A permanent venue could help the Canadian Open draw bigger names, but the fix is not that easy – SCOREGolf

One of the more annoying questions posed during the Canadian Open through the years was always, “When will a Canadian win the Canadian Open?”

Let’s face it: if anyone knew, they’d have placed a large wager on Sir Nick Taylor before the tournament began at Oakdale G&CC last year. And it would have paid out nicely. Nick’s win was worthy of all kinds of superlatives — landmark, history-making, pride-inducing. Sports fans across the country suddenly became familiar with how good a Mario Cart player he is — as listed in his X bio — as they revelled in the glory he brought to Canadian golf. A household name, no doubt. A year later? Absolutely. Such moments resonate for a long time.

Prior to Taylor’s playoff heroics, much of the 2023 RBC Canadian Open was spent discussing the golf course that hosted the event. Oakdale, located in Toronto’s west end, wasn’t a household name. Whereas in the past, PGA Tour players knew Glen Abbey intimately, had memories of Hamilton and St. Georges, and maybe even yearned for Vancouver’s Shaughnessy, the 2023 field trekked across the border to a course with which no one was familiar. Not even the Canadians.

It’s rare for events on tour to change venues. It happens on occasion, but not annually. There are even tournaments that have become synonymous with their hosts. Do we say Riviera or the Genesis? Torrey Pines or Farmers Insurance? Pebble, Colonial, the Bear Trap, the Snake Pit … the list goes on.

Which begs the question: does the Canadian Open switching courses every year affect the quality of the field? The number of high-level, top-10 players who will attend? The short answer is yes. Players will play and return to events that provide that familiarity.

There are other factors, of course. For years, the Canadian Open was relegated to an early fall date, when many of the top players had hung up their spikes after the major championships had ended and didn’t want to be away from home during their kids’ first week of school. The fields suffered. Later, the Canadian Open followed The Open. This change was made in 2007 with the arrival of the FedEx Cup, which was also the year between Bell’s departure as title sponsor and RBC’s arrival on the marquee. To try to attract players, RBC chartered a jet each year to bring those who’d played the Open back to North America. It helped, but only so much. They signed several big names to Team RBC, which helped more.

Then, the date was moved again in 2019 at RBC’s request. The tournament is now played during a more competitive part of the schedule but among the Memorial, the U.S. Open and the Travelers Championship, which has since gained “signature” status. This week it’s a year earlier than last year and therefore closer to the PGA Championship as well.

Whether the RBC Canadian Open finds its way onto the schedule of a player during such a busy time depends on the status of said player. What does that mean? Well, for a guy like me, getting into the limited number of events that I did during my time on tour, I can’t think of a week I chose to miss. If my number came up, I played. It could have been Silvis, Ill., (the John Deere), or Jackson, Miss., (the Sanderson Farms), or Montreal, Que., where, by the way, I tied for ninth in 2014, my best Canadian Open finish. Wherever it was, I was there.

For other, more successful, players, more goes into schedule-making. After my first event as a rookie, the Sony Open, I was cleaning out my locker and chatting with my playing partner’s caddie from that final round. I asked if he and his player were playing the next two weeks (Palm Springs and San Diego). He responded, “Next week, heck yeah, that’s my boy’s golf heaven. The next week, heck nah, he’ll never get within 100 miles of that place.”

The player was Brian Gay — he of the short drives and the lethal wedge game and putter. The PGA West courses in Palm Springs are putting contests (perfect for Brian) while Torrey Pines’ beastly courses would eat guys like him up. So, he never went there. He would skip it every single year. It didn’t suit him, so he chose not to play. That is a huge advantage for established players, one that they earned and one that they learned, on the job, was key to managing their schedules.

So does the golf course moving around hurt the RBC Canadian Open? I would posit that yes it does. Is it an easy fix? Of course not. There simply aren’t many courses in Canada with the yardage and acreage to host a PGA Tour event. Could the news of what will likely be a semi-permanent future home for the RBC Canadian Open at TPC Toronto’s North Course help? Could that attract (and keep) top players to the tournament? That remains to be seen. The reality of being a non-signature event will continue to raise questions about the RBC Canadian Open and its fields and one way to help draw players in the interim is to have a consistent, and excellent, venue.

The former, it seems, has been achieved, at least in part. The latter? We shall see.