Alberta Golf (Gibbons) – By Dunc Mills

The busiest week of the McLennan Ross Alberta Junior Tour is now over!  Four tournaments, five tournament days, four different golf courses and hundreds of enthusiastic junior golfers from every corner of the province!  What a great week!  We had it all in terms of the variety of the host sites, from the spectacular Rocky Mountains in Canmore to links-like prairie in Crossfield to rolling parkland in Wetaskiwin, to the water-lined fairways of Goose Hummock that are more reminiscent of Florida than northern Alberta!

The Goose Hummock Junior Open was this year’s only 36-hole event on the 2021 schedule, and the staff at “The Goose” did their usual bang-up job in hosting the players. We had a field of 45 juniors on hand from as far away as Calgary and Lethbridge to test their games over the sloping greens and many water-lined fairways over the course located about 5 miles north of Gibbons.  Josiah Tong of Heritage Pointe in Calgary earned his second Tour win this week, coming on the heels of his first-place finish in Canmore on Monday. Tong fired rounds of 75-71 (146) to get to the wire three shots clear of Seth Mottershead-Yee who had rounds of 77-72.

Josiah Tong of Heritage Pointe

Brandon Gratton of the Edmonton Petroleum GCC was solo third with rounds of 78-74 (152) as boys in the U17 division swept the podium.  As Josiah had previously qualified for the Tour Championship at Wolf Creek Golf Resort on August 30th by virtue of his win in Canmore, Mottershead-Yee gets the automatic Tour Championship spot from this division. Other qualifiers today are listed at the end of this article.

We must be getting spoiled by the larger turnouts of junior girls at events last year and in the first half of this summer’s slate, so it almost seemed disappointing to have “only” five girls on hand.  But when we think back a few short years, we would have been delighted to have five girls out at some tournaments. Looking ahead to events coming up soon on the Tour, we will be right back to double-digit junior girls entries.  Emma Liu of Jagare Ridge also took down her second Tour event of the week (Montgomery Glen) with rounds of 92-98 (190), eight shots clear of runner-up Samantha Lin.  Third-place finisher Sela Ogada gets a spot in the Tour Championship as both Liu and Lin had previously qualified.

Other Tour Championship spots from Goose Hummock go to:

Boys U13 – Solomon Tong – Heritage Pointe  (85-90)

Boys U15 – Sahir Sharma – Edmonton CC  (81-84)

Boys U19 – Brennan Tailfeathers – Paradise Canyon (81-75)

Wild Card #1 – Brandon Gratton – Edmonton Petroleum Club (78-74)

Wild Card #2 – Kennedy Bailey-Borges – Windermere  (76-82)

FULL SCORES FROM GOOSE HUMMOCK JUNIOR OPEN HERE

For those following the qualifiers’ list for Wolf Creek, we posted a complete spreadsheet a week ago with all the qualifiers from the season to date.  Over the weekend, we will update the master list with this past week’s additional qualifiers and get the full list posted on the Alberta Golf Juniors website early next week.  Complete details of the Tour Championship are being finalized with Wolf Creek Golf Resort and each qualifier will receive an individual email next week with those details.