Canadian Tour headed back to Interior and Okanagan?

By GREGG DRINNAN
Daily News Sports Editor
Professional golf may be on its way back to the Interior and the Okanagan, and it could happen as soon as the summer of 2010.
Rick Janes, the commissioner and CEO of the Canadian Tour, told The Daily News in a Thursday email that chances appear good that such a tour stop would rotate among a handful of golf courses.
“The Canadian Tour has been investigating the possibility of a stop in the Okanagan beginning in 2010,” Janes wrote. “We have spoken with several golf courses as well as tourism officials and we are now qualifying the availability of local sponsorship dollars.”
Chances are that 2010 stop, should it happen, will occur in the Kelowna area, perhaps at The Bear Course at the Okanagan Golf Club in Kelowna, The Harvest Golf Club in Kelowna, or at Predator Ridge, the site of the 2000 and 2008 Skins Games that is located between Kelowna and Vernon.
“At this juncture most of our effort has been in Kelowna,” Janes said, “but we have definitely not ruled out Kamloops.”
The tour has shown interest in Tobiano, the Kamloops-area track that opened late in the 2007 season and was named the 2008 Canadian course of the year by Golf Digest and Score magazine.
In mid-June, Tobiano played host to some Canadian Tour players as they were en route from two B.C. stops to a pair of Alberta-based tournaments.
This year, the B.C. leg of the Canadian Tour began with the spring qualifying school — at one time, it was held in Kamloops — at Morningstar Golf Club in Parksville and followed up with two tournaments.
The Times Colonist Open, with a $200,000 purse, was held at Uplands Golf Club in Victoria, June 1-7, followed by the $150,000 City of Surrey Invitational at Hazelmere Country Club, June 8-14.
The tour then took a week off — which is when some of the pros played Tobiano — before the $150,000 ATB Financial Classic took over the Sirocco Golf Club in Calgary, June 22-28.
This week, the tour is at the Glendale Golf Club in Edmonton for the $150,000 TELUS Edmonton Open.
From Alberta, the tour will head to Saskatoon for the $150,000 Saskatchewan Open presented by Dakota Dunes Casino, and then to Winnipeg for the $200,000 Canadian Tour Players Cup.
Janes said an additional B.C. stop “would be an official 72-hole event on our June schedule with 156 players and part of our regular Golf Channel programming.”
All of the aforementioned tournaments, aside from Q school, will be featured in taped coverage on the Golf Channel. For example, the Times Colonist Open will be shown five times in August and once in November.
“We anticipate the tournament would rotate among several courses within the region,” Janes added. “It would also be sanctioned by the International Federation of PGA Tours, attracting players from roughly 15 countries competing for a minimum of $150,000 and world ranking points.”
While a tour stop has to include a minimum $150,000 purse, it is believed that the total sponsorship bill would run close to $350,000.
Dan Halldorson, a former PGA Tour regular who now is the Canadian Tour’s deputy executive director, told the Calgary Sun: “We’re looking at it — it’s still in the works. We had a space for it this year, but it didn’t materialize. And with the way the schedule falls this year, we kind of didn’t want to compete with the U.S. Open.”
The U.S. Open was held June 18-21. Next year, it is scheduled for Pebble Beach, June 17-20.
gdrinnan@kamloopsnews.ca
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