The Mountain View Golf Club is preparing to host 18 Canadian PGA players for the 2nd annual Skookum Asphalt Charity Pro-Am on Saturday.

"This is an opportunity for me to show my peers and my fellow professionals, ‘Hey, this is where I am, this is what golf is like in the Great North, here's how golf is broadening itself in the country as a whole,'” club pro Jeff Wiggins said.

"So it means a lot to me, from a personal standpoint, to be able to work in an area that has a golf course of the quality that these guys can come up and be proud of.”

All proceeds from the tournament will be donated to the Whitehorse Hospital Foundation and Variety Children's Charity of British Columbia.

Scott Kent, president of the Yukon Hospital Foundation, said this year's charity revenue has already tripled since last year's total of $30,000, which was split with Variety.

The Pro-Am is an important part of raising funds for the associations, Kent said.

"This tournament has been sold out for weeks, as far as players go, and our sponsorship has been fully subscribed for two or three months,” he said.

"We've seen this thing grow. From the charity side of things, the revenue has tripled from last year to this year.”

That growing sum is necessary to securing the $2 million over three years the foundation is hoping to get to purchase an MRI machine, which would be the first of its kind north of 60, Kent pointed out.

"We'll be able to take wait times from six months to two weeks for non-urgent MRIs.

Having that equipment here is extremely important,” he said.

"We're less than a year in, but this event will help us contribute to bring an MRI machine to the Yukon.”

The format for this year's event will see one pro shoot with four amateurs. The tournament will be scored using a Modified Stableford system. Amateurs' handicap will be deducted from their score, yielding a point value. The point value is taken from the top two amateurs score on each hole, plus the pro's, to create the team score.

There will also be a pro division wherein the pros will play for a purse.

The first shotgun start will begin at 7 a.m. and end with lunch at 11:30 a.m. The second shotgun start will go at 1 p.m. and last until roughly 5:30 p.m., followed by a dinner, dance and silent auction.

"One of the exciting things is the quality of the Mountain View Golf Club and the people that we're attracting to come up to this event,” Kent said.

"It's really become a marquee event on the golf calendar here in the Yukon and a lot of people are excited to be involved.”

Wiggins first mentioned the success of Pro-Ams for charity last year.

The concept had yet to be tried in Whitehorse, Wiggins said.

"It just makes for a great day, and they thought it was a great idea, so we moved forward. It was a really simple concept,” Wiggins said.

"They're quite popular outside the territory. You go into B.C. or Alberta or anywhere in the country or world, so it's a nice opportunity for the participants and sponsors to play with a golf professional and have a good day.”

At the first annual Pro-Am, Trevor Metcalf, a Canadian PGA professional from Eagle Ranch Resort in Invermere, B.C., shot a 65 – a course record – beating the previous best score of 69.

"Last year was the first year that the Mountain View Golf Club had showcased itself to golf professionals from outside the territory, and they were really amazed by the condition of the golf course and the fact that we have the facility that we do have up here in Whitehorse,” Wiggins said.

"The guys were expecting to come up and have to carry around a mat like they do in Yellowknife, but that wasn't the case; they actually had a first-class and so they're really excited about coming back this year.”

Wiggins added that recognition from visiting pros breeds recognition from potential visitors from down south.

"We're getting recognized, Whitehorse is getting recognized, the golf club is getting recognized, Yukon golf is getting recognized far beyond the boarders of the territory. That's good for tourism, the golf club itself, the golf course itself, the membership itself. You put value into the facility by being able to host these kinds of events.

"It's just leading into bigger things. We're starting to get recognized and that's leading to more recognition, which is good for the territory as a whole. These golf professionals go back down south, they tell their members how great it is up here, and they can't help but to be curious. They don't just want to come up here to hunt and fish and canoe anymore; now there's more options.”