Presidents Cup 2007

LORNE RUBENSTEIN, From the Globe and Mail

ÎLE-BIZARD, QUE. — The Presidents Cup is more than three months away, but things are already humming here at the Royal Montreal Golf Club, which will play host to the biennial competition between International and U.S. teams of 12 players. The field will have 24 of the world’s top players, including Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh.
Read more »

From PGATOUR.com

BLUE COURSE
The Royal Montreal Golf Club, the oldest golf club in North America, was founded on November 4, 1873. It was originally a 9-hole layout on Fletcher’s Field, part of Mount Royal Park. In 1896, the Club moved to Dixie, in the parish of Dorval, where 36 holes were enjoyed until the pressures of urban growth again dictated a decision to relocate. The Club moved to its present location on Ile Bizard in 1959, where 45 holes were designed by renowned Golf Course Architect Dick Wilson and his Associate Joe Lee.

In 2004, Rees Jones was retained to remodel the Blue Course. Renovations to the Front Nine were commenced in September 2004 and completed in the Spring of 2005. The Back Nine of the Blue Course was renovated in the Fall of 2005 and reopened for play in the August 2006.

The Blue Course has essentially the same layout, except that Holes 12 and 13 have been reversed; 12 is now a par 5 and 13 a par 3.

• The greens are all constructed to USGA specifications and sodded with L93 grown on the same USGA soil mix.

• The greens range in size from 4,000 to 6,000 square feet. All of the greens are elevated and tightly bunkered. The greens tend to have 3 distinct areas or “greens within a green”.

• The fairway bunkers were redesigned and relocated to a range of 280 to 320 yards from the tee. Carry bunkers are at 260 to 280 yards.

• The tees were all reconstructed into pods. Drainage has been installed in all tees.

• The fairways all have an engineered system of slit drains, similar to the Cambridge Drainage System.
Read more »

In September 1998 at Brookline, MA The Royal Montreal Golf Club and The Country Club of Brookline, Massachusetts celebrated the 100th anniversary of their interclub matches, the oldest international golf match in the world.

Alexander Dennistoun, founder of the Royal Montreal Golf Club, born in Dumbarton, Scotland in 1821, came to Canada as a young man and to Montreal about 1860. In 1873 he was the club’s first President and Captain. He died in Edinburgh in 1895.

In 1992 James A. Barclay published Alex Dennistoun: Golf in Canada, a History. In it he tells this story about Dennistoun:

“…he moved to Montreal in 1861. Five years later, he married a daughter of John Redpath of the Redpath Sugar Refinery.

“Over the next thirty years, Alex Dennistoun and his wife appear to have spent as much time in Scotland as in Canada. and it was during one of those visits home that he had some success in competitive golf. He played not only at St. Andrews and Musselburgh, but also at Royal Liverpool GC. At Liverpool, he won the Silver Cross for second-best scratch score in the spring competition of 1870. A year later he tied for the Gold Medal. So it was as an accomplished golfer-and no doubt an enthusiastic one-that he returned to Canada in 1872 with his wife, their first visit in years, and took a home on McTavish street, within walking distance of the new Mount Royal Park.

It is safe to say that a golfer is never keener to play than when he has just won a tournament, and never more frustrated than when he faces the future in a country without a golf course. The incentive for Dennistoun to form a golf club in Montreal is not hard to find.”

Figure 11: A coloured sketch of golfers participating in “The Golf Match between the Quebec and Montreal Clubs, on Fletcher’s Field, Montreal,” which appeared in the Canadian Illustrated News in October 1880, provides a glimpse of early Canadian golf (detail).

The first golf club established in North America was the Royal Montreal Golf Club, founded in 1873. Close on its heels were the Royal Quebec Golf Club in 1875, the Toronto Golf Club in 1881, and the Royal Ottawa in 1891.
Read more »