BIRDIES & BOGEYS: DEAR ABBEY

By Lorne Rubenstein

Two landscapes and the adoration of two countries unite at Canada’s Glen Abbey.

Golfers in Canada know it as “The Abbey.” Opened in 1976, it was the first course Jack Nicklaus designed on his own, and has been the home of the Canadian Open since 1977, excepting 1980 and 1997 when the PGA Tour event and national championship moved to Montreal. The course, which consists of two vastly different landscapes (one a flat, tabletop ground; the other a deep, lush valley), is the Glen Abbey Golf Club, 15 miles west of Toronto in the fast-growing town of Oakville. It’s a public course, which the Royal Canadian Golf Association owned until recently.

The RCGA headquarters remain on the Abbey property, leasing space from ClubLink Corporation, the King City, Ontario-based company that bought the course in early 1999. ClubCorp owns a percentage of ClubLink and has a strategic alliance with Canada’s largest golf-course developer. The course will be the site for the Canadian Open this September and at least five more times through 2019.

The RCGA approached Nicklaus to design a course for its national championship, after Nicklaus had co-designed the Muirfield Village Golf Club (with Desmond Muirhead) in Dublin, Ohio, near his hometown of Columbus. But the RCGA required Nicklaus to provide more than yet another tough course suitable for a PGA Tour event. He was asked to allow for plenty of space for spectators; the notion of a “stadium” course that could hold tens of thousands of spectators who would have good sight lines was paramount.

As it happened, Rod McIsaac, then chief executive officer of the landholding company Great Northern Capital, had attended the 1972 Canadian Open at The Cherry Hill Club in the Niagara Peninsula area of southwestern Ontario. Not a tall man, McIsaac was disappointed that he was unable to see any more of Gary Player than his head when he walked to the fourth tee. McIsaac returned to Toronto, where he read an article by Jim Vipond in which the Toronto sportswriter called for the RCGA to build a course where it could hold its biggest tournament on an all but permanent basis.

McIsaac was intrigued. He recalled his experience at Cherry Hill and called Richard Grimm, then the RCGA’s vice president. Together they decided to weld the idea of a stadium course for the Canadian Open to the RCGA’s mandate of supporting the public golfer; The Abbey would be a public course, that is. Who to call?

PURE NICKLAUS
Nicklaus was the RCGA’s man. He had a close association with Canada, having played in the Canadian Open since the early 1960s, and Nicklaus and Grimm knew and respected one another. Meanwhile, Nicklaus, an avid fisherman, had spent plenty of time in Canada. He enjoyed fishing on the Restigouche River in the highlands of northwestern New Brunswick. And he was the golfer at the time, and a man whose name has always been associated with high quality.

The meeting between McIsaac and Grimm led inexorably to the Glen Abbey Golf Club. The property chosen had been a private estate belonging to a prominent mining engineer during the late 1930s and 1940s. It then became a Jesuit retreat in the 1950s and 1960s; the building that would become the RCGA’s home was then an abbey. Finally, during the 1960s, a group of Oakville businessmen bought the property and transformed it into a golf course. Great Northern Capital and a company called Western Realty merged during the early 1970s into the Abbey Glen Property Corporation. The company purchased the property in 1975 with the intent of renovating the course.

“Glen Abbey,” Nicklaus says, “is a reflection, in many ways, of Muirfield Village. At Glen Abbey I corrected many of the mistakes I had made at Muirfield in building a course for both a tournament and spectators.”

Muirfield Village, the site of the 1987 Ryder Cup, is one of America’s finest courses. It’s the home of the annual Memorial Tournament, the popular PGA Tour event where Nicklaus is host. Glen Abbey’s golfers are the lucky recipients of the lessons Nicklaus learned designing Muirfield.

It is immediately apparent that Nicklaus, who always loved to take a good crack at the ball, gives the golfer room off the tee. The first hole plays as a par-5 except during the Canadian Open, when it’s a par-4 from a forward tee. Whether the hole is a par-4 or a par-5, the golfer is encouraged to swing away. The fairway is generous.

But there’s a caveat, as there is on just about every hole. The player seeking a favorable angle to the green had better find the correct side of the fairway. The golfer who drives down the left side of the first fairway will have a much easier shot into the long, narrow green, because a deep bunker eats into the right front of the green and continues along the right side.

Nicklaus, moreover, built greens with at least four distinct pin positions — no surprise, since the Canadian Open is played over four days. The par-3 seventh hole plays anywhere from 94 yards to 197 yards, crossing a pond in front of the green. It’s fun to play the course from a forward tee with the pin tucked directly behind the bunker at the front of the green and just beyond the water; or, conversely, to go to the back tee when the hole is cut to the left rear. There’s room on the green now, but the shot over the pond is longer.

Perhaps the most noticeable feature at The Abbey is that it has the look of two different courses. The upper section of the landscape comprises holes one through nine, 10, and 16 through 18; the so-called “valley” holes consist of 11 through 15. The upper holes are on tabletop land where Nicklaus incorporated ponds, mounding, contouring, and bunkering. The valley holes, meanwhile, are in pure parkland — almost a microclimate all its own.

IN THE VALLEY
The valley holes provide a feast for the eyes, too, beginning at the 452-yard par-4 11th hole, where one stands high on a tee that is elevated 120 feet above the fairway. Here, suddenly, one finds a landscape that seems greener and more thickly populated with trees, where a wider variety of vegetation grows. To descend to the valley is to wander into another world. How wonderful that one course can provide two such different experiences.

The valley experience includes shots across Sixteen Mile Creek to the 11th, 12th, and 13th greens. The golfer drives across the meandering creek on the dogleg-right, par-4 426-yard 14th hole that often confounds players in the Canadian Open. The player needs to decide how much of the dogleg to try to cut off, always being aware that a shot that slips right will find the stream.

The 15th hole, a 141-yard par-3, provides the bridge back to the upper part of the course. The shot is slightly uphill, and after playing the hole the player returns to the higher ground. The 16th and 18th holes are par-5s that the longer hitter can reach in two shots, while the 17th is a 436-yard par-4 that culminates in a controversial U-shaped green that wraps around bunkers.

So unusual is the 17th green that golfers in the Canadian Open who hit its front left portion when the hole is cut in the back right face a problem; the two segments are separated by a bunker. No worries. The player in such a predicament uses a wedge to pitch his next shot over the bunker.

THE QUINTESSENTIAL FINISH
The last hole at The Abbey plays straight back to the clubhouse, which sits behind the green. Nicklaus mounded the area between the green and the clubhouse so that it provides an amphitheater for spectators. It’s quite a sight as thousands of spectators sit there, waiting to see whether golfers in the Canadian Open will go for the green on their second shots. It’s no easy matter, because a large lake intervenes, and the front of the green comes up almost against the water.

The great thing, of course, is that the spectator can return to The Abbey to try to hit the green. Such is the beauty of a public course that holds a PGA Tour event. The 18th hole is the quintessential gambler’s par-5, and has decided many a Canadian Open. Nicklaus needed to eagle the hole to get into a playoff with Peter Oosterhuis at the 1981 Canadian Open. He hit a typically Nicklausian long ball down the left side of the fairway that offered him a good angle to the green, then hit his 4-iron 20 feet from the hole. Alas, Nicklaus missed the eagle putt.

Nicklaus was admitted to the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame in 1995, in the builder category. He has never won the Canadian Open, having finished second seven times. But that’s OK. Glen Abbey is his true legacy to Canadian golf. He built The Abbey, and golfers from across Canada and the United States have been coming to it, year after year after year.

No wonder: The Abbey is two different landscapes that create one fine course. A course for Jack Nicklaus. A course for Greg Norman, Nick Price, and Mark O’Meara, all of whom have won the Canadian Open at The Abbey. And a course for all golfers who come seeking a challenge. ©©

Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national paper, since 1980. His latest book, written with David Leadbetter, is about Ben Hogan.