‘Rookie’ Andrew Pinette Grabs First-Round Lead At B.C. Senior Men’s Championship
Andrew Pinette - Image Credit Brad Ziemer/BC Golf
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
WILLIAMS LAKE — There’s a new kid in town. Of course, at the B.C. Senior Men’s Championship being a ‘kid’ is a relative kind of thing.
The rookies at this championship are 55 years old and one of them has the first-round lead at Williams Lake Golf & Tennis Club. Surrey’s Andrew Pinette fired a two-under 69 — the only sub-par round of the day — to grab a two-shot lead on a course that brings back lots of memories.
Pinette doesn’t just have an age advantage on much of the 155-man field. He also has more than a little inside information on the golf course.
Pinette grew up in Williams Lake and was a junior member at the course until his family moved to the Lower Mainland when he was 16.
“That is part of the reason I wanted to come up here this year,” Pinette said. “It was my old stomping ground and it’s my first year of (senior) eligibility.”
Pinette played hundreds of rounds at Williams Lake as a junior member. “When I was a kid my dad would drop me off here at seven in the morning and there’d be 15 or 16 of us juniors and we couldn’t play until after 10 when the members had teed off.
“We’d play at least 36 holes and then get picked up at 6 or 7 o’clock. So it was pretty hard not to get good. When I was a junior we always had one of the largest contingents at the B.C. Junior, even though we were from a small town like Williams Lake.”
Pinette, now a member at Shaughnessy Golf & Country Club in Vancouver, had four birdies and two bogeys in his round. “I missed a few out there, which is always the case,” he said. “But I had a lot of good looks today. I was pretty happy with the round overall.”
While the course has changed some since his teenage days, Pinette said what hasn’t changed is the test presented by its greens. “You’ve got these crowned greens here and you have to have a really good short game to get it up and down,” he said. “That is really the defence of this course. It’s not a long course. You don’t need driver. It’s a wedge game out here.”
Four players — Mark Dupuy of Victoria, Steven Savage of Surrey, Bernie Bolokoski of Kelowna and Steve Wheeler of Whistler — are tied for second at even-par.
Wheeler, a 57-year-old who plays out of Nicklaus North, said a couple of missed greens hurt him on his final few holes. “It’s tough if you miss a green,” he said. “There is so much slope on the greens, so if you miss it on the wrong side it’s tough to get it up and down. It’s an interesting course. It’s in awesome condition.”
Five-time champion Doug Roxburgh of Vancouver opened with a two-over 73 that left him inside the top 20. After making the turn at two-over, the 71-year-old Roxburgh started his back nine by birdieing three of his first four holes. He chipped in for one of those birdies on the par 4 12th hole.
“I ran out of gas,” Roxburgh said. “I made some bad swings and I didn’t putt well today. I just needed to finish the round. The wind came up on the last hole and changed it from a drive and a short iron to a drive and a 5-iron.
Defending champion Sandy Harper of Nanaimo opened with a four-over 75. In addition to the Senior championship for players aged 55 and older, a Super-Senior Championship is also being contested at Williams Lake for players aged 65 and older.
A 54-hole two-man better-ball competition is also being contested this week. The team of John Gallacher of Burnaby and Steven Savage of Surrey and the team of Scott Humphreys of Kelowna and Steve Protz of Whistler are tied for the lead at six-under par.
Click HERE for complete first round scoring.