After the final day of the Sony Open in Honolulu, Canada’s Adam Svensson and Corey Conners finished T7 and 11th respectively.

For Svensson, who shot a three under 67, this would mark his best finish since he placed T15 at the 3M Open in 2019.

Connors, who celebrated his 30th birthday last week, finished the tournament at minus 16.

The tournament ended in a playoff round with Hideki Matsuyama besting Russell Henley for the top spot on the leaderboard.

Born January 16, 1933 in Red Deer, Alberta, Douglas Howard Silverberg is known for being a dominant force on the Alberta golf scene beginning in the late 1940s. A fierce competitor, Silverberg has won every major provincial championship in his home province, including the Juvenile, Junior, Amateur, Open and match play.

 In addition to his stellar provincial record, Silverberg won the Canadian Junior in 1950 and the Senior Championship of Canada in 1994, and also represented Canada several times at the Commonwealth Tournaments, Americas Cup and World Amateur Team Championship.

When asked about the toughest competitor he ever faced as a player, fellow Canadian Golf Hall of Fame member Robert Wylie pointed to Silverberg.

“He wanted to win more than any other player I competed against,” explained Wylie. “He was intimidating because of his intensity; you could see him grinding the entire round. You could never feel like you had him beat because he never gave up. You could be on the green in two with a ten-footer for birdie and he could be in the middle of a bush but you would have been foolish to think you were going to win the hole. He would make pars and birdies from places you wouldn’t imagine. It was remarkable. He just put his head down and tried to beat you. No one was tougher than Doug Silverberg.”

Silverberg was inducted to the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame in 1985, the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1989, and the Alberta Golf Hall of Fame in 2005.

Click here for his Honoured Member page.

Prior to teeing off this morning for day three of the Sony Open, B.C. native Adam Svensson hit a few practice balls and admitted that he “just kind of wasn’t feeling it.” Clearly, the 28 year old overcame those nerves as he finished the day tied for third heading into the final round tomorrow.

Despite a tsunami advisory in effect for Honolulu in the early hours of the morning, the tournament was able to safely continue with weather conditions slightly windier than the previous two days of play. When asked if this affected his game Svensson replied:

“I’m usually pretty good into the wind. I kind of like the wind. Yeah, there is some extremely tough golf shots. I think on 13 I hit 3-iron into that hole, so you definitely got to play smart, golf your ball around here.”

Corey Conners who had been tied with Svensson after the first two rounds dropped to T18.

Play resumes tomorrow morning. Full leaderboard here.

Round 2 of the Sony Open brought envy-worthy views as golfers tee’d up for the second day of competition in paradise. Around mid-day Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, the thermometer read 77F, equating to 25C for those who are north of the border.

For Conners and Svensson, the Friday round in Hawaii was a successful one as the pair moved up four spots on the leaderboard to finish the day at nine under in a tie for fifth. Both sit six strokes back of leader Russell Henley.

At the midway point of the tournament Conners is error-free, carding nine birdies total. His best finish at the Sony Open was in 2019 when he finished T3 at Waialae.

Conners and Svensson are the only two Canadians advancing to the third round with Sloan, Pendrith, and Gligic missing the cut.

Full leaderboard here.

2022 is off to a good start as the Canadians kick things off in Hawaii after the PGA TOUR broke for the holidays. For many of us in Canada experiencing especially cold weather as of late, the oceanfront views and swaying palm trees at Waialae County Club are an added draw along with the main attraction – spectacular professional golf.

After the conclusion of round 1, Corey Conners and Adam Svensson sit T9, with Conners carding a bogey-free round on Thursday. Both players finished six-under par 64, just three strokes behind leader and defending champ Kevin Na.

Roger Sloan and Taylor Pendrith each opened with a 71 and are tied for 119th. Michael Gligic sits T132 after he opened with a 72.

As host to 144 golfers, The Sony Open marks the first full-field event of the reopening of the PGA TOUR season. The host club, Waialae Golf and Country Club, has served as the only venue since the tournament was established in 1965.

Click here for the full leaderboard.

There is considerable debate about this topic, to say the least. There are several clubs and several people who have staked claims about the origin of the term ‘mulligan.’

The story most widely accepted focuses on a gentleman named David Mulligan who played at the St. Lambert CC in Montreal during the 1920s. There are several versions of the David Mulligan story.

Story one: Mr. Mulligan was a hotelier in the first half of the century, a part-owner and manager of the Biltmore Hotel in New York City, as well as several large Canadian hotels. One story says that the first mulligan was an impulsive sort of event – that one day Mulligan hit a very long drive off the first tee, just not straight, and acting on impulse re-teed and hit again. His partners found it all amusing, and decided that the shot that Mulligan himself called a ‘correction shot’ deserved a better named, so they called it a ‘mulligan.’

Story two: Mulligan played regularly with a group of friends at St. Lambert, and in the morning he drove to pick up his golfing buddies. The road into the club was reportedly bumpy and windy and just sort of generally poor, with bridge of bumpy railroad ties. An extra shot was allotted to Mulligan, the driver of the car, on the first tee because he was jumpy and shaking from the difficult drive.

Story three: this story again identified a specific moment, citing a day when David Mulligan showed up late to the course, having scrambled to get out of bed late and get dressed and get to the course on time. He was frazzled on the first tee, hit a poor shot, and re-teed.

Another version of the ‘mulligan’ story comes from the Essex Fells CC in N.J. This story is one of the latest, and may therefore be less credible. According to this version, the term was named after a locker room attendant at the club named John A. ‘Buddy’ Mulligan, who worked at the club during the 1930s and was known for replaying shots, particularly on the first tee.

Born on this day (January 7) in 1908, Jules Huot is often considered to be one of the finest of all Quebec golf professionals and an important contributor to the growth of the game across the country.

Huot grew up in Boischatel, Quebec, the second boy in a family of 13 children. His home within close proximity of Royal Québec Golf Club, Huot became a caddie and pro shop assistant while using his wages to help support his large family. At the age of 16, Huot’s mentor Frank Locke urged his assistant to begin competing and entered him in the 1924 Quebec Open.

Known as “le petit Jules”, Huot received many accolades and captured the CPGA Championship and Quebec Open Championship three times, won five Quebec PGA Championships, and finished as the low Canadian Professional at the Canadian Open on two occasions. His most notable victory however, was in 1937 when he bested Harry Cooper at the General Brock Open. The occasion marked the first time a Canadian professional had won a PGA TOUR tournament.

Huot would also be invited to play in the Masters on three occasions, serve as the President of the PGA of Canada in 1946, and represented Canada four times in the Hopkins Cup, as well as the Canada Cup (now World Cup) in 1954.

His achievements and legacy earned him Honoured Membership to the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1977, Canada’s Sports Hall of Fame in 1978, The Quebec Sports Hall of Fame and Quebec Golf Hall of Fame in 1996, and, posthumously, the PGA of Canada Hall of Fame in 2014.

In recognition of his loyal services, Jules Huot was named Honorary Life Member at Le Club Laval where he served as head professional for 25 years until he retired in 1970.

In Chicoutimi and Montreal, you can find streets named after this French-Canadian icon who gave so much to the sport.

Visit his Honoured Member page here.

Noah Steele, 24, announced today that he has selected One Eleven Management Group for representation.

Steele, a National Team Program member and a 3-time NCAA tournament champion at Sam Houston State, begins his professional career after a summer to remember in 2021. That included a victory as an amateur on PGA Tour Canada against a field of professionals.

“I’m really excited to get my professional golf journey underway and thrilled to work with Jeff Dykeman and One Eleven Management Group in doing so,” said Steele, a Kingston, Ont., native. “Jeff’s reputation in the golf industry is fantastic and it was clear after a number of conversations that this would be a great match for both of us.”

In 2021, the Kingston, ON. native finished tied for fifth at the Canadian Amateur Championship before making an impressive run on PGA Tour Canada with a win, a runner-up and one additional top 10 on his way to finishing third on the points list. That secured him 2022 membership on the Canadian circuit. His victory at the 2021 Osprey Valley Open was especially impressive as he finished at 23-under par to win by six strokes at TPC Toronto.

“We are thrilled to start working with Noah, who on top of being exceptionally talented is also a total class act,” said Jeff Dykeman, CEO of One Eleven Management Group. “Noah is extremely dedicated to the process of achieving his goal of winning on the PGA Tour. We feel very privileged to be working with him and will do whatever we can to help and support him on this journey.”

Steele also earned conditional status on PGA Tour Latinoamerica for the 2022 season and hopes to play a full slate of events starting in February before returning home to play a full schedule on PGA Tour Canada. In addition, he will try to qualify for June’s RBC Canadian Open on the PGA Tour.

Golf Canada congratulates Noah on this next step in his career.

The internet was abuzz in late December when an image of a neatly hand-addressed envelope made the rounds on social media – Mackenzie Hughes’ invitation to the Masters.

With a new year comes a fresh realm of possibilities and many of us use the month of January as a time to craft new goals or anticipate what the next twelve months have in store for us. For golf enthusiasts, the list of things to look forward to is, thankfully, a long one.

In addition to watching Hughes compete in his third Masters Tournament in April, the Canadian golf contingent returns to PGA TOUR golf after a holiday hiatus. The current standings for players with full PGA TOUR status are as follows:

If you’ve added ‘attend a PGA TOUR event’ to your 2022 bucket list, you can purchase tickets to the 2022 RBC Canadian Open, the only Canadian stop, HERE.

The new Vokey Design SM9 wedges – the next generation of the PGA Tour’s most played wedges – will make their debut this week at the Sentry Tournament of Champions in Maui. 

Master Craftsman Bob Vokey and Vokey Tour Rep Aaron Dill, working alongside Vokey’s team of engineers, have spent the last two years designing prototypes and testing them with the world’s best players, pushing forward in their relentless mission to craft better performing and better feeling wedges.

Players in the field this week at Kapalua are getting the first opportunity to game the new models in competition. The tour launch of SM9 will continue at The American Express, when AD is back behind his grinding wheel in the Titleist Tour Truck at PGA West.

Visit Titleist.ca and Titleist’s social channels over the coming weeks for updates as the introduction of SM9 wedges continues on the PGA TOUR and across the worldwide professional tours.