St. George’s will be bursting at the seams for RBC Canadian Open next month

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/05/2022 (1571 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Bits, Bites and Barbs from around the world of golf:

Bits

Nothing hits like the first round of golf of the season. Not the first shinny skate, the first softball game or the first whatever your favourite sport is. That first time out to a golf course after a long winter is the best. Few things bring better spirits . . . If Phil Mickelson does play in next week’s PGA Championship, where he is the defending champion, his pre-tournament press conference is going to be as entertaining and fascinating as any golf shot struck at Southern Hills. And the PGA of America should not give Mickelson a pass to duck the scribes. If he plays, he should finally face the music. He’s been muzzled far too long . . . The odds of Tiger Woods making the cut in the PGA should be longer than those of him playing the weekend at the Masters. He’s won at Southern Hills, yes, but Augusta is 1,000 times more familiar to him . . . I think I’ve figured out why I three-putt so much: I don’t hit the ball close enough to the hole . . . A couple of in-case-you-missed-its: This story on Irene Crowchild, a recovering addict turned two-time Canadian Women’s Long Drive champion, and this one on what meditation can do for your golf game, as Mickelson, before his exile, proved at last year’s PGA Championship.

Bites

Two words for Sergio Garcia, evidently set to take Saudi money and join Greg Norman’s LIV Golf International series: Good riddance. No professional golfer has whined more over the last 20 years than the Spaniard . . . Having said that, Garcia has also been one of my favourite players to watch strike a golf ball over the last two decades. He’s supremely skilled while being supremely surly . . . RBC Canadian Open officials weren’t asked about the competing LIV Golf series at Monday’s media day press conference to promote the June 6-12 tournament. But both Mary DePaoli, RBC’s executive vice-president and chief marketing officer, and John Sibley, Golf Canada’s chief commercial officer, indirectly addressed it when they made sure to express extreme gratitude for the tournament’s partnership with the PGA Tour in their remarks. DePaoli previously addressed Norman’s series starting the same week as the Canadian Open here . . . Cameron Smith, Tony Finau and Matthew Fitzpatrick were confirmed for the Open on Monday. They join defending champion Rory McIlroy, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and past champion Dustin Johnson as top-20 (at present) players in the field. There will be more big names confirmed before tournament week too. Hardly anybody who will play in the LIV series event in England instead of the RBC Canadian Open will be missed by Canadian golf fans . . . Nothing gives you an appreciation for how skilled top touring pros are than playing a tournament course in prep mode (or the Monday after the event). The rough at Toronto’s St. George’s Golf and Country Club is already long and thick, if not yet consistent. The question now is whether it will be that way for the tournament. The PGA Tour cut it significantly the last time the Canadian Open was played there in 2010.

Barbs

Of all the evidence — physical and anecdotal — to support the notion that this year’s RBC Canadian Open will be the largest undertaking in Golf Canada’s history, this may be my favourite tidbit: There will be approximately 7,000 pieces of furniture on the grounds of St. George’s come the second week of June. Couches, chairs, stools, tables, etc., to fill the 210,000 square feet of hospitality and fan activation space that will have been erected. That’s roughly 1,700 more pieces than what was required at Hamilton Golf and Country Club for the 2019 Open, itself a big event and the last time the national championship was played. Here are some additional numbers to digest: That hospitality space represents 92,000 more square feet than what was built in 2019. There will be 234 tents at St. George’s compared to 179 at Hamilton. There will be 10 viewing decks or bleachers with more than 2,000 seats compared to five in 2019. And there are 37 partner activations for this year’s tournament compared to 15 in 2019. The tournament has an official automobile, chicken, sausage, restaurant, hotel, betting app, Caesar, beer, wine, tequila, pop, convenience store, lawn mower and more. Two years of cancellations and golf’s uptick in popularity during COVID kept the phones of the tournament’s sales team buzzing. And all of this at a golf course that has a smaller footprint than most other PGA Tour venues, including Hamilton. St. George’s is going to be bursting at the seams with excitement come tournament week so long as Mother Nature co-operates with good weather. And at this point, that’s all officials are hoping for. Asked what’s on top of their event list wish, both DePaoli and Bryan Crawford, the tournament’s director, cited the sunny skies and temperatures in the 20s that have finally arrived in southern Ontario this week. Everything else, they said, is in place. After a two-year absence, the golf gods could at least deliver on that request.

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Obscure thought of the week: You’d think an editor wouldn’t have to chase freelancers for invoices. To pay them money. You’d be wrong though.

Jason Logan is the editor of SCOREGolf Magazine and is based in Toronto. He is a contributor to the Star’s Sports section. Follow him on Twitter: @jasonSCOREGolf