Gavey wins points title and final event

Aiden Gavey won the battle and the war when the Niagara Golf Warehouse Men’s Tour wrapped up Sunday at Lookout Point with the Coldwell Banker Tour Championship.

The 24-year-old native of Caledonia carded a three under par 69 to win the final event by two strokes. His third win in five events on the tour saw him win the overall championship by 101 points with a total of 920.5.

It was the first time the former NCAA Division 2 scholarship golfer at Rogers State in Oklahoma had played at Lookout Point.

“There was a bunch of elevated tee shots which I am not a massive fan of but the greens overall were pretty good and there weren’t too many undecisive breaks. It all breaks toward the escarpment,” he said. “The course was in good shape with a lot of undulation that you wouldn’t expect and it played pretty firm.”

Gavey’s usual approach when playing a course for the first time is to be a little conservative but he had to change that mindset on the fly.

“I got behind the eight ball early today so I just pushed the driver up as far as I could on some of the holes. Normally on courses you haven’t played, you lay up and play pretty conservative. But I got off to a rough start and had to jump on it.”

He birdied the first hole but some early struggles saw him three over par after six holes and trailing the leaders by five or six strokes.

“I knew I had to make some birdies and I played pretty good on the back nine to seal the deal.”

He birdied the seventh and ninth holes and then got himself in the thick of things with the eagle on the 12th hole.

“After that it was pretty good,” Gavey said.

He enjoyed his first year on the Niagara Tour.

“It was pretty good. They treat you very well, there are no complaints about the courses and obviously ending with the last one on a private course was nice.”

Last year’s runner-up at the Ontario men’s amateur championship wasn’t expecting to win the tour points crown and capture tournaments at Grand Niagara, Twenty Valley and Lookout Point in the process.

“I didn’t have that high of expectations. I was just trying to come out and have fun,” he said. “Overall I have had a good year. I played a lot of consistent golf and I putted pretty well so on to the next year.”

His summer also included a sixth-place finish at the Ontario amateur and a 14-place result in the Canadian amateur. He also competed in the $125,000 Canada Cup in Victoriaville, Que., as an amateur.

“Compared to what won not too good but I didn’t have a bad finish,” he said of his play at the Canada Cup.

He plans to shut his golf game down for the season at the end of September and play on a golf simulator for fun over the winter.

“Ever since I graduated school two years ago I have played pretty well and I will just keep grinding.”

Rounding out the top 10 in the overall points race were Ryan Dyck 819.5; Jaret Chipman 816.5; Zach Hallborg 716; Kham Vong 702; Trevor Low 685.5; Andrew Dagneau 636; R.J. Derhodge 604.5; Brendan Canning 598.5; and, Maric Brooks 573.

Completing the top 10 on the leaderboard Sunday were Hallborg 71; Hanish Nagrani 73; Colin Streuther 73; Dyck 73; David Hall 76; Dagneau 77; Low 77; Brandon McGregor 78; and, Chipman 78.

Qualifying for the tour championship by finishing in the top 40 in the points race after four events were Tyler Edwards, John Majerovic, Dylan Leahy, Caleb Shorthouse, Ben Hanson, Joel Davis, Zachary Soccio-Marandola, Neil Richardson, Bob Neilson, Austin Golding, Jason Moody, Damien Stehling, Pete Doyle, Tyler Balcombe, Mike Woodhouse, Nick Avgerinos, Lukas Pavkovic, Morgan Daly, Brock Hansell, Ty Anderson, Justin Krawczuk, Jordy Carrigan, Trevor Murray, Hal Kerby, Colin Buckborough and Jason Coull.