Teeing it up
Gamester excited to start competitive season
Steve Gamester is looking forward to renewing friendships today and seeing where his game is early in the golf season.
The Charlottetown resident will hit the course this morning for the opening round of the two-day Avondale Open. It is the first stop on the tour to determine Prince Edward Island’s amateur player of the year.
“It’s kind of a big family,” Gamester said. “It’s going to be good to see everybody you haven’t seen all winter.”
The field of 39 golfers, including six women, begins play today at 10 a.m. Gamester said this weekend would be a good measuring stick of where his game is as the competitive golf season begins. The wet start to the spring has resulted in less practice time, said the Avondale and Fox Meadow golfer.
“You’re kind of playing between raindrops,” Gamester said, adding he is hopeful the nice weather from earlier this week will welcome golfers to the Vernon River course.
“It’s exciting. It’s the start of a
brand new season.” Gamester was only 12 or 13 years old when he started playing the sport on Sundays in Summerside with his father, Alan, and uncles Dennis Pidgeon and Garth Wall. After playing through the junior program, Gamester got involved in the competitive golf tour.
“Initially, it was a cheap way to play other golf courses when I was younger. It was a lot of value for the dollar.”
Getting to know the other golfers and measuring his own game with others has kept him involved in the tour for about 20 years.
Gamester hasn’t won a tour stop yet, but he finished second at the Avondale Open two years ago and won the club championship there in 2016. He said the tour has a talented field of golfers.
“Anybody that’s hot, and has a hot putter that week, can win,” he said. “I just kind of go with the mindset, you go play one shot at a time and add it up at the end of kind of see where you finish.”
The key at Avondale for Gamester is keeping the ball in play.
“A lot of people try to force drivers on holes that aren’t really needed. You’re better off leaving yourself a longer approach shot and keeping it in play.”
The tour points are also used to select Prince Edward Island’s golfers for the Atlantic Cup, which used to be known as the Mel Murray Maritime Cup. Each of the four Atlantic provinces has a 12-member men’s team competing for provincial bragging rights.
“The points are extremely important this year because the Atlantic Cup is off to Newfoundland,” said Tim Yorke, who organizes the Island squad.
P.E.I. won last year’s championship in Summerside. This year’s tournament is at the Bally Haly course in St. John’s, N.L., Sept. 22-24.
“I think that’s what a lot of people are really fighting for,” said Gamester, who was on the team two years ago but not in 2016.