Here’s looking at the past and future for the final 2007 edition of Chicagoland Golf:
We saw new daddy Tiger Woods working hard to pay for new boots for Sam (it’s a girl, right?). He wasn’t the Tiger of 2000, but he won seven of 16 starts including the Western (aka BMW) at Cog Hill, the PGA at Southern Hills and the Tour Championship at dart board East Lake; won $10,867,052, twice as much as runnerup Phil Mickelson; led the scoring average with a 67.79 mark, a shot and a half better than Ernie Els and thrilled all of Canada by losing to Mike Weir in the Presidents Cup singles.
Mentioning Canada, for the first time in Tour history (probably), two Canadians won on Tour in the same year, Weir and Stephen Ames. Pretty good, eh? So what that Weir lives in Utah and Calgary resident Ames actually is from Trinidad.
Lorena Ochoa, who spent a couple years at the University of Arizona, the preparatory school for both the men’s and women’s tours, took her second straight LPGA Player of the Year crown and Annika Sorenstam, who also passed through the Tucson school briefly, started showing some of her old stuff although she didn’t match fellow Scandinavian Suzann Pettersen, who won five times and was runnerup to Ochoa for Player of the Year.
The American women posted a historic victory over Europe in the Solheim Cup, the first time the women pros competed on the Old Course at St. Andrews; America’s male amateurs edged Great Britain & Ireland in the Walker Cup at Royal County Down in Northern Ireland and the American pros beat All of the World except Europe in the Presidents Cup in Montreal. Now if they could just do that against Europe next September in the Ryder Cup in Kentucky.
The year wasn’t all bad for Europe as Padraig Harrington, despite two water balls on the 72nd hole, snapped a seven-year drought by beating Sergio Garcia in the British Open at Carnoustie. The Scottish course, where Ben Hogan won the only Open he played in and where Jean Van de Velde tried to play water polo, is the only course on the Open rota where water plays a major role. Woods pulled his opening tee shot, with an iron, into the Barry Burn to set the tone for the championship.
As the world’s No. 1 aquaphobe, my new hero is Harrington for his remarkable drinkmanship.
MEANWHILE, here in the Great Midwest, we had one of the best weather summers I can remember. Is it global warming? The lack of rain hurt agriculture in some areas, but golf courses didn’t lose weekends or Monday outings to rain and September and October were exceptionally good. If only we could say the same about gasoline prices and the economy.
“Play was stronger than anticipated,” said David Graham, executive director of the Golf Association of Michigan, and Michigan PGA executive director Kevin Helm echoed it, crediting the weather for expanding the season.
Graham said “savvy operators” were careful with their pricing to provide good value for the dollar and invested in marketing.
Often when things go sour, there is a reticence to promote and it brings to mind the line from Grand Prix, the Formula One movie of years ago when Yves Montand said when he sees an accident, he hits the pedal harder because others are slowing down.
Boyne, the Big Daddy of Midwest golf with nine courses spread over Boyne Mountain, Boyne Highlands and Bay Harbor, saw a 3 percent dip in rounds played but, thanks to a price increase, had a 2 percent increase in revenue.
The 1990s rush to build new courses isn’t even a crawl. It’s non-existent. Jerry Matthews, Michigan’s most prolific golf course architect, said “I’m just working in my garden.”
A sign of the times was the conversion of an early Matthews course in suburban Detroit, Partridge Creek, into an upscale mall that opened this summer.
Ray Hearn, who apprenticed under Matthews and has an imposing list of his own courses – Mistwood at Romeoville, Island Hills, in Centreville, MI, Hemlock in Ludington and Macatawa Legends in Holland among them – is doing remodeling work at century-old Flossmoor and it seems there’s no airport he hasn’t gone through. He’s working on a new course in France, two in Egypt and is working on drumming up business in the Bahamas, China and Vietnam.
Colorado architect Jim Engh, who won awards for Tullymore in Michigan, and numerous courses in Colorado plus Idaho and North Dakota, has a new one at Reynolds Plantation in Georgia and recently returned from Korea where golf, as proven by the LPGA player roster, is hot. Engh also is adding nine holes to the spectacular Carne Links in Belmullet, County Mayo, Ireland.
Renovations are the major openings and, in a takeoff on the old western “Have gun, will travel,” course designers’ cards read “Have shovel, will travel.”
I CAN SEE clearly now, the old song goes, and so can two friends who took off their glasses. Kaye Kessler, sports editor and columnist of the Columbus Citizen-Journal during Jack Nicklaus’s golden years and then media coordinator for The International at Castle Pines, CO, always was kidded about his six-part swing.
But lately, as his eyes weakened and he went to trifocals, his shots were going six ways, none of them straight. Recently a friend told him to take off his glasses. Incredible! He saw only one ball on the tee. And it went long and straight.
I mentioned that to Dave Hackenberg, columnist for the Toledo Blade, and he said he asked mutual buddy Marino Parascenzo, the Pittsburgh poet, why he took his glasses off on the green but wore them on the rest of the course.
Parascenzo said he could see the line better. Hack said “Why don’t you try that on the rest of the course?” Once again, incredible! He never hit it better.
Therefore, when you get older, take off the bi and trifocals.
LOOKING AHEAD – The United States Golf Association finally got around to announcing the 2011 Senior Open will be played at Inverness Club in Toledo and the 2012 Senior Open at Indianwood G&CC in Lake Orion, a Detroit suburb.
Both clubs knew for a year they’d get the events. Indianwood owner Stan Aldridge felt the USGA owed him a men’s championship after he took the 1994 Women’s Open on short notice because of Merion Golf Club’s restrictive membership policy.
It was the second Women’s Open at Indianwood in six years. Betsy King won in 1989 and at the time it was the best attended, most successful Women’s Open in history, and Patty Sheehan won in 1994.
Because the PGA Senior Tour had one of its major championships at TPC Michigan, the USGA was reluctant to give Indianwood the Senior Open and no way would it get an Open instead of cash-cow Oakland Hills. When Ford dropped the Senior Tour, the way opened for Indianwood.
The Senior Open has become an attractive money-maker for clubs and as a result it’s going to the top drawer sites. Oakland Hills hosted it twice with Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus winning. It goes to the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs next summer and, after playing the Broadmoor a few weeks ago, the old boys can expect some of the most treacherous greens they’ve ever played.
There’s a Michigan flavor at the Broadmoor. Russ Miller, the director of golf, is a graduate of the Ferris State Professional Golf Management program and Mark Kelbel, a Michigan State alum and formerly at the Grand Hotel’s Jewel course on Mackinac Island, is head professional. Kelbel’s brother, Ed, heads the PGM program at Colorado State University.
Another Michigander golf nut, is doing well too – Glenn Frey of the Eagles with the No. 1 album in the country, “Long Road Out of Eden.”
And Michiganders Jeff Daniels and Tim Allen have been promoting the state by doing the voiceovers for the “Pure Michigan” TV and radio commercials.
You can’t keep a great (lake) state down.
11-19-07
As year winds down, we get two pieces of good news
With the holidays upon us, the two tightest-wound major championships, the Masters and the United States Open, produced two of the best pieces of news of the year from the management side of the game.
Masters Chairman Billy Payne, who is more of a man of the people than any head green coat in many years, announced the Par-3 Contest on Wednesday afternoon will be televised by ESPN from 3-5 p.m. Eastern time. The event is held on probably the prettiest 1,060-yard par 27 course in golf and many of the players use their kids as caddies, dressed in the traditional Masters caddie white jump suits.
First held in 1960, there have been 63 holes in one but winning the Par 3 has been a jinx right from the beginning. No winner has gone on to win the green coat that year.
Payne’s second surprise was announcing free admission, Thursday to Sunday, for a youngster aged 8 to 16 when accompanied by “an accredited patron” – that means the individual named on the series badge.
A Masters ticket is the toughest ticket in all of sports and, looking at the badge holders for close to 40 years, I can say safely that it isn’t a really young crowd.
“We want to inspire the next generation of golfers now,” Payne said. “We’re serious about exposing youngsters to golf and the Masters.”
Payne is a welcome breath of fresh air at Augusta, The man who directed the Atlanta Olympic Games succeeds Hootie Johnson whose legacy is barring female membership in a broadside that likely made PR professionals cringe and then lengthening and toughening the course with a veritable forest of 30-40 foot tall pine trees and tees that were so far back they nearly were in the clubhouse or off the property.
The primary effect was silencing the crowd roars for back nine birdies and eagles that made the Masters such a fun event and stretching the tees made it more difficult for the spectators to get around the course.
The USGA, which pretty much runs the game most of us play, still is run by country club elites but the blue bloods picked up on Tiger Woods’ comment at Oakmont this year that an amateur couldn’t break 100 on the Open setup.
The USGA, proud that the Open is universally agreed as the toughest setup of the four big ones, announced it will let one pure amateur play Torrey Pines one week before the Open. Should be good for a chuckle.
All you have to do to be eligible is write in 100 words or less why you think you can break 100 on the Open course, with Open rough and superslick greens with a USGA rules official and NBC cameras following you. And play with three celebrities who haven’t been named. How about Bill Murray, Charles Barkley and Michael Jordan?
You’ll be seen in a one hour special on the Sunday of the Open.
I’ve played a couple Open courses the day after the championship and don’t think I broke 100 on the first nine at Pebble Beach in 1992 when Tom Kite won. The greens were rock hard and linoleum fast after Sunday’s stiff winds and your shoes disappeared in the rough. On the 11th hole four of us, plus my wife, went practically shoulder-to-shoulder trying to find our drives.
Watching the “lucky” winner of the Torrey Pines contest will be a masochist’s delight.