Canadian Ian LeggattJACK DEMPSEY/The Associated Press
Ian Leggatt has decided to try to make history in an area he never figured he'd worked. The 2002 Tucson Open winner who retired from the PGA Tour in 2009 due to injuries will soon take over as the director of golf at the Summit Golf and Country Club in Richmond Hill, Ont. Leggatt, 46, told me this morning that he thinks the "model in Canada is broken when it comes to private clubs," in that, in his opinion, clubs have become more concerned with the business of golf than the game itself.
"You need revenue, sure," Leggatt, a personable guy who has been working most recently with the Wasserman Media Group as its Executive Vice-President Golf, said. "But the pro isn't engaged anymore at the game itself. Ask just about every pro in Canada and they'll tell you they don't play."
Leggatt won't be the head pro at Summit, mind you. In fact, he's now in the process of helping the club hire a new head professional. He remembers a time when, to be sure, there wasn't such a person at a club with the title "executive director," or "director of golf." Then head pros at many clubs became just that, and drifted away from close contact with members.
"I and the staff will be engaged with members and their guests," Leggatt, known to his friends as Leggo, said. "I'll be a touch point with every member and guest who comes to the club. Summit is making a stand where it wants to go. I'll be helping create that path."
I remember when Summit was one of the top clubs in the Greater Toronto Area and in the country. As it happens, I wrote the 75th anniversary history of the club, in 1987. The club was then noted for having a great number of low-handicap golfers as members. Many fine golfers still belong to Summit, but it's slipped in ScoreGolf's rankings to 80th and, as Leggatt said, it should be in the top 25.
It hasn't helped that the course has gone through a variety of changes that have sometimes divided members. Changes are ongoing, but the club has at least chosen a path towards making the course what it should be. The property is outstanding. There's hardly a better setting anywhere for a golf club that should be about the course and the pleasures of the game more than anything else. Summit is also doing a golf academy, and Leggatt said he'll be involved in that as well. It sounded as if he'll be involved in everything from a golf side.
"Summit is a golfer's club," he said, meaning, I think, to distinguish it from clubs that are more about business and socializing. I used to enjoy driving into the club and seeing members, including kids, chipping around the lawn in front of the stately clubhouse. I believe there was a green in the area. Right away I knew I was at a golf course. No valet parking, nobody at a gate making a phone call to "golf operations." Please, may this never transpire at Summit.
Leggatt's new job came as a surprise even to him. He attended a June 25th centennial event where Dustin Johnson and Lorie Kane played the course. He played with them, and they had dinner that night. Club president Steve Ralph was at the dinner and, Leggatt said, asked him if he could help with a short list of people he thought suitable for the position of director of golf.
It wasn't long before John Kawaja, TaylorMade's executive vice-president and a 20-year Summit member, suggested that Ralph chat with Leggatt. If Summit really wanted to make a statement, well, hiring Leggatt would announce that it was taking golf the game at least as seriously as golf the business.
"I never wanted to go down that path [of being a director of golf]," Leggatt said, "But the opportunity came up. I was happy with Wasserman. My time there was invaluable, and I'll still be involved in some way."
Leggatt is a busy fellow. He's co-host of the weekly golf show on Rogers Sportsnet/FAN 590. He's a prominent advisor for Golf to Conquer Cancer, an innovative, Canada-wide event that was announced recently and that will take place on July 25, 2013. Details can be found here. Harry Rosen Inc. is the presenting sponsor, while TaylorMade is also involved. The event is being billed as the world's largest national golf fundraiser for cancer research.
As for his new and challenging position at Summit, Leggatt thinks back to when he was a kid playing at the Galt Country Club in Cambridge, Ont.
"The pro was always on the range or in the shop talking with members, not in the office doing spreadsheets," he said. "I think that the business model for golf has gone sideways."
At Summit, Leggatt intends to straighten it out. Full Leggo ahead, one might say.
RELATED LINK: More blogs from Lorne Rubenstein
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Lorne Rubenstein has written a golf column for The Globe and Mail since 1980. He has played golf since the early 1960s and was the Royal Canadian Golf Association's first curator of its museum and library at the Glen Abbey Golf Club in Oakville, Ontario and the first editor of Score, Canada's Golf Magazine, where he continues to write a column and features. He has won four first-place awards from the Golf Writers Association of America, one National Magazine Award in Canada, and he won the award for the best feature in 2009 from the Golf Journalists Association of Canada. Lorne has written 12 books, including Mike Weir: The Road to the Masters (2003); A Disorderly Compendium of Golf, with Jeff Neuman (2006); This Round's on Me (2009); and the latest Moe & Me: Encounters with Moe Norman, Golf's Mysterious Genius (2012). He is a member of the Ontario Golf Hall of Fame and the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame. Lorne can be reached at rube@sympatico.ca . You can now follow him on Twitter @lornerubenstein