TREVINO SENTIMENTAL ABOUT GLEN ABBEY
Three-time Canadian Open champ hoping famed course won’t become a subdivision
If you hand Lee Trevino an open microphone, you had best be prepared to settle in for a while.
Trevino, 78, was at Glen Abbey Golf Club on Tuesday to help officially kick off RBC Canadian Open week. The winner of six majors — and three Canadian Opens — turned his brief remarks into extended remarks, and then it was almost a wonder he didn’t get hooked off the stage by a wedge.
He talked about his great memories of Canada, the friends he made here, the wins, the time he won the first open played at Glen Abbey in 1977 and then he just kept meandering.
Trevino talked about the way golf has changed. He mentioned ball components, shaft materials, driver heads, player fitness, player height and had a thing or two to say about lawn mowers.
I thought for a minute that he was complaining about “more” — more what? — before figuring out that, with his Texas accent, he was referring to mowers. They make the game too easy, you see.
Later, when he was handed a club for a photo-op in front of some cameras, Trevino launched into a wedge lesson that touched on the proper grip, the angle of the clubface and left-hip rotation. It’s worth noting here that no one had asked him how to hit a wedge. The man can talk.
But when the subject turned to Glen Abbey itself and the proposal to turn the site that will host its 30th Canadian Open this week into thousands of housing units, Trevino offered a surprisingly concise analysis.
“I’m never in favour of developing any golf course (into homes),” he said.
But then he noted that the land on which Glen Abbey sits, in an expensive city just down the highway from Toronto, is tremendously valuable to its owner ClubLink. Trevino compared it to Shinnecock Hills on Long Island and Pebble Beach in Northern California in terms of golf courses sitting on a metaphorical housing gold mine. Those comparisons might be a touch enthusiastic, but point taken.
“I’d love to see the course stay, but you have to understand (the owner’s) part of it, too,” Trevino said.
That has been a popular sentiment since ClubLink said in late 2015 that it was ready to turn the site into housing and close the course that Jack Nicklaus designed for the specific purpose of hosting the national men’s open. As much as there has been local resistance to the development plans from residents and politicians, it is hard to imagine the owners being forced to keep Glen Abbey a golf course in perpetuity, on land that has only increased in value as the development fight has dragged on.
(The town has rejected the development proposal and it’s currently before the provincial planning authority after an appeal by ClubLink.)
And while it wasn’t long ago that Golf Canada decided to make Glen Abbey the semi-permanent home of the men’s open again, with this year marking the fourth straight in Oakville, it is plainly preparing for life after Glen Abbey now.
Next year, the tournament will move to Hamilton Golf and Country Club in Ancaster, Ont., with plans to return there in 2023. Golf Canada wants to rotate the tournament around some of the traditional gems in the Toronto area, although future sites haven’t yet been announced. Chief championship officer Bill Paul said Tuesday that they would like the hosts for 2020 and 2021 to be two-slot sites, as is the case with Hamilton, which would mean 2024 and 2025 would also be snapped up.
That doesn’t leave a lot of room for Glen Abbey, although it could be a plug-and-play option for 2022 if there are still no bulldozers on the property.
Beyond that, there’s still the possibility that Golf Canada will move ahead on plans for a new permanent home for the men’s open, something that was a hot topic as recently as last year at Glen Abbey. Nicklaus had even come to town to scout out potential sites for that new home. That has become a long-term play, if it happens at all.
Laurence Applebaum, Golf Canada’s chief executive, said in an interview earlier this month that the focus now is on securing courses for a rotation on “some of the historic tracks” in the Toronto area.
The recent announcement that the RBC Canadian Open will move next year from late July to the first week of June has also changed the hosting calculus. Private clubs like St. George’s, which had to surrender its course in the middle of summer for the July date, will now see the circus arrive and depart before the prime summer months. The new date also means a better chance of attracting prized corporate sponsor dollars, since clients are more likely to be around for schmoozing in early June than the depths of summer. (Access to corporate money is the key reason why potential sites are now limited to courses in and around Toronto.)
So is this it for Glen Abbey? Did Trevino, winner of the first tournament here, come to see it for its last open?
Perhaps. But, also: “I wouldn’t write it off,” Applebaum said.
As endorsements go, that will have to do.
I’m never in favour of developing any golf course (into homes). I’d love to see the course stay, but you have to understand (the owner’s) part of it, too.