IAGA Member Spotlight – Adam Helmer

Adam Helmer, 37, of Ottawa, Ontario, has been at the heart of Golf Canada’s rules and competitions for more than 10 years. From mid-June to late August, you’ll find him inside the ropes for Golf Canada’s major competitions and a few of the game’s majors, including the Canadian Amateurs, the RBC Canadian Open, and the Canadian Pacific Women’s Open.

All told, Golf Canada – what was once known as the Royal Canadian Golf Association – conducts 30 or more championships and qualifiers each year for golfers in Canada’s ten provinces.

As GC’s director of rules, competitions and amateur status, high on Helmer’s list of challenges is pace of play.

“A high percentage of what we deal with as tournament administrators and referees is pace of play.”

There are variables-a-plenty affecting pace of play, including course setup, weather, size of the field, tee-time intervals, etc., but Helmer believes getting players engaged in the solution to the problem is the key.

He cites the PGA and LPGA’s efforts at proactively engaging players in improving pace through their player advisory councils. After the LPGA Tour adopted 11-minute tee-time intervals and implemented a new time par policy that focused on the lead group, the tour shaved 14 minutes off the average time and 22 minutes from the longest time.

“We’re big proponents of eleven-minute intervals,” says Helmer, adding, “It makes all the difference in the world.”

Whereas limiting the field size is also an option, it’s not a practical or ideal solution given the need to grow player participation, he concedes.

For certain, advances in golf ball and driver technology are credited with most influencing the game inside the ropes, yet Helmer sees the biggest change and opportunity for golf administrators is in the form of new technology, both hardware and software, and the impact it has on communication. He points to hand-held devices such as smart phones and tablets that allow referees to monitor pace of play and collect data from walking scorers in real time.

At Golf Canada, we’ve streamlined the player experience, explains Helmer, adding that their tournament software (provided by Bluegolf) features the convenience of a single username-password login for all GC and provincial competitions, and more seamless communications before, during and after competitions. The GC tournament app also allows competitors to check in to a championship, much like an airline flight, call for a referee, view hole locations and provide access to interactive GPS distances on course. As a nod to environmental considerations, Helmer adds, GC has also replaced all of its traditional printed leaderboards with television monitors and radically reduced the amount of other printed materials.

Helmer and Golf Canada’s Rules and Amateur Status Committee Chair, Diane Barabe, worked four Opens together this summer: the CP Women’s Open, the Canadian Open, the U.S. Open and The (British) Open, a feat which they jokingly refer to as “the Triple Crown of Refereeing.”

Helmer also worked the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games, a precursor to golf’s Olympic Games debut in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, and has recently officiated at the Players Championship and the WGC-Dell Match Play.

What’s most important at a major championship in his view is how well the course is covered by referees. The Masters uses referees who are assigned to specific holes allowing them to become intimately acquainted with the problem spots unique to their hole (TIOs, GUR, water hazards and the like), while the USGA has recently turned to “pods,” or small groups of referees who are led by a pod captain, and who rotate among one or two assigned holes and work either morning or afternoon shifts. The R&A assigns walking referees to specific groups at The Open facilitating better rapport between players and their referees, while Golf Canada, together with the PGA Tour, uses a group of roving referees at the RBC Canadian Open who cover the entire golf course.

Whether it’s pods, stationary or roving referees, prior to officiating at a championship Helmer likes to “take a lap through the Rules book” to refresh his knowledge, visit the facility to acquaint himself with the golf course’s specific trouble spots and quirks, review the Local Rules, and meet with other referees to discuss potential issues on-course.

In Helmer’s experience, there is no substitution for careful planning and preparation prior to a refereeing a golf championship.