Craig Doell: 2026 Inductee
Craig Doell has spent the previous two decades experiencing the joy that both golf and being home have provided him.
He lives in Victoria, on British Columbia’s Vancouver Island, and has for most of his life. He’s been a member at the historic Victoria Golf Club for 42 of his 54 years and has had a similarly stable accounting job since he exited college, which he’s balanced with the other full-time job of being a family man to his wife and two kids.
Through it all, he’s forged an amateur golf career that includes wins in the 1999 and 2004 PNGA Men’s Mid-Amateur Championships, as well as three victories apiece in both the BC Men’s Mid-Amateur and Mid-Master. He has also won the Victoria City Amateur in his hometown eight times, finished third in the 2003 Pacific Coast Amateur and was a semifinalist in the Canadian Amateur that same year.
Craig will be inducted into the Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame in 2026, which recognizes the game’s brightest stars from the region who have excelled at the highest level of golf competition. The PNGA conducts induction ceremonies every other year to honor individuals who have been nominated by the media and golfing public and then selected by the PNGA Hall of Fame Committee.
“I’m thrilled and honored to have this recognition,” Craig said about his PNGA enshrinement. “The PNGA has been a big part of my competitive golf career.”
One of B.C.’s finest modern-era players, Craig was a jack-of-all-trades athlete growing up, donating his time to tennis, basketball, soccer, badminton and just about any and everything else a young athlete could spend their time doing on Vancouver Island.
He began playing golf around age six, following along with his dad, swinging a cut-down right-handed club on the fairways at Victoria Golf Club. “I never really took the game that seriously because I was busy playing every other sport,” he recalls. “As I played more, we discovered I should play left-handed, so my father got me a set of left-handed clubs.” He would go on to become the most successful left-handed amateur golfer in all of Canada.
At the age of 12, his parents paid $100 for him to become a junior member at Victoria Golf Club, following his father who had been a member at the club since the 1960s.
“In 1989, my friends in Victoria told me if I wanted to play on the Junior Americas Cup team I needed to go to the lower mainland to play the Vancouver Tour,” he recalls. “I contacted the legend, Harry White, for details, and Harry volunteered to pick me up at the ferry every Saturday and take me back at the end of the day so I could accumulate points to be eligible for the Junior Americas Cup. The first event was the Marine Drive Junior Invitational. I won. I think I won two or three more times that summer. I finished second in the points standings and made the team. We played at Pasatiempo Golf Club (in Calif.). From then on, I was hooked on golf.”
Craig attended Glenlyon Norfolk School in Victoria, which didn’t have a golf program. Despite that, he earned a spot on the University of Arizona men’s roster, where he played alongside the likes of Jim Furyk and Manny Zerman, two of the world’s best at the time.
“It was a nice opportunity to get exposed to a higher level of golf,” he said, specifically mentioning how the onset of winter in Tucson brought no interruption to golf season.
After one year as an Arizona Wildcat, he transferred to the closer-to-home University of British Columbia in Vancouver and continued to play on that school’s team. Upon graduating, he got an accounting job with KPMG back in Victoria. Three years later, he started what has been his only other position since, as an investment adviser with BMO Nesbitt Burns.
When he left UBC, he was one of Canada’s best amateur golfers and represented his country twice on the Canadian National Amateur team. He certainly admits to wondering how far he could’ve taken his game if he were to have turned pro, and even had sponsors interested, but he was satisfied with the profession he was already building in his home city.
That was especially apparent when compared to what is usually unseen in the grinding of the pursuit of playing professional golf, such as perpetual life on the road, and the related costs and rewards that are far from guaranteed.
“I just decided I love the game of golf,” he said, looking back. “I can play at a high amateur level and still play professional tournaments. I just decided to stay as a lifelong amateur and enjoy the game for what it was.”
Settling down, he and his wife had two children together, who Craig mentored with their own golf games, and instilled a passion for the game he hopes will remain with them both.
“I just hope they’ll enjoy golf for what it is,” Craig said, echoing his own words. “It’s a lifelong activity you can do.”
While many of Craig’s victories occurred in British Columbia, he had success in PNGA championships. His two Men’s Mid-Amateur wins came at Marine Drive Golf Club (Vancouver, B.C.) in 1999 and Bandon Dunes Golf Resort (Bandon, Ore.) in 2004.
“My win at Marine Drive, I was playing really well,” he recalls. “I shot 70-66 in the first two rounds, then just coasted. I think I won by seven strokes.”
At Bandon Dunes, Craig’s 2004 triumph there concluded under unusual circumstances, as the final round was instead converted into a sudden-death playoff due to heavy fog that had engulfed the oceanside links. Only one playoff hole was necessary for Craig to seal the championship. Around that time, he again considered turning pro, but again decided to hold steady where he was.
In the following years, he made the most of his continued amateur status, with his BC Mid-Master and Mid-Amateur wins coming in 2014, 2017 and 2021. Playing in the Pacific Coast Amateur, he represented B.C. in the Morse Cup 10 times.
While Craig has accumulated a great career as an individual player, his career as a team player representing B.C. and Canada around the world is equally as impressive. Being selected to more than 24 teams, he has travelled to Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica, Mexico, New Zealand, and throughout the U.S.
“Looking back on my career I would say the highlight has been travelling the world playing team golf,” he says. “You get to meet so many great people, make so many lasting friendships. You create a bond with your teammates that lasts a lifetime. Golfers are all such great people. I probably would never have had the opportunity to visit all these places if it weren’t for golf.”
Beyond pure success on the course, Craig has found simply being enveloped within the golf community of the Pacific Northwest to be very welcoming. He’s seen firsthand how close-knit quite a few of the players, rules officials, volunteers and tournament organizers are.
“It’s such an amazing group of people that help run the events,” he explained. “It’s a neat feeling to see a lot of familiar faces over and over at various events over the years. You get to know people on a much more personal level and it’s a neat set of friends you develop over time.”
These days, Craig’s competitive schedule is tempered down a notch or two, but for good reason. With his daughter already in college and son soon to graduate high school, he’s been intent on spending time with them, by way of traveling and other family outings.
He himself recently became a member at Royal Portrush, the Northern Ireland links that hosted the 2025 Open Championship. He managed to log a few rounds in advance of the course closing for that major week, and one more the Monday after, with Sunday’s hole locations still in place.
He’s leaving the door open to continue to compete in senior events. And the next time he decides to play in another PNGA championship, the now-Hall-of-Famer will do so with the highest honor that can be bestowed upon any of the region’s golfers.
Accomplishments
- PNGA Men’s Mid-Amateur Champion – 1999, 2004
- BC Men’s Mid-Amateur Champion – 2014, 2017, 2021
- BC Men’s Mid-Master Champion – 2014, 2017, 2021
- Canadian Amateur Semifinalist – 2003
- Canadian Mid-Amateur Runner-up – 2009, 2010
- Canadian Mid-Master Runner-up – 2012
- Canadian Club Champions Champion – 1997, 2000, 2001
- Peru International Amateur Champion – 2002
- Victoria City Amateur Champion – 8 times
- Club Champion of Victoria Golf Club – 20 times
- Vancouver Island Open Champion – 2016, 2022
- Stocker Cup Champion – 2004, 2007
- PGA of BC Tournament of Champions Champion – 2007, 2017, 2025
- PNGA Lamey Cup Team Member – 15 times
- PNGA Lamey Cup, BC Team Champions – 2009, 2013, 2014
- Centennial Matches, PNGA Team Member – 1999
- Canadian Amateur, Willingdon Cup BC Team Member – 1996, 2004
- Canadian Amateur, Willingdon Cup BC Team Champions – 2004
- Canadian Mid-Amateur, BC Team Member – 2016, 2017
- Pacific Coast Amateur, Morse Cup BC Team Member – 11 times
- Pacific Coast Amateur, Morse Cup BC Team Champions – 2003
- Pacific Coast Amateur, Morse Cup PNGA Team Member – 1999, 2000
- Canadian National Amateur Team Member – 2005, 2006
- Four Nations Cup, Canadian Team Member – 2003, 2005
- World Amateur, Canadian Team Member – 2004
- Inducted into Golf Hall of Fame of BC – 2023
Inducted into Pacific Northwest Golf Hall of Fame – 2026
