The Royal Canadian Golf Association will unveil its new identity as Golf Canada during an 11 a.m. ET press conference Thursday. Well, the RCGA will still be the RCGA when it comes to such business as working on rules with other organizations. Governors will wear the RCGA jacket when they attend USGA and R&A functions, but still, this marks the dawn of a new day.
At least that's what the freewheeling and freethinking RCGA executive director Scott Simmons hopes. He wants Canadians to connect with Golf Canada and to feel part of it. He told me Wednesday that "We are all Golf Canada." (Disclosure: Golf Canada will have a relationship with the Globe in terms of Web content).
By saying "We are all Golf Canada," Simmons meant club pros, the CPGA, provincial golf associations, club members - everybody in the game across Canada, that is. That will be a primary theme of the press conference. Simmons wants Canadians to participate in helping produce top-notch Canadian golfers who will succeed on the world stage. The RCGA has been the National Sports Organization for the game since 2005, this designation having been bestowed on it by Sport Canada. It has to produce like other sports, and that's why it's produced its Long Term Player Development Program.
Simmons told me that the R&A's main man Peter Dawson and the USGA's main man David Fay told him the LTPD is terrific. It's basically five years old in its current incarnation, and deserves more time before we decide whether it's truly going to produce great players. It's an open question as to whether the RCGA should even be involved in trying to produce elite players. Simmons's answer is "If not us, who?"
Anyway, once the RCGA became the NSO for golf it had to produce. Or it has to down the road, but not too far down the road. Soon would be preferable. It gets funding from Sport Canada. Sport Canada likes results. Sport Canada will be looking to Golf Canada for results. This is in the order of the night follows the day.
"The RCGA governors are behind us," Simmons said about their support for Golf Canada. (I'd say it couldn't have been easy for some of the older guard to accept the name change, though). "We borrowed $3,000,000 from our capital fund to do what we're doing over the next three years. We've shown our Board a business model that we think will pay back the Board, if you think of them as investors."
Simmons said that if this all doesn't work out after three years, well, he doesn't expect he'd be able to hold on to his job. I admire him for standing up for what he believes. Whether Canadians will go along is a far different matter. It's all about getting Canadians so interested in Golf Canada and its objectives that they will contribute some money. There are various levels of involvement that you'll hear more about from the press conference.
Will golfers want to contribute 10 bucks, 20, 30, 60, whatever amount, so that they can feel they're part of developing successful tour players? Simmons believes he and his associates at Golf Canada, along with an army of "ambassadors" they hope to recruit at clubs, will convince Canadians to drop a few bucks to move things along.
"It's marketing 101," he said. "People will support organizations that mean something to them. We have to reach them on an emotional level.
The message is that Canadian golfers need to rally together."
Simmons has been talking about these ideas since he took over as the RCGA's executive director in the summer of 2007. Golf Canada has arrived. We'll see during this season whether Canadian golfers will go along for the ride. Simmons has been dreaming big, and he's putting his job on the line and his beliefs to the test. Can't fault him for that.