Ex-Argo Bryan Crawford sees daylight after Canadian Open handoff

That’s part of the story behind the scenes for next month’sRBC Canadian Open that could retrieve some lost lustre and get this event back among the more prestigious competitions on the PGA Tour.

A new date on the golf schedule, the week before the U.S. Open, has revitalized this tournament as organizers prepare to host the strongest field in years at Hamilton Golf and Country Club.

Rory McIlroy is going to be there for the first time. So will Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka and Bubba Watson, riding into Steeltown in his RV.

No Tiger, sadly, but you can’t have everything.

At the helm is that former football player, Bryan Crawford.

Crawford, now 37, built a career between 2005 and 2011 as a special teams star and co-captain with the Toronto Argonauts. He was coached by Pinball Clemons, Rich Stubler, Don Matthews and the utterly clueless Bart Andrus. He was there for the exciting years under the ownership of David Cynamon and Howard Sokolowski, and there to watch David Braley let the organization wither.

He played with Damon Allen and Mike O’Shea. He took Ricky Williams on a tour of a mall in his hometown of Hamilton and watched a mob scene ensue.

“I remember Ricky saying, ‘You gotta get me out of here,’” laughed Crawford.

After stops with Ontario University Athletics and Canada Basketball, his pursuit of a post-football career has landed him with Golf Canada as the tournament director of the RBC Canadian Open.

“What the CFL provided was a learning environment for working with different types of people,” said Crawford, who doesn’t golf much and only got a new set of clubs for the first time last year.

“You’re in such a diverse locker room. There are people like me coming out of Queen’s University with $40,000 in student debt, and then you have Ricky Williams, a millionaire who’s on 60 Minutes, and then everything and everyone in between.

“I was also a union rep and got involved in collective bargaining. So I spent the better part of a decade learning a lot of stuff.”

The father of three is walking into a situation that has more upside now, because RBC’s influence on the PGA Tour forced this new date (play starts June 6) after years of following the British Open in July and getting less-than-ideal fields to attract paying customers, TV eyeballs and corporate sponsorships.

Last year, the tour aggressively redesigned its schedule for 2019. The biggest move saw one of its four majors, the PGA Championship, shifted to mid-May from August. The coveted week before the U.S. Open had previously been occupied by the St. Jude Classic in Memphis, but Golf Canada CEO Laurence Applebaum was able to grab it for this national championship.

“The tournament had gone stale,” said Crawford. “This opportunity was huge. It was really clear all the stakeholders were driving towards raising the tournament’s relevance once again, and bringing it to a new place. They needed someone to loop all the connecting parts together.”

That’s Crawford’s job, and he’s got an intriguing balancing act ahead of him. Golf is a conservative sport with a conservative culture. At the same time, other events are taking the sport in an entirely new direction, like the Waste Management Phoenix Open with its wild, raucous stadium hole.

“We want to find ways to appeal to a different demographic,” said Crawford. “But at the same time, we have this great history we want to respect and honour.”

This year, there will be 15,000 people on the Hamilton course after the second round to watch the popular Florida Georgia Line in concert as part of a new musical element. The tradition of a “hockey rink” hole — complete with boards, marshals wearing referee jerseys, and hockey masks for tee blocks — will continue.

On opening day, meanwhile, there will be a commemorative fly-by of a Lancaster bomber and other vintage aircraft to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day.

A little something for everybody and some Canadiana, plus golf.

A Canadian winner to follow up on Brooke Henderson’s historic win in Saskatchewan last year at the LPGA Canadian Open would be history of another kind. No Canadian male has won the tournament since 1954.

Corey Conners of Listowel, Ont. is the only Canadian to win on tour this year, and he was in Hamilton checking out the course this week. When the 27-year-old won the Valero Texas Open in April, his inconsistent putter was working, his iron play was razor sharp and he looked like he could be that player to end Canada’s drought.

“They’re doing a great job making this a premier event again,” he said. “It’s always been a highlight for me, but it was hurt by the date. This takes it in a new direction.”

The lessons learned in Hamilton will be applied next year when the tournament shifts to Toronto, the biggest market in the country.

“We’ve got to find our own voice,” said Crawford. “When it’s over this year, we’ll ask ourselves: Do we have the right balance?”

Resetting a sports competition this old isn’t easy. But the RBC Canadian Open is back in the thick of things, with a chance for growth now that hasn’t been there for many years.

Damien Cox is a former Star sports reporter who is a current freelance columnist based in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @DamoSpin

VIA: https://www.thestar.com/sports/golf/opinion/2019/05/10/ex-argo-bryan-crawford-sees-daylight-after-canadian-open-handoff.html

Picture Courtesy of the RBC Canadian Open