Talk about your field of dreams.
A full field of 99 young golfers — 66 guys and 33 girls — converged on Morningstar Golf Club in Parksville Thursday afternoon for the first official day and practice round of the 2012 CN Future Links Pacific Championship.
Played out over 54 holes, the big annual tournament gets underway in ernest today (Friday) and features the top young golfers in Western Canada aged 18 and under, all of whom bring their own dreams where the sport is concerned.
The closest Oceanside has to a local in the mix is 15-year old Santiago Bouyra from Mexico, who is currently in his second year at the Brent Morrison Golf Academy out of Pheasant Glen Golf Resort while attending Kwalikum Secondary School.
“I was here last year and I decided to come again this year because Brent is a great coach and he’s been helping me a lot,” he said through a thick accent — his father is French.
“It’s good. It’s fun,” the Grade 10 exchange student said with a smile and a shrug when asked how he likes living on the rock, and apparently Island life agrees with him, as he posted first place finishes in his first two zone tournaments of the season.
No stranger to the pressures of tournament play, the soft spoken teen played in the Junior World Championships at legendary Torrey Pines last year, and is scheduled to tee off at the World Masters of Junior Golf tournament slated for Angel Park in Las Vegas in July.
He and Brent Morrison Academy teammate Aaron Crawford from Alberta, “have been playing this course for the past three weeks every day, getting ready and hoping to have a good
tournament,” the soft spoken team told The News Thursday from beside the putting greens.
Key to the weekend he says “is to keep it on the fairway and make some putts.”
Stay tuned for more on the event results from The News.