Even the dating web site eHarmony recognizes that, listing “15 reasons to date a golfer.” Among them, “golfers strive for emotional balance,” “they know how to make conversation,” “golfers understand they must forget mistakes and move on,” and “committed golfers are in it for the long haul.” Finally, these relationship experts point out, “you’ll be spending countless hours together in pristine park-like settings. Not a bad way to nurture romance.”

They might have mentioned etiquette, balance, equity and all those other fundamental values in the game. As well, the rules would be worth mentioning. Not the new Modernized Rules of Golf, although those certainly have their place in the actual playing of the game.

If you want golf to help forge and strengthen a romantic bond, you would be well advised to follow these guidelines which I have learned (often the hard way, particularly No. 1) over three decades of golfing with my beloved.

1. Be mindful

If you’re not asked, resist the urge to offer your well-intentioned opinion if your partner is having an off day. You most likely don’t have the instruction credentials to rectify the situation. Second, even though they love you, it is more likely that you will only add to the frustration.. If you are going to follow only one rule, make it this one.

2. Go on vacation

Take a golf vacation together. Sitting on the beach is all fine and good, but getting out on the course and sharing some conversation and laughs is far better.

3. Nine and dine

Whether it’s an organized weekly couples’ league or just an impromptu outing for just the two of you, nine holes followed by a leisurely dinner and drinks is a wonderful way to unwind and catch up.

4. Don’t take it too seriously

Sure, you want to play your best but the object of the exercise is to enjoy each other’s company.

5. Include family

If you have kids or grandkids, invite them to play a few holes with you. Or maybe it’s your brother and sister-in-law or other relatives you love but don’t get to see often enough. Golf is a great excuse to reinforce those family ties.

I speak from experience, as I mentioned earlier. My wife took up golf after I did and fell for it as hard, or maybe harder, than she fell for me. We’ve done all things listed above, from golf vacations to couples’ nights to including family. And while the pure meaning of Valentine’s Day is focused on your one and only, and my wife and I have spent many delightful hours golfing together, I can tell you that one of my everlasting memories is the sight of our son and his grandfather golfing together. That’s something else I truly love.

back

2024 Commemorative Logos

EPS Files

Templates

Guidelines

Fonts

For the most part, I enjoyed and appreciated Richard Moss’s 2013 book The Kingdom of Golf in America.

Until the very last paragraph.

After 355 pages, Moss took a double bogey on the (figurative) 18^th hole.

“Golf’s problems are rooted in the seismic changes in the economy and the culture of the past 40 years. If the golf community responds to these changes by dramatically changing the game, by making it shorter, easier or by changing the rules, it will be a profound mistake. Golf is not best seen as a consumer product …”

Not? 

In my opinion, that’s the literary version of a golf swing’s double-cross.

This does not mean the game needs to be reinvented. How about re-engineered? In business terms, that means rethinking your processes to improve your overall product.

Personally, I prefer “reimagine,” a word that noted golf writer Lorne Rubenstein used when we spoke about the challenges facing not only municipal golf courses but many public-access courses as well. Rubenstein, who is a member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame among many other honours, said golf needs to spread the word that its image as an activity largely reserved for white wealthy males is a fallacy.

“The vast majority of courses are open to the public but the perception is that it’s elitist,” he said. “That’s just not true.” (About 90 per cent of Canada’s 2,400 courses are open for public play.)

He added that, in order to appeal to a wider audience, the traditional 18-hole configuration must be reimagined to include shorter courses, putting courses and other activities, golf and non-golf.

Municipal courses in particular have a bull’s eye on their back, perhaps because of “budget deficits and cheap populism,” says Brad Klein, a respected author and course architecture consultant based in Connecticut. Politicians try to hit a hot button by advocating the closure of these green spaces and replacing them with housing or other alternative uses.

“Golf benefits many more people than those who play it,” Klein said, citing the enormous environmental benefits of golf courses. “Green space versus hardscape. A thermal sink with grass and trees. Carbon sequestration [capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere]. Habitat for all sorts of creatures and pollinators. Flood and storm water control. 

“It’s an asset to the whole community, especially in an urban setting. A municipal golf course is essentially a park with the added benefit of a game anyone can play and with the opportunity to at least break even or maybe show a profit.”

That message may be being heard, if not across the country, then in some progressive municipalities.

The City of Toronto voted this month to implement an improved operating model for its five courses, combining re-engineering and reimagining, to “provide improvements in customer experience, environmental stewardship, financial performance and recreational opportunities,” according to a press release. (More than 195,000 rounds were played on the city’s munis last year.)

“Maintaining City golf facilities in a prudent way that delivers a better experience for golfers, supports affordable access to the game for Torontonians and expands opportunities for how we use these spaces year-round is the right thing to do,” Mayor John Tory said in the release. “Providing public access to these areas, primarily in the off-season, creates more opportunities to be outside and active, including hiking, running, snowshoeing or cross-country skiing.”

Expanded accessibility, especially to young people, low-income families and other groups, was key to the decision. Notably, Golf Canada conducted the inaugural Canadian All Abilities Championship at Humber Valley, one of Toronto’s munis, last September.

Another win was scored for publicly accessible golf courses when Winnipeg’s city councilors voted 13-3 in January not to sell one of its municipal facilities, the John Blumberg Golf Course. Cindy Gilroy spoke for her colleagues after the vote.

After serving in senior positions in the parks and recreation departments in Toronto and Vancouver, Malcolm Bromley is well aware of the negative and inaccurate view many—not just politicians—have of golf courses, municipal or otherwise, and the people who play there.

“A municipal course is an integral part of the community and a vital part of the parks and recreation inventory,” said Bromley, who retired a couple of years ago after working in municipal government since 1979. His last post was general manager of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation for a decade.

In his experience, he can’t recall a single parks and recreation department staff member recommending the closure or sale of a golf course. A controversial motion to sell the municipally owned Stone Ridge, the only course in the small Northern Ontario city of Elliot Lake, to a developer was defeated on Feb. 14 after a public and social media outcry, an online petition and representations from Golf Canada and the Northern Golf Association.

It must be noted that the motion was proposed by the city’s economic development manager, not the parks and recreation staff. The staff proposal was introduced in a closed council session a month earlier and recommended the sale proceed without even an appraisal of the value of the facility.

Bromley acknowledged that a golf course is low-hanging fruit for a politician seeking notoriety but suggested these people haven’t hung out in the parking lot or on the first tee of a municipal course to see who shows up. (It’s unlikely the almost 200,000 golfers who played Toronto’s municipal courses in 2021 were all wealthy white men.)

“Then they should ask themselves, ‘If this [course] wasn’t here, where would all these people go?’ They sure wouldn’t head out of the city to play, so what happens to them?”

Like Rubenstein, Klein and most others who care deeply about the game, Bromley understands shifting cultural, economic and demographic realities are impacting everything in our world, including golf. 

“That’s why we have to ask ourselves, ‘How can we maximize and optimize this valuable public asset? How can we have golf—and more—on this green space?’”

Reimagining …

Perhaps the most important “more”, according not only to Bromley but many others, is creating what he calls an “on ramp” to golf like baseball, soccer, hockey, basketball and others. To get more creative, to evolve the classic experience into putting courses, welcome programs, driving ranges, short courses, courses of fewer than 18 or even nine holes, and junior programs. “Golf-related fun,” in his words.

To that final point, Golf Canada has proposed a partnership with the City of Toronto to become the home of program locations for the First Tee – Canada and the RBC Community Junior Golf Program.

Most of the people quoted in this article made individual representations to the City of Toronto during its review of the future of its courses. Craig Loughry was one of them and his tie was as strong as or stronger than anyone’s.

Loughry, Golf Ontario’s Director of Golf Services, grew up on those layouts. As a younger man, he won the club championship at Tam O’Shanter Golf Course in Scarborough. In those days, the club champion moved on to the City of Toronto championship, a title he won twice.

“Listen. These courses, most courses for that matter, are the farthest thing from elitism. People who think that is the case are just wrong. Have they ever been to one to see for themselves? I highly doubt it.”

It should be noted that, like Rubenstein, Logan and Loughry, many other prominent people in Canadian golf learned to love the game on municipal or public courses. Golf Canada CEO Laurence Applebaum, PGA of Canada CEO Kevin Thistle and Earl Fritz, founder of the Canadian Junior Golf Association, are among them.

Few, if any, in Canada have been more vocal in support of municipal golf than golf writer Rick Young. Young, president of the Golf Journalists Association of Canada, has been relentless and vociferous about the challenge to these recreational oases not just in Canada but in other countries like the U.S. and Australia.

“I understand it’s an easy target but I really wish the critics would do some research, do their homework, before taking the path of least resistance. What I see in most cases are hidden agendas from politicians or developers. We’ve got to rewrite golf’s playbook. We’ve got to go on the offence and get everyone’s voice heard. Now.”

Young echoed the common theme that, as Klein said, “municipal golf is doomed if it stays on the defensive.”

“Golf lacks a cohesive voice on the local level,” Bromley said. “If you tried to close an arena or a ball field, the parents, minor sports and other leagues and other user groups would rise up. They’d sign petitions, hold meetings and take to social media.

“We’ve got to stop looking at every instance as a goal-line stand, a face-off between opposing forces. A golf course shouldn’t be like a light switch where it’s either on or off.”

The message should be, as Young poetically puts it: “From green space to dream space.”

Reimagining … 

Brendan MacDougall was introduced to the game of golf during his early childhood and it’s become his biggest passion in life. Today, the 24-year-old is one of Canada’s top amateur prospects and has ambitions of competing professionally at the highest level one day.

“I was fortunate that my parents introduced me to the sport at a very young age,” recalled MacDougall, a fourth year member of Golf Canada’s National Team Program.

“When I was three I was hitting plastic golf balls in our backyard and a couple of years later I started hitting actual golf balls,” said MacDougall, who was born in Newport Beach, Calif., and moved to Calgary during his childhood years.

While California had consistent golf weather year round, when young Brendan moved to Alberta his love for the sport remained consistent.

In the seventh grade, MacDougall remembers having thoughts that he was going to be a professional golfer one day.

“It may have just been a pipe dream at the time because I was so young but having that goal made me work a bit harder and be a bit more disciplined.” he noted.

MacDougall says he didn’t spend much time socialising outside of school or going to parties. Instead, he realized golf was his hobby and passion and he was happy to be spending five or six days a week working on his game in practise.

MacDougall’s talents on the golf course would earn him a Division I scholarship to High Point University in North Carolina.

“After I got to High Point University that’s when I really started thinking that my childhood dream of playing golf professionally could be a reality,” he said. “I was determined to put everything I had into and see where it took me.”

After completing his freshman year, he scored a big victory at the 2017 Alberta Match Play Championship. MacDougall beat out a talented field of amateurs to secure the most significant win of his career up to that point.

“Some of the guys in the field were older than me by a few years and I remember looking up to them in high school. So to win that tournament against those fantastic golfers it gave me confidence and made me believe that I could take golf as far as I wanted to take it,” said MacDougall, who would repeat as champion in 2018.

The talented young Canadian would score his first NCAA tournament victory in 2018 as he captured The Big South Championship.

“I started off a little slow but I got incredibly hot for the last 45 holes and I ended up winning the tournament by five or six shots,” he pointed out. “Some don’t get to win a tournament in college and to have my first win at a conference championship was something really special; and it got me into my first NCAA regionals.”

Another notable NCAA triumph came in March of 2020 when he won The Challenge at the Concession. 

“We were in Florida for our spring break and it was the last tournament before everything shut down because of the pandemic,” he recalled.

“It was great to win the tournament but it was also super rewarding that as a team we came in second in front of a lot of great teams. And the best part was the bus ride back with the team.”

For his fifth year of NCAA eligibility, MacDougall transferred to the University of Nevada and played in all eight events during his final season of eligibility with the Wolf Pack. 

MacDougall says his success wouldn’t have been possible without the support of the National Team Program.

National Team head coach Derek Ingram says the 5-foot-8-inch amateur standout has come a long way during his time in the program.

“Brendan is much more mature and professional in his approach to playing the game. He is longer off the tee and he had to add distance to compete at the highest level – it’s a work in progress but he’s made a lot of improvements,” Ingram noted.

“I love Brendan’s routines – quick, committed and athletic. His pre-shot routine reminds me of Corey Conners or Ricky Fowler. He rides positive momentum really well and is both aggressive and smart.” 

For his part, MacDougall has nothing but praise for his National Team head coach.

“Derek is such a great coach and a great person and is dedicated to helping us be the best version of ourselves on the golf course and off. I truly appreciate everything Derek and Golf Canada has done for my game.”

MacDougall points out that one of his biggest short-term goals is to gain status on the MacKenzie Tour-PGA TOUR Canada. 

Ingram says if the talented young Canadian amateur continues to apply himself and make the necessary adjustments, he likes MacDougall’s chances of competing professionally at the highest level one day.

“Brendan needs to continue to gain more distance and be more explosive. This will give him shorter clubs in on holes and allow him to play out of the rough much more effectively. He also needs to continue to work on not getting too down and beating himself up – as golf tends to do. I like a positive and patient Brendan MacDougall’s chances,” said Ingram.

As he prepares for a transition from amateur to the professional ranks, the fourth year member of the National Team Program is motivated by the success of others who have gone through the program such as Taylor Pendrith, Mackenzie Hughes, and Corey Conners – just to name a few.

“Its inspiring to know that these players have all been where I am. And I know if I’m working hard and doing what I should be doing, there’s a chance that I could be where they are in five or six years,” said MacDougall.

“It’s a credit to them for being able to pave the way for players like me coming up. And one day I would really like to be able to do that for the younger players also.”

TORONTO – The Golf Journalists Association of Canada (GJAC) is proud to announce the golf story of the year, as well as the various Player of the Year awards for the 2021 season.

“GJAC is pleased to recognize Canadian professional and amateur golfers again this year with our year end player and Canadian golf story of the year awards,” said Rick Young, President of the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. “While the game posted record participation numbers it also faced another season of unique challenges due to the pandemic. That included a second straight year of cancellations to the RBC Canadian Open and CP Women’s Open, rising operational costs and supply chain issues.”

Without further ado; here is the story of the year and Players of the Year for the 2021 season.

2021 Golf Story of the Year

Covid-19 affects golf both positively and negatively. Both the men’s and women’s Canadian Opens cancelled for the second year in a row but golf courses report record number of rounds played.†

Male Professional of the Year – Corey Conners

• Currently ranked #37 in the world.
• Finished T8 at The Masters.
• Collected 13 top-20 PGA TOUR finishes
• Qualified for the TOUR Championship based on Fedex Cup standing

Female Professional of the Year – Brooke Henderson

• Won her 10th career LPGA Tour event at the Hugel-Air Premia LA Open
• Was the runner-up at the ShopRite LPGA Classic
• Finished the season with 12 top-20 finishes.

Male Amateur of the Year – Noah Steele

• *Turned Pro in November
• 2nd at the Azalea Invitational
• Won the Osprey Valley Open as an amateur and came 2nd at the Brudenell River Classic (both Mackenzie Tour Events)
• WAGR before turned pro: 188, WAGR at start of 2021: 129

Female Amateur of the Year – Monet Chun

• *Currently Sophomore at Michigan
• 5 top-15 finishes in her NCAA debut season, including T2 at the Columbus Regional
• Named Big Ten Freshman of the year
• Finished T2 at the Porter Cup and 2nd at the Ontario Women’s Amateur, which included a course record of 64 in the final round
• Current WAGR: 187, WAGR at Start of 2021: 736

Member Club Resources

Member Club Benefits

Member Club Resources

Golf & Health Resources

Club Anniversaries

Golf Canada Mobile App

Handicapping & Course Rating

Development Programs

National Facility Reports & Resources

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Safe Sport

Long-Term Player Development

Golf’s Long-Term Player Development (LTPD) guide encompasses all aspects of athlete progression – from early childhood through to adulthood. The framework is at the core of Golf Canada’s mission to develop players that can compete at the highest level within the sport.

While serving as a measurement tool for performance, the LTPD guide also focuses on continued efforts to foster life-long engagement with the sport. The 2015 release of the guide’s second iteration elevated the experience for those that utilize the guide by incorporating new interactive elements to separate it from its earlier version (released in 2006).

Although specifically targeted at golf professionals, athletes and parents, LTPD also contains valuable information for Golf Course Owners and Superintendents.

Click here to view the full LTPD guide.

Like many of you, I’ve always been diligent about maintaining an accurate handicap. The reasons are ridiculously obvious: I want to know if my game is improving (or not) and I want to ensure that when I compete in net events, I’m being honest and equitable with my fellow competitors.

I never really thought about the mechanics of the system, perhaps because I was too lazy or disinterested to read through the ponderous Handicap Manual (now called the Rules of Handicapping). I gave full credit to the boffins who came up with the convoluted doorstop but never cared to interview the geniuses behind the curtain.

And then, this year, along came the World Handicap System.

Perhaps because of the restrictions due to COVID-19, golfers had more time on their hands. In any case, I’ve never been asked more handicap-related questions at the course or on social media. So, taking a cue from the manuals that accompany your new car or fridge or TV, here’s my version of a “Quick Start Guide” for the World Handicap System.

Why a new handicap system?

Why not? Golf now has both a globally recognized set of Rules as well as a worldwide handicap system. Even if you never travel outside Canada, you can be assured you are playing the same game as every other golfer around the world. The new system may require some tweaking after it’s been in effect for a while but it’s doubtful there will be another significant revision in the near future.

How does the new World Handicap System work?

At one of the meetings of the 23-member committee tasked with creating the new system, a USGA delegate compared understanding the intricacies of the handicapping system with air travel.

“I have no idea how an airplane works. I don’t understand jet propulsion, aeronautics and so on, but I trust that when I get on that plane, it will get me safely to the destination I intended.”*

Likewise, the process of coming up with the World Handicap System would make your head spin, so just concern yourself with the final outcome.

But if you’re in quarantine or a masochist or one of those aforementioned boffins, you can review the Rules of Handicapping here.

Has the Course Handicap calculation changed?

Yes. To your benefit. Under the old system, there might have been just a two- or three-shot difference in your Course Handicap from the front to back set of tees, despite the fact that those tee decks might be separated by 1,500 yards.

Under the new system, that difference now might be 10 to 12 shots because the par of the course has been integrated into the calculation.

Why doesn’t my Handicap Index go up when I post a high score?

Under the old system, the low 10 of your most recent 20 scores were used to calculate your Handicap Index. Under the new system, the low eight are used. So that bad score may not enter into the calculation. Similarly, using the most recent eight scores instead of 10 may have lowered your Index.

What the heck is Net Double Bogey?

“Net Double Bogey” has replaced the old Equitable Stroke Control system (ESC).

Now everyone’s maximum score for handicap purposes is net double bogey. Simply put, this is the par of the hole PLUS two strokes (double bogey) PLUS any handicap strokes you may be allowed on that hole.

If you don’t want to have to figure that out when you’re posting your score, let the Golf Canada Score Center do it for you. When you enter your score hole by hole, the Score Center automatically adjusts for net double bogey.

And for those of you complaining about posting scores hole by hole: You play the game hole by hole so why not post your score that way? It takes only a couple of minutes and provides some interesting data.

Here’s my Super Easy Quick Start Guide:

Post all your scores hole by hole immediately after your round. Let the Golf Canada Score Centre take care of the rest. And check out the new app which makes the process even easier.

(*Thanks to Craig Loughry, Director of Golf Services at Golf Ontario, for this anecdote and other invaluable assistance with this article. Loughry was the Canadian representative on the World Handicap Operations Committee.)