Dustin Johnson grounds his club in the sand of a bunker filled with footprints and other marks left by spectators and is penalized two strokes, costing him a chance to win the PGA Championship in a playoff.

Faced by a 30-minute wait upon arrival at the 10th tee during the opening round of the LPGA Safeway Classic, Juli Inkster attaches a small weight to the shaft of one of her clubs and tries to reacquaint her 50-year-old body with the various portions of the golf swing. A fan watching the television broadcast of the LPGA Tour event sends an email to tournament officials, but Inkster is already on the 17th hole, so she doesn't learn about her disqualification until after the round.

Jose de Jesus Rodriguez shoots what would be a course-record 61 in the third round of the Canadian Tour's Seaforth Country Classic, but, perhaps because he was so excited, leaves the scoring area without signing his card. He is immediately disqualified.

Two Ottawa-area golfers were DQ'd from a modified alternate-shot club event because he had already played the course earlier in the day.

As they say, stuff happens, but it can and does lead some to wonder if there are just too many rules in golf.

I'm not one of them, though. I don't think there are too many rules, just too many people who don't know them.

Yes, I know that the vast majority of club members and an equally sizeable portion of the overall golf population doesn't play competitive golf and won't ever be affected by these and other rules, but the whole point in having such rules is to make the playing field as level as possible for everyone in a competition.

What do you think they would have said if, for example, Ian Woosnam had used both of the drivers that were in the bag that day in 2001 at the British Open?

It's not as if these kinds of things haven't happened before. Stuart Appleby was penalized four strokes for a bunker-rule violation in 2004 at the same course (Whistling Straits in Wisconsin) where Johnson got in trouble. Michelle Wie was disqualified from a tournament in 2008 because she forgot to sign the scorecard. Grant Waite was disqualified from the 2001 Canadian Open because he slept in and then got caught in a massive traffic jam on the way to Royal Montreal Golf Club. Roberto de Vincenzo famously missed a shot to get into a playoff at the 1968 Masters because he signed a scorecard (kept by his playing partner, of course) that gave him a higher score on a hole than was actually the case.

Oh, by the way, the rules sheet prepared for participants in this year's PGA Championship and postings in the locker room reminded one and all that pretty much anything with sand would be considered a bunker, including areas outside the gallery ropes. Johnson didn't bother to read the notice, and neither did his caddie, apparently.

At some point, golfers have to assume responsibility for knowing the rules, just as athletes in Olympic sports and others must accept responsibility for knowing what's in the supplements and medications they take. Oh, sure, some of them can receive incorrect assurances (ex: rower Silken Laumann and a cold-medication snafu) from medical professionals, but it's still up the athletes to get it right.

On the plus side, though, a lot more golfers on and off professional tours will now read the rules sheets attached to their scorecards and posted in locker rooms, and scorecards will receive additional attention for a while, but these things will always happen because, after all, golfers are human, and there will always be human error.

That doesn't mean, though, that there are too many rules or that the rules in place should be repealed or amended. If you're going to play the game, you also should be able to say you know the rules.

If I was incredibly vain, I could say that it was because of my previous Need For Speed blog posts, but I can't say that.

Rather, the relatively timely play of golfers in the Canadian men's mid-amateur championship at Royal Ottawa Golf Club this week has been do mostly to a conscious effort by organizers and rules officials for Golf Canada to reinforce the rules governing pace of play and a reasonable amount of buy-in by the golfers themselves.

The "time par" for the tournament was set at four hours 35 minutes, and the hammer used to maintain it was something called Group Pace of Play rules.

Here are the basics: In addition to the overall time par, there are four checkpoints for each group on the course, with those for the mid-amateur championship occurring at the fourth, ninth, 13th and 18th holes. (That covered the dual-tee start for the first two rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday as well as the single-tee start for rounds on Thursday and Friday.) Failing to make it to any one checkpoint on time would result in a warning for all three members of the group, with subsequent checkpoint failures resulting in one- or two-stroke penalties and, if all four were missed, disqualification. Any such penalties could be appealed by players in the scoring areas and, based on their submissions and the observations of time and rules officials on the course, could result in the erasure of the penalties for all three or, if a single player was judged responsible, the other one or two in the group.

So, given that there were 51 or 52 groups that played each of the first two rounds of the mid-amateur championship, how many penalty strokes were assessed?

Answer: none.

That's right, zero penalty strokes, and only one warning in each round, each at the final hole of the day for that group.

On Thursday, the first group out in the morning, featuring Stu Clements of Gibsons, B.C., Robert Oliphant of Winnipeg and Kevin VandenBerg of Camillus, New York, finished the round in three hours 50 minutes, or 45 minutes under the time par. While Clements shot an 82 and Oliphant carded an 81 and VandenBerg produced a 1-under-par 70, so the pace of play was obviously no problem for him.

This was, in case you didn't remember, the same Royal Ottawa course where an Ottawa Valley Golf Association women's city and district round a few years ago lasted more than six hours, and there was no danger of being pulled over for speeding by the police or anyone else during the first round of this year's Alexander of Tunis men's amateur tournament.

It's safe to assume those tournaments didn't have as many rules officials available as the 2010 Canadian mid-amateur championship, and it's also a pretty safe bet that the overall calibre of play was somewhat higher this week, but at least the mid-amateur has shown that it is possible to play at a reasonable pace and that golfers won't pull any hamstrings in trying to comply.

Now if only someone could exert the same kind of influence on professional tour players. No doubt there would be appeals aplenty, but, as I wrote previously, the best example that golf officialdom could set for the average player would be to require strict adherence to pace of play guidelines for the stars we watch on TV.

Heading to the 'Peg

Golf Canada announced this week that 48 of the top 50 players on the LPGA Tour money list, going into this week's stop in Oregon, had committed to play in the CN Canadian Women's Open at the St. Charles club in Winnipeg starting Aug. 26.

The only confirmed absentees among the top 50, the association said, would be No. 36 Lorena Ochoa (retirement) and No. 47 Natalie Gulbis (back injury).

Of course, that could still change. Organizers of the 2008 Women's Open in Ottawa started out with somewhere between 45 and 48 of the top 50, but, by the time the first tee ball was struck at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, the number was down to about 43 because of withdrawals due to injury.

Still, it shows that you can draw a good field as long as the money's good ($2.25 million U.S. overall purse) and the event enjoys a reputation for being well-organized.

The field at St. Charles will also include nine former Canadian Women's Open champions, including 2008 winner Katherine Hull and defending champion Suzann Pettersen, and 13 Canadians.

That list features the handful of players with LPGA Tour status, including Charlottetown's Lorie Kane, Hamilton's Alena Sharp, Montreal's Lisa Meldrum, Samantha Richdale of Kelowna, B.C., and Adrienne White of Red Deer, Alta. As well, Duramed Futures Tour players Jessica Shepley of Oakville, Ont., and Seema Sadekar of Toronto qualified by winning the 2009 CPGA Women's Championship and placing in the top four on the CN Canadian Women's Tour Order of Merit, respectively.

The list of Golf Canada invitees includes national amateur team members Jennifer Kirby of Paris, Ont., and Sara-Maude Juneau of Fossambault, Que., plus development team members Christine Wong of Richmond, B.C., and Rebecca Lee-Bentham of Richmond Hill, Ont. The association also invited former national team members Sue Kim of Langley, B.C., and Stephanie Sherlock of Barrie, Ont., who recently turned pro.

Those 13, plus any of the 20 Canadians who manage to earn one of four spots up for grabs in the open qualifier on Monday at the Elmhurst club in Winnipeg, will be trying to end the drought of victory by a homegrown player. It's not 36 years and counting since Hall of Famer Jocelyne Bourassa became the one and only Canadian woman to win an LPGA Tour event in her native country.

The chances of that drought ending in Winnipeg are long, but maybe they won't be so long down the road. Kim tied for third in this past week's CPGA Women's Championship, while Sherlock tied for 11th, and that was just days after the Barrie golfer reached the semifinals of the U.S. Women's Amateur championship.

Go Canada.

On Sunday, Jeff Overton played the 18 holes of his final round of the PGA Championship in two hours nine minutes.

He was playing by himself after Ian Poulter withdrew, citing illness, and he wasn't playing with any hope of challenging for the title, but Overton can still claim a purported record for the fastest round in major championship history. He beat Phil Blackmaar's time of 2:10 at Crooked Stick in 1991.

By the way, Overton shot a 7-over-par 79 to finish at 298 for the championship. That score wasn't much, but it still beat the 81 "fired" by Nick Watney, who had merely been the leader by three strokes at the start of the day.

It was also a mighty contrast from the opening round of the PGA Championship, when 78 players could not complete play before darkness, though that was also due in large part to a three-hour delay because of fog in the area around Kohler, Wisconsin.

On the other hand, it was way past 8 p.m. ET before tournament officials could distribute Day 1 results from the Canadian Tour's ClubLink Jane Rogers Championship just outside Toronto and the men's Canadian Amateur at London, Ont.

Next week, the second wave of players for the Canadian mid-amateur championship won't start play at Royal Ottawa until somewhere between 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday and Wednesday, and that's if the morning wave finishes on time.

Anyone for a little night golf?

Nobody wants that, of course, but it could happen, or a round could be suspended because of darkness or inclement weather.

Those, however, are just the minor problems that nobody can be blamed for. A bigger concern could be, and should be, the pace of play. I'm guessing that the pace of play for those two rounds could be close to five hours, which would take the afternoon wave dangerously close to the fall of darkness.

I don't want to be at the golf course that long into the evening, and the players won't, either.

How do you deal with slow play, though?

Here's one idea that was batted around by a bunch of golf writers last week: Assess the penalty that's already in the rule book for slow play, and then tell everybody about it. SImply telling a particular group that they're "on the clock" and being watched won't do it.

Better still if that happens in a high-profile, televised professional tournament such as the PGA Championship.

Can you recall an incident in which a tour pro was penalized for slow play? I don't, and I'm more than a casual observer. I'm not talking about the fines that are included in the conditions of competition for various tours, but actual strokes added to a player's score, visible to all who look at the leaderboards, and then included in the evening summary shipped to media outlets and golf fans.

Embarrassing to the player? Sure, but only temporarily, and it would do a world of good for the world of golf, just as you can be sure that a lot of players, both professional and amateur, will pay greater attention to handling their clubs in bunkers after the two-stroke penalty that cost Dustin Johnson a shot at the playoff against Martin Kaymer and Bubba Watson on Sunday.

Updates from here and there

In case you missed it elsewhere, Graham Cooke of Summerlea won his third Quebec senior men's amateur championship on Thursday. He shot a final-round 71 for a total of 208 and rallied for a five-stroke triumph over Drummondville's Luc Guilbault in the tournament at Cap-Rouge.

Cooke, who's already inducted into the Quebec and Canadian Golf Halls of Fame, has won the provincial senior title in each of the past three even-numbered years. He'll be in the field for the mid-amateur at Royal Ottawa, too, thanks to last year's victory in the Canadian senior championship.

Rejean Theoret of Hawkesbury Golf and Curling Club was the top player from eastern Ontario. He tied for fifth with a total of 221.

Meanwhile, at the Country Club of Montreal, Elyse Archambault of St-Jean won the Quebec girls match-play final 5-and-4 against Alexandra Pelletier of Triangle-d'Or. Jean-Sebastien Viau of Rosemere won the provincial boys match-play title with his 2-up victory over Nicolas Foretin of Levis.

Closer to home, at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, Grace Howie of Kanata downed Cynthia Louden of Rideau View 6-and-4 in the Ottawa Valley Golf Association girls match-play final. Ottawa Hunt's Mike Reaume, who had to survive a six-way playoff just to get into the top 16 for match play, won the boys final 4-and-3 against Hylands' Josh Goheen.

Where to turn?

I don't mean me, particularly, but golf fanatics in a general sense.

Should you set your web browser to the PGA Championship in Wisconsin? That's where the giants and not so giants of the world of men's professional golf have gathered for some reasonably civilized competition and some less civilized conversations about the impending Ryder Cup selections. (See Pavin, Corey, and Gray, Jim, for more information. Not to be confused with Montgomerie, Colin, and what he describes unsubstantiated and false rumours about supposed legal action in which he was involved.)

Another possibility, if you're a Canadian golf keener like me, would be the Canadian Tour event website for news and scores about an event in Toronto. Yes, there still is a Canadian Tour, and the players are pretty good. I'll bet you can even name three or four. OK, maybe you'll have to wait until those three or four are on the PGA Tour, but wouldn't it be more fun to watch their progress now?

Another source of inspiration might come from the opening rounds of the Canadian Amateur at London, Ont. Two hundred and fifty players chasing a national title and a sponsor's invitation to next year's Canadian Open. Same advice: File away the name of the top couple of finishers for future reference.

Down the roads into Quebec, you might find some pretty good amateur golfers, too, playing in the provincial senior men's championship and the final stages of the provincial junior boys and girls match-play competitions. There are similar junior match-play events being completed at the Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, not to mention an Ottawa CPGA Junior Championship event set for Dragonfly Golf Links in the Renfrew area.

In case you weren't counting, that's seven official competitions, and who knows how many other tournaments are under way, and it's all happening on one day.

That's right. One day.

Meanwhile, I've got to finish up a column scheduled for publication next Monday and another piece that's due on Tuesday. Guess what I'm doing on Thursday.... I doubt my web browser will get much work.

Perhaps one good thing, though, is that I won't have time to worry about my own game. Given the result of Wednesday's round, that's a good thing.

Oh well, there's always tomorrow.... Right?

It seems like a very long time ago, but it was only a year ago that:

Tiger Woods had won every time he took at least a share of the lead into the final round of the major championship;

Ol' Tiger was also, at least as far as the rest of the world knew, still happily married;

Phil Mickelson was Phil, capable of producing enough sparkling shots in a week to give Tiger a run for his money in any given event;

Sergio Garcia still wanted to play.

Now the golf world is at a point where Tiger and Phil played a combined 15 shots over par in the final round of a World Golf Championship event at Firestone, and Sergio, after finishing in a tie for 22nd, says he will take an extended break after the PGA Championship.

My question: Why wait? Unless he really thinks he can get the top-three finish that appears to be the only way he'll get onto Europe's team for the Ryder Cup, Sergio should save his caddie the work involved with lugging a bag around Whistling Straits and go directly to the airport for the next flight home to Spain or wherever he'd like to chill out for a couple of months.

After all, Garcia's work on this side of the Atlantic Ocean in 2010 has been mediocre at best. His leading finish was fourth place in the world match-play event early in the year, and there has been nothing better than a couple of ties for 22nd since then.

Similarly, the only real issue left with regards to Woods' marriage appears to be when the divorce agreement will be finalized. Maybe at that point he can clear his head enough to focus on missing shots on only one side of the fairway. He said it wasn't fun to shoot 18 over par at Firestone, and I believe him because it wasn't much fun to watch, either.

It wasn't just Firestone, though. Woods' best results this year have been ties for fourth in the Masters and U.S. Open, and there's nothing else better than a tie for 19th. At least he was a contender last year, even after Y.E. Yang knocked him off his crown in the PGA Championship, with a victory and two second-place finishes in North America, plus another title in Australia.

Shortly after that, though, his world was turned down under by the events that followed the infamous SUV crash outside his home in Florida.

Mickelson's play hasn't been as woeful as Woods, but it hasn't been Phil-like, either. Really, if not for a stirring triumph in the Masters, it would have to be considered an off-year. For every top-five finish (4 in total), there has been another result of T45 or worse.

Of course, his distractions weren't self-inflicted, but it seems apparent that health problems for immediate family members have hurt Mickelson's performance. I don't believe talk of being able to overtake Woods for No. 1 in the world rankings has anything to do with it because I don't Mickelson puts any more stock in that than I do, which is zilch.

Will things turn around for any of them, or all of them?

I hope so, but not for golf's sake. The way I look at it, the better things are for golf's biggest stars off the course, the better they'll be on the course eventually.

So here's hoping a good vacation for Sergio, a resolution of family matters for Tiger and good health for Phil's family. Then we can get back to the idea that golf is a game, which is how it should be.

The game of professional golf, or at least the business side of it, includes one of those oddities of life known as the defending-champion media teleconference.

The way it usually works is that the tournament organizers arrange with a player or that player’s agent for the player to be at the tournament site or available by telephone for mostly easy questions and a few minute of banter with writers who also call in.

Rarely is there any breaking news, but at least it gives keyboard artists such as yours truly a chance to get comments from pros that we wouldn’t normally get unless we were actually at the tournament site.

That was all part of how it was supposed to work on Thursday, when Golf Canada organized a teleconference with 2009 CN Canadian Women’s Open winner Suzann Pettersen.

Just one problem: No Pettersen.

First there was some suggestion that technical problems — perhaps a cellphone — were responsible, given that Pettersen was in Norway at the time.

Later, though, the real reason was disclosed:

“Unfortunately, a previous sponsor obligation ran longer than expected and prevented Suzann from joining today’s call,” an email from a Golf Canada director said Thursday evening.

“We have since heard back from Suzann through her agent that she will available to speak with any media from toay’s call that are interested in a follow-up one-on-one. If you are interested in speaking with Suzann Pettersen, please let me know and I will connect you directly with her agent to arrange an interview time.”

Now, please don’t assume that I’m excessively distressed by the lack of opportunity to chat with Ms. Pettersen in a teleconference. I was more in the “maybe I’ll hear something interesting” crowd as far as Thursday’s proceedings were concerned.

On the other hand, I can imagine that some folks in Winnipeg, where this year’s Open will take place on Aug. 26-29, might feel a little unwanted or unhappy that they didn’t have a story for Thursday’s evening newscast or Friday’s edition of the newspaper.

Heck, even people from Calgary, where Pettersen won the 2009 Open, might have enjoyed the opportunity to go over that event once more.

The people I sympathize with most in this case, those, are the organizers at Golf Canada and those connected with the St. Charles Golf and Country Club and trying to sell tickets to the 2010 Open.

It’s widely acknowledged that it’s tougher for professional golf to find sponsors willing to put up the kind of money that the tour pros want to play for, which is why good business practice for the sponsor and the tournament organizers is also good business practice for the golfer.

I have no reason to doubt the stated explanation that a sponsor obligation in Norway ran late, but it was bad planning for Pettersen and her agent to book a pair of engagements that COULD conflict and even worse for neither of them to be able to find a cellphone that could have given the folks on this side of the Atlantic Ocean a heads-up.

And, no, I’m not in a bad mood today. However, if anybody asks, I have no idea what Suzann Pettersen would have to say about it.

Now for some good news 

The Golf Journalists Association of Canada recently held its second annual writing awards at Weston Golf and Country Club in Toronto, an event that included the first presentation of the RBC Dick Grimm Award. Based on lifetime achievement the newly created award will alternate years between a member of Canada’s golf industry and a GJAC member for their contributions to the game of golf in Canada.

The first annual RBC Dick Grimm Lifetime Award was presented to none other than Dick Grimm himself. Known as “Mr. Canadian Open,” Grimm was a central figure to the development of the tournament and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association’s Director of Professional Tournaments for a decade ending in 1993. He is also a past President of the RCGA.

The second-annual awards, presented by RBC and Titleist, included nine prizes for the top golf journalism and photography in Canada. In all, 12 publications were represented in the awards.

The winners and runners-up included: 

Editorial — Newspaper or Magazine: 1. Rick Drennan, Mississauga Business Times, NAGA Study Helps Industry Manage Future Course; 2. Ross Macdonald, Pro Shop, New Groove Regulations.

Editorial or Blog — Web: 1. Robert Thompson, Sympatico.ca, Small Town, Small Course plays Big Roles in Weir’s career; 2. Gord Holder, OttawaCitizen.com, How to Spend $3 Million.

Travel Feature (Destination or Golf Resort) Newspaper, Magazine or Web: 1. Ross MacDonald, Canadian Golfer Magazine, Playing Around, Singing the Blues; 2. Ted McIntyre, GolfStyle, Rediscovering the New World.

Feature — Newspaper or Magazine: 1. Lorne Rubenstein, ScoreGolf Magazine, Looking Long Term; 2. Robert Thompson, ScoreGolf Magazine, High Hopes for Highlands.

Feature — Web: 1. Jeffrey Reed, LondonOntarioGolf.com, Wilson Golf Reed on the Greens; 2. Rick Young, ScoreGolf.com, The Demise of the Footjoy Classics.

Profile — Newspaper or Magazine: 1. Jeff Brooke, ScoreGolf Magazine, Awaiting Ian; 2. Terry Lenyk, GolfScene Magazine, Inside the Ropes with RBA Canadian Open Tournament    Director Bill Paul.

Photography — Action or general golf image: 1. Grant Fraser, Herald Magazine; 2. Brent Long, GolfScene Magazine.

Photography — Landscape: 1. Grant Fraser, Tee To Green Magazine; 2. Anita Draycott, Travel Industry Today.

Al Geiberger was the original Mr. 59, and then there were Chip Beck and David Duval, and now Paul Goydos and Stuart Appleby have added their names to the PGA Tour record books.

Annika Sorenstam shot a 59 in an LPGA Tour event. Jason Bohn once shot 58 in a Canadian Tour round some years ago. Ryo Ishikawa had a 58 in a Japan Tour event earlier this year. Some kid named Bobby Wyatt just shot 57 (FIFTY-SEVEN) on a 6,628-yard course in the second round of the Alabama junior boys golf championship.

Where does it stop? Weren't equipment rule changes supposed to make it tougher to chew up golf courses like that?

Maybe, but it clearly isn't working.

The problem isn't that somebody is shooting 59, 58 or 57, because clearly everybody isn't doing it, but it seems to be happening a lot more now. Don't forget that Steve Stricker, Carl Pettersson and J.B. Holmes all shot 60 in PGA Tour events within the past four weeks.

What's the new frontier, though? Is it the perfect 54 (a birdie on all 18 holes) that Swedish golf gurus have written about?

Sure, you could go all U.S. Open-ish on them, but that would only make golf less enjoyable for the rest of us, for whom 59 is more likely to be out total at the end of 12, 14 or 15 holes.

In the end, it seems to me, this is just another piece of ammunition for those who think golf's governing bodies need to take action limiting the capabilities of the ball itself. Reining in clubs hasn't been enough.

Levesque cashes in

The Quebec PGA Tour doesn't usually get a lot of notice outside that province, but something that arrived in the in-box on Sunday caught my eye.

It seems Dave Levesque, an Ontario-based pro, won the Coupe Canada 2010 event at Richelieu Valley with an 11-under total of 277 over four days. No news there, but the $18,000 top prize was worth the trip for Levesque.

Quebecer Yvan Beauchemin and B.C. pro Bryn Parry tied for second and received $9,150 each.

The leading player from the capital region was Rivermead head pro Luke Saunders, who tied for 12th at 292 and won $1,750. White Sands' Graham Gunn (296) tied for 28th and received $781.25. John Kelly (297) of Hylands was tied for 36th and won $640, while Deep River's Chris Learmonth (304) tied for 54th and took home $345.

Catching up to Klekner-Alt

Ottawa's Kiersten Klekner-Alt, who plays out of Camelot, won four matches and lost two as part of the Canadian Junior Golf Association team in the European Junior Golf Cup at Fife, Scotland.

The Canadians finished second in the three-team event, behind Scotland, but ahead of the United States team over three days of competition.

Next up for Klekner-Alt is a trip to Trinidad and Tobago for the Stephen Ames Cup, another CJGA competition.

Holmes ties for 10th

Ottawa Hunt's Greg Holmes shot a 75 on Sunday for a 5-over total of 293 and a tie for 10th in the boys 16-18 division of the Optimist International Junior World Golf Championships at Palm Beach Gardens, Florida.

Florida golfer A.J. Crouch beat South Korea's Sam Chun in a playoff for the title. They shot had regulation-play totals of 283.

Of the 78 players who made the cut after two rounds of the Royale Cup Canadian Women's Amateur golf championship at Kingsville, Ont., nearly one in three was from the United States.

Of the 140 or so players who were pre-registered for the Canadian Amateur men's championship at London, Ont., in mid-August, roughly a dozen will hail from outside the Great White North.

Two of the three tournament winners and half the four players who qualified for the CN Canadian Women's Open by virtue of their standing on the affiliated CN Canadian Women's Tour were also from the U.S.

Who invited them, anyway?

Turns out we did.

It's all part of Golf Canada's strategy for improving the reputation of championships conducted in this country, and the reasoning is sound. Sure, it may sting that players from the U.S. or elsewhere might win our national titles, but two of Canada's greatest amateurs, Gary Cowan and Marlene Stewart Streit, were celebrated in part because of their accomplishments in the U.S. and elsewhere.

The thing about inviting good international players to compete in Canadian events is that it forces Canadians to get better, and that has to be good. To use another sports analogy, Canadian hockey players are probably better because they have to compete for NHL jobs against players from Europe.

The only thing that might prove difficult is actually players to come to Canada for tournaments. It's not a reflection on the calibre of the events, but rather an indication of how much other competition there is. Those dozen or so internationals in the field of 240 at the men's Canadian Amateur may just be the tip of the iceberg, but we really don't know how big the iceberg is because of all the high-level amateur tournaments being conducted in the U.S. and overseas.

It is a good start, though.

The assessment of the event at London will undoubtedly factor into how Golf Canada conducts the Canadian Amateur in coming years. Next year's tournament will be in Winnipeg, with the 2012 edition of the championship scheduled for Camelot Golf and Country Club in Cumberland.

See you there.

The men's Canadian Open is not perfect, but this year's edition of the tournament was well worth watching.

Based on an up-close inspection of the molasses-thick rough, I was surprised by the low scoring, and not just at the leading edge of the scoreboard. I found it hard to believe that the cut would be below par, even if heavy rain on Friday softened the sloping greens of St. George's Golf and Country Club in Toronto.

If it had been even par, not an unreasonable expectation given the extreme slopes on some of the putting surfaces, four more Canadians would have survived the cut for the weekend rounds, bringing the total to seven.

On the other hand, because only those three Canadians did make the cut, even more credit should be given to PGA Tour player Stephen Ames of Calgary, Nationwide Tour member Jon Mills of Brooklin, Ont., and the Canadian Tour's Adam Hadwin of Abbotsford, B.C. When it was all said and done, Hadwin had been awarded the Rivermead Cup honours as leading Canadian.

Unfortunately, none of the five amateurs in the tournament survived the 36-hole cut, so there was nobody who qualified for the Gary Cowan Medal, which is presented to the leading amateur in the field. On the plus side for the amateurs, though, Cam Burke, Dave Bunker, Beon Yeong Lee, Nick Taylor and Eugene Wong all finished ahead of the struggling Mike Weir, which of course also means that it was another Canadian Open disappointment for the 2003 Masters champion from Bright's Grove, Ont.

Weir's game is truly in difficulty, but he can't yet put in the work needed to right the ship because of the tendinitis in his right arm. The situation gets even more complicated, though, because there aren't that many weeks left for PGA Tour players to try to cement their places in the FedEx Cup standings. Only the top 125 make that big-money playoff, and Weir is only slightly inside the cutoff with five tournaments remaining in the "regular season."

Now on to five things that will improve the only Canadian stop on the tour, currently billed as the RBC Canadian Open:

1) Persuading the PGA Tour to at least consider "flex" scheduling so that the Canadian Open doesn't always follow in the week after the British Open. A varied schedule that puts the Canadian Open ahead of a major once in a while is the only way that it will have a reasonable shot of bringing some of the game's biggest stars onto this side of the Canada-U.S. border.

2) Find a course in Montreal — quickly — that is Open ready so that it doesn't have to be in Metro Toronto as much. Other than course capacity, there's absolutely no reason why the Open shouldn't be in Montreal and Vancouver at least two years out of five. And, if building a new course in Calgary is what it takes to get the Open there, find a way to facilitate that, too.  Guarantee the Open to Calgary every five years for the next 20, and I think it will get done.

3) I know Golf Canada doesn't want to go to a fixed rotation of courses, but it should be considered. Golf Canada CEO Scott Simmons maintains that Glen Abbey is the best spectator course in the world, and maybe it is, but it's NOT the favourite of the tour pros who help sell tickets, so it shouldn't be included in the rotation on a regular basis.

4) Instead of having only an Open Monday qualifier, consider going partway down the road that the United States Golf Association goes with the U.S. Open. Hold regional qualifiers in the West, Ontario and Quebec, and devote one sponsor's invitation each to the winners of those events. What was then the Royal Canadian Golf Association, but now brands itself as Golf Canada, used to have an Ontario regional qualifier, so it can be done.

5) Find some broadcast partner to do a morning or early afternoon telecast, preceding the highlighted coverage by such networks as TSN, Global and CBS. It would give some exposure to those Canadian golfers not named Weir, and it would build interest for the coverage at the end of the day. If broadcast doesn't work, then go online.... The cameras are already there, so it's not as if there would be substantial extra costs.

Next year the Open is at the Shaughnessy club in Vancouver. Some of the above steps can't be taken in time for that Open, or even for the 2012 event at Hamilton Golf and Country Club, but some can, and it's never too late to get started.

Close call for Bussières

Marc-Etienne Bussières of Gatineau was tied for the lead going into the Palmetto Amateur, but a final-round 75 dropped him into a tie for eighth in the standings of the tournament in South Carolina.

His first three rounds had been 69, 69 and 70, meaning his total score was 283.

The eventual winner was U.S. golfer Todd Moore, who won a three-man playoff on the fifth extra hole. Moore's four-round total was even-par 280.

More Openings for Canadians

Alena Sharp of Hamilton and Lisa Meldrum of Montreal are the Canadians in the field for this week's Women's British Open at Southport, England. Charlottetown's Lorie Kane tried to play her way into the tournament through a qualifier on Monday, but a 3-over 75 left her one stroke out of a playoff for the final spots.

Just outside Seattle, Dave Bell of Windsor, Jim Rutledge of Victoria and Rod Spittle of Niagara Falls are in the U.S. Senior Open.

No, you're not imagining things. The seniors are playing major championships on consecutive weeks. I don't get it, either.

Toronto

Mike Weir can’t catch a break these days. First his game, now his body.
 
Weir, who received the Order of Canada from Governor-General Michaëlle Jean in January (see photo below), cut short an appearance in the championship pro-am of the RBC Canadian Open, pulling out after 15 holes because of tendinitis in his right arm.
 

Having battled that affliction myself for months, I can sympathize, and I’m not in the habit of practising as extensively as a tour pro.
 
However, I’m also not in habit of being in the on-course company of representatives of the title sponsor of the RBC Canadian Open, as Weir was on Wednesday at St. George’s Golf and Country Club in Toronto. No doubt the RBC reps want Weir to do well in the Open, and maybe they were the ones who suggested he cut things short and put his arm on ice, but it would hardly be the preferred strategy for someone with genuine hopes of contending for the right to be called the first Canadian champion of the Open since 1954.
 
“It started bugging me a little bit last week at the British Open,” Weir said in his pre-tournament visit to the media centre on Wednesday. “I put a little brace on it Monday (for the Mike Weir Charity Classic), and that seemed to do the trick pretty well.
 
“I kind of took it easy, just hit probably 20, 30 balls yesterday, and today it got progressively worse. So I decided to call it a day, and after 15 holes I got it worked on, so hopefully I’ll get it ready for tomorrow.”
 
That tomorrow would be Thursday, the first round of the Open, in which Weir will be participating for the 20th time. In his previous 19 appearances, he had three top-10 finishes, featuring, of course, his playoff loss to Vijay Singh at Glen Abbey in 2004.
 
Weir started the 2010 PGA Tour season well with a sixth-place finish in the Bob Hope event, and there was a run of seven consecutive made cuts between February and April. Since then, however, his best finishes have been a tie for 33rd (Colonial) and a tie for 80th (U.S. Open), and he has missed the cut in four other events, most recently the British Open at the Old Course in St. Andrews, Scotland.
 
Those two rounds in the gusting winds of St. Andrews followed a three-week break from competition for Weir, so to experience tendinitis now should sound an alarm.
 
“Every week, sometimes, you know, you’re not 100 per cent, and it has just happened that this week it’s bothering me, but I don’t think it’s a distraction,” Weir said bravely. “It’s just the fact that, you know, I’m not able to practise as much as I would have like to coming off three weeks off and only playing two rounds last week at the British.
 
“I would have liked to practise a little bit more, but I’ll just rest the rest of today and get ready for tomorrow.”
 
Weir remains the biggest name in Canadian professional golf, so there’s always additional pressure when he plays in his native country and particularly so during the Open, and he said Wednesday he would soldier on despite the discomfort in his arm.
 
“I can’t see myself withdrawing. I’ll play through it,” he said. “I have next week off, and I just knew today in the pro am that it was really bothering me on every shot I hit. I thought today was a good time to take it easy and the (PGA Tour’s physical therapist) said it was a good thing you did that. He said don’t hit any more shots today, just keep doing ice and Advil and rest it….
 
“I can’t see myself pulling out, so I’ll be playing through it.”
 
Weir’s recent travails on the course have left him with total earnings of $513,092 in 10 starts on the PGA Tour this season. He ranks 118th on the money list.
 
Thus, being able to enjoy the time off after the Canadian Open would be good enough reason in itself to get as much as possible out of his sore left arm before the weekend ends. He was scheduled to play the first two rounds with Sean O’Hair and frequent Skins Game counterpart Fred Couples.

Calling out to Calgary

 
During his media session on Monday morning, Golf Canada executive director Scott Simmons suggested Calgary was the type of corporate-heavy market in which the association would like to conduct a men’s Canadian Open.
 
Asked about it later, Calgary resident Stephen Ames said that his was “the best city in Canada, so it has got to go there.”
 
There’s just one problem, though. Based on the experience of the 2009 CN Canadian Women’s Open in Calgary, golf balls fly further in that foothills city than they do at lower altitudes, and Simmons suggested a course would have to stretch out to 7,800 yards to accommodate a men’s Open, and Ames agreed.
 
“A new facility would have to be built,” Ames said. “There isn’t a current one right now. We’ve looked. A lot of golf courses have come up and asked if they could host it, and we’ve looked at them like, ‘Yeah, are you going to add a thousand yards to your golf course?’ They’re like, ‘That means cutting trees down, making new tee boxes.’ They’re not willing to do that, so there (has to be) a new facility that we’re looking at.”

It’s tough out there

 
On the practice range earlier this week, David Hearn of Brantford, Ont., was heard lamenting the fact that there was no chance to take one’s foot off the gas when playing in Nationwide Tour events.
 
Last week’s Chiquita Classic in Cincinnati was a prime example. Tommy “Two Gloves” Gainey won with a 27-under-par total of 261. Nineteen under par would have earned one a tie for 10th place. TENTH!
 
Then there was Peter Tomasulo, who followed up his final-round 61 in the Wayne Gretzky Classic at Thornbury, Ont., with an opening-round 62 in Cincinnati. It’s not an official tour record because it involved scores in two different events, but it was the lowest total for consecutive rounds in tour history.

Now that you all know how to pronounce Oosthuizen, take a moment to think about Karl Keffer.

Who?

Exactly.

Keffer is the only Canadian-born player to win the men's Canadian Open, in both 1909 and 1914, and they've been contesting the world's third-oldest open men's golf championship longer than that. King Karl has some links to the national capital region, too, having worked as head professional at the Royal Ottawa Golf Club from 1911 into the mid-1940s.

You might even hear Keffer's name this week during what is now called the RBC Canadian Open at the St. George's Golf Club in Toronto.

You will also hear Pat Fletcher's name since he was the last Canadian to capture the national open championship in 1954, but Keffer is the only Canadian-born winner of the event since Fletcher and all other Canadian citizens who captured the title were immigrants to this country.

It's going to happen again, some day. It probably should have happened already, except that Mike Weir couldn't quite find a way to hole any one of a series of putts that would have won him it in 2004 at Glen Abbey, where he lost in a playoff to Vijay Singh.

Weir will be back again this year, leading the charge of the 15 Canadians and counting (more on that later) who will be in the 156-man field, and Weir could find St. George's to his liking. It's not that long, which gives average hitters a shot at winning, and the priority will be hitting precise approach shots, given the undulations on the greens, which is a Weir strength when he's on his game. Not the game he had in a wind-blown, miss-the-cut appearance in the Open Championship at the Old Course in St. Andrews, but the one he flashes from time to time on this side of the Atlantic.

Other Canadian pros in the tournament include fellow PGA Tour members Stephen Ames and Graham Delaet, but Delaet may have vertigo after going 76-62-78 in the final three rounds of the Reno-Tahoe Open. The Canuck contingent also includes Nationwide Tour players Ted Brown, Barrett Jarosch, David Hearn and Jon Mills, Canadian PGA club pro champion Ben Boudreau, Jim Rutledge and Adam Hadwin, who qualified off their rankings on the Canadian Tour money list, and Matt Hill, who received a sponsor's invitation to play in the 2009 Open at Glen Abbey as an amateur and has been given another to compete in the event after recently turning pro.

As of Sunday night, there were four Canadian amateurs in the field: national team members Nick Hill and Eugene Wong, defending Canadian Amateur champion Cam Burke and 2008-09 national mid-amateur champion Dave Bunker.

The only way that numbers would increase was if a Canadian finished in the top four of a Monday-qualifying shootout at the Club at Bond Head.

All in all, it means there's about one Canadian for each 10 players in the Open. The odds are longer than one in 10, but it really would be nice to start adding someone else to the sentence that includes Karl Keffer and Pat Fletcher.

I once read a golf-tip book either authored or co-authored by eight-time major champion Tom Watson.

I remember thinking it was at least partially helpful, too, in that it listed a large number of golf-swing-related problems and suggested fixes for them. A couple of them seemed to apply to me, and the fixes were at least partially successful.

This brings me around to Watson's latest entry into the world of tour pro turns instructor, a two-DVD set entitled Lessons of a Lifetime.

It's different in more than presentation format, as Watson has chosen to use the DVDs to prescribe what he believes to be the proper techniques for everything from setting up to a shot to putting in gusting winds.

A couple of things struck me as I watched "Advance Screening Versions" of the DVDs, which is the producers' way of stopping me (and others who have received complimentary copies) from reselling them, at least legally.

First of all, Watson doesn't like left-handers. Well, maybe he does, but Tom's tips are all phrased in such a way as to speak only to right-handed golfers. If you're a lefty, and more than one in four Canadian golfers is, you'll have to translate.

Secondly, while the production value of the DVD is generally good, I found it disconcerting on the occasions when a side view of Watson was used, but he continued to look directly at the camera right in front of him while speaking. Would it have killed them to do a second take of each comment with Tom looking at the side-view camera?

Third, and this is just my impression, the ultra slow-motion review presentations of Watson's tips looked like something out of those old Golden Tee video games: no sound until the "click" or "clank" of club meeting ball. Kind of eerie, actually.

Finally, there could very well be a finite number of golf tips in this world because Watson keeps mentioning how he borrowed this one from that guy or that one from this guy, and so on.

The list begins with his late father, Raymond, and his early coach, Stan Thirsk, and it runs the course of professional golf history in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Harry Vardon, Ben Hogan, Mike Weir, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer, Fred Couples, Byron Nelson, Vijay Singh, Nick Price, Padraig Harrington, Ernie Els, Lee Trevino, Harvey Penick, Claude Harmon, Billy Casper, Bobby Lock, Dave Stockton, George Archer and Paul Wyler.

That's a lot of dropped names, but there's a lot of material covered in the 77 minutes on disk 1 and the 86 minutes of disk 2.

I won't go shot by shot through those 163 minutes, and Tom would probably prefer it that way because, after all, he wants people to actually buy the DVDs, with a portion of the proceeds being given to the Bruce Edwards Foundation for ALS Research in honour of Watson's late caddie.

However, there are a couple of highlights that should be mentioned.

One is a repeat of Watson's argument that he didn't really understand the golf swing until he saw Corey Pavin on the practice range at Harbor Town Golf Links in 1994. Watson claims it motivated him to abandon the old Reverse C swing and improved his ability to maintain proper shoulder/spine angles. Here's a tease for you: There's a coat hangar drill.

The other moment not to be missed involves Watson's discussion of the rhythm of the golf swing, which he describes as the glue of the entire process. Another hint: Edelweiss.

And then there's this: Both disks begin with shots of Watson chipping in on the 17th hole at Pebble Beach on his way to victory in the 1982 U.S. Open, and Watson reprises that magic moment in his dissertation on the short game. Yes, he does make it again, but not on his first attempt.

How many? You'll have to watch it yourself to find out.

Klekner-Alt in Netherlands

Ottawa's Kiersten Klekner-Alt has been in Breda, Netherlands, this week as one of six Canadian Junior Golf Association representatives in the River Woods Junior Open, an international junior competition.

Unfortunately, rounds of 84, 89 and 80 meant she was only tied for 45th and missed the cutoff for Saturday's final round.

Only one of the six Canadians, Adam Shaw of Richmond Hill, Ont., made the cut in the junior boys division.

Svensson's a world champ

Adam Svensson of Surrey, B.C., won the boys 15-17 division title in the Callaway Junior World Golf Championships at San Diego on Friday.

He's the second Canadian to win that championship in the past three years, following Eugene Wong of North Vancouver, B.C.

Imagine that you have a two-foot putt that could give you a chance to win a golf tournament.

Now imagine that you have to think about nothing other than that putt for two hours 50 minutes.

Sara Brown didn’t have to imagine it. It happened to her at Rivermead Golf Club on Wednesday in the second and final round of a CN Canadian Women’s Tour event.

The 24-year-old pro from Tucson, Arizona, had missed a birdie putt on the 18^th hole, then marked her ball and waited for playing partners Maiya Tanaka of San Diego and Sookhee Baek of Bradenton, Florida, to hole their putts before lining up her tap-in.

As Brown was addressing the ball and waggling the putter in preparation for what would be the 68^th and last stroke of her round and the 143^rd stroke of the two-day tournament, however, officials with Golf Canada, the game’s governing body in this country and organizers of the CN tour, were counting down from three using walkie-talkies.

When they hit zero, they also hit the button on the warning horns in their other hands, sounding the order to clear the course because of potentially dangerous weather conditions.

Startled, obviously, Brown backed off and didn’t complete the stroke that she had already begun. She and her father/caddie looked at the nearest official, Brent McLaughlin, with something of a “you’ve got to be kidding look.”

Brown, who in a later conversation seemed quite personable, verging on perky, apparently asked McLaughlin if she could finish out the hole. He said no, and he was right. The rules on that point are quite clear, and anyone who plays a stroke after the single “clear the course immediately” horn signal sounds is disqualified. (The three-short-blast signal marking the suspension of play because of impending darkness is different, with players having the option of completing the hole on which they are playing.)

This is the part of the story where things become somewhat unclear. Brown, unhappy at being forced to what for who knows how long to tap in a two-foot putt, apparently said something to the official. Her father and McLaughlin became involved in what seemed to be a “vigorous” discussion.

McLaughlin wasn’t changing his mind, and shouldn’t have, given the powerful lightning/thunderstorm that followed, so Brown was left to cool her heels in the clubhouse, all the while explaining to others that she had only that little two-footer remaining.

When the practice facilities were reopened to players, about 150 minutes after play was suspended, Brown headed to the putting green and worked on two-footers. Seconds after the horns sounded again to signal the resumption of play, her caddie/father removed the flagstick from the cup, and Brown knocked the ball into the centre of the cup.

She raised her arms in triumph and waved to the handfuls of spectators, writers and photographers who had gathered beside the 18^th green to record the moment for posterity’s sake.

“It was literally inside my putter grip (lengthwise),” said Brown, one of the cast/contestants in the Big Break Sandals Resorts reality series currently on the Golf Channel television schedule.

“They were going, like, ‘Why didn’t you just keep swinging (as the first horn was sounding)?’ and I was, like, ‘And miss that short putt? I don’t think so.’”

Brown’s tap-in was her 27th putt of the round, and her 4-under-par 68 was the day’s best score, but a 33-putt performance in Monday’s opening round had put her too far back to do anything more than put a scare into the tournament leaders. She finished with a 1-under total of 143, tied for fourth with LPGA Tour member Samantha Richdale of Kelowna, B.C.

Her only hope was that the golfers she was trailing at that point would lose ground, and it didn’t happen. She and Richdale ended up three shots behind winner Candace Schepperle of Birmingham, Alabama, and one behind Sue Kim of Langley, B.C., and Jessica Shepley of Oakville, Ont.

“It’s funny,” said Brown, a third-year member of the U.S.-based Duramed Futures Tour.

“All the girls were asking, ‘Are you really going to practise your two-footers?’ And I go, ‘Yes, I am. I’m not going to miss this two-footer.’”

By the end of the extra-long day, any too-warm feelings seemed to have dissipated, and the earlier discussions had entered into the water under the bridge category, much like the muddy water coursing through the culverts, etc., on the golf course and bounded for the nearby Ottawa River.

On the Marc at Mid-Amateur

Golf Canada’s Adam Helmer confirmed Tuesday that Boston Bruins centre Marc Savard had entered the Canadian mid-amateur championship at Royal Ottawa Golf Club on Aug. 17-20.

The winner of that event will receive a sponsor’s invitation into the 2011 RBC Canadian Open at the Shaughnessy club in Vancouver. The winner of the past two mid-amateurs, Dave Bunker of Woodbridge, Ont., will be in the field for this year’s Open at St. George’s in Toronto, and he’ll be at Royal Ottawa in a bid to go for three in a row.

Henderson taking on the stars and stripes

Brooke Henderson of Smiths Falls will be in North Carolina next week for the U.S. Junior Girls Championship. The youngster — she’s 12 — earned a spot in the July 19-24 event by placing third in a qualifier at Victor, New York, in late June.

Past winners of the U.S. Junior Girls title include Joanne Gunderson (later Carner), Nancy Lopez, Hollis Stacy and the new teen phenom of women’s golf, Alexis Thompson.

There are two rounds of stroke-play qualifying, followed by matches.

On Wednesday, Henderson won the CN Future Links Quebec girls championship by about a half-dozen strokes over three rounds.

During the first round, on Monday at the Val des Lacs course in Ste-Sophie, she recorded her first hole-in-one.

Did you know this was "Take a Kid to the Course" week in Canada?

Bet you didn't.

It is, though, and that means you have been duly notified of the marketing initiative of the Ottawa-based National Golf Course Owners Association Canada.

More than 600 NGCOA members will offer free golf to children under the age of 16 who are accompanied by paying adults during the promotion, which runs through Sunday. A full listing of participating courses is available online at www.kidsgolffree.ca. Don't forget to book the tee times in advance.

The program also involves a grand prize consisting of roundtrip airfare for two, three nights accommodation and two rounds of golf each at a resort in Miami. Again, see www.kidsgolffree.ca for details. The entry deadline is Sunday, July 11, and the winner will be drawn in late July.

All of this gets me around to musing about what I'd do if I owned my own golf course — sadly, that's not yet the case, though in another sense I do "own" the fifth hole at the Belmont Golf Club in Belmont, New South Wales, Australia — and had enough money that I didn't have to worry about revenue, thus leaving me free to undertake any project I felt like.

There would be a child-friendly initiative, of course: Not just one day or one week, but once a week all season, there would be a "Kidz Klub," much like the Men's Night or Ladies' Knight at your home clubs. It might or might not last all day, but would at least last a few hours, allowing young golfers their own time slot so they didn't have to worry about being pressed from behind by Mom, Dad or Uncle Arnold.

I don't think I'd make Kidz Klub entirely free since it seems to me that those who contribute even a small stipend are more likely to show up, but the fee wouldn't wipe out little Ernie's weekly allowance, either.

The idea is to let young golfers enjoy the game in as pressure-free an environment as can be created. Come to think of it, I might ban parents from the course entirely during those hours, just for that reason.

The next thing I'd do is bring course conditions up to the highest possible standard, given the climate in this part of the world, and then I'd make a pitch for high-level competitions such as Canadian Tour, CN Canadian Women's Tour and Canadian PGA events.

This move would be all about inspiring kids and those who want to take a shot at professional golf careers. It's more than a little coincidental that Ottawa-area golfers Brad Fritsch and Lee Curry took a shot and made it on the Canadian Tour, and even a little higher up the ladder on the U.S.-based Nationwide Tour, after the Canadian circuit made a stop in the capital region each year between 1998 and 2001.

Remember, I said money/revenue wouldn't be a factor, so I could therefore not worry about the financial impact of closing my course to the public for a week or two every year.

What about the men's Canadian Open, you ask? Well, as much as I might like to have the game's biggest stars, or at least those who aren't taking the week off, at my course, I suspect that we won't see either the PGA Tour in our neighbourhood in the forseeable future. The problem isn't the golf course, since I've already committed to making my layout as top-notch as possible, but the off-course infrastructure (such as hotels, airports, airline connections, etc.) probably won't make the cut.

I'd also like to propose offering my course as home base for the Canadian men's and women's amateur golf teams, as well as the development squads. It might not be a year-round operation, but it would still be nice to offer the players someplace to stay for, say, six or eight weeks during the season, except for those days when they're in competition.

Of course, barring a victory in an upcoming lottery, this might all be just so much hot air on my part.

A golf guy can dream, though, right?

A serious automobile accident is a serious automobile accident, which is no laughing matter.

Fortunately, though, the accident that occurred on Aylmer Road in Gatineau in the early hours of Monday morning happened when it did. That meant there weren't many more motorists involved in the collision, and it also meant there was nobody on the nearby first fairway of the Royal Ottawa Golf Club.

The vehicle in which a 28-year-old man was critically injured careened through about 25 feet of fence, damaging a couple of trees in the rough between the fairway and the property line, but it was probably stopped from travelling even further onto the golf course property by several large rocks. My quick look at the area revealed small pieces of the damaged automobile as well as a pack of cigarettes and a cellular telephone charger.

That meant some quick juggling for organizers of the Alexander of Tunis, the first of the three major Quebec men's amateur golf championships of the season.

Gatineau police at first wanted to close off the entire first hole to allow for investigators to do their work unimpeded. However, after some negotiating, the police and tournament organizers agreed to a couple of modifications that allowed the second and final round of the Tunis to proceed on the full 18-hole layout.

The tee was moved forward, turning what had been a 465-yard par-five hole into a 430-yard par-five. The investigators were working about 200 yards from the tee area, and among the trees in the rough, so most of the tee shots would be landing well past their location.

However, a 50-yard section of rough, extending 15-20 yards in from the property line, was marked with stakes and designated as "ground under repair." A tournament official was assigned the task of watching for balls that were headed for that area and spotting those that did so the players could move them to the nearest point of relief. By day's end, only about four of the 75 players who qualified for the second round were affected.

The greater impact, golf-wise, was on two players who failed to make it to the first tee on Monday. One player was disqualified after arriving at the golf course more than five minutes past his scheduled tee time in the first group of the day; the other golfer never arrived at the course.

What was worse was that one of them had been staying only a short distance away at the Chateau Cartier hotel, but the massive traffic jam caused by the accident and the subsequent road closure kept him from arriving on time.

Masterful stuff

Greg Holmes, who plays out of Ottawa Hunt and Golf Club, reached the final of the International Junior Masters match-play event at East Aurora, New York.

After earning a spot in the matches with a two-round qualifying total of 152, Holmes defeated Luis Rogiello Medina of Mexico, Chris Hemmerich of Kitchener, Kyle Jeziorski of Orchard Park, New York, and Matt LeMay of Waterloo before losing the final to the host club's Jonathan Clark.

Maxime Marengère, who plays out of Rivermead, also qualified for the Championship Flight with a total of 153, but lost to Clark in a semifinal.

Ottawa Hunt's Michael Reaume (157) and Patrick Goodhue (158) qualified for spots in the secondary Gold Flight. Reaume won two matches before losing to East Aurora's Kyle Kapturowski in the semifinals. Goodhue lost his first-round match to Blair Hamilton of Burlington, Ont.

In the third-level Silver Flight, Spencer Kelly (162) of Ottawa lost a first-round match to Sean Mahon of Amherst, New York.

Off the course, Ottawa's Peter Sabourin was honoured as a long-time friend of the Junior Masters.

Breaking through off screen

Big Break Sandals Resorts contestant Ryann O'Toole has been making her own big break on the course during the 2010 Duramed Futures Tour season.

The 23-year-old O'Toole, from California, defeated Oshawa's Angela Buzminski in a playoff on Sunday to win the Falls Auto Group Classic at London, Ont.

It was O'Toole's second victory of the season, following one in the rain-shortened Mercedes-Benz of Kansas City Championship, and it lifted her to sixth on the season money list with a total of $32,963.

That's important because the top five at the end of the season receive full privileges on the parent LPGA Tour in 2011.

Another former Big Break contestant, Gerina Mendoza (Big Break P.E.I.) is fourth on the money list with $39,742. Fifth place currently belongs to Thailand's Pornanong Phatlum ($35,301).

Buzminski is the leading Canadian at 20th place with $16,116.

Outside the top five at season's end, the next 10 receive exemptions to the final stage of LPGA Tour fall qualifying.

O'Toole is among the eight remaining contestants at this point in Big Break Sandals Resorts, the 13th edition of the reality series on Golf Channel.