Canadians at Q-School

Here's a good article from sympatico.ca's Robert Thompson:
http://bit.ly/UO8vKJ

I'm always interested in the Canadian contingent at Q-School, wondering if this will be a "break-out" year for Canadian pros: who will join DeLaet, Hearn and Fritsch?
Could this be Ryan Yip's time? Let's keep our fingers crossed!

A Better November

The season ended here at Victoria Park East and Victoria Park Valley on the afternoon of Thursday November 22. And what a fabulous day it was! Mild and VERY busy - we even had the beverage cart out, much to the delight of the golfers. But now the pins are pulled and the crew is busy putting the winter touches on the turf.
November actually proved to be a decent month, balancing the generally wet and cool October.
The Road Construction Saga is nearing an end - Victoria Road is now paved between Arkell Rd. and McAllister; but a retaining wall is still under construction just north of our entrance, so it's still northbound access only from Arkell Rd.

The East Course pro shop and office remains open during the off-season, and will handle all Victoria Park Valley business as well.

Get Used To Seeing This

A very interesting announcement was made on October 18: the PGA Tour Canada will assume the title from the Canadian Tour, with the PGA Tour taking operational control. This is an incredible "re-brand" and will definitely help in promoting the Canadian game to the American - and worldwide - markets. Here's the announcement from the PGA Tour's website

I Love This Picture

A great 'Fall Golf" shot: Hole Lakes #1 at Victoria Park Valley, taken with my humble phone. If we could only have days like this all October, we'd be very happy! Click on the pic to enlarge it.

My Yearly Treat

Every year, usually on the first Monday of October, we enter a team into the Hulbert Memorial, an Ontario PGA event. It's a real treat for me because we get to play some fabulous courses, and this year the tournament was held at Thornhill Golf and Country Club. This wonderful Stanley Thompson-designed golf course - my first time there - is celebrating its 90th birthday this year. Fortunately the weather was great, sunny and mild most of the day. And needless to say, it was fun to play this challenging and very scenic golf course. Here's a view of the first hole, taken with my modest phone camera:

It was fitting for Thornhill to host this event during its anniversary year, because Arthur Hulbert was its head professional during the early part of the 1940s. Mr. Hulbert passed away suddenly in 1945, and left his family with little means; and so the area golf pros held a benefit tournament to raise funds for the Hulbert family. The event continued, and now the Hulbert Fund benefits Ontario PGA pros who are in need of emergency support.

Ryder Cup All Around

Is it just me, or does the hubbub surrounding the Ryder Cup match seem a little more intense this year? Sure, the Rory/Tiger thing is good for some buzz, and Snedeker is in fine form - or has been, anyways.
Here's a great article from Bleacher Report, as well as some great pics, leading into today's match: Bleacher Golf - Ryder Cup

                                Here's Team Europe

I don't usually hear this much excitement about a match, outside of The Masters. And we'll take it!

The "August Shuffle"

It was quite a week here at Victoria Park East.

Usually, we aerate our green during the Monday and Tuesday of the last week of August; but this year, David DeCorso engineered what I would like to call a "surgical strike" of aerating - with all his staff on board and some help from a local company, he managed to aerate all the greens, fairways, and tees in a 3-day period! Talk about cracking the whip! So the inconvenience to golfers is minimized. In the past, fairways would have been done some time in September, and tees after that. The aerating bonanza moves over to our new Victoria Park Valley on September 4th. Here's one of the crew (actually that's my son Alex), cleaning up around the freshly-aerated 1st tee.

This is also the last day of our successful string of Junior Camps. Gordon Crossman can now relax a bit, and get ready for his fall lesson schedule (it's never too late in the season for golf lessons!).

Also at this time of year, some of our staff head back to college or university, and so it becomes a bit of a challenge for us to maintain a balanced schedule. September is our second-busiest month for tournaments and events; but the shorter days can work in our favour, in terms of staffing all of our departments.

And of course, the 2012 PGA Tour calendar is almost on its last page, with 3 more playoff events and 6 more tournaments to round out the year. Saskatchewan's Graham Delaet's exciting finish at last weeks' Barclay's vaulted him, like, 60 spots up the FedEx Cup standings, so that was great to see. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for him to have a great finish this season.

                                                      Graham Delaet