Presidents Cup | A course adapted to new realities

In 48 days, the best PGA golfers will meet to compete in the Presidents Cup on the prestigious Royal Montreal Golf Club course. Needless to say, with just a few weeks to go until the event, which will attract more than 30,000 people per day from September 24 to 29 on Île Bizard, the course is ready to be at the heart of the action.

To highlight the progress of preparations for the event, which will take place for the second time in its history at the Royal Montreal – the only golf course in Canada to have had this privilege so far – the organizers of the Presidents Cup invited a group of journalists on Tuesday to tour the course to discover its thousand and one subtleties.

Like almost all sports journalists, The Presswho are also golfers, were stuck in Paris covering the Olympic Games, the Sports boss kindly offered me to go and represent them by playing a little 18-hole round and then explain to readers what the state of play was.

I had never played at the Royal Montreal Golf Club and I am all the more pleased to have done so on Tuesday because I discovered a course in top shape, impeccably manicured with fairways cut with nail scissors and sand traps in which one would not hesitate to spread a large beach towel.

“It looks like it’s been six months since anyone played on the course, it’s so soft and well-drained, you don’t see any divots, it’s smoothed out everywhere,” observes my playing companion, Bob Weeks, a senior reporter and golf analyst for TSN.

The management of the Royal Montreal Golf Club and the organizers of the Presidents Cup have spared no effort in getting the most out of the already extremely well-equipped course with its two 18-hole courses and the vastness of the area where they are located.

I had never played at the Royal Montreal, but I attended a day of the 2007 Presidents Cup and followed several different foursomes over several holes in a row.

But it’s not the same course as in 2007; it had to be lengthened by more than 200 yards, to 7,300 yards, to adapt it to the new technologies that today allow golfers to launch real missiles to more than 340 yards.

The shortest hole will be 150 yards and the longest, hole No. 6, will be 575 yards.

And it’s not an easy course. If you miss the fairway on your tee shot, you end up in the long grass that is bushy to the point where you might have trouble finding your buried ball.

Each of the holes is jealously protected by large and abundant sand traps – fortunately very well drained and aerated – several of which are deeply embedded, which obliges the golfer to be extra vigilant in his attempts to get out which, otherwise, can easily become complicated.

After the first nine holes of the course, I visited the traps next to the greens seven times, which gives you an idea of ​​their omnipresence and their usefulness in protecting the place. On each of my visits, it only took me one shot to emerge from the trap and find myself on the green because the sand is so finely sifted, which is not often seen in Quebec. A pleasure.

It should be noted that the Royal Montreal Golf Club undertook two years ago to completely redo all the traps on the Blue course and to replace the granule particles with new ones.

The greens are undulating, which means that long hitters can not only hope to get as close to the green as possible, they must also plan an approach shot that will allow them to reach the ideal plateau and then make their putt.

Hits and numbers

The Presidents Cup will take place on the Blue Course of the Royal Montreal Golf Club, whose transformation is already well underway, with pavilions (which will house around a hundred boxes), stands and platforms of all kinds being installed to accommodate more than 20,000 guests and VIPs expected every day and more than 10,000 visitors from the public who will be there daily.

“We started working on the ground last October and once the Presidents Cup is over, it’s going to take us three months to unpack everything,” said Ryan Hart, general manager of the Presidents Cup.

More than 600,000 square feet of supporting structures will be erected on the Blue course site, including a stage that can hold 3,000 people at the start of hole No. 1, where the aim is to recreate the atmosphere of the Bell Centre.

“That’s three times more than the Canadian Open,” Guillaume Béland, vice-president of sales at Effix Marketing, told me.

In 2007, we could welcome 25,000 people per day to the Presidents Cup, while this year, we will be able to welcome 33,000 daily visitors to the site of the oldest golf club in North America, which celebrated its 150th anniversary last year. A site capable of welcoming a lot of people without the crowd effect becoming too oppressive.