TST #3 Three Cards, One Trophy
Nk'Mip Canyon Desert | May 24, 2026
Some stops on the schedule get talked out of. Nk'Mip is one of them. Ninety minutes south of Kelowna, a drive just long enough to make a Sunday morning feel like a commitment. The route down the lakes is one of the best in the valley, and what you spend in gas you save in green fees. While the rest of the Okanagan pushed their rates up, Nk'Mip stayed flat. Ask anyone who's made it down and they'll tell you the same thing: the course is worth every mile.
Forty-three made the trip on May 24. The course doesn't reward the drive. It tests it.
This was the first Major of the 2026 season, with prizing from Birdie2Bogey. More points on the line, the first event where players could really make a move on the leaderboard. Blue sky, no clouds, heat that found the back of the neck by the third hole. The wind sat down for most of the day, then woke up on the long-drive 16th, dead into the field's faces, turning a hole built for chest-out swings into a calculation.
The wind wasn't the test. The fairways were. Narrow corridors with the desert pressing in on both sides. Brush that swallowed balls, lies that wouldn't let a clean swing through, and snakes for anyone unlucky enough to go looking. The fairway was the only safe place to be.
The headline name was missing. Tyler Johnson, two events into a Gross-season lead, didn't make the drive. The door opened. Andy Abreo, Vitaly Yaromich, Chris Myer. All had a shot. Fred Winters, who's owned this course in recent visits, had every reason to be the story.
None of them were.
Reid McIntyre signed first. +4. The number sat in the clubhouse like a bet on the table. Beatable, but only just. Kevin Irving stood on the 18th tee at +4 of his own, needing par to match. He'd been steady all day. Then the nerves got to him. Double bogey. Out of the playoff before it existed.
Bruce Kristinson played the back nine like a man doing arithmetic. On the uphill par-4 15th, he nearly drove the green, then drained a testy eight-footer for birdie. Tied for the lead. Three holes to play. On 18 he played it conservatively. Laid up, wedged on, twenty-five feet for birdie below the shelf. The line was right. The speed was right. The ball tracked the cup the whole way and slid past the edge. Par. He signed for +4.
Landon Harison was in his group, one shot back. Same fairway, different math. He went for the green in two and flew it long. The chip back was the kind that takes the round with it if you miss. Land it firm and watch it run off the front. Land it soft and stay in the rough. He nipped it perfectly. The putt wasn't a gift either. He made it. Three-way tie.
The USGA 9-6-3-1 tiebreak handed Bruce the Major.
Three players. Three +4s. One trophy.
In the Net division, the leaderboard sorted itself out early.
Evan Koppa has done this before. He opened +3 and then went eight straight holes without another bogey. Just pars, just patience. His only real blemish came on the long par-4 14th, where a double crept in and got nowhere else. He signed for -4, the day's lowest Net score, and a clean three-shot margin.
Bruce, of course, was on both leaderboards. -1 for second in Net. The defending double-season champion doing what he does.
Third went to Brenden Blair. Even par Net. New clubs, fit at Strictly Golf in Vernon earlier this year. A player whose game has caught up to how much he enjoys it.
The standings reshuffled. Reid McIntyre's runner-up vaults him to the Gross season lead, with Chris Myer and Andy Abreo close behind. Tyler Johnson, absent, paid for it. Evan Koppa retakes the Net lead, exactly where he tends to live, with Dustin Hughes and Andy Abreo in pursuit.
Nk'Mip wasn't a course to attack. It was a course to survive. Bruce survived it best in Gross. +4 was enough to share the lead and the tiebreak did the rest. Evan survived it best in Net, eight straight pars stacked in the middle of his round. The fireworks stayed in the bag. The trophies didn't.
Three events down. Eight to go.
