B.C.’S three green amigos
Trio of local golfers will tee off on the PGA Tour next season.
It was July of 2003 and Adam Hadwin, Nick Taylor and Roger Sloan were three of about 150 young golfers from throughout the province who had made the trek north to play in the B.C. Junior Boys Championship at Dawson Creek Golf & Country Club.
All three made the cut that week, but didn’t exactly create headlines.
Those went to a 12-year-old Vancouver kid named Richard Lee, who shot a 62 in the third round of the event, and eventual winner Ryan Lidkea of Delta.
Hadwin, then 15, tied for 18th in Dawson Creek, Sloan, then 16, tied for 41st and a 15-year-old Taylor tied for 75th.
The PGA Tour was then a very distant dream for the trio.
But dreams do come true — sometimes at the same time. Eleven years later Sloan, who hails from Merritt, and Abbotsford residents Hadwin and Taylor are off to the PGA Tour together as rookies.
Hadwin, in a recent interview, searches for the right word to describe their accomplishment, and cool just doesn’t cut it.
“Obviously it’s very cool, but cool is such a crappy way to describe it,” Hadwin says. “It’s an honour, it’s a privilege to be going out with these guys. We all played junior golf and amateur golf growing up together.
“I think it’s a testament to how good our class around that time was in B.C. golf. We had a lot of good competition growing up and it really sort of prepared us for the next level. We have all taken our own path to getting to this spot, but it’s pretty wild that all three of us are going to the PGA Tour in the same year.”
Cool. Wild. Sloan uses another word: Fantastic.
“I don’t think you could write that script any better,” he says. “Three guys, we all played junior golf together, now off to the PGA Tour. I can remember the first time I played with both Adam and Nick in Dawson Creek. Each one of us had fairly good junior careers and we all had a decent collegiate career. I think Nick obviously had the best amateur career. But we all knew where we wanted to go individually. Adam has had a lot of early success, Nick is coming into his own and has had a lot of success this year and I have been a little more Steady Eddie. It’s just fantastic to have the three of us go through what we have gone through and go to the PGA Tour at the same time.”
Taylor, too, has trouble believing what the trio has accomplished.
“For Adam and I to grow up at the same golf course, and still live here in Abbotsford, and Roger being two hours down the highway in Merritt, that just doesn’t happen very often,” Taylor says, “especially in Canada. We have been struggling to get (PGA) Tour players out there and I think there are six of us this year with full cards. It has got to be some sort of record, I think. It’s a unique story and hopefully we can keep it going.”
First, all three need to catch their breath and there’s not a lot of time to do that. The 2015 PGA Tour season actually starts Thursday in Napa, Calif., with the first of five fall events, the Frys.com Open.
Taylor acknowledges being “mentally fried” after playing for eight straight weeks, often under immense pressure. For example, he had to play well in the final regular-season event of the Web.com Tour season in Portland in late August just to secure his status on that tour for 2015 and qualify for the four-event Finals tournaments. Then, four weeks later, he needed a big final round in the Web.com Tour Championship to earn a PGA Tour card. Taylor responded with the round of his life, a seven-under 63.
Fifty players earned their PGA Tour cards via the Web.com Tour Finals. Taylor finished with priority ranking No. 37 while Sloan is No. 46. Hadwin, after a brilliant season, is No. 1. That makes him fully exempt. He has the luxury of being able to plan his schedule and pick and choose which tournaments he will play.
He jokes that isn’t as easy as it sounds. He wants to play them all, but knows it isn’t practical.
“It’s the PGA Tour now, the land of courtesy cars and high-profile events and you don’t want to skip one,” he says, laughing. “You look at the schedule and go ‘ Oh, this one’s fun, this is a nice city, oh, I can go here.’ My thought process going into the year is no different. I always assume that I am going to keep my card and play well. What I’d like to do the first couple of years is get a taste of every event, so I will plan my schedule this year, take off weeks and next year maybe plan it slightly differently so those off weeks I took this year I am playing next year.
“I’d like to play every event the first couple of years and see what courses suit my game, what ones I play well in and then we can go from there. It is certainly going to be hard to skip PGA Tour events with a million dollars as first prize.”
Taylor and Sloan won’t be able to pick and choose. They’ll have to tee it up pretty much whenever they draw into events, but both can improve their positions via reshuffles during the season. The better they play, the more tournaments they’ll get into.
Hadwin and Taylor are both in the Frys.com Open season-opener next week, but Sloan is not.
Kris Jonasson, the longtime executive director of British Columbia Golf, was in Dawson Creek for that 2003 tourney. He knew, given the deep talent pool of junior golfers in the province, that some would find their way to the PGA Tour. But even he didn’t see it happening quite like this.
“They weren’t the big names at that time,” Jonasson says. “These were good players and I think what it has taught us is that golf is a later-developing sport, so you really can’t tell at a young age who really is going to make it and who isn’t. Talent identification is very difficult.”
Hadwin is the more accomplished professional of the three. His breakthrough came in 2011 when he delighted hometown fans by finishing tied for fourth at the RBC Canadian Open at Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club. He has spent the past three years on the Web.com Tour where he won twice this year and earned nearly $530,000. A PGA Tour win almost seems inevitable for Hadwin, who finished his collegiate career at the University of Louisville in 2009 by winning the NCAA Big East Championship.
Taylor had the best pedigree coming out of college. He won the Canadian Junior and Amateur Championships and received the Ben Hogan Award as the top collegiate player following his junior year at the University of Washington. For a time, he was ranked the world’s top amateur and shot a second-round 65 — the record for an amateur — at the U.S. Open in 2009 at Bethpage Black.
Sloan attended the University of Texas-El Paso and won on the then-Canadian Tour before graduating to the Web.com Tour last year. His win at the Web.com Tour’s Nova Scotia Open this past summer helped punch his ticket to the PGA Tour.
Taylor and Hadwin are quick to credit Fraser Mulholland, commissioner of the Vancouver Golf Tour, with helping their development. Both are multiple winners of VGT events and as a way of saying thanks, the two new PGA Tour members played in last week’s West Vancouver Shootout at the nine-hole Gleneagles Golf Course, where the purse was $2,500, not the $1 million they will now be playing for most weeks.
“I think Nick and I both realize where we came from, where we got our start, and we’re happy to help him out any way we can,” Hadwin says. “There are so many good players in this area. There are guys who teach for a living who are great players. Bryn Parry and I had many battles out there in 2009 when I first turned pro.
“What Fraser has done for the local pros has been phenomenal.”
Taylor says being a full-time PGA Tour member still hasn’t completely sunk in. A few weeks ago, he was fighting just to remain exempt on the Web.com Tour.
“I think it will really start hitting me when I get out there,” he says. “I have been texting a bit with Graham DeLaet and he is pumped to have us out there. He has given me some advice. There will be times when you may feel a little bit uncomfortable out there, but don’t be shy about joining guys you have watched on TV for a practice round. Nobody is going to say no. Just get yourself out there and try and feel as comfortable as you can.” But not too comfortable. “I talked to my college coach, Matt Thurmond, and he’s like everyone is pumped to get there, and they should be, but you’ve not really made it until you get to the top 50 in the world and have all these guaranteed events and you are not stressed to keep your card and you are in majors all the time,” Taylor says. “So there are still goals to be reached, but it’s definitely a huge step to get there.”
Especially with two friends walking right beside him.