I write this column sitting in the media centre during the 2025 RBC Canadian Open at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley. With one week until Father’s Day, I figured what better topic to ruminate on than the bond which golf creates between fathers and sons.
Last year’s PGA tour feel-good story of the year occurred at the RBC Canadian Open held at Hamilton Golf & Country Club and involved a father and son. Robert MacIntyre, playing in his 45th career start on the tour, claimed his first win. What made this story resonate is that the 27-year-old’s caddy for the week was his dad Dougie, whose “day job” is head greenskeeper at Glencruitten Golf Club in Oban, Scotland.
The partnership worked magic and Canadian fans embraced “Bobby” and his dear old dad as honorary Canadians. Prior to the trophy presentation, the Scotsman told the media: “I just can’t believe I done it with my dad on the bag. The guy’s taught me the way I play golf.” Standing beside him, the elder MacIntyre had tears of joy and uttered these memorable words to CBS’ Amanda Balionis: “Unbelievable. I’m a grass cutter!”
While taking a break from writing at TPC Toronto, I witnessed a heated exchange between father and son midway through the second round of the RBC Canadian Open. Robert was still stewing about a double bogey that he made seven holes earlier; dad was telling him to let it go.
I chatted with Robert’s dad a while later. “It’s hard for a father to watch,” Dougie said. “His temper has always been his Achilles heel … you just can’t behave like that!”
Dad was visibly upset about his son’s inability to keep his emotions in check. Golf, as the idiom proclaims, is 90 per cent mental. Staying calm and focused is paramount to success. MacIntyre is not the only professional player who struggles with anger management issues. I witnessed Irishman Shane Lowry, paired in the second round with the Scotsman and Canadian Corey Conners, yell a not-so-nice four-letter word following an errant tee shot. The behaviour of both of these professional golfers reminded me of my fiery temper – especially during my formative years – when I struggled to regulate my ire and threw tantrums and clubs and yelled expletives and embarrassed my dad.
A Fascinating Golf Fact (I have 100 more in my book)
There are at least 10 fathers and sons who have individually won tournaments on the PGA tour, including: Jack Burke Sr./Jr.; Jay Haas/Bill Haas; Craig Stadler/Kevin Stadler; and, Bob Tway/Kevin Tway. And one of the more unique tournaments with a history that celebrates its 90th anniversary this year – and is all about family – is The Father and Three Sons Golf Classic. The scramble, which has become an annual tradition centred on friendship and fun, takes place in August this year in Collingwood at Monterra Golf at Blue Mountain.
A Christmas Gift to Remember
In the mid-1980s, my father gifted our family with a membership to Westmount Golf & Country Club. Before teeing it up at this private club in Kitchener, Ont., I had never golfed. Despite the difficulty of learning this new game compared to all of the other sports I played competitively such as tennis, hockey and soccer – I fell in love immediately. For the next decade, my summers started and ended at Westmount. There was a core group of us juniors who played together regularly; some days, we even played 36 holes.
When I was not playing with my friends, I made golf memories with my father. He enjoyed most of these rounds, except for the annual Parent & Child event which he detested because the rounds stretched to five-and-a-half hours and – as an alternate shot event – I often put him in spots on the golf course which he had never seen.
One of the best rounds I ever played occurred on June 25, 1989 with my dad on a Sunday morning coming down the night after attending my first-ever rock concert (The Who) at CNE Stadium in Toronto. I still have the handwritten note filed away somewhere all these decades later that my father left on the floor outside my bedroom. In it, he riffed on where I had been the previous evening: “I hope you had fun at the WHO concert last night. Guess WHO is going to beat WHO’s ass on the golf course today …,” you get the picture.
I had the last laugh that day thanks to a hot putter. In retrospect, I was also probably still dazed and confused from riding the “magic bus” to and from the show the night before. It was the only time I ever beat my father at golf, but that’s not the point. What matters is the lifelong bonds which golf formed between us. I’ve had many memorable games with my dad since then, such as an afternoon at Cherry Hill Golf Club in Fort Erie prior to attending a Jackson Browne concert in Buffalo. If not for my dad, and this generous gift that keeps giving, I might never have picked up a golf club.
More than any other sport, golf is a game that you can start young and still play long after your hair turns grey. Whether or not you can still shoot your age does not matter. Just playing golf is what does. It’s good for your mental and physical health and you can spend quality time making memories with your father, as I did, along the way. As Golf Canada proclaims: “golf can be played from age 4 to 104.”