You’re on course if Ruth and Ian are there
There’s hardly a weekend goes by in the spring and summer months that Hamilton’s dynamic duo of Ruth and Ian Giles aren’t helping to make sure that a golf tournament, somewhere, runs smoothly.
Ruth could be on registration, starting or scoring or any combination of those. Ian has also handled starting and his calligraphy skills have been put to use on scoreboards. More recently, however, he’s become a Golf Canada rules’ official and could be anywhere on the golf course making rulings.
There’s doesn’t seem to be a tournament too big or too small for them. They both worked the Hamilton Wentworth District School Board Middle School Golf Tournament this past spring at Flamborough Hills. Ian did starting at the RBC Canadian Open on the PGA Tour at Glen Abbey. And they both worked the World Junior Girls Championship in Ottawa in late summer.
And, in between, there were literally dozens and dozens of provincial championships, junior tour events and qualifiers and well, you name it.
A competitive golfer in his younger days, Ian was asked by a friend to get involved with the 1986 and 1988 Ontario Junior Championships at Chedoke, his home club.
He got hooked and before you know it he was a director and governor of the Ontario Golf Association and was the president of the organization when it merged with the Ontario Ladies Golf Association in 2002.
He became a governor of the Royal Canadian Golf Association, now Golf Canada, and served in that role for 10 years and was the host club chair when the Canadian Open came back to the Hamilton Golf and Country Club in 2012.
Both Ian and Ruth joined the Hamilton-Halton Junior Golf Tour Board of Directors in 1994. She’s a past president and is still the board’s secretary.
Somewhere in there, between sitting on boards and committees, getting married and raising a family, they started volunteering at the events they were helping to oversee.
“I think the organizations like Golf Canada and the Golf Association of Ontario liked the idea that they were getting two for the price of one,” says Ian jokingly.
Well, that’s not exactly true since they don’t get paid at all.
If it’s a provincial or national championship, however, and they had to go out of town to work it they do get a hotel room, meals and mileage.
Hardly a windfall for giving up your summer, year after year. There are benefits, however. “It’s really neat when someone you met as a junior player in tournaments comes up to you now as a professional and says hi,” says Ian.
And their winters are busy as well. They’re big hockey fans. Their first date was to a local junior hockey game and they were in Montreal to see the Fincups win the Memorial Cup.
So it’s probably no surprise that Ian has been an off-ice official with the Bulldogs since they arrived here as an AHL team and Ruth serves as a backup official.
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Ancaster native Zac Moore has graduated from Wilmington University in Delaware with a Bachelor of Science in sports administration.
After four years as a player on the golf team Moore is now the assistant coach and is pursuing his masters of science in sports admin.
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Kudos to the Burlington G&CC and everyone who played in the Joseph Brant Hospital Open for raising $103,000 for the hospital.
Whole-in-one: Aces in the area included Mark Curik on the 117-yard 17th hole at Willow Valley with a wedge.