CAVENDISH - The Slammer Tour is coming to the Island.
The tour is an extension of the Slammer Tour (Ottawa) and is a Cavendish-based golf league for public golfers who want to improve their game by playing by the rules and by playing with a little friendly competition.
"With Big Break, Prince Edward Island airing on The Golf Channel, I believe that 2009 is going to be a banner year for golf and I decided during the winter that it was time for the Slammer Tour to be introduced here on the Island," said Darrell Doucette, owner of the Tournament Golf Event Planning."
"The Slammer Tour doesn't use handicaps, but rather, the wonderfully unpredictable system of match play to determine winners and losers."
The tour, said Doucette, is structured as a ladder, similar to a tennis ladder.
"You challenge someone who is ranked above you. If you beat them, you get their ranking and they get moved down a notch. And because it's match play, it's not uncommon for a lower-ranked player to beat one of the top dogs."
The Slammer Tour was started in 1997 by Jamie Ryan, president of Executive Golf, with a dozen players who liked competition and wanted to play a variety of courses.
The term slammer is a reference to "trunk slammers", golfers who move from course to course and therefore keep their clubs in their trunks.
Doucette joined the Slammer Tour (Ottawa) while living in Ottawa in 2001 and has played as an outside member for the last six years.
He has been an avid golfer since 1975 and is a graduate of the golf business management program at Holland College and last year registered his business, Tournament Golf Event Planning, dedicated to organizing golf events on P.E.I.
The Slammer Tour matured over time and now boasts a website with full statistics, a refined tour format and 177 members (as of the close of the 2008 outdoor season).
(www.slammertour.com; www.tournamentgolf.ca)
*****
Slammer tour membership level:
n Rookie: free first year membership - unlimited play.
n Gold member: $85 for unlimited tour play and includes a $25 credit towards SlammerGear (shirts, hats, etc.), a slammertour.com e-mail address and listings in the EG business directory.
n Silver dollar: $65 for unlimited tour play (complimentary with any full Executive Golf membership).
