Blake Mithrush will be battling for one of the top prizes in Canadian golf next week.
The Halfmoon Bay resident and regular at the Sechelt Golf and Country Club has qualified for the 2004 Canadian Amateur Championship, which will be contested Aug. 7 to 14 at the Beaconsfield Golf Club in Pointe-Claire, Que.
At age 20 Mithrush is one of the youngest golfers in B.C. to qualify for this year's prestigious event, but don't let that fool you. Mithrush exudes a great deal of confidence and said the limelight in Quebec won't faze him.
"You can't get much higher than this when it comes to golf in Canada," Mithrush said on Tuesday, prior to his shift at the golf club pro shop. "I'm going with the expectations of winning. I think I can hold my own with anybody. I didn't play that well at either the zones or the provincials and I still managed to qualify for the Canadians."
Mithrush and a few other golfers from the Sunshine Coast went to the Riverway Golf and Country Club in June to qualify for the B.C. Amateur. He made the cut on his second day in the top 15. He then went to Vernon on July 11 for the B.C. Amateur event, and out of 160 of B.C.'s top golfers, he tied for 11th giving him an exemption to qualify for the Canadians.
The Canadian Amateur competition is open to male amateur golfers who are members of a golf club belonging to the Royal Canadian Golf Association or clubs in other countries that are in good standing with their respective associations.
Each provincial golf association has been allocated a quota of applications into the 100th Canadian Amateur Championship.
B.C. will be sending a total of 26 golfers to the event.
The first two rounds of championship play will seed all the players in the field, with the top 64 advancing to the next round that will consist of a match play format.
"I'd been playing for quite a few years and just got tired of it, so I took about seven months off, moved to Victoria and just started working," Mithrush said. "I really started missing the game - I felt lost without it. I moved back to the Coast, Kevin [Krake, head pro at Sechelt] hooked me up with this great job here in Sechelt, and I just started playing again. I started feeling good about my game and decided I would give it a shot.
"I still really can't believe that I made it and that I'm going to Quebec. I'm pretty excited - I can't wait to get there and get on the course and start playing."
