The most fun four people can have on a golf course is a Texas Scramble event, but the RBC PGA Saskatchewan event earlier this month at TS&M Woodlawn Golf Course was a little bit different than most.
The event was a qualifier to the regional event at Royal Regina Golf Club in September and teams had to have a mix of skills.
“This was the first time I’ve seen something like that here,” said Jeff Ward, one of the team members and president of the golf course. “You could only have two members with a single digit handicap and all members of the team had to have a minimum handicap of 32.”
Ward was joined on the winning team by Mark Spencer, Brad Wilhelm and Nathan Wilhelm.
“We all have different skill sets,” Ward said. “We’re all pretty good off the tee so getting the minimum three drives per person wasn’t as difficult as maybe some teams have. We have some people that are fairly good from the fairway in so we gave ourselves some birdie putting opportunities and we drained quite a few of those that were pretty lengthy. I think that’s what made the difference in the scores in the end.”
The team had a score of 59, 13 under par.
There were seven teams indexed on handicap and won the local qualifier to go to the regional event in Regina Sept. 10. The winning team there will go to the Cabot Trail Golf Course in Nova Scotia.
Ward and the team are fairly serious about their golf and the uniqueness of the event is what sparked their interest.
“You put something with PGA in the title and RBC, you can tell it’s a little more serious. It’s not a golf scramble where you’re going to support a charity,” said Ward. “It’s actually a competitive tournament where there’s actually rules. It was interesting and we had a few other people who were interested and we had the right type of handicap to create a team that we thought would be competitive.”
Woodlawn held up well for the competition, Ward said.
Woodlawn general manager Amanda Minchin, no stranger to highly competitive golf, will join the team for the Sept. 10 event.
“At this point it becomes a five person team so that will change the dynamic,” Ward said.
Now that the qualifying event is under their belt, a couple of months of range work will help but also some familiarity with Royal Regina would be a good thing to have.
“I think most of us have played that course before,” Ward said. “I know we played a practice round on the Sunday before. That’s actually the course that Kyle Mulligan, our previous general manager for a couple of years (is now). I’ve been in contact with him already and I believe we’re going to get up there and have a couple of practice rounds.”
