What a weekend of golf that was.
The RBC Canadian Open took place at St. George’s Golf Course in Toronto. Rory McIlroy successfully defended his title.
Canadian golf news got even better. Canada’s top female golfer, Brooke Henderson won her 11th LPGA event with an extra-hole win in New Jersey.
It didn’t stop there. In Carnduff, word began to leak out that Justin Hollinger and Lucas Day had won the 2022 Antler Creek Invitational.
The Antler Creek Invitational is a yearly 36-hole tournament featuring 36 two-man teams. It is a handicapped tournament, meaning that scratch golfers and duffers alike all play on a level playing field. Maybe we should say a level fairway.
Every golf course rates the difficulty of each hole. If a golfer’s handicap is nine, they are entitled to deduct a stroke on the nine toughest holes. The golfer who wins a handicapped tournament is the one who shoots the best score over their typical round of golf.
In a team event, each player on the team plays the hole and the best score of those two players, after the handicap is applied (if applicable), is the one that is carded.
Hollinger’s handicap was 14; Day’s was 20. Neither was the best golfer on the course. But of all the teams, they played best compared to their normal and when all was tallied up, they were the champions with a total score of 27-under-par.
They didn’t go home with $262,500 like Henderson did, or earn more than $1.55 million like McIlroy, but they did snag a couple of nice prizes, thanks to the generous donations of many local businesses.
Scooter Boyes and Howard Taylor went home with a bit of money, though. After Saturday’s round, a ‘horse race’ took place. The top 10 golfers of the day were auctioned off and the Boyes/Taylor bidding team paid big to get their ‘prized horses’. The horse race began, with all 10 golfers playing the same hole. Slower horses (golfers with higher scores) were eliminated and this continued until there was one horse left running – Kris Carley, one of the two horses that Boyes and Taylor had in their stable. Carley’s stablemate, Darrin Trimble, finished third, giving the Boyes-Taylor ownership group the win/show money.
Another Antler Creek Invitational is in the books. It may not have received the publicity that the RBC Canadian Open and Brooke Henderson received, but judging by what was seen in the clubhouse and in the parking lot and the reports that came from the course itself, it was a lot more fun.
