Good morning all !
This is the first Canadian Open since 1985 that I am unable to attend so I must admit I am saddened not to be with all my friends and colleagues in the media center at the Abbey.
Grumpy Curtis Strange won it by 2 shots over Jack Nicklaus and Greg Norman that year, his first of two Canadian championships, yes those were the calibre of guys who showed up every year when it was considered by many as the 5th major.
I think it was sponsored by du Maurier then, I remember free cigarettes being available for the media, who were allowed to smoke while they worked, heck they even opened the bar at lunch time and after 6pm !!
I would take a week's holiday from work and volunteered as a dispatcher with the transportation committee back then, so got to meet all the players and their wives. The late Dick Grimm was the tournament director in his powder blue blazer and a big beefy guy called Bill Paul was his young assistant, and that started our life long friendship that is still going strong to this day.
It was during those 31 years as a volunteer and broadcaster with the Fan590 and our Fairways golf show I met Bob Weeks, Weeksie to his friends, and we went on to do 18 years of memorable shows together, along with Bob Durant originally then Scott Metcalfe.
In 2006 at Hamilton G&CC where Jim Furyk beat Bart Bryant, the media tent was down at the foot of a hill and when we showed up to do the broadcast at 7am it was raining hard, and a torrent of water was flowing down the hill and right through the tent under all our electrical equipment. Metcalfe mentioned we all may just get electrocuted ! as we did the show while standing up on chairs with a river running below us !
Well congratulations to my pal Weeksie who was officially inducted to the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame at his beloved Weston GC on Wednesday. As I told him he is now amongst all his peers where he belongs. I was always in the studio for our show, while Weeksie was often off on behalf of Scoregolf, then later for TSN to cover the Masters, or the other majors and of course I would wake him at some ridiculous hours of the morning to give us a live report.
In his time at Scoregolf, starting as an assistant editor, I'm sure he had a little moustache back then, and maybe even tugged on the odd smoke, he took that magazine to the very top of Canadian golf publications, and the annual Scoregolf awards were the academy awards of our golf industry.
Bob is a proud Canadian, a quiet, private caring guy, and a great dad to his son Christopher who used to sit on my knee when he was a toddler, with a set of headsets on during our early radio shows. He has had a long friendship with Mike Weir who was with him at Weston on Wednesday, that's typical of the esteem with which Weeksie is held amongst his peers.
I am proud to say he is my friend. Well done pal.
Bryan Angus
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