Risdon holds on for victory in Alberta Golf’s top event

This scenario seemed eerily familiar.

And last time, Dustin Risdon didn’t enjoy the ending.

James Love was sizing up a chip on the closing hole at the Scott Venturo Rudakoff Alberta Open Championship, needing to drain the delicate wedge shot.

Risdon could only watch and wonder if history would repeat. It didn’t. Love’s attempt trickled past the hole and the 36-year-old Risdon, at long last, was crowned the champion at Alberta Golf’s marquee event.

“Love just walked by me and said, ‘Now, we’re even,’” Risdon chuckled just moments after clinching his victory at the two-day showdown at Sundre Golf Club. “Because he holed out a shot at Carnmoney two years ago to nip me.”

In this case, Love needed a chipin to match Risdon’s two-day tally of 5-under 139 and force a suddendeath playoff.

“I thought he was going to make it,” said Risdon, a teaching professional at the National Golf Academy at McCall Lake. “My caddy, Mark, he said, ‘You’ve got this. He’s not going to make that.’ And I’m like, ‘Shut up! It ain’t over yet.’”

Some folks figured the latest instalment of the Alberta Open was over before it started, and they were picking Risdon — raised in Strathmore and now a Calgary resident — as the winner.

Not a bad choice since he has an impressive record on the treelined fairways and pristine putting surfaces at Sundre, where he triumphed last summer at the PGA of Alberta’s Tour Championship.

“I’ve had some success here in the past, so I tried to draw on that,” Risdon said. “When I first joined the PGA, we had a one-day tournament out here and I shot 65, and the boys were like, ‘Wow, we didn’t see 65 out there.’ And then last year, we had the Tour Championship here and I shot 64 in the final round.

“So I just had a game plan, you know? I knew what I was going to hit off every tee. We didn’t do a practice round or anything and (Monday), Mark would say, ‘What do you do here?’ I’d say, ‘I always hit driver here,’ so I’d pull it out and hit it.

“So it was just automatic what to pull off the tees and I can read the greens decently, I guess.”

Risdon mixed five birdies and two bogeys en route to a 3-under 69 in Tuesday’s final round and managed to reel in the Calgaryraised, Denver-based Love, who was 1-over on his last lap.

Love (Inglewood) finished as tournament runner-up at 4-under, while Calgary’s Brendan MacDougall (Glencoe) and Ryan Were of Redcliff shared third spot, each shaving two strokes off par.

The 19-year-old MacDougall was the top amateur on the leaderboard and admitted it was “pretty cool” that the only guys he couldn’t catch have lengthy histories in the play-for-pay ranks.

Risdon is a three-time winner on what’s now known as the Mackenzie Tour-PGA Tour Canada and made 46 career starts on the Web. com Tour.

The 33-year-old Love is also a former winner on the Mackenzie Tour and is still competing on the minor-league circuit. Through three events, he’s at No. 30 on the money list.

Both have teed it up on the PGA Tour.

“It really validates all the work that I’ve done,” MacDougall said. “It shows that what I’m doing is going the right direction and I want to improve on that and maybe eventually I’ll be ahead of them.”