ABOUT VANCOUVER GOLF TOUR

Mission Statement
VGT has been developed for our local Professionals and Amateurs – giving them the opportunity for a high level of competition in a PGA Tour environment without spending excess travel dollars. We want to give our players the opportunity to learn how to win while at the same time building their confidence to play on Worldwide Major Tours.
The mission statement of VGT is to send a minimum of one Professional down to compete in the PGA Tour Qualifying School every year. Our top ranked player on the 2008 Order of Merit will be granted a fully paid entry to compete in the 2008 PGA Q-School. Our hope is to soon send multiple players down to PGA Tour School and see a growing surge of VGT players graduating to the PGA Tour. We are working alongside the Canadian Tour to secure positions in the two local Canadian Tour events for our top VGT members. In 2007, our Spring OOM leader Jeff Hallborg was granted an exemption into the Greater Vancouver Charity Classic. We are also setting our sights on getting our top OOM player an entry to compete in the 2008 Canadian Tour’s season ending Tour Championship and a birth into the 2008 Canadian Open.

The Vancouver Golf Tour is a based on a culmination of ideas borne from Canadian PGA professional Fraser Mulholland. Like many youngsters, Fraser had the childhood dream of reaching the PGA Tour, winning the Masters, and slipping on the coveted ‘GREEN JACKET’. At times throughout his career, he was closer to this dream than ever imagined, playing in two PGA Tour events, an Australian Open, a South African Open and Masters, winning his first ‘major’, the BCPGA Championship and qualifying to play on both the Canadian Tour and Malaysian PGA Tour. However, along the way, he endured countless set-backs that made the journey to his dream seem very hard indeed.

During his 14 years as a professional, Fraser has witnessed limitations with local sponsorship as well as opportunities to make a full-time living playing professionally without being on one of the top 3 or 4 tours around the world or without spending endless amounts of travel dollars. With these facts in mind, Fraser, and many other Canadians who tried to fulfill their dream of reaching the PGA Tour found it very hard pressed indeed. Seeing the trend of a majority of our fine Canadian players running out of finances and then trading in their hopes of continuing their pursuit of golf excellence for a managerial position at dad’s company spurred Fraser on to make a difference for the many rising Canadian golfers.

“The Vancouver Golf Tour will be the first developmental tour of its kind in Canada” states Mulholland. “We have created a locally based tour for our young and aspiring professionals, amateurs and juniors to compete against each other for seriously needed competition in a “PGA Tour” run environment. We are currently developing a professional cash and prize structure that will give our young professionals an opportunity to make a living while they are preparing to compete on either the PGA Tour or one of the top tours around the world”.

The tour will give our young rising stars (juniors and amateurs) a chance to compete head-to-head against the best professionals in our province on a regular basis. “The youth movement in golf will have an opportunity to see how some of our best professionals play the game earlier than ever before and learn how to win against them before they are out of their teens” says Mulholland. “I want our youth to learn how to win against the best professionals in our country so early that by the time they are 17 or 18, they are ready to win on the PGA Tour! This is the biggest reason Tiger Woods is where he is today”.

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In the past 10 years, Mulholland has seen the growth of professional golf tours accelerating almost everywhere else in the world (USA, Asia, Australia, South Africa, Europe) except for Canada. The VGT’s goal is to make the acceleration of growth in professional tournament golf start right here in Vancouver!

The tour’s five year vision is to see five of Vancouver Golf Tour’s members rising to and playing on the PGA Tour. “We want Vancouver, and eventually Western Canada to be THE force to be reckoned with on the PGA Tour within the next five years” says Mulholland. Within this same five year period, the Vancouver Golf Tour will grow into other regions in BC and Western Canada.

Other than the ‘Drive for Five’ on the PGA Tour, Commissioner Mulholland has three ultimate goals for the Vancouver Golf Tour.

• The first is to increase the tournament prize money for the tour through added corporate sponsorship.

• The second main goal for the tour which will aid the first goal is to create more awareness about the tour and its many great players through the media to our golfing public. “Our Vancouver golf fans need to recognize our future stars if they are to support them in their quest towards the PGA Tour” states Mulholland. “By creating this awareness, we can not only recognize players for their tremendous skills, but harness the required relationships with our corporate community so the next wave of talented young golfers has the greatest chance of fulfilling their dreams”.

• The third and likely most important goal of the tour is to set aside fundraising dollars to help develop the future of our junior golfers. Through the development of scholarship programs, we can help our young players choose the school best suited for their academic and golf goals in mind. And through the building of a junior golf academy for the tour, young kids of all ages and means can learn the game of golf from our local professionals at a very subsidized cost and in some cases no charge.

We are currently developing a membership structure for the tour and will have a full schedule of events for 2007 that will lead up to a two-day Championship and an Order of Merit winner at the end of the season who will have their 2007 PGA Tour Qualifying School Entry paid for. The top two Order of Merit winners on the 2008 Vancouver Golf Tour will have their PGA Tour Qualifying School entry fees paid for. As mentioned before, our long-term goal is to see more of our VGT members playing on the PGA Tour every year.

If you have any further questions regarding the tour, including the 2007 sponsorship opportunities, please feel free to contact us at our office details below.

Vancouver Golf Tour
Box 18, #112-1151 Mt. Seymour Road
North Vancouver, BC V7H 2Y4
info@vancouvergolftour.com
local: (778) 866-GOLF (4653)

Sponsorship Opportunities Email: info@vancouvergolftour.com