The annual Rod Clark Memorial Golf Tournament went off again Saturday, and organizers are hailing it as another great success.
The fundraiser takes place at Quadra Golf Course each year, and unlike many charity tournaments – of which there are many in the Campbell River area – this one supports the golf course itself.
That’s because Quadra Golf is one of few not-for-profit golf courses out there, operated and maintained primarily by volunteers and the community in which it resides.
“It was another overwhelming success,” says head professional and general manager Jason Tchir. “Easily the best one to date.”
While previous years had room for maybe one or two more teams, Tchir says, this year they were full-up and actually had a waiting list of people who wanted to be involved.
The best-ball event was fully handicapped this year, as well, which means everyone had an equal shot at winning it all.
Each golfer provided their approximate handicap to tournament organizers before the event. Those handicaps got added up, giving each team a “team handicap,” 10 per cent of which got subtracted from their scorecard at the end of the day. So if your team made its way around the course in even par, but your team handicap was 112, you would finish the tournament 11.2 strokes under par – or 60.8.
“It went way better,” Tchir says. “It didn’t unfairly bump anybody up unfairly and it didn’t unfairly push anybody down. It did exactly what we wanted it to do, which was give everyone equal opportunity to get their name on the trophy.”
Prizes for participants ranged from golf trips to various places across the Island, right down to hats, shirts, travel mugs and golf umbrellas.
“We make sure we have enough that everybody gets something,” Tchir says. “I mean, sure, by the time we get down to announcing the 10th place team, your pickings from the table have been pretty reduced, but that just means you need to do a little better next year,” he says with a laugh. “But seriously, I think people appreciate that we make that effort to make sure we have something for everyone to say ‘thanks for coming out.’”
The most complicated part of pulling off an event like this, from a logistical perspective, Tchir says, is that they don’t have enough carts for everyone, so they have to borrow them from other courses. With this year’s event happening to coincide with the Howie Meeker tournament at Storey Creek and Campbell River Golf and Country Club not yet stocked, they had to go a little far afield to get the carts they needed.
“I really gotta say a huge thanks to Crown Isle for hooking us up,” Tchir says, “and to Az-tec Frieght for getting them all here. It was a little touch and go for a while there while we were trying to figure out how we’d make this work, but it all came together in the end.”