This year on the PGA Tour has been far from normal. But there’s one thing worth celebrating – for Canadian golf fans at least – and that’s the success of our homegrown talent.
During the PGA Tour’s return to action after its longest in-season break since World War II, Canadians have appeared near the top of the leaderboard every single week. It seems like a total ‘when-not-if’ scenario with respect to whether Canada will see another one of its countrymen find the winner’s circle on the biggest stage in the sport.
And the crazy thing is we already had someone win earlier this season.
Nick Taylor, Winner the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am
Indeed, Nick Taylor won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in February (which, thanks to COVID-19, seems like forever ago), chasing down Hall of Famer Phil Mickelson in the process. It was Taylor’s second PGA Tour victory. Only six other Canadians in the history of the sport have more than one PGA Tour victory.
In the process of lifting his second Tour trophy Taylor has basically locked himself up a spot in the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame.
Adam Hadwin, Canadian PGA Tour Player
Come mid-July Canadian golf fans saw another first: there were four Canadians in the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time. Adam Hadwin led the way, followed by Corey Conners, Taylor, and Mackenzie Hughes. Hadwin is a two-time Presidents Cup team member and part of golf’s exclusive ‘59’ club. Conners is already a winner on Tour and made it to The Tour Championship last season. Hughes is also a winner on Tour and has notched top-six finishes in two of his last three tournaments.
Mackenzie Hughes, Canadian PGA Tour Player
“It’s been fun to play late on a few Sundays and get your name in the mix. I haven’t been able to get it done but the more you put yourself there the more times you might end up winning,” Hughes said in a recent interview.
Corey Connors, Canadian PGA Tour Player
Hughes and Conners have been longtime PING golfers, even through college and when they first turned professional. Hadwin, meanwhile, has had a lengthy relationship with Callaway Golf, while Taylor has trusted TaylorMade clubs for both his first (in 2014) and second PGA Tour victories.
The other Canadians on the PGA Tour include Roger Sloan (a past winner on the Korn Ferry Tour), Michael Gligic (a rookie this year) and David Hearn (an Olympian). Hearn’s fellow 2016 Olympic competitor, Graham DeLaet, has been on the sidelines for a few months but is planning to make his Tour return in September after battling a back injury. And of course, there’s Mike Weir, who just turned 50 and will making his PGA Tour Champions debut in August.
In all there were a record number of Canadians with PGA Tour status a season ago and that number seems primed to grow even more.
Taylor Pendrith is on the Korn Ferry Tour for now but he sits third on that Tour’s season-long points race. Pendrith is a former college teammate of both Hughes and Conners and a longtime part of Golf Canada’s national team. His last three starts saw him go T2-2-T3 to catapult up the Korn Ferry Tour’s rankings.
While the men of the PGA Tour are collectively performing the best out of any generation of Canadians before them, it’s worth noting that they’re all following the lead of Brooke Henderson on the LPGA Tour. The 22-year-old is already Canada’s winningest professional golfer of all time, having won nine tournaments in her short career (Mike Weir, Sandra Post, and George Knudson all won eight) – including a major and the CP Women’s Open (a drought the Canadian men would so desperately love to break on the PGA Tour side).
“The guys love it,” said Golf Canada Men’s National Team head coach Derek Ingram. “I think they were so inspired by Brooke early on just stepping on throats on the LPGA Tour and thought, ‘well, if we keep pecking away and doing what we’re doing, why not us?’”
As far as success on the 2020 PGA Tour for Canadians is concerned, ‘why not us?’ indeed.
Written and intended to the GlobalGolf.ca audience by Adam Stanley