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1st edition
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Telus World Skins Game 2011
The Telus World Skins Games returned to the Banff Springs Golf Course on
the 25th and 26th of July, 2011, coinciding with the release of
Banff Springs Golf Club, a limited edition hard cover book filled with historic and
contemporary images accompanied by text written by ren The 2011 Telus World Skins Game featured five Nike Tour pros, including Anthony Kim, Paul Casey, Stephen Ames, Lucas Glover, and Jhonattan Vegas. Although Glover won five skins worth $125,000 on the 18th hole with an eagle, the event's winner was Vegas, who won seven skins and took home $140,000. In addition to the prize money, Telus announced a donation of $375,000 to the Alberta Cancer Foundation. The Telus Skins was previously hosted by the Banff course in 2006, with some of golf’s most famous names competing. That year, Jack Nicklaus, Greg Norman, Stephen Ames, John Daly, and Sergio Garcia teed it up for the two-day Telus World Skins Game, an annual event in Canada since 1993. The 2006 edition was the first in which five players competed (previously only four took part); each chosen golfer represented a different decade. For the event, the course was played in its original rotation; players were introduced on the original 1st tee box, high above the Spray River, by town of Banff mayor and club member John Stutz. As a tribute to the earliest days of golfing in Banff, the five players used hickory clubs at the Devil’s Cauldron. Jack Nicklaus, who was most comfortable with the old clubs, hit a shot that settled under three metres (nine feet) from the hole. A spectator on the tee box commented that it sounded like it was miss-hit. Nicklaus calmly looked to the crowd and said he was between clubs and that he was going to “hit the extra club a little off centre to deaden the shot into the hole”—and no one was going to argue with that! A few moments later, Sergio Garcia, the youngest of the fivesome, fired his ball to the back of the green, from where it spun back and lipped out for a hole-in-one. Golf writer Ian Cruickshank‘s fondest memory of the Banff Springs Golf Course is of the Skins event and the tee shots on Thompson’s famous 1st hole. “As the legends peered out over the cliff,” he recalls, “they began to grin like little kids on a Christmas morning. Mesmerized by the spectacular site, the fabulous fivesome launched their drives into the horizon and the golf balls seemed to rise as if they were helium balloons, eventually tumbling like shooting stars more than 300 yards down the fairway, as the gallery whooped and hollered in appreciation. As the group wound its way down from the cliff top to the fairway, it was easy to see why the Banff Springs is Stanley Thompson’s most famous work.” In 2006 Calgary resident Ames won $95,000 on the first day of competition, and on the following afternoon, the crowd roared with wild abandon when larger-than-life John Daly sunk a birdie putt on the 15th hole to win $135,000 and then sealed his place as overall winner by claiming a $25,000 skin on the 18th hole. But the sentimental favourite was Jack Nicklaus, whose presence alone proved a memorable experience for all in attendance. |
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Summerthought cares passionately about the Canadian Rockies and about books. Based in Banff, Canada, we are a vibrant, proudly independent publisher producing books that we believe in and that we think readers will enjoy. |
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© 2011 Summerthought Publishing. All rights reserved
owned historian E.J.
(Ted) Hart).