Wednesday at Glen Abbey.. Interviews with Els, Mahan and Donald...

Bright breezy day at Glen Abbey.. Pro Am day which if the truth were known the pros could do without, however they realize how much money the ams are paying.. $20,000 for a team of three this year, so they put on a brave face..

One year I played with Tim Petrovic and he told me ( I think to set us all at ease) that one cold windy Pro Am day he was paired with 3 rather elderly ladies. The first one whiffed, the second one whiffed then the third one declined...He said the best part of the whole day came on the 9th green when the decliner was appointed by the other two to approach Tim and said  " We ladies hope you don't mind but we'd rather not play the back nine"...

He suppressed his glee somehow or another, insisted that they were just rounding into form, and just as he sensed they were losing their resolve, he backed off and said "of course this back nine is much tougher" and was inwardly relieved to see them re group and stick to their original plan..

Of the pros playing today Luke Donald has the best score at -6 so far, although DJ is at -5 through 9.

I am happy to see the breeze blowing to dry this course out get it firm and running. Hamilton last year and St Georges in 2010 were soaked early in the week and the pros took very good courses apart, Carl Petterson 71 68 60 67 266 -14 at St Georges and Scott Piercy 62 67 67 67 263 -17 at Hamilton were not great scores for our National Championship.. I don't expect Merion or Muirfield tough but somewhere in between.

There are thunderstorms in the weekend forecast but nothing like a torrential rain that had the course under water when Chez Reavie won it in 2008..

We had a chance to interview Luke Donald and Hunter Mahan and Ernie Els... Donald is on his 4th straight week and looks like it, he says playing four straight weeks is never good, especially with the WGC at Firestone Aug 1-4 then the PGA Championship right after..

Undoubtedly his affiliation to RBC is the reason he is here.

Ernie looks relaxed and is certainly in better shape this year than he was last when he came to Hamilton after winning the Open.. Pretty big party on Sunday last year, into Hamilton Tuesday, big dinner Tuesday night, another function on Wednesday.. he laughed and said he never saw the course at all until Thursday !!!

Easy going, relaxed, what a great world wide ambassador he is for this game, watch out for him this week, he has his family with him..

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Bryan