TORONTO—Toronto’s Oakdale Golf and Country Club (OGCC) will be hosting its first Professional Golf Association tour event (the RBC Canadian Open in just under two weeks), and the course has a definite Manitoulin Island connection.
Patrick Greenman, who is from Barrie Island and is the son of Lance and Lillian Greenman, has a big part to play in this prestigious Canadian championship tournament. He is the director of property for OGCC.
“What can I say? This is the pinnacle of the industry to host the Canadian men’s golf championship. It is pretty important to the industry, and it is important that we provide a good product,” Mr. Greenman told The Expositor.
Mr. Greenman, who has been in the golf industry for 21 years, has been the property director at OGCC for two seasons and took on the position at about the same time as it was announced that Oakdale was going to be hosting the Canadian championship.
He told Golf Course Maintenance magazine that he is calm even though the historic club will be hosting its inaugural PGA tour event. “It’s not as big as you might think it will be. Sure, it is a baptism by fire since I arrived here only two years ago. But if you take a step back and put it in perspective, in the grand scheme of things, we are still just maintaining a golf course.”
Last fall Mr. Greenman volunteered with the turf and maintenance team for the whole week at the PGA Tour’s CJ CUP, held at Congaree Golf Club in South Carolina. Over seven days working on site, the Canadian superintendent got a good feel for the daily agronomic preparation required to pull off a successful Tour event. In his previous role as assistant superintendent at The Raven Golf Club at Lora Bay in Collingwood, Mr. Greenman also experienced these increased expectations firsthand when The Raven hosted several professional events, the 2007 Telus Skins Game and the Ford Wayne Gretzky Classic on the Nationwide Tour (now the Korn Ferry Tour).
After graduating from Manitoulin Secondary School and going to the University of Waterloo to study kinesiology for two years, Mr. Greenman began his career in the golf course maintenance industry at the Manitoulin Island Country Club, working under the tutelage of course superintendent Arthur Pummell for two seasons. “Patrick showed a lot of interest and promise in the job,” said Mr. Pummell who suggested he go to Seneca College (King City) for the golf course technician course.
“Absolutely, Arthur was a very good teacher, and you learn good work ethics because he is that kind of a guy. Working for him was great,” said Mr. Greenman. He pointed out that Mr. Pummell’s son Jason had worked at MICC. “Jason worked at MICC before me and then he moved to work at the Toronto Board of Trade Golf and Country Club (Woodbridge), and (with the support and reference from Arthur Pummell) I ended up following him down there.”
“Patrick’s boss at the Board of Trade was Gord Witteveen, a legend in the industry, who mentored Jason and then Pat and helped them move on in turf,” said Arthur Pummell
Mr. Greenman worked at the Board of Trade “for three seasons then I moved to Oakdale Golf and Country Club (as assistant superintendent) for four seasons.”
“I then had a great opportunity to go to The Raven at Lora Bay Golf Club,” said Mr. Greenman. “We had the opportunity to be part of the construction and grow-in of the course. This was a really great experience; you don’t get that type of opportunity in this industry very often if ever.” While he was at The Raven, the course hosted a Telus Skins game and a Nationwide Tour event.
“Then I had the opportunity to be the superintendent at The Briars Golf Club for 10 seasons,” continued Mr. Greenman. The club hosted the Canadian Amateur golf championship during his tenure there.
“Then I was fortunate to have the opportunity to come back to Oakdale,” stated Mr. Greenman.
Professional Golf Association tour event, the RBC Canadian Open in June.
As director of property, “I oversee everything that happens outside of the clubhouse,” said Mr. Greenman. “We look after the maintenance of the outdoor pool, driving range, 27 holes of golf clay court tennis courts and pickleball.”
“It is a big operation,” acknowledged Mr. Greenman. And with the major tournament upcoming, “there is lots happening right now with Golf Canada representatives here and building structures and maintaining and working on the course.”
“We’ve known for a couple of years that Oakdale was hosting the Canadian championship, so there has been a lot of construction taking place, building back t-decks to make the course longer, narrowing the fairways, and adding at least one new bunker on each hole.”
“Today we are doing sodding on several patches and just working on the course, condition-wise, to make sure it is in tip top condition. We have three weeks until the tournament starts (June 8-11), and we have 60 staff on hand.”
“We have a 6 am start time meeting before we start work for the day,” said Mr. Greenman. “We have a morning meeting of the entire staff and divide up the jobs to be carried out that day. Usually, we divide staff up into three crews to each work on nine holes of the course every day. With the tournament we are working as one group.”
While preparations continue on the course it is still open to members and visitors to play up until the week previous to the start of the event. “The members are still playing,” said Mr. Greenman. “We won’t actually close the course except for two weeks, the week prior and the tournament week.
As soon as Oakdale knew it was hosting the event, the clock started ticking, Mr. Greenman said. With the pandemic it was hard to get PGA tour reps on the site. But in the fall of 2021, to get a head start, “we expedited a couple of items on our master plan we knew would be on their (PGA) list.”
Widening some fairways and narrowing others was part of that plan. Drainage and irrigation were also to-do items to upgrade a system that was past its prime. Oakdale upgraded its irrigation control system and satellites. The biggest project was a modernization and cleanup up of the bunkers on all 27 holes. With three nine-hole tracts to choose from to help determine the best mix of 18 holes for the pros, what resulted was a 7,460-yard composite routing that will take in a mix of holes from the Thompson Nine and the Homenuik Nine, along with the full Knudson nine.
“The club members are very understanding of all the work that has been done and they are as excited to host this tournament as we are,” said Mr. Greenman. “Two years ago, this past spring the club membership voted on whether to host the tournament. Not absolutely everyone voted in favour but just about everyone was positive about hosting the Canadian championships. And we will be hosting the Open again in 2026. We are all looking forward to it.”
The course was founded in 1926, with renewed Canadian golf course architect Stanley Thompson designing the original 18 holes. Robbie Robinson added nine holes in 1957. Oakdale is the 37th course in the 117-year history of the Canadian Open to host the tournament, the third oldest continuously run event on the PGA Tour.
