Practice and putt prepares Canadians
Pre-tournament round and casual wager have become ‘a little bit of a tradition’
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 said. “Everyone is in for a hundred 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. Abbotsford’s 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 two-year 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 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.
“It’s got a good mix of holes, it’s a fun layout with some interesting contours in the fairways and obviously you can tell they’ve added some tees that aren’t normally here,” Hughes said. “The sixth hole is a par three and right behind it, like two steps off the green there is a tee block for the next par four. There’s no way a tee block is supposed to be there, but they managed to squeeze one in.”
Another quirk to get the most out of the available real estate is a tee deck for the 632-yard parfive 13th hole that has players driving directly over the 12th green. On Tuesday, the par-three 14th hole was playing 238 yards into the wind; Conners and Hadwin hit woods, while Hughes tried to step on a four-iron. The finishing stretch begins at the 16th hole with a 527-yard par-4 that features a fairway bunker on the left side of the landing area, in case it wasn’t hard enough already.
The all-Canadian practice round is a memorable part of any major championship week, but it was clear on Tuesday that business comes first. More than ever, these three men believe their time is now, and they all know the best memories are made on Sundays.