OverDrive - Applebaum on Golf Canada's season, outlook for the golfers and the performance around the country

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

Golf Canada CEO Laurence Applebaum joined OverDrive to discuss the best golfer around the TSN, the rise of simulators across Canada, how professionals continue their style, the qualifying tournament by Korn Ferry, the outlook for next season and more.

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The three top golfers at TSN right there, right there in front of me. Good to see you guys. Highly debatable. Highly debatable. Well, these are the top two. I'm not even in the conversation. Always for sure. Always, without question, the best goal for a TSA.

You're better than Duffy, aren't you? I think I'm better than Duffie. He plays a lot more than I do, right? Like, Lawrence, you've seen us both. Be honest. Best game going. If you had to pick one of us, J.D. or myself, who you take it? Well, I got to take the O'Dog as a partner just because the gross score, in a gross game,

that game is not going to be gross. That's what I know with O'Dog right there. But as you know, Brian, we do our hashtag my golf year for all our Golf Canada members. And so we send out a year in review. And it's pretty telling. You know, it's pretty telling. You got your total number of games, total number of holes, how many birdies, how many eagles. And off a very nice year, you know, obviously Jeff has the lowest gross score.

but the most holes played bus duffy by about a phi factor by anybody that you guys know so i would guarantee you with this weather kind of lightning up he'll find he'll find around a golf on the weekend like that's the kind of nonsense he does he'll like he'll find he'll call around to the course that's open in December and say can i go tee it up and he'll be playing oh i've seen it and and you know we we've had we've had such a run of of golf in 2025 but we get a respite from this cold here in this part of the country and that these out there playing.

Unfortunately, the tracks that we've got a chance to play a few times, they've put it to bed, they've had a full season, but you're right, Brian, the off course, the simulator golf, this sort of, we've tried to take an approach that there's no off season

for golf. You just have to take it indoors and it's been super fun to see Canadians across the country getting into simulators, honing their game, especially the short stuff, Brian. The short stuff is where it's at for 2026. That's what I have to work on

in particular. But how does that work with the golf courses around a country? Lawrence, I'm curious how that works, because as you know with Sims, like sometimes you go to a place and they have hundreds of courses, thousands of courses. Some of them don't have many. Do you have any idea how that works, L.A. because I'm

sure there's like a copyright issue. I would think. You can't just put a course under your, you know, under your programming. But do you advocate for that with, you know, the great courses in the country to get out there and allow people to play them presumably around the world if they're playing SIM golf? Sure. You know, you could go on a lot of the different SIM platforms, whether you're playing with

Foresight, which is a partner of ours or Trackman, which you see everywhere, they've got literally, as you said, thousands of golf courts around the country. Most of the private golf course or semi-private have either engaged and had their golf courses put on. So if you want to go play Copponwood, you can play Copponwood. You want to play Mad River. You can play Mad River. A lot of people like to play, you know, the pebbles and the old courses. But if you go into a club and you walk into a place like, let's say, Hamilton golf club, there'll be three people playing the old course and one and one group playing at Hamilton. You know, they're always playing. You want to play your golf course no matter what it is.

So I just think what's so cool, and south of the border you see in a ton of top. golfs or drive shacks. But it's happening here in Canada. People are able to go out and play, have fun, learn the game. Like what we're seeing a lot of is these indoor leagues that are going on. So Tuesday nights, you know, you're going out for an hour with your buddies and having fun playing. A lot of the places have great, great food, great drink and you can enjoy yourself. But I think for us in Canada, that's kind of the next frontier. People play close to 70 million rounds of golf in this country and once the snow starts flying they still want to hit it and so that's that's just been awesome to see as people going indoors but in total this year has just been the year where

people played so much golf it was it was really a special moment but by far are the greatest year of golf in in our country's history wow L.A. one of the real golfers do like the team Canada golfers as far as keeping their game sharp is like are they able to head south or play actual golf or they're not using simulators are they they're doing something different well our team like we've we've got the largest group of team canada golfers uh young women young men boys and girls that are on team canada ever before and what we've done with our high performance program is uh we we rent a house in the western part of the u.s and outside of scotsdale and then we also have our friends at cabot who we lease a place just outside cabot citrus farms and they go down they

train all winter long and one example that is this is this young guy AJ Ewert who you guys probably saw in the final Q school. AJ stayed 120 nights at our house outside of Scottsdale and they train at a golf club

they practice with other team Canada members and AJ just won that Corn Ferry Q school and got his PGA tour card. So the kids and the young pros, they got to go south, they got to see full flight, they got to train against the best in the world, and we're seeing it.

And now we've got, you know, now we've got seven guys on the PGA tour, and now we'll have three in the LPGA tour for 2026, which is really spectacular. Hey, Lawrence, you know, nothing is more dramatic in a lot of ways than watching that Q school event. Because, you know, for a lot of those guys, it's either you're going to have a full-time job as a golf or you're going to be back to grinding and trying to get a full-time job as a golfer. And there aren't many of them. We saw, you know, as you point out, you say, AJ, you were, you know, rise at the top, Adam's fencing, got into that top five, and you had some guys that were near misses.

Ben Silverman loses out in a playoff and misses out on those full-time privileges by one shot. Adam Hadwin missed out. Miles Creighton missed out. What do you make of those guys who come up on the wrong end of the eternal quest to get that coveted card? Well, I think one of the magics of professional golf is it's a true meritocracy. and this Q school or qualifying schools that they play is such must-see television and for the core golfers, they follow it pretty closely.

But we had nine guys in final Q school. And as you said, AJ Ewert wins it. Adam Svensson gets his card back and then Ben Silverman loses in a playoff. In sports, you don't have it come down to your entire next year is down to this one one playoff. I think about some of the other guys that guys that you guys all love and know

Adam Hadwin had a tougher year and he's going to have a more challenging schedule in 2026 but we know we'll see Adam at the RBC Canadian Open we know he'll get a bunch of starts on the PGA tour but those guys like Adam like Miles Crichton we've also we just want to sure that

all the Canadians continue to follow these guys and women who are trying to get back their cards we also have another rookie who earned his card a guy named Sudarshan Yelamaraju and so when we get back to regular programming and Hayes and Odog are making their picks you've got two new guys with Sudarshan and AJ who are going to start to make fill out your rosters but Corey had his best year ever overall finishing a six on the FedEx list Nick's having a great you know he's still in the heart of his career and playing so well And then obviously two of our favorites in Taylor Pendrith and McKenzie Hughes coming back for another full year on the PGA tour.

So, Lawrence, can Owen I stay at that house? Like, can you text? What happens if Owen and I? Like you said the guy, the other guy, stayed there 103. I would have stayed there 300. No kidding, like a full move in. Hey, you haul and everything. Where's the house, Copsdale?

Okay, well, I'll stay there as long as I want. Thank you very much. Yeah, but let me just tell you, this isn't like our program where you roll out of bed, make some bacon and eggs, and then go hit a few balls. This is, you know, doing your workout before 7 o'clock, eating right, going to the golf cars, hitting balls for two hours, having a protein lunch, then you go putt for two hours,

then you go in the golf course, then you hit balls, then you come back, tuck yourself into bed by 8.30. It was great to see, like we had three or four of these young pros or amateurs staying at the house, and they feed off of each other. And so it is a dream. Many of us would think it's a dream to be fully committed to playing professional golf. And so it's actually a real pleasure to see, you know, we just had a coach, Derek Engram.

Many of you guys have met Derek over the years. You know, he's Corey's coach. He's Taylor's coach. He lives and dies with these young guys. And he's now, you know, coach of the year. And the PJF Canada just named the national coach of the year. And he's down at the house, working out with these kids, making sure they're doing the right things. We had a goal to get 30 Canadians on that.

LPGA and PGA tour by 2032. And so we feel like this, you know, all the things that we're doing are really contributing to that. We're just kind of having a golden moment right now in golf and Canada. Awesome. Can't wait for 2026. Get to the Gulf Canada app for the My Golf Year full breakdown. And L.A. you can text us the address if you want off the year.

You don't have to reveal it publicly, but we look forward to getting down there. We'll bring Festruck, too. Maybe you can get down there and we'll play and we'll figure it out. Thanks for doing this, buddy. appreciate it. All right. Thanks guys for everything you do. You got it.

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