CHELMSFORD—Much like the impact he made at Humber College in the mid-2000s, the induction of golfer Ryan Willoughby into the Ontario Colleges Athletic Association (OCAA) Hall of Fame (OCAA) was sudden.
“It really came out of nowhere,” stated Mr. Willoughbly of the news he would be inducted into the OCAA hall of fame. “I graduated from Humber 13 years ago, but I guess like any hall of fame it can take several years before you are nominated and selected,” he said, noting that every year Ontario colleges put forward a series of names of athletes that they nominate for the hall of fame.
Mr. Willoughby is familiar to many people on Manitoulin Island. He is the son of Colleen and Lloyd Willoughby of Mindemoya, and he spent all his summers on Manitoulin Island growing up and playing a lot of golf on the Island’s three golf courses.
“We still go over every two or three weeks to see my parents and while were there, I will usually play Brookwood Brae in Mindemoya or Rainbow Ridge Golf Course in Manitowaning,” said Mr. Willoughby.
“I grew up playing these courses and the Manitoulin Island Country Club (now Manitoulin Golf in Gordon),” said Mr. Willoughby.
When Mr. Willoughby enrolled in the professional golf management program at Humber College back in 2004, he signed up for the program not knowing what a golf pro did. He stuck it out following up his three years in golf management with three years of business administration studies in a stream that merged the efforts of both Humber College and the University of Guelph.
Mr. Willoughby failed to make the Humber Hawks golf team as a freshman. However, by the fall season of 2005 he was unquestionably one of the best ball strikers to ever compete in the OCAA, reads a Humber press release. He was a consistent performer for the Hawks, winning the 2006 OCAA championship along with individual Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) medal performances in 2006 and 2009.
“I had aspirations of making the Humber team my first year there, but didn’t make it,” said Mr. Willoughby. “So, I worked very hard on my game that winter.”
His program of studies offered him regular access to the Humber “golf lab” and the opportunity to work regularly with golf pro Bob Beauchemin. The latter tweaked his posture and grip that summer and, “my ball striking went to a completely different level.”
In the summer of 2005, “I used some of the stuff I had learned and worked on in Toronto,” he explained. “And that summer I pretty well ran the tables winning the men’s opens at the courses on the Island. I had really good scores at MICC and Rainbow Ridge, under par, and won both those tournaments. My golf coach at Humber (Ray Chateau) called that summer to see how things were going, and I told him the success I had been having and the scores I had posted.” The coach was impressed by the scores and results but had doubts about the distance of the courses he had played.
“I went back to Toronto that fall and made the team as a walk-on,” said Mr. Willoughby. “I won the Ontario (collegiate) championship that year, placed seventh or eighth at the Canadian championships and then qualified to represent Team Canada in Italy at the World university Games (and again in 2010 in Spain).” He won the Idylwylde Invitational in 2010 and 2015, and in 2009 he went to Scotland with Team Canada.
In 2007 Mr. Willoughby helped Humber golf capture its second RCGA title, firing a two-under par tournament as the Hawks combined to shoot a program-record 18-under par over the four-day event.
“Ryan was a quiet leader who led by example, particularly in 2009 when leading the Hawks to their seventh national championship. Ryan’s final round birdies on the first and third holes opened a lead over Champlain St. Lawrence that would not be relinquished.”
A two-time CCAA All-Canadian, Mr. Willoughby was inducted into the Humber Varsity Hall of Fame in 2012.
“I now have my own financial planning practice,” Mr. Willoughby told The Expositor. “My goals are now more business and family related,” he said, noting he is married, and he and his wife have two young children. “We get out and play once or twice a week and my game is still pretty sharp.”
“I credit my golf success and the person I have become from the person who shaped me, gave me a lot of opportunities and confidence, my dad,” stated Mr. Willoughby. It was his dad who got him started in golf at a very young age. “When I was one, he took me in a back of the cart on a car seat. He would bungee-cord a car seat into the cart and I would tag along.”
“I remember not being very old and going around as a caddy at the MICC men’s open, and my brother and I would spend the rest of the weekend looking for golf balls,” said Mr. Willoughby. “All the players used the most expensive golf balls and would lose them during the tournament. The bush would be full of Titleist Pro ‘V’s.”
“I want to introduce our kids to the game of golf, like my parents did for me,” said Mr. Willoughby. “Golf gave me so many opportunities and allowed me to take part in so many cool things and travel to so many places.”
Mr. Willoughby said his son Matthew (four) and two-year-old daughter Kate “both have golf starter kits. I will be bringing them out to the course, but maybe not to the same level my dad did with me. This summer we will go out on a weekly basis; we will do family golf nights. My wife took up golf last summer. She could see the writing on the wall that if she wanted to see me and the kids during the summer, she would have to take up golf,” he quipped.
“I will be playing in the Idylwylde Invitational this summer,” said Mr. Willoughby. “I missed last year’s tournament, the first time in 20 years. It’s a long weekend and a lot of golf, but it is the major for us in the North.”
