B.C. Junior Boys & Girls Championships Head North To Prince George
Prince George Golf & Curling Club Hosts The 2023 BC Junior Championships - Image Courtesy PGGCC
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
The B.C. Junior Boys & Girls Championships are heading north to Prince George Golf and Curling Club and that brings back some memories for general manager John Swanson.
The last time the B.C. Juniors was held in northern British Columbia was 20 years ago when the 2003 Junior Boys competition was played at Dawson Creek Golf Club.
Swanson happened to be general manager at Dawson Creek at the time and that field had some interesting names that included Nick Taylor, Adam Hadwin and Roger Sloan, who all went on to play on the PGA TOUR.
None of those three finished among the leaders in Dawson Creek. Hadwin, then 15, tied for 18th, Sloan, then 16, tied for 41st and a 15-year-old Taylor tied for 75th.
The headlines that week instead went to a 12-year-old from Vancouver named Richard Lee, who carded a 62 in the third round, and the eventual winner, Ryan Lidkea of Delta.
Swanson remembers running out onto the course late in Lee’s remarkable round when he heard he was going low. “I followed him for the last two or three holes,” Swanson said. “I was busy inside and heard about this young junior making all these birdies and I thought I have to get out there and check this out. It was incredible.”
Twenty years later, Swanson is delighted to be welcoming some of B.C.’s best junior boys and girls to Prince George Golf and Curling Club, where he became general manager earlier this year after stints the past two decades at courses like Meadow Gardens, Osoyoos Golf Club, Shadow Mountain, Nk’Mip and Saskatoon Golf & Country Club.
He’s not sure any 62s will be shot by the juniors in Prince George, but he is expecting to see some low scoring. “The golf is going to be spectacular,” Swanson said. “These juniors are really impressive. A lot of the older ones hit the ball a mile and it’s not a long golf course, so I think they will score well here. It’s great for us and it’s great for the City of Prince George to be able to host something like this.”
Image Courtesy John Swanson/PGGCC
Prince George Golf & Curling Club General Manager John Swanson
The club has about 400 golf members and generally logs about 44,000 rounds a year. It was once a tree-lined layout, but the pine beetle infestation changed that. While not completely devoid of trees, the course now is more links-like in nature.
Unfortunately, Swanson said the course is still recovering from a nasty end to the winter. The course normally opens in mid-April, but this year the first rounds were not played until April 28. “We had a very, very challenging late winter, early spring weather-wise,” he said.
“We had an exceptional amount of snow. It has been a challenge the last couple of months trying to get the course back to what we normally have. We had some winter-kill on some of our greens, our aprons and fairways.”
Most of the greens have recovered nicely, but Swanson said fairways remain spotty and suspects the juniors will be permitted to lift, clean and place their balls during the tournament, which runs July 3-6.
“B.C. Golf will make that decision,” he said.
Swanson said Prince George’s small greens may be the biggest challenge the juniors face. “Many of them are crowned so anything that gets close to the edges will roll off,” he said.
A new girls champion will be crowned in Prince George as 2022 winner Luna Lu of Burnaby is not defending her title. Players to watch include Surrey’s Rebecca Kim, Ha Young Chang of Surrey, Cadence Ko of Richmond and Meera Minhas of Burnaby, who all finished inside the top 5 at the recent B.C. Women’s Amateur Championship at Arbutus Ridge Golf Course in Cobble Hill.
On the boys’ side, James Lee of Whistler is back to defend the title he won last summer at Nk”mip in Oliver. He’ll face stiff competition from the likes of Ryan Vest of Vernon, Matthew Wilson of Nanaimo, Ethan Posthumus of Coquitlam and Thomas Zhang of Vancouver.
Click HERE for tournament information and scoring.
Click HERE for PGGCC website.