News Release
SUSSEX LAYOUT HUFFS AND PUFFS AND BLOWS FOR ALL IT'S WORTH
August 8, 2006
As published on page B10 on August 8, 2006 - Telegraph Journal
High winds send scores soaring and shoulders slumping
By Peter McGuire - Telegraph-Journal
SUSSEX - It was a day where scores were inflated and egos deflated as the Canadian Junior Men's Golf Championship teed off at the Sussex Golf and Curling Club on Monday.
Gale-force winds of close to 70-kilometres per hour sent the scores soaring with Nick Taylor of Abbottsford, B.C., setting the first-round pace after a one-over-par round 71. Taylor played in the final group of the day, which was surely an advantage as the winds had died down significantly by the time he signed off at 7:45 p.m.
Brad Revell of Kingston, Ont., playing alongside Taylor, is alone in second after a 76 and four more golfers share third spot, six shots off the pace.
For the longest time, 2004 Canadian amateur champion Darren Wallace of Langley, B.C., was the clubhouse leader after a morning-round of 78. He is in a tie for seventh spot with seven others.
Defending champion Mitchell Fox of Okotoks, Alta., shot 81.
Sussex normally plays to a par-72 but the Royal Canadian Golf Association added a couple more teeth to the layout's already fierce bite by reducing the first and 14th holes from par-5s to par-4s.
Round 2 is today while the field of 162 will be reduced to the top 70 and ties after 54 holes on Wednesday.
Also, the interprovincial team championship will be decided after today's round.
Team New Brunswick - which consists of Jean Mainville of Fox Creek in Dieppe (80), Alain Plourde of Edmundston (83), provincial champion Nick Clark of Riverview (84) and Thomas Keddy of Hillsborough (84) - sits in fifth place at the midway point of the 36-hole event. The top three scores count each day toward the team. N.B. has a total of 246, 19 behind B.C., which leads at 227.
"I didn't play that good," said Mainville, a 16-year-old who had just one double-bogey on the day and sits in a tie for 27th. "I was fighting a hook.
"I'm not very pleased with it but when I see that everyone else was pretty high too, I guess it's all right."
Plourde got off to a fine start by birdying the 10th hole and found himself temporarily alone atop the leaderboard early in the afternoon. His downfall was a quadruple-bogey 9 on the first hole with no penalty strokes. He did, however, suffer a whiff and a three-putt that helped balloon his number.
With flagsticks holding on for dear life and golf bags falling over like dominoes, Monday's was a test that few passed with flying colours.
Survival was what most were grasping for, especially those playing in the morning flight. But as the wind let up slightly in the early evening, a rain shower pelted the final few groups.
Widely regarded as having the two toughest finishing holes in the province, Nos. 17 and 18 had plenty of company on Monday. Nothing came easy. Long, punishing rough, fast, crowned greens and a wind that pulled what seemed like hundreds of balls beyond the plentiful out-of-bounds markers brought most players to their knees.
Mathieu Gingras of Dieppe posted the second-lowest score among the 12 New Brunswickers in the field with a round of 82.
Chris Hopper, of Country Meadows in Moncton, posted a very respectable round of 15-over 85 in his first appearance on the national stage.
"I hit the ball really well," said Hopper, an 18-year-old graduate of Harrison Trimble High School in Moncton. "I would hit a shot to the middle of the green and it would be one bounce and over. You couldn't get it close. I hit other shots that the wind would just eat up. I've never seen anything like it."
Two double bogeys and a 'ton of bogeys' made up most of Hopper's round but a memorable birdie on the 17th got the blood pumping.
"This is my first nationals," he said. "I was pleased with the way I hit it. I was a little nervous on the first tee but it wasn't bad at all."
Eric Michaud of Grand Falls was among the leaders after seven holes - he started on the back nine - but a double-bogey on the 17th hole derailed his chances at making a serious run.
He hit a big drive downwind but his approach sailed long and right. That miscue came to rest in the narley rough and eventually he found himself at three-over. He also bogeyed the 18th but his real trouble came on the front nine, where he shot 12-over 47.
"That's golf, I guess," said the good-natured 18-year-old. "You have to take a bogey sometimes and stay away from the big numbers."
Other New Brunswickers included Stephane Cormier of Bathurst (85), Matt Layden of Moncton (86), Stephane Boudreau of Dieppe (88),Corey Bourque of the Westfield Golf and Country Club (91) and Alex Whelan of the Riverside Country Club in Rothesay (92).