2022 RBC Canadian Open – St. George’s Golf and Country Club Course Preview
Ron Klos
4 years ago
Nestled among the tree-lined streets of Toronto’s west end sits a classical course that has stood the test of time. St. George’s Golf and Country Club was designed in 1929 by famed Canadian golf architect, Stanley Thompson who took advantage of the natural contours and the wooded valleys to create a strategic course that is not only scenic to behold but one that has excellent golfing character.
Ranked as the 23rd best course in the world by Golf Digest in 2020, it has hosted the Canadian Open five times, including most recently in 2010. As the final event leading up to next week’s U.S. Open, it will present a good warm-up test for the 15 players scheduled to play at the Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. St. George’s is also a par-70 course with long and challenging par-4s, thick rough and eccentricity with blind shots and elevation changes.
Headlined by world number one and Masters champion Scottie Scheffler, a solid field will head to the Great White North for the first RBC Canadian Open event since 2019. Among the other notables vying for the $1.4 million winner’s cheque include Justin Thomas, Rory McIlroy, Cameron Smith, Sam Burns and Matt Fitzpatrick. The field is definitely on the top-heavy side and is quite weak down on the lower end.
The tournament was canceled the past two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was first played 118 years ago in 1904, and is the third oldest continuously running tournament on the PGA Tour, after The Open Championship and the U.S. Open. Also of note, a Canadian has not won this event since 1958. Most of the top Canadians on the PGA Tour will attempt to change that this week including the likes of Corey Conners, Adam Hadwin and Mackenzie Hughes.
St. George’s Golf and Country Club
History
The most famous Canadian golf course architect, Stanley Thompson, was selected as the course designer of St. George’s and chose the current 2,000-acre site as the grounds for his masterpiece. At the forefront of the “Golden Age” of course architecture in Canada, Thompson loved the beautiful rolling woodland combined with the natural ravines and valleys that run through the property. Completed in 1929, he routed many holes alongside or through the valleys rather than over them, leading to a world-class golf course.
In 2014, the course had a substantial greens reconstruction project let by Tom Doak and Ian Andrew. The goal was to convert the greens to all Bentgrass and also to replicate Thompson’s original greens complexes. The team removed numerous treens around many of the greens and attempted to replicated the original layout as much as possible.