{"id":726677,"date":"2026-06-10T04:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726677\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T04:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T04:07:11","slug":"why-winning-the-rbc-canadian-open-means-more-than-most-other-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726677\/","title":{"rendered":"Why winning the RBC Canadian Open means more than most other events"},"content":{"rendered":"

CALEDON, Ont. \u2013 Several hours after Ryan Fox tapped in to win last year\u2019s RBC Canadian Open<\/a> at TPC Toronto, he was sitting down to a late dinner with his wife, Anneke, their children and members of his team.<\/p>\n

This was in the Babbo Wine Bar at the nearby Hockley Valley Resort, past 10 p.m., after all the \u201cchaos had stopped.\u201d His kids were zombies at that point, Fox said, but the evening, naturally, was celebratory. Golfers don\u2019t enjoy the spoils of victory often, so Fox sipped champagne and \u201cprobably had a couple glasses of red wine, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fox had hit the \u201cbest shot of his life\u201d to defeat Sam Burns on the fourth playoff hole at TPC Toronto that day. A month earlier, he\u2019d won the Myrtle Beach Classic in a three-man playoff that included Canadian Mackenzie Hughes. And prior to joining the PGA Tour he\u2019d won four times on the DP World Tour, including its flagship BMW Championship in 2023, plus twice on the European Challenge Tour and thrice on the Australasia circuit.<\/p>\n

So his trophy cabinet was far from empty. This addition, however, was different.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, Myrtle was special because it was my first PGA Tour win, but it was an opposite-field event,\u201d said Fox in an interview earlier this year. \u201cWentworth was obviously very special. That\u2019s sort of the players championship of the DP World Tour and that was a great field and a great leaderboard as well. But the Canadian Open has been around for, well it\u2019s the third- or fourth-oldest tournament in the world, if memory serves, and there are some pretty iconic names on that trophy. And it was a full-field PGA Tour event, it was a strong field. That\u2019s the stuff that you dream of growing up. Or, for me, when I first started taking golf seriously at 18 years old, that\u2019s the stuff that I really wanted to achieve one day and that was literally ticking off a dream. And it definitely was more special, the Canadian Open and all the history with it and it being a national open.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think Rory (McIlroy) has said a lot about it over the years, that national opens just have that something extra about them and I certainly believe that too and to be the Canadian Open champion is pretty damn awesome, I have to say.\u201d<\/p>\n

McIlroy has hoisted RBC Canadian Open hardware twice, in 2019 and 2022, and it was telling that after his first victory at Hamilton Golf and Country Club, the superstar took a few moments in the media centre to admire his prize on the dais and those who had held it before him. When the inevitable what-does-this-mean-to-you query came, McIlroy immediately recited legends he had joined.<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, even just looking at some of the names on this side of the trophy. Sam Snead, Bobby Locke, Arnold Palmer, Tiger Woods, Nick Price,\u201d said McIlroy. \u201cI mean, some of the greats of the game have won this trophy. For me to put my name on it is something I\u2019m very proud of.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Ryan<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\"\"
\nRyan Fox, Robert MacIntyre and Rory McIlroy are three recent international winners of the RBC Canadian Open. (Photos: The Canadian Press, Getty Images)<\/p>\n

The common thread between Fox, a New Zealander, and McIlroy, a Northern Irishman, is that they are international players. So too is Scotland\u2019s Robert MacIntyre, who said this upon winning the Open at Hamilton in 2024 when much of the PGA Tour conversation centred on \u201celevated\u201d events, which came to be called \u201csignature\u201d events: \u201cI think national opens are huge for professional golf or any kind of golf. I feel like national opens are elevated because it is national.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n

International players have always had a soft spot for the RBC Canadian Open, one of few PGA Tour events contested outside the United States. To the masses, especially those in the United States, it might simply be viewed as another stop in a busy month that includes next week\u2019s U.S. Open and two of those \u201csignature\u201d events in last week\u2019s Memorial Tournament and the upcoming Travelers Championship.<\/p>\n

It is not. It is the world\u2019s fourth-oldest professional tournament behind the Open Championship, U.S. Open and BMW Championship, which traces its roots to the Western Open, begun in 1899, five years before the Canadian Open. It is the only national open to be a PGA Tour event, with the British and U.S. Opens owned and operated by the R&A and USGA, respectively. It is a tournament with more than a century\u2019s worth of winners, moments, highlights, heartbreaks and heroes.<\/p>\n

That distinction is worth considering when contemplating the PGA Tour\u2019s proposed plans under new CEO Brian Rolapp to split its schedule into two tiers \u2014 one slate of events for the stars and another for the rank-and-file. There are many unanswered questions as to which track the RBC Canadian Open would take under such a transformation, and what that would mean to the makeup of its field as an \u201copen\u201d championship.<\/p>\n

For now, though, let\u2019s reinforce the importance of this tournament \u2014\u00a0\u201celevated,\u201d as MacIntyre called it, even though it is not officially designated as such by the tour. And let\u2019s hope that this week\u2019s winner is another in a long line of champions like McIlroy, Fox and MacIntyre who truly appreciate and understand the accomplishment and that it is indeed more special than winning most anywhere else.<\/p>\n

\u00d7
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