PHOTO COURTESY OF CONNAUGHT GOLF
Hole 2 at Connaught Golf Club will be busy next Wednesday when the PGA Seniors' Championship of Canada tournament gets underway at the local club.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Connaught Golf Club is soon to be centre stage in the PGA Canada golf world.
The PGA Seniors’ Championship of Canada gets underway Wednesday at Connaught as 47 of the country’s top senior golfers compete on the local course.
Connaught general manager Jeffrey Roy said it will be exciting for the three-day tournament that finishes up on Friday to get underway and said the course is all ready to go for its big day.
“The golf course is in absolutely stellar shape. Justin Olansky, our golf superintendent has done an amazing job,” Roy said Friday. “Today we have a construction tournament and I’ve been out handling things and talking to people and they’ve been just raving about the condition of the golf course. We’ve had a heat wave, we have a bit of a water issue with the city that we’re working through and it’s in really good shape. It really is.”
It will be the first PGA event Connaught has hosted in its nearly 100 years of golf and comes a week before the club hosts the 89th annual Southeastern.
Roy said the field of golfers in attendance is not as large with 47 competitors. He attributed that to the rise in travel costs affecting how many golfers can budget the commitment.
“These guys, a lot are retired golf professionals and they budgeted $2,000 for a tournament and now it’s going to be like $4,00-5,000,” Roy said.
Two of the competitors will be able to sleep in their own beds for the tournament as Hatters Brian Oliphant and Trevor Ellerman are taking part in the event. Oliphant is the CPGA head professional at Connaught and Ellerman is an owner/general manager at Desert Blume Golf Course.
Ellerman said he is looking forward to getting back into tournament play and doing so locally.
“I think it’s kind of a unique and obviously good opportunity. Nothing I’ve done in senior ranks before, but I played a few times down in the Canadian PGA, they usually have that event in the States during the winter,” Ellerman said. “I played down there a few times, but now with the opportunity to be local, it’s a whole different thing. It’s great to just have the opportunity to do that.”
He said having the local knowledge of Connaught will be a huge advantage when it comes to the putting greens.
Roy was able to sign up for the tournament, being a Canada PGA member himself, but said he would have a hard time running a course and playing on it. He said the Connaught staff are well prepared and ready for the challenges of the week.
“Brian and his people have a great handle on things, Linda (Howie) has everything handled from administration and our kitchen is ready to go,” Roy said. “We’re going to do a limited menu, just because we’re not sure what the foot traffic is going to be like. So we have about a dozen items that they can pump out pretty quickly, everything from soup to sandwiches to burgers, and wraps and stuff.”
He said with the smaller group there won’t be any cuts made throughout the tournament so each golfer will get to enjoy three days of golf and the said the course will be able to host public rounds mid-day.
“It really doesn’t close the course in the afternoon because the first tee will be open by 11:30-12 p.m. and then we’ll keep it open for about three, four hours before we shut it down. Then Justin will do his thing in the evening to get everything ready for the next day,” Roy said. “So the course will be in great shape and it’ll be ready to go.”
The tournament gets underway Wednesday morning with the first tee time set for 8 a.m.
