This weekend, the home course for our two local golf stars, Katie Cranston and Nicole Gal, Oakville Golf Club, celebrated its (covid-adjusted) 100th anniversary on Saturday, with member Ron Maclean MC’ing a retro-inspired garden party.
Golfing legend and first Canadian to play on the LPGA tour Sandra Post was on hand to reminisce about her childhood playing at Oakville, as were Anita Anand, MP and Minister of National Defence, and Mayor Rob Burton. Among other notables were famous figure skating champions Otto and Maria Jelinek.
The club was founded in 1921 by Ban Taylor and Stuart Brown. They acquired the property from the Lightbourn family, which was leasing it to Bill Buckle to graze sheep and cows for his butcher shop on Lakeshore Road (then Colborne St.).
For more on the history of this great Oakville club by local expert Geoff Godard, click here.
Meanwhile, our two young golf prodigies, Nicole Gal and Katie Cranston, both showed their character in the face of the inevitable challenges on the long road to success in golf.
Katie, having cleared the gruelling hurdle of Q-school first stage qualification in California, barely had time to get back to Canada for the CP Canadian Women’s Open in Ottawa. With travel and time zone and weather changes, not to mention physical and mental exhaustion, she stepped up to her first exposure to competition against professionals: the very best women players in the world, in an internationally televised tournament.
Unsurprisingly, she didn’t make the cut to play on Saturday. But despite the challenges, she acquitted herself well, finishing Friday with four birdies, including 9 and, significantly, 18, a great way to close out her first experience at this elite level.
She should be very proud of her resilience and performance in this her first appearance on the world stage.
At only 17, she will have lots of ups and downs and face plenty of adversity. Her response here bodes well for the key components of long-term success, more important even than skill: resilience and perseverance.
The tournament was eventually won by South African Paula Reto. At 32, this was her very first LPGA tour win: a great example of how hard to come by success is at this level.
In Paris for the World Amateur Team Championships with the Canadian Women’s Amateur Team, Nicole helped her teammates tie for 7th overall among 56 countries. Finishing tied for 64th among 164 golfers, she carded a critical to the team 69 on day 3, one of the very best scores of the whole tournament. Without this contribution, the team would have been 15th.
The best amateur golfers in the world assemble for this prestigious tournament, known as the Espirito Santo. Nicole, at 17, has already shown she belongs in the company of the top players, holding up under the pressure of representing her country on a truly international stage: for the second time after her strong showing in Tokyo. This was all the more impressive after some misfortunes on the first two days led to above-average scores for the Oakville resident.
Nicole leaves Paris directly to take up her spot at Ole Miss, where she will be one of two freshmen on a team with five seniors and two sophomores. Ole Miss won the NCAA division-1 team competition in May 2021. This was the first national title in any sport in the school’s history. Ole Miss women’s golf team was notably ranked #3 in the US academically, with the highest average team GPA, 3.890, the best in the South-East conference.
Oakville is very proud of you both.