CANADIAN OPEN POISED TO RETURN TO MONTREAL.
In 20 years as head of the Canadian Open golf championship, and in more than three decades working in the sport, tournament director Bill Paul has enough special moments to fill a few trophy cases.
So it’s interesting, as the 105th edition of this country’s national championship comes to Royal Montreal this week, that Paul says his greatest memory in golf is something that happened not inside the ropes on the fairways, greens or bunkers, but in the boardroom.
It came in 1997, when following 16 straight years at Glen Abbey in Oakville, Ont., the Open returned to Royal Montreal.
“People at our end never thought you could move the Open away from Glen Abbey,” Paul said during a chat in the final hours before organized chaos sets in this week at the historic layout on Île-Bizard.
“It was done for, let’s say, political reasons. We wanted to come to Quebec, which was two years removed from a (referendum) vote, and we had a Quebec president who challenged us to return to the province.
“We went from the feeling that we couldn’t have a big tournament away from Glen Abbey to having the biggest Open we’d ever had,” Paul said. “The people here at (Royal Montreal) and the enthusiasm of the Montreal fans just blew me away. It was the highlight of my career in golf.”
Steve Jones would win the 1997 Open, an event noteworthy for being the first missed cut — by a single stroke — for Tiger Woods in the 26 professional tournaments he’d played to that point.
The Open returned to Royal Montreal in 2001, grander still, and this week, branded the RBC Canadian Open, it is back for the 10th time, North America’s first course having played host to the inaugural 1904 event at its Dixie layout in the parish of Dorval.
The $60 winner’s purse claimed in 1904 by J.H. Oke would convert to roughly $1,500 today, which still pales just a little to the $1,026,000 U.S. that will go to the champion crowned next Sunday.
A field of 156 professional and amateur golfers will play at least 36 holes on Royal’s famed Blue course Thursday and Friday, the top 70 and ties after two rounds playing for pay on the weekend. Eleven former Canadian Open winners are in the field, including defending champion Brandt Snedeker, winner of the 2012 FedEx Cup.
A Golf Canada Founda- tion pro-am on Monday, with a shotgun start at 12:30 p.m., kicks off the week. Canadian pros, playing alongside many alumni of the Montreal Canadiens as well as current players David Desharnais and P.A. Parenteau, will raise funds for young Tourbound men and women from this country.
Not in the field is Woods, the 2000 Canadian Open champion who is feeling his way back into the spotlight after time away with a bad back.
But Woods’s absence in no way diminishes an excellent field that includes 15 Canadians, including Graham DeLaet, Canada’s top-ranked player and No. 36 in the world; David Hearn, who finished tied for 32nd in the British Open on Sunday; and Mike Weir, the eighttime PGA Tour winner and 2003 Masters champion who will play in his 24th Canadian Open.
Other than the undulation and size of some greens, and no doubt a few sadistic pin placements, the layout of the 7,153-yard, par-70 Blue course won’t be much different than it was in 2007, when major renovations reshaped it for the Presidents Cup.
Golfers won’t battle the nearly six-inch, dew-wet September rough that lined fairways in 1997, when organizers feared the field would embarrass Royal, turning it into mini-putt without the windmill.