Wes Dixon golf tourney cancelled for first time in 38 years
Organizers of memorial competition at Pine Crest are unsure if event will be able to return in 2021
“With a tournament like that, there is so much socializing. People want to hang around and have drinks.”
JAN DIXON PINE CREST GOLF AND COUNTRY CLUB
For the first time in 38 years, there will be no Wes Dixon Memorial Golf Tournament.
The tournament was named in Mr. Dixon’s memory by his children Bob and Jan Dixon who inherited Pine Crest Golf and Country Club, near Keene, from their father.
Ontario golf courses opened in mid-May with social distancing restrictions because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two-day tournament, one of only two multiday men’s invitationals left in the Peterborough area, is played annually on Father’s Day weekend.
The other is the Kawartha Golf and Country Club’s three-day Kawartha Invitational held each Civic Holiday weekend in August.
Tyler McDannold, chair of the Kawartha Invitational, said his committee expects to announce the fate of its 2020 tournament next week.
Jan Dixon said she and her brother decided when they opened last month to cancel this year’s event. It was an emotional decision but not a difficult one, she said.
“I just knew we weren’t going to be able to do it,” she said. “I wasn’t going to put the golf course, the staff or the customers at risk.
“We wanted to be proactive.”
It’s the first time they’ve cancelled the tournament.
“We’ve had years where it’s been cut short because of rain on Saturday or something but we’ve never cancelled it,” Dixon said.
Like many courses in the area, she said Pine Crest has seen higher than normal traffic despite the pandemic. It’s one of the few recreational activities the province has allowed to open in Phase 1 of its reopening plan for businesses.
“Once we opened, we realized we really were the only game in town. People wanted to golf and wanted to get out of the house,” she said. “We’ve had quite a few new members join because of this. They’ve decided, if they’re not going to be working this summer or until August, they wanted something to do and golf is a good alternative.”
Golfers don’t show up until 15 minutes before tee time and leave as soon as they’re finished. It wouldn’t be the same for a tournament.
“With a tournament like that, there is so much socializing. People want to hang around and have drinks,” Dixon said.
“We normally have a barbecue on one of the days or a buffet breakfast. Unless we could allow people to be in the clubhouse fully, we’re not going to do it.”
The pandemic’s impact hasn’t been as bad as Dixon initially feared.
“I wasn’t sure if we were going to get hit really hard with staff not wanting to come back, people not wanting to come to the golf course, but everybody is. Like everybody says, you can stay physically apart on the golf course. We have little gadgets on our flag poles where you don’t even have to touch the flag pole anymore to get your ball out. One of our members invented that. That’s been very helpful. Everybody loves them,” Dixon said.
“The golf carts are an issue because we only have so many. We ran out on Sunday because everybody wants to take a cart and we only allow one person per cart. That’s really been the funniest issue because our gas consumption for golf carts for the first 10 days was twice as much as it normally is.”
Dixon even wonders if there will be a tournament in 2021.
“We’ll see what happens next year. I see this being the new normal for a while,” she said.
“I really don’t want things to open any faster than necessary because there is going to be a second wave. We might miss it, but I think it’s pretty inevitable we are going to get one. I think we need to accept the fact that this is the way it is for a while.”