Vancouver Open touches down at Langara Golf Course

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      It was never designed as a championship course, and for 51 weeks a year, it isn’t. But in that remaining week, the popular city-owned Langara Golf Course—a tranquil plot of gently rolling land on Vancouver’s south slope—is one of the host venues for the city’s biggest professional golf tournament. This year, from June 13 to 15, a full field of this country’s top professional golfers will tee it up at Langara and the city’s other municipal courses, McCleery and Fraserview, in the Vancouver Golf Tour’s flagship event: the $125,000 Saputo Vancouver Open. At first blush, Langara gives the appearance of a glorified pitch-and-putt course that pros should chew up and spit out. Just 6,261 yards when stretched to its limit—ridiculously short by today’s tournament standards—and with very little in the way of true hazards, Langara seems about as benign and straightforward as a golf course can get. But looks can be deceiving.

      As the pros who tee it up in the Vancouver Open are about to find out, the danger of Langara lies in the devilish greens that have repeatedly brought top players to their knees.

      “You look at the yardage, come out and play, and you’re thinking, ‘I’m going to tear this place apart,’ ” Fraser Mulholland, commissioner of the Vancouver Golf Tour, tells the Georgia Straight by phone as a warning to players thinking they’ll simply overpower the course. “The complexity of the greens and where they put the pins means [that] if you’re in the rough, you have to be careful where you place your ball, and you probably won’t be able to control it the way you’d like.”

      And that’s where even the best golfers are bound to run into trouble. Between the speed of Langara’s greens and the many undulations they offer, players can’t afford to get too aggressive or they’ll be licking their wounds as they walk to the next hole.

      Last year’s winner, Eugene Wong of North Vancouver, caught fire in the final round, shooting 63 at Fraserview to claim the title, but only after sputtering to an even-par round of 71 at Langara the day before. And in 2011, Langley’s James Allenby missed out on a playoff for the tournament title by a single shot, and a 73 in the second round at Langara was a major factor in that outcome.

      At the professional level, all players are able to strike the ball purely. But it’s those who demonstrate the most finesse on and around the greens who usually walk away with the trophy. And that will undoubtedly be the case again in this year’s Vancouver Open.

      “There are lots of big hitters out there, but there aren’t a lot of guys who are unbelievable with their short games or putters,” says Howard Normann, the City of Vancouver’s supervisor of golf operations. “I think Langara is the most fun to play because it’s just not easy to read those greens.”

      Due to the rolling terrain on almost every one of Langara’s 18 putting surfaces, finding firm but fair pin placements can be an issue for tournament staff. The idea is to challenge the professional golfers to hit quality shots and to make sure those shots are rewarded.

      “We certainly don’t want to kill these guys,” Normann says with a laugh. “We want a fun and fair round of golf, but we don’t want to punish them. We don’t want to put pins on the sides of hills or four feet from the edge of a green. We live by the one-third rule: a third of the pins in easy places, a third in moderate spots, and the other third, we’ll certainly find some difficult locations.”

      One thing that may help players at the Vancouver Open attack all three of the city’s courses is the fact that this event is being played in June instead of September, as it has been the past four years. With spring rains softening the greens, players of this calibre can get aggressive with approach shots, knowing the targets will likely be more receptive than they would be after a summer’s worth of firming up.

      The move to springtime was made to give newly rebranded PGA of Canada (formerly the Canadian Tour) players an event in which to compete between sanctioned stops in Victoria and Calgary. The hope is that a total of 156 professionals—some local and some just passing through—will strengthen the field and test themselves on the three municipal courses, making the Vancouver Open the highlight of the city’s professional-golf schedule.

      And each and every one of them had better be sharp when they step onto the first tee at Langara.

      “I thought it [Langara] might be viewed as the weaker sister to Fraserview and McCleery, but I’ve found that the players think it’s in perfect shape and just as tough as the other two, and feedback from the pros has been better than expected,” Mulholland says of the little golf course that’s proven to be a big challenge. “With the new spring dates and with the rain we’ve had, the greens may be more receptive to lower scores. And with the calibre of player we’ve been able to attract this year, there may be a 63 or 64 out there.”

      In order to post that kind of score, players will have no choice but to go flag hunting. However, they’ll do so at their own peril. Judging by the scorecard, it may not look like the toughest test in golf. But Langara has shown that it’s up to the challenge, and it will be again this year.

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