COURSE CONFOUNDS BEST PLAYERS IN PROVINCE
PGA of Alberta championship’s final round wasn’t exactly pretty
Royal Mayfair assistant head pro Mike Belbin blasts out of a bunker during Tuesday’s final round of the PGA of Alberta Tour championship at the Royal Mayfair Golf Club. Belbin won the event despite shooting a 4-over-par 74. Story /
It was almost painful to watch Tuesday’s final round of the PGA of Alberta’s crowning jewel of the season — the Tour championship played at Royal Mayfair Golf Club.
But don’t expect the course’s assistant head professional, Mike Belbin, to throw the win — tainted as it may have been — back.
“We were all kind of struggling and watching one bad shot after another bad shot,” said Belbin, whose final round of 4-over-par 74 was still good enough to win the two-day tournament by two shots over The Quarry’s Keith Whitecotton, GolfTEC Calgary’s Jamie Kureluk and Blackhawk Golf Club’s David MacComb.
“Chip outs and missed putts. It kind of snowballed,” he continued. “It was awful.”
Belbin had only one birdie on the day — a long 22-footer on No. 8. But, then, birdies were hard to come by for everyone.
In the final grouping of Belbin, Kureluk and Whitecotton, there were only four birdies in total. By comparison, Belbin had five birdies of his own on the back nine in Monday’s opening round.
“We didn’t have a lot of good vibes in our group,” he said.
For that matter, there weren’t a lot of Beach Boy tunes playing anywhere. Not a single player in the 38-player field broke par. And these aren’t some nickel and dime Sunday afternoon hackers. These were not only the best players in the province, they were some of the best players in the country.
“It was like nobody wanted to step up and win it,” said MacComb, who was tied for the lead with Belbin after nine holes — both at 1 over par.
But as solid as MacComb was on the front nine, he gave it back on the back nine.
“I played beautifully on the front. On the back, I couldn’t get off the tee,” he said.
Kureluk also had a piece of the lead. After Belbin walked out of the starting gate with a double-bogey on No. 3 and then a three-putt bogey on No. 4, Kureluk stood on the seventh tee with a one-shot edge. But then he gave it back, too, punctuated by a triplebogey on No. 7 when he hit a poor approach that found the right greenside bunker. From there, he promptly bladed his bunker shot, airmailing the green and putting the ball in the trees.
Whitecotton kept hanging around, but he couldn’t get the job done either.
“I just didn’t play good enough to win,” Whitecotton said. “I didn’t make a single putt all day. All three of us were struggling pretty hard. Tee to green and then putting, no one got anything going.”
With carnage everywhere, Belbin righted himself after his slow start and held a fourshot lead with just three holes to play. But then he bogeyed holes 16 and 17.
“That kind of made it interesting again,” said Kureluk. “If (Whitecotton) makes his birdie putt on 18, I somehow make the crazy bomb of a putt I needed and Mike three putts, we could have had a three-man playoff.”
Fortunately, for Belbin, that didn’t happen.
“I didn’t have my best. But I got her done. It’s OK to win when you play bad sometimes,” said Belbin, who also won this tournament last year when it was played at The Hamptons Golf Club in Calgary.
Belbin said he had a lot of clues that it wasn’t going to go smoothly.
“I knew something was off. I could feel it on the driving range,” he said. “I should have stayed home until 15 minutes to my tee time, got on the first tee and fired it because I had too many bad thoughts.
“I didn’t have my best. I got the job done because I putted good on the back nine on Monday,” he added.
In fairness, Royal Mayfair also played hard. Pins were set up in tough positions, the greens got firm and fast and the wind swirled.
“That was probably one of the hardest rounds I’ve played. It was just a hard round,” said Belbin. “I may not have liked the way I played. My expectations are high here. I expect to play well here and I love to play well here. I won. I expected to play better. I didn’t.” cstock@edmontonjournal. com Twitter.com/CurtisJStock