TST #8 They Played Anyway
Salmon Arm Golf Course | August 9th, 2026
Three wildfires burned through the valley in the span of two weeks. By August 9th, the region had some of the worst air quality on the planet. The advisories were blunt. Stay inside. Skip anything strenuous. Wait for the wind to change.
Thirty-two players didn't wait.
They drove in anyway, through haze thick enough to swallow the mountains around them. The smoke never let up. It sat over the course all day, exactly as advertised. But underneath it, conditions were playable. Temperatures were good, the layout played firm and fair, and the greens were soft enough to make a handful of KPs come down to inches. The eye said disaster. The scorecard said otherwise.
Mostly.
Under skies that never cleared, Salmon Arm still found a way to bite. More doubles than usual turned up on cards with familiar names attached, proof the smoke wasn't the only thing testing the field's patience that day.
Taylor Campbell teed off as a guest, not a member. No season race this year, no points to protect, nothing riding on the round beyond the round itself. The past tour champion didn’t join as a member this year due to a busy wedding season crowding out the Sundays he used to give the tour. Campbell shot 74, +2, closing with a back nine that read like he'd never left, 34, -2, methodical from the turn home. Guest or not, it was his first Gross win with Twlv Stix.
Steve Buse came in chasing a third straight win. He didn't get it, but he didn't fade either, plus-4, tied with Vitaly Yaromich, the two separated only by a one-stroke edge on the back nine that put Buse in second and closed the book on the streak.
Net told a different story. Clayton Houle had played exactly two Twlv Stix events before this one. In his third, he shot 4-under and walked off with the Net win, the kind of result that turns a stranger into a name people start watching for. Evan Koppa followed at 3-under, another steady week in a season that's been full of them. Dustin Hughes rounded out the podium at 2-under, keeping the usual suspects in their usual company even as a new one crashed the party.
Elsewhere, the season board mostly held its shape. The one real shift came from an absence. Bruce Kristinson, still chasing a repeat as season champion, got shut out by highway closures and never made it to the course. The miss did what a bad round couldn't, it ended the comeback before it had a chance to start.
The forecast told thirty-two players to stay home. They came anyway, and the course made them work for every stroke, soft greens and tight pins doing nothing to soften a leaderboard that still found ways to bite. Taylor Campbell proved a year away doesn't dull an edge. Clayton Houle proved the field still has room for a new name to make noise.
The smoke was bad. Thirty-two players didn't care.
