Canadian Open faces questions and challenges going forward

ANCASTER, Ont. — If Monday’s hefty weather delay is the only thing set to impact this year’s RBC Canadian Open, then all who play a role in Canada’s national golf championship can breathe a big sigh of relief.

The Canadian Open — played this year for the seventh time at the venerable Hamilton Golf and Country Club — was hit hard by wet weather Monday morning, causing the Golf Canada Pro-Am to be postponed by nearly five hours and the course being closed to spectators on Tuesday.

There will be a cloud hanging over the event this year regardless. Grayson Murray, a winner on the PGA Tour earlier this season, died by suicide over the weekend. There’s no easy way to segue from that tragic loss. But last week’s Tour event went on with the blessings of Murray’s parents, and this week will continue as scheduled. During the tournament’s opening ceremony on Thursday, there will be an acknowledgement of Murray and his memory.

So, tournament organizers are wishing for the best at an event that’s seen its fair share of drama over the last half-decade, and with a few questions still unanswered about its future.

“We don’t control what happens inside the ropes, but I think the fact that it is a national open, it’s got the history that it has creates some extra drama,” tournament director Bryan Crawford told Sportsnet. “The Canadians in the field, it means a little more. Those things fuel the drama on the golf course.

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed that we have a string of compelling winners and great finishes and I expect we’ll have a great storyline emerge as well.”

One of the main non-competition storylines that is bubbling under the surface is the question mark around RBC as the go-forward title sponsor of the event. While the bank has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into Canadian golf – along with being the only two-tournament sponsor on the PGA Tour – and will likely continue to do so no matter what happens with their PGA Tour partnership, RBC only signed a one-year deal for 2024 for both the Heritage and the Canadian Open. It hasn’t committed beyond that with the question mark about the future of men’s professional golf still very much in bold.

The Hilton Island Packet is reporting the Heritage Classic Foundation is “optimistic” about its future with RBC, while Laurence Applebaum — the CEO of Golf Canada — tells Sportsnet his organization sees “many areas” where it will continue to work closely with the bank.

RBC has been a long-time partner of the PGA Tour as well as Golf Canada and is firmly engrained in plenty of sports and entertainment offerings in this country, including the Canadian Olympic Committee and, yes, even Taylor Swift’s run of shows in Toronto and Vancouver. Beyond the Canadian Open, RBC saved the Heritage (an annual stop in Hilton Head Island, S.C.) from a “gaping void in funding,” according to the Hilton Head Island Packet, in 2012. The RBC Heritage is now a $20-million (U.S.) Signature Event on the PGA Tour. In this country, RBC is a vital cog in Canadian golf propping up the incredibly successful RBC PGA of Canada Scramble, grow-the-game programming, and a new women’s golf series called She Plays Golf. It became the title sponsor of the Canadian Open in the 11th hour in 2008.

“RBC’s deep, integrated connection with our game has been one of the greatest things about this run we’re on for the most-played sport in Canada,” Applebaum told Sportsnet. “We’re really looking forward to the future. We understand and appreciate some of the concerns that have been raised and we are working together with RBC and the PGA Tour to try to alleviate some of the tough moments we’re experiencing in golf; but we see a long-term, successful, history with the game — with RBC and with our future with the PGA Tour.”

A source with the bank says it will see what the Tour’s new go-forward business model will be before determining whether or not it’s for them.

In a statement provided to Sportsnet, a PGA Tour spokesperson says the bank has demonstrated an “incredible commitment” to the Tour, supporting “two historic tournaments” as well as Team RBC — a sponsor/ambassador program that features nine golfers on the PGA Tour.

“With a successful RBC Heritage under our belt, we are working alongside RBC and Golf Canada to deliver a first-class RBC Canadian Open to our fans around the world and positively impacting the communities that will benefit from Canada’s national open,” the statement said.

TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley has been confirmed as the host club for the 2025 Canadian Open — the 38th venue in the tournament’s history.

As for the long-term future of the tournament, a source with intimate knowledge of the ongoing discussions between the Oakdale Golf & Country Club and Golf Canada confirmed to Sportsnet that the club will not be the host in 2026 as originally hoped. When it came down to it, the source explained, there were too many unknowns: What time of year would the event take place and where would it land in the player’s schedules? Would RBC still be the sponsor and bring back its roster of sponsored players? And what would men’s professional golf look like in two years?

When the club leadership considered the uncertainty around these key elements, it felt that it would be unfair to ask its membership and staff to host in 2026. For now, the club will be focusing single-mindedly on its 100th anniversary that year and continue the work with Golf Canada to bring the Open back to Oakdale in the future.

Questions be damned — the tournament has provided golf fans with some of the most exciting recent finishes in the game. Inside and outside the ropes, the Canadian Open has been the most excitable event on the PGA Tour calendar — for better or worse — the last few years.

Rory McIlroy captured the 2019 edition at Hamilton by seven shots, flirting with a final-round 59 in the process. After the two cancellations due to the pandemic, McIlroy returned and won again in a final-round duel against some of the tournament’s biggest names — Justin Thomas and Tony Finau – at St. George’s Golf and Country Club in 2022, while LIV golf’s first event was happening in London. That came after two years of cancellations (for the first time since World War II) due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

At the 2023 tournament, the bombshell agreement between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour was announced. It was initially rumoured as a merger, but formally became a go-forward framework agreement. However, nothing has come of that, and negotiations continue.

While that happened on Tuesday last year, Sunday night saw Canadian Nick Taylor’s drought-busting, drama-filled, playoff victory over Tommy Fleetwood.

“I still get people coming up to me where they were when the putt dropped and their reaction and I think those stories over time have been the most special ones,” Taylor said. “I wish I could be the defending champion for a little longer.”

Taylor is back this year, of course — the tournament’s logo for 2024 even has a subtle, and tremendous, nod to Taylor’s putter-drop moment last year — along with McIlroy, despite not being the defending champion, and some of his European Ryder Cup teammates in Shane Lowry, Tommy Fleetwood, and Nicolai Hojgaard. There will be at least 25 Canadians teeing it up, too.

The golf course will also be a shining star.

Not long after McIlroy’s win in 2019, the club underwent a renovation project under the eye of Martin Ebert (who is more so known as the consulting architect for eight of the 10 golf courses on The Open Championship rotation). It was a virtual eye, however, as Ebert was supposed to make 12 visits to Hamilton — all cancelled due to the pandemic. His firm used virtual reality and drone work to inform the contractors doing the construction, though, and he finally got to visit for the first time in the fall of 2021. The work was named ‘Best Renovation’ of the year by Golf Digest in 2023.

Ebert is hopeful for a good show on his layout. Ditto Bryan Crawford, the tournament director, and RBC officials and broadcast partners and Golf Canada. It’s the country’s national open.

Perhaps there are a few clouds. But the sun is poking through.