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22 Sports Oakville Beaver SPORTS EDITOR: JON KUIPERIJ Phone 905-845-3824 (ext. 432) Fax 905-337-5571 email sports@oakvillebeaver.com · FRIDAY, JULY 3, 2009 Field coming into focus for RBC Canadian Open This month's RBC Canadian Open will feature a variety of promising young talents and established PGA Tour notables. The Royal Canadian Golf Association (RCGA) announced Tuesday the confirmations of several recognizable names for the tournament, slated for July 20-26 at Glen Abbey Golf Club. Among the players set to challenge for Canada's national open championship are rising stars Sean O'Hair, Hunter Mahan, Nick Watney, J.B. Holmes, Charlie Hoffman and Dustin Johnson. Other PGA Tour notables added to the field include long-hitting Bubba Watson, Kevin Na, Steve Marino, Jeff Quinney and Ricky Barnes, the latter coming off a second-place finish at the U.S. Open. Veterans Retief Goosen, Brian Gay, Jerry Kelly, Steve Flesch, Todd Hamilton, Shaun Micheel, Lee Janzen and Corey Pavin also committed to the RBC Canadian Open, as did former Canadian Open champions Scott Verplank (2001), John Rollins (2002) and Bob Tway (2003). The new additions join a field that included previously announced young guns Anthony Kim, Camilo Villegas, Trevor Immelman, Luke Donald and defending champion Chez Reavie; veterans Fred Couples and Mark Calcavecchia; and Canadian favourites Stephen Ames and Mike Weir. "It's become a new era for the RBC Canadian Open and we're delighted to welcome this tremendous mix of emerging talent and notable veterans to the field for the 2009 RBC Canadian Open," said tournament director Bill Paul. "We've methodically tracked our player field and the fields of other PGA Tour events since 2007 and are thrilled with our progress and relative standing to date. The event as well as the inherent strength of our field has come a long way since RBC has come on board." The field was also bolstered with the announcement that Canadian National Amateur Team members Nick Taylor (Abbottsford, B.C.) and Matt Hill (Bright's Grove, Ont.) have been given exemptions to compete in the 100th playing of Canada's national open championship. Taylor is the top-ranked amateur in the world, while Hill is ranked third. Griffiths chasing time standard Patience isn't a virtue, at least as far as Miana Griffiths is concerned. The 19-year-old Oakville native knows sprinters don't generally reach their peak until age 23 or 24, but she isn't interested in waiting for the future. "I want to reach my peak now, so I'm trying to do what I can do," the St. Thomas Aquinas grad said Tuesday, three days after finishing third in the women's 100-metre dash at the Canadian Track and Field Championships in Toronto. Griffiths completed the national 100m final in 11.69 seconds, good enough to edge out Teneshia Peart for bronze but not good enough to meet the time standard required to compete for Canada at this year's world championships. She still needs to trim a couple tenths of a second off her personal-best time of 11.63, set earlier this year, by the middle of the month. But Griffiths, who was hampered by a sprained foot at the nationals, thinks she can do it. "I'm going to work hard. Really, really hard," she said. "Practice makes perfect. It's not just one aspect (of my race) that I have to focus on, it's all of them." Griffiths intends to race in a couple more meets over the next two weeks in an effort to meet the time standard. Griffiths was the senior girls' 100m champion at the 2008 Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations NATIONAL BRONZE: Oakville's Miana Griffiths (OFSAA) meet. She won gold in the 60m sprint at this sprints down the track Saturday in Toronto on her way to a year's Ontario University Athletics championships, repthird-place finish in the women's 100-metre dash at the resenting the University of Guelph. Canadian Track and Field Championships. -- Jon Kuiperij Tough break for van Koeverden ROUGH TRIP: Adam van Koeverden, pictured with the silver medal he won at the 2008 Olympic Summer Games, broke his right ankle recently while on a whitewater rafting trip in the Grand Canyon. OAKVILLE BEAVER FILE PHOTO Olympic kayak champion injured on whitewater rafting trip By Randy Starkman TORSTAR NEWS SERVICE It wasn't exactly how Adam van Koeverden envisioned ending his mini-holiday in the Grand Canyon -- getting evacuated by helicopter after breaking his right ankle. The Oakville native says the injury, which happened last week when he was stepping between two boats on a whitewater rafting trip with Olympic swimmer Mike Brown, won't keep him out of the Aug. 12-16 world championships in Halifax. But it will make things more challenging for the Olympic champion kayaker. "I'm pretty disappointed, but I don't have any room for pessimism and being (ticked) off, " said van Koeverden. "I just have to be really optimistic and think about my recovery and know that my more than a decade of training will carry me through a little bit." Surgery three days ago went extremely well and van Koeverden is already back in the gym strengthening his upper body. He hopes to be back in his boat next week and knows that an ankle injury is more problematic for a kayaker than most realize. "People always say, `Oh, kayaking's not that much of a lower body sport so you'll be fine, `" he said. "But that's just not true. Our legs generate all the power in our stroke." He's got a metal plate and screws in the ankle from the operation. "I'm more machine than man now." Van Koeverden took more time off than usual after winning a silver medal at the Beijing Olympics in the K-1 500 metres -- he was a shocking eighth in the 1,000metre race after entering as a favourite. He hasn't been at his best this season, but still has four World Cup medals. He's the kind of competitor who wants to put on a good show on home water. "I'll probably be stronger at the end of this than I was before I broke my ankle, to tell you the truth, " he said. Part of his mental preparation is to grit his teeth and avoid any kind of pain medication. "If I just endure this pain, maybe it will make me a bit stronger."