And then Wayne Gretzky called while he was in the drive-through.
Taylor’s victory in June was the fourth record by a Canadian on the PGA Tour in the past 12 months (although it was the only one worthy of a celebratory phone call from the Great One), after he nailed a 72-foot eagle putt — the longest putt of his career — on the fourth playoff hole. It’s going down as the trajectory of Canadian golf continues to move in the opposite direction.
“To think I’m the person people think I am,” Taylor says in disbelief, “is terrifying.”
It’s been an all-time 12 months for Canadian golf. The four winners are the most on the PGA Tour this season from any country outside the United States. Mackenzie Hughes of Dundas, Ontario, and Adam Svensson of Surrey, BC, won in the fall, while Corey Conners of Listowel, Ontario, won in April. Svensson, Conners, Taylor and Adam Hadwin give Canada four players among the 50 still alive in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoffs; no country except the United States has more. The second leg of the playoffs, the BMW Championship, begins on Thursday, with the top 30 in the standings advancing to the Tour Championship. If more than one Canadian wins in that field, it could be a FedEx Cup season record, too.
It doesn’t stop there either: There are two Canadian winners on the minor league Korn Ferry Tour, another two on the PGA Tour Canada, one winner on the Epson Tour (the women’s qualifying tour), and another on PGA Tour Latinoamérica, while Stephen Ames has won four times on the PGA Tour Champions circuit.
And we haven’t even mentioned Brooke Henderson yet.
The steely-eyed, blond-ponytailed, powerful-swinging small-town hero from Ontario now has 13 career wins on the LPGA Tour – a record for Canadians on the LPGA or PGA Tour – including the Tournament of Champions to open 2023 season
Next week at the Women’s Open in Vancouver, Henderson, who is just 25 years old, will go for her second national open title after winning in 2018. That year she broke a 45-year drought in Canada on the women’s side. Henderson has been a mainstay in the world’s top 10 for more than half a decade, and has many fans – women and men, young and old – who make up the “Brooke Brigade” next week in Vancouver, T-shirts and everything.
Canadian golf is clearly experiencing a golden moment, with Henderson’s unprecedented body of work leading up to linchpin moments like Taylor’s win at the Canada Open – celebrated on the green in other Canadian stars – not far away.
“In Canada in particular, I feel that golf continues to grow and improve, and it will continue to get better,” Henderson told the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in June.
None of this happened by accident, according to those who invested in the success of golf in a country that is more often recognized for its prowess in winter sports. Henderson and the other Canadians on the LPGA Tour (Maddie Szeryk and Maude-Aimée Leblanc), and each of the four Canadian PGA Tour winners this season, are part of Golf Canada’s national team program as juniors. . The national program — which provides financial support, travel opportunities, equipment and access to high-level coaching to young players — has been part of the fabric of golf in Canada since 2005, and earlier this year even the powerhouse of the United States noticed.
“We’ve studied Canada closely, and we’ve seen success,” said Heather Daly-Donofrio, managing director for player relations and development at the US Golf Association.
The USGA announced in February that it would launch its own national team program, something seen in nearly every other major golf nation. The organization is in the process of interviewing candidates to become head coaches, with the program part of a nearly decade-long strategy to help identify and develop the best of the best in American junior golf.
“When I was playing on the LPGA Tour, I look to the left, I look to the right, and any international player on the range with me is a product of their national team, while we haven’t given that support of our players,” Daly-Donofrio said. “We want to make sure that when a kid chooses a golf club in the United States, they know what the path is.”
Fifty-seven golfers are part of the Golf Canada program, including juniors, elite amateurs and new pros. Canada has ambitious goals, aiming to have 30 combined golfers on the PGA Tour and LPGA Tour by 2032, a number that Kevin Blue, the chief sports officer of Golf Canada, obtained after analysis the length of golf seasons in other countries and their high performance. output and comparison with Canadian data. If Canada – with its golfing public numbering in the multimillions – can get players to become “tour-level” at the same rate as the United States, for example, then in the next decade the projection is 20 more Canadian men and women will join the current crop to reach 30 with PGA Tour or LPGA Tour status, Blue said.
“The year of men that we are experiencing is absolutely extraordinary, and the country must believe that this kind of result is possible … and that we must wait [it] happen more regularly,” said Blue. “Not that we have four different ones [PGA Tour] winners every year, but shifting the mindset from ‘Canada is an underdog’ to ‘Canada is a major golf country’ is something we hope to help achieve as we go forward.
Canada’s men’s national team is managed by Derek Ingram while the women’s national team is led by Salimah Mussani.
Mussani said more women are moving into the Canadian golf system sooner, which “could be a good thing.” On the men’s side, two decades after Mike Weir’s victory at the Masters in 2003, the country saw the impact of that type of victory in the north. All of Canada’s PGA Tour members point to Weir’s win — which came at a time when Tiger Woods dominated pro golf — as a key part of their development.
“I look up to Mike Weir, and when kids say the same thing about me, that’s the biggest compliment I can get,” Taylor said.
Part of Golf Canada’s focus is finding talented young people early and keeping them involved in the game. That’s where Tristan Mullally came in. He coached the women’s national team for a decade before being promoted to a new role in May 2022 as head of national talent identification for Golf Canada.
The organization also now has a home in Arizona for winter training and is launching First Tee-Canada in 2020 to create even more junior golf opportunities. Combine those efforts with a dozen or so victories from last year, and you have a force that Mullally says is “immeasurable.”
Mullally, Mussani, Ingram and Blue played important roles behind the scenes, but they beamed with pride after seeing victories like Taylor’s or Henderson’s record-setting body of work rather than seeking credit for their self
“To have someone do it from a country that has snow on the ground and the resources aren’t leaking anywhere — that’s huge,” Mullally said. “It gives faith in a dream [that Canadian junior golfers] maybe not at all before.”
Like getting a call from Wayne Gretzky — while waiting for fast food.