Maureen Barnes-Smith, vice-president of sales at Unique Vacations Canada, says she is expecting an exciting championship at this year’s 27th staging of the annual Canadian Baxter Travel Industry Golf Tournament, which will be held at the Sandals Golf and Country Club in Upton Estate, St Ann, over the weekend.

The highly anticipated two-day event, which is scheduled to tee-off at 8:30 am today, has attracted over 60 golfers from the Canadian travel industry.

Trevello, who won the tournament last year, are scheduled to defend their title against a very strong contingent of golfers that will be seeking to wrestle the title away this year.

Barnes-Smith told the Jamaica Observer that there will be 15 participating teams in groups of four that will be competing. She noted that most of these golfers take the sport seriously and are, therefore, determined to put on a great showing.

“We have a group of premier Canadian attendees — travel agents, tour operators, airlines — from Canada participating in the tournament,” said Barnes-Smith.

“This is our 27th annual event and so many of them have been here before and so the expectation is that people are coming for a good two rounds of golf and also to experience the brand-new reimagined Sandals Dunn’s River and also to experience Jamaica,” she added.

Barnes-Smith pointed out that last year’s tournament went down to the wire and so she is expecting the same this year because all golfers are ready and raring to go.

“Some of the teams that are here this year were here last year and it was a dead heat between two or three of the teams and those teams are here again representing this year, and so I know that some of them are coming for revenge,” she said.

“We have 15 teams of four persons and some of them are mixed male and female and they are all travel industry people in Canada. It ranges from Air Canada Vacations, West Jet, Porto Airlines, [Air] Canada Airlines, so all of the major tour operators in Canada will be represented,” Barnes-Smith explained.