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Niagara area golf teams punch their ticket to National Final

The teams, one representing Niagara National Golf and Country Club and the other representing Rockway Vineyards Golf Club, qualified by having the lowest scores at the Southwestern Ontario Regional Final held in Brantford
Niagara-on-the-Lake Local Staff

NEWS RELEASE
RBC SCRAMBLE
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Two Niagara area amateur golf teams will have the opportunity to win a Canadian National Championship.

Niagara Falls high school friends Mike Maloney, Ryan Nagy, Shane Belanger, Mike Formica and Niagara National Golf pro Kevin Layte, had the lowest ‘net’ score at the Southwestern Ontario RBC PGA Scramble last month hosted in Brantford, to earn a trip to the national final at prestigious Cabot Links Golf Course in Inverness, Nova Scotia in early October.

Also clinching their spot in the National Final was the team from Rockway Vineyards Golf Club in St. Catharines. The group, who had the tournament’s lowest ‘gross’ score, consists of Kyle Beattie, Tim Summers, Jeffry Janz, Eric Dijan and Rockway Vineyards PGA Pro Donny Churchill.

“We didn’t know we qualified and we went nuts when they starting announcing the winners of the low gross score,” said Rockway team member Kyle Beattie. “ We all jumped up and celebrated before they could even finish saying the golf course we played at. Such a surreal moment. It had that Christmas morning feeling as a kid. We all knew we played well enough to be in the conversation but for it to actually happen, wow.”

The teams qualified for the 18-hole RBC PGA Scramble regional tournament by winning their respective local qualifiers at Niagara National and Rockway Vineyards earlier this summer.  The team-focused scramble format considers the handicap of each golfer when calculating their final score, allowing anyone who has a registered Golf Canada handicap the chance to participate and win. 

The groups will compete against teams from all over the country at the October final.

“All of us are extremely excited for this bucket-list trip to Cabot,” said Niagara National team member Ryan Nagy. “We hope we can all bring our “A” game and have a chance to contend.”

Now in its ninth year, the RBC PGA Scramble is the largest grassroots amateur golf program in Canada. In 2024, participants competed across 180 local qualifiers from coast-to-coast. For more information, visit rbcpgascramble.com.

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