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Message: [QUOTE="jncuse, post: 4280180, member: 1969"] Went to the Canadian Open in Toronto on Thursday for the first round at St. George's. Thought I would do some comments and review of the event as I watched today's Round 3. The leaderboard is actually quite strong, as the cream has risen to the top, in this top heavy field. [B]The Course - [/B]St. George's is ranked in top 5 of Canadian courses by basically all listings of repute (as high as #2). I had never been there and I enjoyed it. Its a Stanley Thompson course who is considered the greatest Canadian course architect ever (courses designed about 90-100 years ago). Course was in great shape, albeit a little soft due to some recent rain (although the course itself was not wet at all). The rough was very thick and lush - hitting fairways was at a premium. It's a classic old school parkland course with many valleys, greens typically elevated at the top of the valleys. Smaller greens. Due to the above reasons (keeping it on fairway at a premium) and relatively soft greens, many players were not using drivers at times. Overall, with the thick rough and smaller greens, it was a great prep for next week's US Open. And many top players took advantage of this, and this leads to the Field [B]The Field[/B] It was an unusual field compared to prior opens. [I]5 players in the world top 10 played - the most in the event in a long time I believe. However, the field was not deep -- there was much less player in the world 50 to world 200 than normal. [/I]In fact there was not enough "qualified" players to fill the field of 156, even with 23 Canadians playing... they had to fill the field with the lowest qualifier - past champion of a PGA tour event -- many guys with no world ranking points in 2 years but past winners of a PGA tour event were in the field - Ben Crane, Brian Davis, Richard Johnson, Kevin Stadler, George McNeill and many others. It took out some event as a fan because yes there was a handful of groups with great players, but there were also many jobbers out there that would make even Barry Horowitz or Steve Lombardi blush. Let's consider some context here: 1) New place on schedule - The Canadian Open used to have arguably the worst date on the PGA tour. - British Open - Canadian Open - WGC Akron - PGA Championship Not only was it the week after the British Open, all the top 50 in the world would play the other 3 events for sure... guys don't like playing 4 weeks in a row, so which one would get passed on? 2) St George's vs Glen Abbey - Glen Abbey is a nice course. But it is not a great prep for a US Open, and not at the level of a St. George's in terms of a course that would be highly respected by players. Factors 1 and 2 explain why 5 of the top 10 players were here. 3) Vaccines - No political comments here pro or con. Just stating the fact - you have to be vaccinated to enter Canada - similar to those entering the US. There is probably a number of unvaccinated PGA tour players who would have normally come to this event. There was much less "middle of the pack players then normal" which severely weakened the middle and bottom of the field. [B]The Weather[/B] Weather was very nice despite the forecasters predicting a cold rainy day. I was overdressed because of these idiots. There was some gusts at time but overall there was wind but not that strong. [B]Course Play[/B] Some guys are really heating up in round 3 as I type this, but overall it played tough through first two round. The Cut was at +1, despite the course being a tad soft and there really being not that much wind. Part 2 to come [/QUOTE]

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