Last Sunday's win for Moose Jaw native Adam Hadwin at the Valspar Championships was a big moment for Canadian golf.

With the win, Hadwin vaulted himself into 51st place in the world rankings, ranking as two of the top three Canadians in the World Golf Rankings Saskatchewan-born.

The South West Athletic Conference (SWAC) is hoping that recent success of Canadian golfers will translate to the grassroots level and increase popularity in the sport.

"The fact that male Canadian golfers are (achieving success on the international level) and Brooke Henderson for the females, that's a great aspiration point for some of our young golfers to look forward to that," Deb Reamer, Athletic Director for SWAC said. "I can't speak for if it's a national level, but it's definitely a Saskatchewan issues where the numbers have declined tremendously in high school golf."

Since Reamer was appointed Athletic Director of SWAC in 2008, the numbers have fallen from 72 participants (15 females) to 27 participants (3 females) for the 2016 high school golf season.

"I think part of the reason is golf season is not solely during the school year," she said. "The actual golf season for high school starts in April. it's a tough sell for our kids because they're involved in track and field and all of the other sports, so you would really have to self-monitor yourself away from school in the summertime.

"I think if kids are really into golf, they do it on the junior tour. Much like what we are seeing with club volleyball and club basketball it's happening outside of the schools."

With the numbers diminishing for high school golfers in the province, SWAC has made a change to try and stimulate the grow by allowing grade nine's to participate in the sport.

They have also looked at allowing grade eights to partake in golf to try and make the sport more appealing to the youth.

One significant change, though, has happened recently to decrease the provincial numbers; in 2015 the Saskatchewan High School Athletic Association (SHSAA) including SWAC stopped offering sand green golf. This change affected approximately 20 golfers in the southwest alone.

"We still choose to offer a road to provincial golf to be open (in grass green) and we still support our schools that want to send schools," she told Swift Current Online. "I think this is going to be looked at the provincial level, SHSAA is going to be looking at the feasibility of golf as a school sport."

Saskatoon's SHSAA's golf scene has taken a hit, with the city schools having refused to participate at the Association level, instead electing to have an inter-city championships.