RBC CANADIAN OPEN

June 10, 2022

Ian McQueen

St. George's Golf & Country Club

Trophy Presentation - CGSA

THE MODERATOR: We are here with Pierre Vezeau, superintendent with the Cook Municipal Golf Course, also president of the Canadian Golf Superintendents Association, here for a special presentation to our superintendent here at St. George's Golf and Country Club, Ian McQueen. Pierre, if you just want to start us off with a few remarks and the presentation.

PIERRE VEZEAU: Yes, thank you, Golf Canada and RBC for this opportunity to honor one of our members, Ian McQueen.

The Canadian Golf Superintendents Association has approximately 1,000 members and it represents them from across Canada. Our mandate is to promote and support the profession and provide education and resources to the golf course superintendents.

As part of our ongoing efforts we recognize the superintendent that hosts these national tournaments. Our members are an essential part to insure the golf course provides fair and consistent conditions for all competition.

Ian McQueen, who is the superintendent here at St. George's Golf and Country Club is hosting his first national tournament. He has been a CGSA member since 2004 and has 18 years experience as a superintendent, six of those at St. George's which remains in the top 5 in Score Golf's top 100.

It is my pleasure to present Ian with this tournament plaque for hosting the 2022 RBC Canadian Open.

(Applause.)

THE MODERATOR: Ian, we'll open it up to any questions, if you wanted to maybe just start with a comment about hosting and obviously playing host to us here and getting this wonderful facility ready and then we'll just open it up to a couple questions.

IAN MCQUEEN: Yeah, it's been great to host my first national tournament at St. George's. Being part of the national championship has been a dream and I think it's been a very successful event so far.

THE MODERATOR: Great. Thank you. Questions?

Q. Congratulations. What does this award mean to you?

IAN MCQUEEN: It means a lot. Being recognized by the CGSA and being part of a great association for going on almost 20 years, been in the career for about 35 years, so it's been a goal of mine to be at St. George's and come back to Toronto where I grew up and host a national event like this.

Q. Curious, what are some of the challenges of hosting an event like this from your perspective, especially since it was delayed for a couple of years?

IAN MCQUEEN: Yeah, delaying it for a couple years actually gave us a great run through in the spring to make sure we had everything in place.

It's a challenge being in Toronto, being in the city, it's a smaller property, it's a smaller venue, fitting everything in, being able to mature the turf to host the tournament.

It was a challenge, but something that we accepted and I think we accomplished as a team.

Q. So I know you used to manage Bond Head and that looked like a course that was ready to sort of host an Open by May every single year. This course looks like it's been manicured by celestial beings, but I want to ask you, moving from semi-private to private, how has that allowed you to sort of fix your vision on the course?

IAN MCQUEEN: Yeah, I started as a superintendent at Bond Head years ago, more semi-private golf club. And when you get to come to a private golf club like St. George's you get the support from the membership and from the board and the club to allow you to achieve your goals of conditions that you want to produce on a day-to-day basis. And that's what St. George's has provided me.

Q. Tell me a little bit of what goes into that. Like managing sort of the climate of the. The climate is wet and cold, the desert-like conditions that we can sometimes have. What do you take from that? What do you like about that?

IAN MCQUEEN: Yeah, managing turf conditions to the standards that we want at St. George's, taking into consideration all the weather inputs that come, the uncontrollables that we can't control make it's difficult. But managing turf to the standards that the members, the players, the TOUR want takes a lot of people. I have a great staff of about 45 people, staff. And the team, you couldn't do without them. It's all about the team effort that's been put in on a day-to-day basis and without them we would never get it to what it is today.