American Paul Simson recently won the Canadian Senior Amateur by a whopping 15 strokes over Graham Cooke and a field of not quite good enough Canadian golfers. Simson is a 58 year old insurance agent from Raleigh, NC who has amassed a very impressive amateur record with multiple victories in state ams, mid ams and senior events.

The presence of foreign players in the Canadian Senior field is nothing new and the record shows that in addition to Simson’s victory, David Lane of England and Bud Bradley of California also won the event in the past ten years. So what you might ask?

This year the RCGA announced that there would be a concerted effort to make the field stronger in each of our national amateur championships by inviting the best international players to compete. The theory is that having Canadians play against the top 100 ranked players in the world will help prepare our top players for international competition and perhaps an eventual pro career. That’s certainly sound thinking but it really only applies to a handfull of the top Canadian players in each tournament. For the rest of the field it’s a slap in the face.

There is one reason and one reason only that top foreign players come here to compete – they see a chance to win. And winning at any level provides a psychological edge to doing it again. Opening our national championships to foreign players denies our own players the opportunity to gain winning experience.

Remember a few years ago a lot of criticism was levelled at Michelle Wie for competing against the men on the Nationwide and PGA Tours. “Learn to compete and win in state and national amateur events before you take on the world’s best”, they said. Wie won the US Public Links Championship at age 16 but then began a wild ride where she bounced amongst the men’s and woman’s pro tours and won nothing and often didn’t even make the cut. Finally after winning an LPGA Tour event in Mexico last year and then the CN Canadian Women’s Open this year is Wie finally starting to capitalize on her enormous potential. Most experts will say that her ability to win was stunted by not competing and learing to win at the junior and adult amateur levels.

If that’s true then is it not more beneficial to Canadian golfers to provide them with a chance to win their own national championship as a stepping stone to international competition or a pro career? Most of our top amateurs attend US colleges so they compete against the best in the world for four years anyway. Surely they don’t need another local event with essentially the same collegiate players they see all year.

Everybody in the golf industry talks about trying to grow the game. One proven way is to produce winners which provides belief and encouragement to others. The trickle down effect or pyramid of influence creates interest at evey level and eventually influences even non-golfers to have an interest in the game as a casual observer, then maybe a fan and eventually a player. If all the winners are unknowns from another country, there won’t be much trickling down to the grassroots level here.

Dan Halldorson, a member of the Canadian Golf Hall of Fame and a two time winner on the PGA Tour was congratulated many years ago for finishing as the low Canadian in the Canadian Open. It was reported that he responded “that’s like being the tallest midget.”

In other words, being low Canadian means squat unless you win.

It stands to reason that a country the size of the United States can produce a lot more top amateurs than Canada – more people, longer golf seasons, more resources. If we open our national amateur championships up to the Top 100 players in the world and many of them come here, it won’t be long before Americans dominate the leaderboards.

And that’s not good for Canadian golf.