The rough is up and so are the scores these days at Morgan Creek Golf Club, where members and public players at the south Surrey layout are getting a taste of what PGA Tour Americas pros will face in late September at the season-ending Fortinet Cup Championship.
PGA TOUR agronomists have instructed Morgan Creek to grow its rough to about three and a half inches in preparation for the Sept. 25-28 event and director of golf operations Tom Doull recently got some good news from course superintendent Alan Ayres.
“Last week he told me we had hit the target the Tour gave us and I was actually happy to share that news with our players,” Doull said with a chuckle. “It’s not going to get any worse.”
While acknowledging the longer rough has most definitely made the course more challenging for players, Doull hasn’t heard a lot of complaints. Morgan Creek regulars are excited about their course playing host to the event that will send 10 players off to the Korn Ferry Tour in 2026.
Morgan Creek's Clubhouse - All Images Are Credit Morgan Creek GC
“Yeah, it does have an affect on the average golfer,” Doull said of the longer rough. “They have a hard time hitting the ball out and getting it back in play. But it does stop the ball from rolling into hazards and bunkers and what not. I have also had some compliments. It makes you think on the tee blocks. I am going to aim more toward the centre and not cut the corner as much because I don’t want to risk going in there.”
Morgan Creek was asked last year to consider holding the Fortinet Cup Championship and the club’s management decided the timing was right. Morgan Creek’s last big tournament events were the 2017 B.C. Amateur Championship and the 2011 Canadian Junior Boys Championship. So it’s been a while.
“We decided the time was right to get back into tournament golf,” Doull said. “So we looked at it and went to ownership with it to see if they were comfortable with us doing it because it means closing the golf course for a week. They challenged the leaders of the team here and we all said, yeah, we want to do it, we want the challenge.”
The season-ending tournament has often been held in Eastern Canada, but title sponsor Fortinet wanted it in British Columbia this year. “Fortinet has a major operation with 1,800 employees in Burnaby,” Doull says. “Fortinet was pressing PGA Tour Americas to get it here. They wanted to have it in their backyard. They are a world-wide company, but this is one of their bigger campuses.”
The Fortinet Cup Championship is arguably the third biggest pro event of the year in Canada, after the RBC Canadian Open and the CPKC Women’s Open, and Morgan Creek is determined to treat it as such.
A 2,500-square-foot hospitality area will be erected adjacent to the 18th green and beer and wine gardens will also be on site. Doull said the club has been encouraged by the corporate and community support it is receiving for the event.
“Our sponsorship has exceeded our target, so we are really happy with that,” he said. “The volunteer target set by the PGA TOUR was 250 and last I heard we were at 261 and that was last week, so we’re probably around 270 or so.”
Daily tickets to the event are $15, with $5 of that going to charity. Weekly passes are also available. Kids aged 16 and under get free admission. “Ticket sales have gone well,” Doull said.
“We are closing in on about 1,500 tickets for the week. Weather permitting, and especially if there is a Canadian on the leaderboard, we are expecting that we could have 2,000-plus people here on Sunday. The benchmark this year is New Brunswick, which had 5,100 people for their week. That’s our goal.”
The field will be comprised of the top 120 players on the Fortinet Cup points list following the Times Colonist Victoria Open, which is being played the previous week at Uplands Golf Club. While there won’t be any household names in the field, it’s a safe bet that a handful soon will be. PGA Tour Americas and its PGA Tour Canada and Mackenzie Tour predecessors have produced a long list of PGA TOUR winners.
U.S. Open champion J.J. Spaun is just the latest graduate to make a big splash. Johnny Keefer, who finished atop the Fortinet Cup points list in 2024, currently leads the Korn Ferry Tour points list and seems headed to the PGA TOUR in 2026.
Morgan Creek's 8th Green & Bunkering
In addition to some thick rough, there will be other tweaks made to the layout to make Morgan Creek less prone to the birdie barrage that most events become. For starters, the second and 17th holes, both par 5s, will play as long par 4s tournament week. That means Morgan Creek will play as a par 70.
Still, Doull expects scores to be low and he is certain of one thing: The course record will most definitely fall. It’s currently 67, which was shot by Scott Dunlap in a 2005 Canadian Open Monday qualifier held at Morgan Creek.
“These guys are shooting really low scores,” Doull said. “There were a couple of 59s in Ottawa and minus 20 gets you into a playoff. I think minus 15 to 18 will be pretty good here. I am very confident the course record is going to fall. These guys are going to get multiple kicks at it during the week.”
While Morgan Creek will yield lots of birdies, Doull thinks parts of it will prove a challenge. “Our Amen Corner, if you will, is 8, 9, 10 and 11. If the tees are in the back and the pin is in the back, No. 8 can play close to 250 yards as a par 3. Nine is a 430- or 440-yard uphill par 4 into a prevailing wind. And there’s a forced carry if the pin is back right.
“No. 10 is 470-yard par 4 from the tips. They probably won’t play from the tips all four days, but I expect they will a couple days. And it plays into the wind. The (447-yard) par 4 11th is a good one as well.”
Doull knows PGA Tour Americas staff will do their best to make the course a considerable challenge for players. “The goal, weather permitting, is to start the week with the greens at 11 and then with cutting programs and rolling by Sunday have them at 12 or 12.5. The PGA TOUR will pick the pin positions and they have already told me there will be some pins that will be three paces from the edge.”
Tournament week begins on the Monday with Adam Hadwin’s annual charity tournament that benefits the C.H.I.L.D. foundation. “Adam will be out for that,” Doull said. “That is a good tie-in because Adam used to work at Morgan Creek way back when and his dad did as well. And also Adam was an alumni of this tour.”
The tournament’s official pro-am, sponsored by RBC, goes on the Wednesday of tournament week. “We want people to come out and enjoy the tournament,” Doull says, before adding with fingers crossed: “The weather is going to be good. We have made a deal, late September in Vancouver is always great.”
Tickets and more information are available at fortinetcupchampionship.com.