM CLASSIC PHOTO ALBUM 

Alberta Golf (Calgary) – It was a gorgeous day for the Shaw Charity Classic Junior Drive, Chip & Putt event presented by West Island College. Over 70 boys and girls tested their skills at Golf Canada Calgary Centre.

The winners of each age group will get inside the ropes access during the final round of this year’s award winning Shaw Charity Classic to follow one of the final groups on Sunday September 1st. To top it all off, the Shaw Charity Classic champion will present the 4 winners their trophies in front of thousands of golf fans on the 18th hole at the conclusion of the event.

The winners of each age group at the Junior Drive, Chip & Putt were:

Girls 8-11, Justine leon – 38 pts

Girls 12-15, Jade Carter – 40 pts

Boys 8-11, Jalen Apedoe – 41 pts

Boys 12-15, Easton Hopkins – 39 pts

VIDEO of Junior Drive, Chip & Putt

Interview with age 12-15 champion Jade Carter