BELL BAY TO HOST NEW ATLANTIC GOLF CHAMPIONSHIP
As we approach the 2014 golf season the four Atlantic Provincial Golf Associations are finalizing details for the new Atlantic Golf Championship that will take place on August 15-17, 2014 at the Bell Bay Golf Club in Cape Breton.
The New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador Golf Associationâs have collaborated to create a new tournament for the regions best golfers. The Atlantic Golf Championship will see golfers in six (6) categories competing both as inter-provincial teams and as individuals.
Twenty (20) golfers from each province will make up the exclusive eighty (80) player field and will play in the following Divisions:
Men (under 40)
Women (under 40)
Mid-Master Men (40-54)
Mid-Master Women (40- 49)
Senior (55+) and Super Senior (70+) Men
Senior (50+) and Super Senior (65+) Women
The determination of eligibility for each division will be in accordance with Golf Canadaâs national championship policies.
Each Golf Association will set its own qualifying process to determine the players that make up its team. The new Atlantic Cup will be awarded after 36 holes to the provincial team that accumulates the most overall points. All players will also compete for individual honours through 54 holes of stroke play, within their respective divisions.
The Associationâs note that a key objective for the Championship is to give players in different age brackets the opportunity to test their skills against others from across the region.
Over the next four years the Atlantic championship will rotate between the four provinces. Following Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador will host the tournament next year followed by New Brunswick in 2016 and Prince Edward Island in 2017.
Golf Canada, the National Sport Organization for golf in Canada has placed its support behind the Atlantic Golf Championship. In addition to providing exemptions for individual division winners into future National Championships, Golf Canada will also be donating Golf in Schools kits to a number of local schools as a legacy of the tournament.
David Campbell, Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Golf Association and this years host said that the Atlantic Championship is being developed to be the premier tournament for amateur golfers in Atlantic Canada.
âOur goal is to create a fun, first class experience for our players. We want the regions top competitive players to start thinking about the Atlantic Championship as soon as they tee it up in the spring. In years to come we hope that this tournament becomes the standard by which great amateur golfers in this region are recognized.â
The 2014 Atlantic Golf Championship takes place August 15th -17th at the Bell Bay Golf Course in Cape Breton.
For information contact:
Nova Scotia Golf Association
Golf Newfoundland and Labrador
New Brunswick Golf Association
Prince Edward Island Golf Association
ABOUT THE BELL BAY GOLF CLUB
The Bell Bay Golf Club is located in the historic Baddeck, one of Nova Scotia’s most beautiful little towns. From Baddeck’s earliest beginnings, when a trading post was set on Kidston Island, it’s fortunes have been bound up by the sea, which brought the settlers and carried their trade to and from the outside world in the wake of aboriginal canoes.
History has been made on this bay. Casey Baldwin’s great hydrofoil set the world’s water speed record just below our fairways, and from it’s frozen surface the Silver Dart made the first successful airplane flight in the British Empire.
Alexander Graham Bell’s baronial summer place on the far headland was home to what was perhaps the greatest assemblage of inventive genius the world had known – tinkering with everything from radar to rocket propulsion, the iron lung to sonar from the airscrew to airships, this bay was the setting for them all.
Baddeck is a saltwater port and ships have been built here, and sailed from here, since earliest times. Many of then were known in harbours around the world, their names reflecting their Cape Breton origins. It seems fitting that this seaside golf course should recall some of those famous ships by giving their names to appropriate holes whose character is reflected in their names.
The sails of the yachts that throng the bay today reflect those of the tall ships which one plied these waters, and whose names are enshrined in the golf course high above.