Phil Hardy

Director of Golf

Beacon Hall Golf Club

Aurora, ON

A ‘Beacon’ for Other Professionals

Phil Hardy, director of golf at Beacon Hall Golf Club, the wonderful Bob Cupp-designed private equity-owned 18-hole course on the Oak Ridges Moraine (a 30-minute drive north of Toronto), says life is simple: we have to look out for the young and very old.

The rest of us can pretty much take care of ourselves, he said.

Hardy has been taking care of 12 youthful residents of the area surrounding the club for the past few years.

The scholarship program at Beacon Hall is a template for other private and public clubs across Canada – a chance for kids 13 to 18 to work and learn about golf through the Beacon Hall caddy program.

The club’s Heritage Membership program also assists its more elderly members stay engaged, and active.

The Beacon Hall scholarship program gives boys and girls from families in the surrounding communities (and unrelated to the club membership), an entry into the grown-up world of private clubs.

Each year a dozen kids are accepted by a panel of judges (including Hardy) and get paid $20 a round to caddy for members.

In exchange, the club allows them to train with the pros on Hardy’s staff, practice at the facility, and play on one of Canada’s premier layouts.

This widening of opportunities for local kids who couldn’t afford to play Beacon Hall on their own, will, in many cases, groom them for future golf adventures – including interning in the backshop, securing a golf scholarship down south, or graduating to an assistant’s position in the Hardy pro shop.

The Hardy method allows kids to work in a grown-up environment and cultivate a good work ethic. He says it prepares them for life – on and off the course. It also acts as a summer job placement with a decided purpose.

Hardy’s ultimate ambition is to re-energize the golf industry by helping mould a new breed of participant.

Some scholarship grads are already making big noise in the world of amateur golf – thanks to a play and practice schedule they wouldn’t enjoy without the program.

The club wins by having an enthusiastic group of kids who are willing and eager to learn.

Hardy and Beacon Hall have received their fair share of press about the unique program, and the veteran professional who once had hopes of a professional hockey career, is grateful for the coverage.

But that wasn’t the purpose behind it.

“We want to create an opportunity, not just in a golf sense, but in every sense, for kids,” he says.

Hardy thinks back fondly to his own youth growing up in the Scarborough section of Toronto. He played junior golf under the watchful eye of head pro Mel Taylor, and almost viewed him as a surrogate father after losing his own dad at an early age.

His reverence for Taylor only grew as he worked under him as an assistant pro.

Hardy later leapfrogged to Maple Downs and Richmond Hill (his first job as head professional), and again learned under the tutelage of legendary golf figures Irv Lightstone and Reg Acomb.

Both men never asked Hardy to do anything they wouldn’t do themselves.

When the opportunity to join an eclectic group of visionaries and build Beacon Hall came up in the mid-1980s, he jumped at the opportunity.

The 200-acre parcel of land, once owned by the Toronto and North York Hunt Club, became an exclusive gated community of 80 homes, overlooking a golf course that is a perennial pick on the Top 10 lists in Canada.

The founding fathers (Bryan Leggett and Bill Carruthers, Don Howson, and Harry Lawson) wanted to create a players’ course with a limited membership. They wanted it to be a stern but fair test.

Beacon Hall might be considered a “sleeper club” because it only turns out about 15,000 rounds a year, but Hardy is ever busy providing his membership with the latest in instruction and service – including a whole line of hard and soft goods, and that includes a full list of product from TaylorMade and adidas.

He’s been using both for the past few years, and says he “likes the whole package. They offer the widest variety of product and that’s good for my members,” he says.

Hardy loves the TaylorMade technology, but also its philosophy of providing the best product to each player – not just pushing the most expensive equipment.

“Their product and service is hard to beat,” he says.

Hardy’s scholarship program is hard to beat, a ‘beacon’ to other clubs across Canada and a chance for his membership to give something back to the community.

He’s a professional who understands that there’s a vast difference between a great golf course and a great club. Beacon Hall’s fabulous layout and its determination to take care of the young and old make it both.

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