Globally skilled Canadian sports activities government returns house to guide new chapter for Canada’s Nationwide Ladies’s Open
(November 26, 2024) – Golf Canada is happy to announce that Claire Welsh of Barrie, Ont., has been appointed as the brand new event director of the CPKC Ladies’s Open.
Welsh spent 10 years working for The R&A in St Andrews, Scotland, holding progressively senior roles with The Open and the AIG Ladies’s Open championships. Most just lately, Welsh served as the top of participant relations for The R&A, the place she developed and carried out a participant relations technique specializing in all areas of the participant expertise. In that position, she was liable for important parts together with participant engagement and retention, journey and lodging, accreditation, ticketing, and participant amenities, whereas constructing trusting relationships with gamers and their assist groups at each main championships.
As well as, Welsh developed a complete participant survey and benchmarking program, delivering The Open Clubhouse, thought-about to be the best-in-class for a participant facility in skilled golf. She labored carefully with the LPGA Tour, Women European Tour, and IMG on all participant relations points of the AIG Ladies’s Open following The R&A’s merger with the Women Golf Union.
Welsh additionally labored inside The R&A’s Industrial and Communications departments, specializing in media relations, digital content material, broadcast, and partnership agreements all whereas main a crew and supervising occasion employees and volunteers. She additionally labored with the Worldwide Golf Federation supporting golf’s return to the Olympic programme at Rio 2016.
“We’re extremely excited so as to add Claire to our crew at Golf Canada and convey house a globally skilled golf business government to guide a brand new chapter for the CPKC Ladies’s Open,” mentioned Golf Canada Chief Working Officer Garrett Ball. “Claire’s expertise working with The R&A together with all aspects of constructing a profitable and memorable event for the gamers, employees, companions, and followers was distinctive. We spoke with proficient candidates each internally and externally and it was Claire’s intensive worldwide expertise within the international golf house that positions her as the best lead for Canada’s Nationwide Ladies’s Open Championship.”
For Welsh, returning house to guide Canada’ Nationwide Ladies’s Open Championship, one in all Canada’s premier girls’s sport properties is a perfect alternative.
“It’s a real honour and privilege to function Event Director for the CPKC Ladies’s Open, an occasion that celebrates the easiest of golf in Canada. Coming house to assist form the following chapter of our Nationwide Ladies’s Open feels extremely particular, particularly at a time when girls’s sports activities are experiencing exceptional development and recognition,” mentioned Welsh. “I understand how vital this historic occasion is for golf’s high gamers, and I’ve additionally seen its means to encourage communities proper throughout the nation. I’m actually wanting ahead to collaborating with the unimaginable groups at Golf Canada and CPKC to ship an unforgettable expertise for followers, gamers, volunteers and companions alike.”
After learning Communications and Media Research at Carleton College, Welsh started her profession in sports activities at her hometown newspaper, The Barrie Examiner, as a contract sportswriter earlier than serving as Director of the Tim Horton’s Charity Golf Tour and founding the Thursday Night time Lights highschool soccer sequence. She additionally labored on the Vancouver Olympic Winter Video games as an occasion providers crew lead for the boys’s and ladies’s hockey competitions.
Previous to becoming a member of The R&A, Welsh spent six years working with Golf Ontario because the advertising and marketing and communications supervisor overseeing championship media protection and the group’s digital channels.
Welsh will start her new position remotely this week earlier than returning to Canada in January and can report back to Golf Canada’s Chief Working Officer Garrett Ball. She takes over from former CPKC Ladies’s Open Event Director Ryan Paul who was appointed event director of the RBC Canadian Open in August.
The 2025 CPKC Ladies’s Open will probably be performed August 19-24 for the primary time on the historic Mississaugua Golf and Nation Membership in Mississauga, Ont.
