Neil MacLeod and Senior chair Lexx Potter with the Les Howard trophy.

There has been some epic weather at recent Zone 4 senior championships. Take the 2022 event, won by Brad Cochlin in a playoff that necessitated the presence of sweepers, there to brush a layer of hail off the green

But for 2025 the BCGA instituted a policy change that made its zones the primary determinant of entrants to the perennially over-subscribed provincial senior championship, and in response Zone 4 Senior chair Lexx Potter wrangled successive late-May dates to replace the damp and blustery April ones to which participants had become reluctantly accustomed.

Then the climate fairies kicked in with a developing high-pressure system, providing perfect playing weather and classic July 1st course conditions at, first, Beach Grove Golf Club, followed on day two by Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club, the latter with greens stimping at 13.

So, who might have prevailed on a national Top 25 golf course sporting conditions similar to its numerous stints hosting PGA and LPGA fields? Well, none other than a player based at one of Vancouver’s municipal golf courses.

In truth Neil MacLeod’s victory on the first playoff hole over Shaughnessy’s Andrew Pinette and Vancouver Club’s Tom Kenny wasn’t such a shocker. The three-time club champion and five-time senior champ at Fraserview has frequently figured in our events, finishing runner up in our 2023 championship, for example. It might also be noted that men’s clubs based at Vancouver’s not so humble munis supplied 10 of the 60 players making the 18-hole cut, five from Fraserview, four from McCleery and one from Langara.

Meantime, MacLeod’s stop and start golf trajectory will be familiar to many: several years of avid participation as a young man in Ontario, then another brief amateur spurt in B.C. around the turn of the century, followed by gaps of various lengths and sorts until re-committing to the game after graduating to senior ranks and joining the Fraserview club in 2019.

Like many who have played at a high level for a long time, he tends toward understatement. Regarding his even-par round at Beach Grove, his descriptors include “played okay,” “nothing special,” and “solid round of golf.” At Shaughnessy, where he was three under, he says “I sank a couple of putts, I hit a couple of wedges close, I didn’t spray the ball too much.” As for his golf prowess in general, he describes his game as nothing special, while allowing that maybe his iron play stands out a little.

We trust his irons will continue to stand out—a little at least—when he joins Kenny and Pinette on our team at the provincial championship, to be held this year at Pitt Meadows Golf Club.

- Jim Sutherland