Victory twice as sweet for South Surrey golf club champion
Published 2:00 pm Tuesday, August 18, 2026
The final “major” of the year for a South Surrey men’s golf club was a hotly contested battle Saturday and Sunday.
The Nico Wynd Golf Course Senior Men’s League Club Championship was held over the weekend (Aug. 15-16), and the champions were only decided in the last few holes of the second day of play, with 50 members from the Saturday League of the club battling it out for the title.
With the golf course’s Senior Men’s League Club Championship held three weeks earlier, many of the same members competed in both events, noted men’s club media relations director Ross Ruddick.
Competitors were vying for one of two titles: Gross Score Club Champion and the Net Score Club Champion, which take established handicaps into the calculations, Ruddick continued in an email, adding the continued dry spell meant a combination of remarkable weather along with fast fairways and fast, but fair, greens.
Day 1 produced some outstanding gross scores by a crowded field, with 10-time club champion Jamie Mills tied at 73 with Ben Silvers, who had only recently returned to active play after a medical absence.
Silvers also wowed the other players with his golf wardrobe, as he was resplendent in colourful plus-fours and an even splashier top, Ruddick shared.
Five-time club champion Blair Smith was close behind, carding 75, followed by Saturday Club captain Graham Roberts at 76; Roberts has one club championship and many runner-up finishes.
Although considered somewhat long shots, Gary Lee (77), Steve Bach and Richard Faucher (78) and Victor Lee and Michael Henning (79) were players to watch on Sunday, Ruddick continued, with a large pack of players carding net scores in the 60s on the first day of the tournament, led by John Wyatt and Michael Henning with 65.
Bach (66) and Faucher (67) were followed by Jim MacKenzie and Jack Bowman at 68.
The final three sub-70 players were Gary Lee, Rick Romano and Victor Lawson, all sitting at 69 each.
Ruddick noted that tradition has the Saturday Clubhouse leaders (on a gross basis) scheduled for the later tee times on Sunday, with the higher net score players on dawn patrol with first tee times starting at 7 a.m.
Perhaps needing more time for sleep and coffee, first-round net leader Wyatt added 10 strokes to his Saturday total and faded from contention, as did MacKenzie, who added eight more.
Henning shared a similar fate by carding 15 more strokes for a disappointing day, Ruddick said, but the flip side of that was Dave Rieberger, who shaved 15 strokes off a very poor Saturday game — not enough to be in contention but deserving of honourable mention.
Dick Wilson impressed while improving by 10 strokes on Sunday, but remained outside the winner’s circle, noted Ruddick, while Bach, Faucher, Lawson, Lee and Tony Clark were in the mix but, with three strokes better than Bach, long-time club member Bowman captured the Net Club Champion title with a net two-day total of 132.
Over half of the first-round hopefuls chasing the Gross Club Champion title faded during Sunday play, with only Mills, Roberts, Smith and Silvers in serious consideration, Ruddick continued, sharing that Roberts and Smith each bettered their Saturday rounds by three and one strokes respectively, but Silvers slipped to fourth place by adding five strokes to his Sunday score.
Try as they might, neither Roberts or Smith (tied for second at 149) could catch a steady Mills at 146 and a three-stroke win.
Ruddick noted that this is the first time since 1988 that the club championships for both the Saturday and Tuesday leagues have been captured by a single player: Mills now shares that unique honour with Herb Fritz, one of the Nico Wynd visionaries who was instrumental in developing both the strata corporation and the golf course.
Fritz, the first resident of Nico Wynd, achieved that dual victory in five seasons.
After the final scorecard calculations, Saturday Captain Graham Roberts presented the the coveted trophy to Mills (gross) and Bowman (net), the 2026 Club Champions, Ruddick concluded.
Summer play continues through the end of October, and the club’s annual general meeting is scheduled for Oct. 4, with the yearly wind-up banquet following on Oct. 9.
This 47-year-old club starts accepting applications from prospective new members as of Dec. 1.
More information is available at: nwmgc.ca or by picking up a brochure at the golf course.