Ask him about his new title and Tristan Mullally pauses a little bit.
It’s ‘head of national talent identification’ for Golf Canada.
It’s a position that for all intents and purposes the 42-year-old Dundas resident designed and he’s quite happy to be given the opportunity to build the job from the ground up.
“It’s just that that title doesn’t represent everything I’m going to be doing,” he says.
Mullally joined Golf Canada 11 years ago when he was the successful candidate to head up this country’s national women’s amateur team.
A native of Straffan, Ireland, Mullally had worked at a golf course back home, and as a provincial coach and in their national team program before applying for the job in Canada.
“I had been doing a bunch of different jobs but coaching is my passion and I felt I had a good background to add to the existing program (in Canada),” he says. “And to be full time with players who are trying to reach lofty heights is a big pull and was something I wanted to do.”
He has been doing that successfully with Canada’s national women’s team for 11 years, but Mullally felt there were some gaps in Golf Canada’s national development team program.
“One of the things I felt we should be doing more, was underneath our existing program, working with parents, athletes, and coaches and supporting them in getting to the national team program. That wasn’t happening and I felt that was a real miss.”
When Golf Canada named Kevin Blue as their new Chief Sport Officer, he met with everyone in the program and that gave Mullally a chance to present his plan.
“He asked me if that was a position I’d be interested in because I was clearly passionate about it and had done lots of research,” said Mullally.
“I told him that I was because I felt it’s an area where we can make a real difference. I think it’s an important role because it strengthens connections with players earlier and it helps support coaches, who are doing a phenomenal job in the market, to do things with more of a long-term vision.”
In his new position, which he started this past May, Mullally won’t entirely be giving up coaching.
“I had already been working with the PGA of Canada on coach education,” he says. “I have been a facilitator for them and I’ve done a bunch of things on educating parents and working with coaches so this just formalizes that.
“I will be working with (younger) players but it will be much more in tandem with their current coaches and helping them so that by the time they get to the junior national team age their standard will be a little bit higher.”
Mullally said going into the position he felt strongly that Golf Canada needed to create a cross country network of coaches so that the teachers at the grassroots level would have more support.
“This would also give us a pool (of coaches) that we can recommend to parents,” he says. “These will be men and women who are doing a great job with long term development in mind in their market.”
Mullally has also hit the ground running in terms of talent identification.
“Part of the job is gaining more knowledge of players around the country,” he says. “And we’ve begun doing some physical testing and golf-game testing so that we have a better understanding of the landscape.”
The new system, Mullally notes, is not being set up to identify the next Canadian golf superstar.
“We’re already set up to do that,” he says. “When Brooke (Henderson) came along she was identified and made it on to our program. We’re looking for the late bloomers or the player who is number six when only five make the team.”
In other words, they want to have fewer players, who have, for whatever reason, fallen through the cracks.
“We were doing pilots on testing and we’re going to align with junior tours around the county and have them be part of those events so junior age players who are starting to compete have access to this testing,” he says.
“And we’re also going to use this as a tool to educate on how to practice and the coaches who are in our network will deliver it to the market.”
The aim, says Mullally, is to reach Golf Canada’s stated goal of having 30 players on the PGA and LPGA Tour by 2032.
Whole-in-one: It’s club championship season.
- At Hamilton G&CC Nicholas Hofland won the championship flight. Other flight winners were: A-Tom McBarron, B-Jeff O’Brien, Net-Peter Rakoczy.
- Jennifer Lochhead won the women’s club championship. Flight winners were: A-Cam Sakas, B-Diane Campbell, Net -Rhona Scott.
- At Hidden Lake Craig Pinder won the men’s club championship, Paula Gillis won the women’s title and Carson Skinner captured the junior title.
- Aces in the area include: Chris Ridgewell on the 136-yard fourth hole at Glendale with a nine iron and Gary Crowell on the 148-yard eighth hole at Burlington Springs with a 4-hybrid.
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