Canadians have some fun before real golf drama starts

The group of smiling Canadians stood on the 18th green at Southern Hills and waved on the players behind them.

Tuesday's practice round for this week's PGA Championship was over, but there was still one thing left to decide for Corey Conners, Mackenzie Hughes, Adam Hadwin and their assorted caddies and coaches. After the group behind hit up to the green, each member of the Canadian contingent attempted a diabolical putt from the back right corner of the severely sloped green down to the front left pin location. There were plenty of laughs, but nothing that scared the hole.

“That's something that we started doing now, a little money putt at the end of the round,” Mackenzie Hughes told Postmedia. “Everyone is in for 100 bucks and you just see if someone can make it. Now, we don't always pick a putt that's pretty impossible, but someone finds a way to make it every now and then.”

The all-Canadian practice round is now a regular occurrence at major championships as our country's top golfers have become mainstays at golf's biggest events. This week in Tulsa, Conners, 30, is making his 10th consecutive major championship start. For Hughes, 31, it's eight in a row. Hadwin, the elder statesman in the group at 34 years old, will be making his 19th major championship start on Thursday.

“It's become a little bit of a tradition that we do now and it was a lot of fun,” Hughes said of the practice round. “We had a lot of laughs out there and it was good catching up with the boys.”

There will be a much bigger reunion a few weeks from now at St. George's Golf and Country Club in Toronto when the RBC Canadian Open returns after a twoyear absence due to the pandemic.

“Finally,” Hadwin said. “It will be nice to get back home and I'm sure the golf fans up there are ready for this. They've had a few years to prepare for it so it'll be nice to get back in front of them and play a great golf course like St. George's.”

This day, though, was all about preparing for the season's second major at a golf course none of them had seen in person before the week. With the wind up on Tuesday, Southern Hills was showing its teeth.

“I think if the wind continues to play like it is today, I could see scores between six and eight under par winning the tournament,” Hughes said. “It's so hard to tell on a day like today to predict it, but if you told me I'm going to shoot one or two under every day, I'd take that in a heartbeat.”

The last time the PGA Championship was held here was 15 years ago when Tiger Woods took home the 27-pound Wanamaker trophy with a winning score of eight under. That year, the course played 7,131 yards. It has been stretched since then, and after a 2019 restoration and renovation by architect Gil Hanse, the scorecard will read 7,556 yards for the world's best this week.

Hadwin was a little surprised that the greens were softer and somewhat slower than he expected: “Don't know how fast they can go with some of the green complexes they have, especially if the wind starts picking up here,” he said.

Hughes found a lie in the wall of a greenside bunker at the 15th that caught his attention when it didn't roll to the bottom: “The faces themselves seem fairly firm but occasionally they'll plug there, and not far below the surface is the liner of the bunker which is like concrete so it's kind of bizarre. It's very rare for it to plug there but sometimes it will.”

The all-Canadian practice round is a memorable part of any major championship week, but it was clear Tuesday that business comes first. More than ever, these three men believe their time is now; they all know the best memories are made on Sundays.