Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris linked to pro golfers

OAKVILLE, ONT. — One sport involves hurdling off snow-covered jumps as music blares in front of rabid fans. The other is played on manicured grass where spectators are hushed into silence.

Still, Canadian Olympic snowboarder Mark McMorris sees a lot of similarities between his craft and the golfers he’s been watching this week.

“The littlest adjustments can make the biggest difference,” McMorris said Friday at the RBC Canadian Open. “If you tuck a little bit too much in snowboarding, you might start spinning or flipping faster. I feel like we might have a little bit more room for error than the golfers.

“Our errors are a little bit more consequential to our well-being, but there can be some big financial errors for these guys.”

Speaking just off the 17th tee at Glen Abbey Golf Club, McMorris knows a lot about consequential errors.

The 24-year-old from Regina was nearly killed in a March 2017 snowboarding accident in British Columbia’s backcountry when he crashed into a tree.

McMorris suffered breaks to his jaw and left arm, a ruptured spleen, a stable pelvic fracture, rib fractures and a collapsed left lung — 17 broken bones in all.

He was airlifted off the mountain before spending 10 days in a Vancouver hospital and had to be on a liquid diet for six weeks.

But McMorris somehow rebounded in time to capture bronze in men’s slopestyle at the Pyeongchang Winter Games for his second Olympic medal.

“It’s pretty impressive what the human body can do, given the circumstances.”

McMorris, who is sponsored by RBC, said he chatted with world No. 1 golfer Dustin Johnson and Canada’s Adam Hadwin at the tournament, the latest stop on the snowboarder’s whirlwind summer, which has included the Calgary Stampede and a recent music festival.