Hamilton to host 2012 Canadian Open
Golf Canada is going to keep the Canadian Open on the move, announcing that the 2012 tournament will be hosted by the Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ontario.
While the offer must still pass through Hamilton city council – a process that is widely viewed as a mere formality at this point – organizers and golfers alike are happy to see the Canadian stop being rotated around.
“We’re just absolutely thrilled,” said Scott Simmons, the executive director for Golf Canada. “It’s a National Open. We want to move it around to the best courses in the country. Period.”
St. Georges Golf and Country Club in Toronto played host to this year’s event while the Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club in Vancouver will be the site of the 2011 stop.
"I think it's great," said Mike Weir, a veteran Canadian of the tour. "Another two great venues coming up, Shaughnessy next year and then Hamilton again. I think the players like that, playing these great golf courses that we have here. “
Hamilton has hosted the PGA tour four times in the past, receiving positive feedback from players who enjoy the traditional H.S Colt layout. In the past, logistical challenges have left many of Canada’s courses out of consideration to host the huge event, but the RBC, the event’s main sponsor, the PGA, and Golf Canada have been ironing out many of the issues that have plagued the Canadian stop over the years.
One of the major challenges has always been recruiting high-calibre players coming off one of tour’s biggest stops, the British Open. Bill Paul, this year’s tournament director
says one of the best ways has been the creation of a charter flight from the U.K. to Canada that has run for the past four years.
“Our numbers (on the jet) increase every year,” said Paul. “The bottom line is (the players) will get off the plane saying ‘if you didn’t have this I probably wouldn’t be here…that’s the telling tale.”
While the Stanley-Thompson-designed St. George’s is considered to be one of the best courses in the country, its location, nestled in a residential neighbourhood in Toronto’s West end, also posed accommodation challenges, leaving organizers scrambling to find appropriate places for practice ranges and lodging required for a modern PGA tour event.
However, according to Yahoo! Sports, an industry insider says this year’s event outranks “10 or 15” other tour stops in terms of entries, and so perhaps the Canadian organizers can let the numbers speak to their choice of venue.
It’s the Canadian Open, not the Ontario Open
Though the tour will return to its 2008 and 2009 location in Glen Abbey after 2012, organizers are also hoping to bring the tour to Canada’s other regions outside of Ontario, including Montreal and Calgary.
“Calgary is a city that we'd love to be in theoretically," said Simmons. "If there was a course there that could handle the Open, (we'd go)."
One of major challenges facing the Alberta location is finding a high quality course long enough as the ball tends to travel ten per cent further in the mountains high elevation.
"There isn't a current one right now,” said Stephen Ames, another veteran of PGA tour,and resident of Calgary "A lot of golf courses have come up and asked about hosting it and we looked at them and asked, `Yeah, are you willing to add about 1,000 yards to your golf course? That means cutting trees down, making new tee boxes. They're not willing to do that."
While Golf Canada says it has decided on “tentative” locations for the tour stop up to 2017, nothing official will be announced pending negotiations between the PGA and the events title sponsor, RBC on a pair of deals that are set to expire in 2012.
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