Tamarack’s Cubs program with instruction sees surge in popularity

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This article was published 22/08/2016 (3577 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WASAGAMING — The future of the Tamarack golf tournament lies not in the current crop of men and women, but with the junior men, junior women and the Cubs program.

Although there are only 38 junior men and four competitors in the junior women’s field, the potential for growing the annual event isn’t all that gloomy, according to committee chairman Dave Newman.

Last year, about 70 kids 12-and-under participated in the golf-only Cubs event. Nearly double that number of kids are registered for this year’s event, which will be held Tuesday and Wednesday at Poplar Ridge Golf Course in nearby Onanole.

Instruction from accredited Canadian Professional Golf Association members will also be included.

“We were around 70 last year and now we’re at 137 this year, which is fantastic,” Newman said. “We’re a little overwhelmed. The golf course is more than willing to have the Cubs do their clinic on the Tuesday and do their game on the Wednesday. We’re going to have to manipulate it a little bit, just to make things work for us, but those are great numbers.

“The Cubs and the juniors are what we need for the tournament to keep going in the future.”

Newman also believes that the instructional element is one of the best moves the Tamarack Committee has made in relation to the Cubs.

“We’ve had to adjust it a little bit, but it’s mostly going to be the younger kids that get to participate in the clinic and some of the older kids are actually going to play two rounds,” he said. “For us as a committee, it seemed important to move the Cubs division (to Poplar Ridge) so that we could actually do this. There’s a driving range over there that we can use, a chipping and putting facility and obviously with the numbers we have it’s been well-received.”

The event had been held at Elkhorn Resort’s nine-hole golf club, but the committee couldn’t be happier with moving the event.

“Poplar Ridge is a beautiful golf course that we’re not taking advantage of and why shouldn’t we? I think it’s a really good move for the tournament and it’s a really good move for the Cubs and they’re going to have a great time out there,” Newman said.

The ladies scramble event has also grown from its inaugural year last summer.

Sixteen teams of two, including defending champions Holly Scinocca and Micki Banks — albeit on separate teams — will play a best-ball format in an event described as fun and care-free.

“As far as the ladies division is concerned, the numbers were dwindling a little bit, so we thought, let’s try this two-person scramble and last year it was a huge success, so huge that we had to open up another flight this year and the ladies absolutely loved it,” Newman said.

“They’re really, really passionate about the fact that they can just go out there and have fun and not worry about what the score is and it’s been a great success.”

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