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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, July 30, 2015 | 30 Jon Kuiperij Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports and openly engages with fans. It also doesn't hurt that he's sponsored by RBC, as are Hearn, perennial Canadian Open contender and world No. 7 Jim Furyk (fourth this year) and several other big-name players. Rain has been a nemesis of the Canadian Open in its recent stops in Oakville, but not this year. The sun shone down on a Glen Abbey course that many players and media members said was in the best shape they'd ever seen, a credit to course superintendent Andrew Gyba and his team. McLaughlin's new touches on the tournament were well-received, whether it was giving the players selfie sticks in hopes they would post photos on social media, shepherding players closer to the beer gardens, boosting patriotic pride with a `Canada Day' Friday that promoted the wearing of red and white, the huge Canadian flag behind the 18th green, or providing the 16 participating Canucks with their own designated parking spots for the first time. "Players were saying, `This is right. This is your national open. You need to be proud of your Canadi- "Connected to your Community" Glen Abbey merits its encore in 2016 Canadian Open tournament director already planning how to make event bigger and better A Sunday leaderboard containing three of the top seven players in the world, a Canadian in contention until the final hole, near-perfect conditions -- both the weather and the golf course -- and crowd numbers that may have been record-setting. An RBC Canadian Open like that deserves an encore. "I'm so excited we can build on this Sports Editor Oakville Beaver momentum," Oakville resident and first-year tournament director Brent McLaughlin said of Canada's national open championship, which will return to Glen Abbey Golf Club for a record 28th time next July. How couldn't he be? The tournament has as marketable a champion as you could ask for in Jason Day, the 27-year-old Aussie who birdied his final three holes Sunday to pull the rug out from under world No. 3 Bubba Watson and Brantford native David Hearn. Day, who all but clinched the title with a 21-foot birdie putt on 18 while Watson and Hearn looked on from the fairway, comes off great in interviews, has a million-dollar smile, is the fourth-ranked player in the world Jon Kuiperij With a huge and supportive crowd behind him, Brantford native David Hearn needed to hole out this shot from a green-side bunker on the 18th hole to force a playoff Sunday in the RBC Canadian Open at Glen Abbey Golf Club. Hearn finished third in the tournament, two strokes behind champion Jason Day and one behind PGA Tour star Bubba Watson. | photo by Justin Greaves -- Oakville Beaver -- @Halton_Photog ans, and you should be flying that flag,'" McLaughlin said. "It was truly embraced." And the timing for a homegrown player to contend for the championship couldn't have been better. Hearn became the first Canadian to hold a 54-hole lead in the tournament since 2004, the year Mike Weir fell to Vijay Singh in a playoff in one of the other memorable finishes at Glen Abbey. As Sunday progressed and Hearn (who has never won a PGA Tour event) continued to hold the lead on the back nine, fans who might have otherwise been there to cheer for Watson or Day didn't even seem conflicted. They were fully in support of the 36-year-old Hearn, though they still -- in true Canadian fashion -- applauded the play of his competitors. "When would we think we'd be rooting against Bubba or Jason Day to be the champion?" McLaughlin asked rhetorically. "The stars were aligned." Though McLaughlin's immediate focus shifts to his director responsibilities with next month's Canadian Pacific Women's Open in Vancouver, he's also already looking ahead to next year's Canadian Open. That tournament will be sandwiched directly between two majors (the British Open and the PGA Championship) as the PGA Tour juggles its schedule to accommodate golf's inclusion in the 2016 Olympics, and there have been concerns that players might choose to skip the Canadian Open as a result. McLaughlin, however, sees it as an opportunity. "I think the field could be stronger. It's an opportunity to reach out to the European Tour and get some amazing players that we normally don't get... guys like Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Justin Rose," he said. "Some guys (coming to North America for the PGA Championship) like to get used to the time zone and play the week before. I think it's a whole new field we can potentially tap into." McLaughlin hopes to bring back a series of nightly concerts for next year's tournament, and chuckled as he mentioned thoughts of adding see Expect on p.31 THE GYM Convenient, clean, and friendly. NAUTILUS We're Oakville's best kept secret! 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