Chilliwack, BC's Brett Webster Plays His Way Into RBC Canadian Open
By Brad Ziemer, British Columbia Golf
SQUAMISH, B.C. (May 8, 2025) — Brett Webster already knew that PGA TOUR dreams can come true for junior golfers. He’d seen it happen first-hand with his close friend Nick Taylor, who Webster grew up playing alongside during countless rounds as kids at Ledgeview Golf Club in Abbotsford.
Webster figured that might be as close as he got to the PGA TOUR, having a buddy who has now won five times on golf’s biggest stage.
But now, for one tournament, anyway, Webster is going to share that stage with Taylor. “Pretty unreal, I didn’t expect this,” Webster, a 36-year-old Chilliwack resident, said after winning a RBC Canadian Open regional qualifier at Squamish Valley Golf Course. “I feel like I am speechless.”
Webster had to survive a playoff with Surrey teenager Sukhraj Gill to earn the one spot into the RBC Canadian Open, which goes June 5-8 at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley in Caledon, Ont. Both players had finished the qualifier at five-under par. Webster won the playoff on the first extra hole with a birdie.
“I feel like it’s a dream,” said Webster, who now plays out of Chilliwack Golf Club. “Everyone grows up thinking they are going to make it to the PGA TOUR and then at a certain point in your career you are just going to hang it up.
"I just kind of said to myself the last few years if I could play one PGA TOUR event I would be over the moon and that would probably be enough for me and I’d be ready to just have fun with the kids. So maybe this is it. I will try and enjoy it as much as I can.”
Having Taylor there will just help make the week even more special for Webster. Nearly 25 years after the two of them played their first rounds together at Ledgeview, they remain good friends.
Before the playoff began, Taylor was part of a group text of friends offering encouragement to Webster. “When I started golf he was there at Ledegview already,” Webster said of Taylor. “He started about a year before me. So we grew up together. Hopefully he’s got room for me for a practice round. I have heard that the Canadian group is a little hard to get into.”
The playoff was forced when Webster bogeyed the 18th hole to fall from six to five-under par. “I told my caddie, this is my Rory McIlroy moment,” Webster said. “I bogeyed the last hole, let’s make up for it here.”
And so he did.
He pushed his drive slightly right on the 539-yard par 5 first hole in the playoff. He got a drop off the cart path and then striped a 3-iron from 242 yards to about 25 feet right of the flag. “Obviously the adrenalin was pumping and the ball kind of jumped and I’m like, oh, God, that’s over the back, so it was lucky it hit that little patch of rough and just trickled on,” Webster said.
Gill, meanwhile, put his second shot into a greenside bunker. He just barely got his third shot out of the bunker and then left his chip well short. That meant all Webster had to do was two-putt for his spot in the Canadian Open. He eased his first putt to within 18 inches of the hole and then tapped it in for birdie. He made it look easy, but it wasn’t. “My hands were as shaky as they have ever been,” Webster said of his final putt.
Webster, who played his collegiate golf at the University of the Fraser Valley, had come to Squamish with low expectations. With two young boys — aged six weeks and two-and-a-half — golf isn’t the priority it once was. “Not much golf lately,” he said. “I work in hospitality and we (Old Yale Brewing) just opened a new restaurant and I was just in Edmonton on Monday and Tuesday, came home Wednesday, and then shot up here this morning.
“I have played a lot on the Vancouver Golf Tour the past couple of years and it has been a great experience and prepares you for stuff like this. It kind of helps ease the tournament nerves, so when you get in the mix you feel better.”
Webster will take those low expectations to the Canadian Open, where he will play his heart out and try to savour every moment while sharing it with family and friends. His wife Kylee and sons Henry and Shep will accompany him to Toronto and he’s sure his parents, who were such big supporters during his junior golfing days, will also make the trip.
“I think I will go there with the same kind of attitude I came here with,” Webster said. “I don’t have much to lose. I will be 37 when I get there and this is probably a once in a lifetime thing. I will have no expectations, which I think is great because I think people play better like that.”
His two sons are too young to fully appreciate what their dad has accomplished and when Webster was reminded that he will have quite the story to share with them a few years down the road, he smiled and said, “You're going to make me tear up now.”
Click HERE for final results/scoring
CHIP SHOTS: While Webster earned the coveted spot into the Canadian Open, 21 other players finishing even-par or better received spots into the Monday qualifier tournament week.