Perceived star power aside, in general there is much more to an LPGA tournament than a PGA Tour event. I was reminded of this yet again on the weekend when I drove to Ottawa for the CN Women’s Canadian Open. That effort was, as usual, rewarded with some terrific storylines.
Katherine Hull of Australia won in exciting fashion, overcoming a six-shot deficit to rookie sensation Yani Tseng, who now has a win and five Top 3 finishes this season.
Steve Lavigne, the burly security guard who has become a welcome fixture at the media centre of both the women’s and men’s opens, showed once again that he’s much bigger on the inside than on the outside (and that’s saying a lot). Lavigne, who has battled cancer, donated a day’s pay to CN’s Miracle Match program under which the women’s Open sponsor matches all donations made during the tournament.
His boss matched it, too, as did some of his friends. In real life, Lavigne is the doorman at the Hilton in London, and was named the hotel chain’s top employee worldwide last year. It made a nice human-interest sidebar.
Speaking of donations, CN, which is the poster child for golf sponsors, announced Sunday that $1-million had been raised through the Miracle Match program for the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.
CN’s generosity was also extended to Annika Sorenstam as the sponsor gave $100,000 to her foundation. This gift obviously had no strings attached; as Sorenstam has made it very clear she is retiring after this season.
But I got to watch her last performance in Canada, follow Michelle Wie after she made the cut and see Lorie Kane make another brave attempt to become the first homebrew since Jocelyne Bourassa in 1973 to win our national open.
During the week, almost 70,000 other fans watched the action, a new record attendance for the tournament.
The women were uniformly complimentary about the great old Ottawa Hunt layout, refraining even from voicing what would have been justifiable criticism of the Tom McBroom-redesigned greens, which are in jarring contrast to the rest of the classic course.
The women were also uniformly appreciative of and accommodating to the fans, volunteers and media. And mentioning the media brings up something that I noticed as soon as I walked into the media centre Saturday.
At the men’s open, you have a quorum of the Golf Journalists Association of Canada at just about any moment. All the usual suspects are there. Last month at Glen Abbey, the national golf magazine had half a dozen people covering the event for its print and online outlets all week. Both national newspapers blanketed the RBC Canadian Open with coverage, as did other outlets.
Not so in Ottawa.
While the local media representation and coverage was great, the same cannot be said for the Toronto/national media, none of whom were there on the weekend as far as I could see.
My Toronto Star this morning carried the generic Canadian Press wire service story.
Strikes me as odd, it does, that these are the same media outlets which bemoan the state of Canadian golf, women’s golf, the growth of the game and wring their editorial hands when sponsors are tough to find for historic championships. But when it comes to covering the national women’s open just a few hours’ drive from their head offices, it’s a different story, apparently.
Anyhow, they (and you by extension) missed a heck of a weekend.