Beers swings into first nationwide tourney

Brian Beers is as excited—and nervous—as a 42-year-old rookie can be.
The reigning Kitchen Creek men’s champ is testing the amateur tournament waters for the first time this week at the 17th-annual Canadian Club Champions Championship in Whistler, B.C.
“It’s more of an excited kind of nervous,” Beers said Friday while waiting to play his final practice round at Kitchen Creek before departing for Whistler on Saturday.
“I haven’t played with this calibre of players before,” he noted.
He started stroke play at the 18-hole course with an 87 in yesterday’s opening round—21 shots off the pace.
The lowest 70 scores and ties among the 120 golfers competing will move on after tomorrow’s third round. The final 18 holes will be played Friday.
Victoria’s Craig Doell, who topped the field with an 11-under 277 last year, is back in search of his third-straight title and fourth in six years.
Meanwhile, Beers is just looking to enjoy four full rounds of golf.
“There’s a lot of good players there so I’m just hoping to make the cut [Thursday] and see what happens,” he remarked. “The biggest thing right now is keeping my drives in the fairway.
“If you can do that consistently, you can score.”
A late-comer in the sport (he started playing at age 29), Beers worked his way through the ranks at both the Kitchen Creek and International Falls clubs before breaking through last September when he snapped Greg Ward’s run of two club titles with a one-shot victory.
He’s credited club pros Steve Wood and Tom O’Connell with helping him on his game recently. But he also noted Mother Nature has prevented him from getting as much practice time as he wanted of late.
“It’s been a slow start because of the weather this year, so I’ve probably had half the amount of rounds this year that I had last year,” he said.
Beers plans to keep up a busy tournament schedule upon his return from Whistler. He’ll head to Dryden with a local contingent in mid-July, and is contemplating a run at the mid- and rural amateurs in Winnipeg.
Beers took out a photocopied layout of the Whistler Golf Club course when getting set to tee off at the first hole here Friday.
“It seems the holes there are more narrow than at [Kitchen Creek],” he pointed out. “I’ll be fortunate to get two practice rounds [in]. I’ll be able to see the layout of the course to give me some kind of idea.”
Ward was the first Kitchen Creek champ to venture to the CCCC, coming home with top-25 finishes in 2000 and again last year. The club subsidizes a portion of travelling expenses for the champion.
Both Ward and Wood gave Beers some simple advice.
“They just told me to take it easy, play my game, and not be nervous. That’s all you can do,” Beers reasoned.