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BOOM BOOM IS COMING BACK - Fred Couples to play in ACC
In what is surely a stroke of good fortune the Air Canada Golf Championship has announced that one of the Pacific Northwest’s favorite golf sons, Freddie (Boom Boom) Couples has decided to join the field for the tournament August 29-September 1 at Northview G&CC in Surrey.
Born in Seattle and now a resident of Santa Barbara, CA, the 33-year-old Couples has been on the PGA TOUR since 1981 and has 14 TOUR victories and five International Championships, including the 1992 Masters Championship and the 1994 World Cup individual title. He’s won the Tournament Players Championship and Nissan Los Angeles Open twice each and his last win was the Memorial four years ago, a month after tying for second at the Masters. Couples’ first pro victory came in 1983 when he won the Kemper Open in a five-man playoff with a birdie on the 2nd hole.
Fred Couples began building his fan base in Greater Vancouver as a teenager back in 1978. In his popular book Backspin, retired Vancouver Sun golf and sportswriter Arv Olson wrote: “. . . in 1978 a supple, free-swinging youngster from Seattle won the BC Junior by shooting 286 at Seymour (Golf & Country Club in North Vancouver). Members still talk about Fred Couples flying the 18th green with a five-iron for his second shot at the 500+ yard hole.” That year Couples, a junior at Jefferson Park GC in Seattle, defeated another Washington standout, Brian Moog of Oakbrook GC, Tacoma, by six shots. The following season, looking stronger and driving the ball even further and with more accuracy, Couples won the 1979 BC Amateur at Vancouver’s Marine Drive by three shots.
Coming into the Air Canada Championship Couples has played in 15 TOUR events, his best finish a tie for ninth at the Nissan LA Open and he’s earned $385,370. He’s currently ranked 28th with a driving average of 287.9, however, his accuracy has slipped this season to 59.9%, 181st on TOUR. He’s ranked 44th with a scoring average of 70.82 and with $13,066,637 Couples is the PGA TOUR’S 12th all-time money winner.
Couples has for years been one of the most popular TOUR players for his likable, easy going personality, his fluid, consistent golf swing and prodigious distance off the tee. Returning to the province that gave him his first prominent golf victory, where the sound of his driver echoing off the trees at Seymour was first likened to the sound of a Bernie ‘Boom Boom’ Geoffrion (Montreal Canadiens, NHL) slap shot, Fred Couples is now likely to be a sentimental favorite to win, after Canada’s Mike Weir, whose first career victory was the 1999 Air Canadian Championship.
Unfortunately, it appears the 2002 Championship will see the end of the PGA TOUR’s love affair with Greater Vancouver after dating since 1996. No sponsor has been found in a year of searching to replace the departing Air Canada.
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