After watching the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics Sunday morning (good old Canadian TV – in Detroit we watched the Olympics live in the morning on CBC) I thought about the one Olympic Games I covered, 1980 in Lake Placid.
Those Olympics seem closer to what would be considered the Olympic Spirit. A bunch of college kids from Minnesota, Bowling Green and Boston beat the mighty Russians, 4-3, on Friday night to run their record to 5-0-1 and then beat Finland, 4-2, Sunday morning to win the gold medal.
It was one of the greatest victories in all of American sports history and Al Michaels’ countdown to the Russian victory ended with one of the most memorable lines in American sports history: “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!”
That was a different time and network television didn’t run the show – the game against the Soviets was late afternoon, not prime time, and the Sunday morning victory over Finland came with many Americans in church or just getting into their newspaper.
Eric Heiden, from Madison and the University of Wisconsin, won all five speedskating gold medals on the track just outside the front doors of the Lake Placid high school. No one else has five in the Winter Olympics and he set a record in every race, from 500 meters to 10,000 meters. And if you were a speedskater, your summer sport was cycling and Heiden won the 1985 U.S. Professional championship and rode in the 1986 Tour de France.
But those gold medals for Heiden and the hockey team didn’t turn into piles of gold the way they are for Michael Phelps. Some did well – defenseman Ken Morrow went right to the New York Islanders and helped them in their run of Stanley Cups. But Heiden went to medical school and is a doctor.
This year in China? The “Redeem Team” of NBA multi-millionaire superstars wins gold. Wow.
Rafael Nadal adds Olympic gold to his French Open and Wimbledon baubles and then it’s off to New York and the U.S. Open for another big payday for Nadal and hours of TV time for the Nike swoosh.
Phil Mickelson thinks golf should go for the five Olympic rings for the 2016 Games. He argues it would be good for equipment manufacturers, for golf course architects, teachers and construction companies, for expanded television coverage, markets for advertisers, more places for players to play. Just put dollar signs through each of those five rings.
The major golf organizations are lobbying for it but it seems to me that few of the regular folks around the world would play golf. A soccer ball is cheaper than a set of clubs and soccer (futbol) already is the world game. A basketball is cheaper than a set of graphite- or titanium-shafted clubs, and soccer fields and basketball courts don’t take as much land as a golf course.
The rush for golf seems more of a “What’s in it for us?” than a desire to spread the game to the common man. Only the very wealthy can play and belong to clubs in Japan, China and South Korea.
The Olympic Games aren’t what they used to be – the opening and closing extravaganzas with casts of thousands and bodies flying through the air made Cirque du Soleil shows seem like grammar school productions.
My two Chicago daughters, Susan and Jill, are all for the 2016 Games to be held in Chicago for the world to see the unmatched lakefront, and Northwestern alum Susan said by 2016 Beijing will be forgotten – London has the unenviable job of trying to match it in 2012.
Susan said Chicago would “follow Daniel Burnham’s word and ‘Make no small plans.’”
Burnham, for the few who haven’t read “The White City,” was the driving force and architect of the 1892 World’s Columbian Exhibition on the lakefront celebrating the 400th anniversary of Columbus landing in America. At that time it was the largest World’s Fair. (Ed. note: while scheduled for 1892, the opening actually was delayed a year – to 1893, due to problems finishing the transportation systems on time.)
“I’m guessing Mayor Daley is already thinking of ways to top [Beijing],” Susan said. “And what Mayor Daley wants, Mayor Daley usually gets.”
OK. But skip the golf. Isn’t the Fedex Cup big enough?
TIME TO THINK CUP Excited about the Ryder Cup?
Or do you think the Cubs will win the World Series before the United States wins the Ryder Cup it dominated until Europe ganged up on us?
Painful as may be, the eight automatic choices on the team, settled after the PGA Championship a few weeks ago, don’t strike fear in the heart of European captain Nick Faldo, who thrived on Ryder Cup play, played on 11 teams, more than any other European, and posted the best record, 23-19-4.
And who leads the charge for Europe? Well, there’s Padraig Harrington, winner of the British Open and PGA Championship.
Then there’s Sergio Garcia, runnerup in the PGA and playoff loser to Vijay Singh in the Barclays last week. Garcia loves the Ryder Cup and no wonder. He has a 14-4-2 record in four appearances.
Darren Clarke won in Europe last week and the five-team veteran has a 10-7-3 record. Add Lee Westwood, always strong with a 14-8-3 record, and the formidable Swedes, Henrik Stenson and Robert Karlsson and Faldo has a strong foundation. Ian Poulter likely will be one of Faldo’s two picks and he’s earned it on his play this summer.
Those Europeans may come thundering down the track the way Secretariat did at nearby Churchill Downs 35 years ago.
Now look at Paul Azinger’s lineup (and, incidentally, Zinger’s record is 5-7-3) and there isn’t anyone with a winning record going into the Sept. 19-21 at Valhalla Golf Club. Jack Nicklaus designed it but, unfortunately Azinger can’t enlist the Golden Bear.
Phil Mickelson, a disaster four years ago at Oakland Hills, is 9-12-4 in Ryder Cup play and go figure his play this year. Stewart Cink putts well but hasn’t been a finisher. Kentuckian Kenny Perry won three times this year and earned his way onto the team. But his John Deere victory in mid-July is the last by an American. Jim Furyk is a consistent top ten finisher but he isn’t a consistent winner when he’s been in position and his Ryder record is a not very stunning 6-12-2.
Ben Curtis, dismissed as a one-timer after his 2003 British Open victory, is a good grinder and played well in the British Open and was third in the PGA. Like flashy Anthony Kim and Aw-shucks Boo Weekley, Curtis is a Ryder Cup rookie.
Azinger asked for and gets four picks but no hot hands appear among his likely choices, David Toms, D.J. Trahan, Steve Stricker and loose-lipped Hunter Mahan who ripped the PGA of America for making the players “slaves” in the Ryder Cup. He didn’t know what he was talking about and since has apologized profusely to the PGA and Azinger.
PART-TIME CHICAGOAN Luke Donald will miss the Ryder Cup, in which he’s posted a 5-1-1 record in two appearances, because of surgery on his left wrist and I feel his pain.
Donald pulled out in the third round of the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines after hurting his wrist. He hasn’t played since.
I feel the pain of Phil Mickelson who went to Oakmont two weeks before the 2007 U.S. Open, complained the rough was too deep and then withdrew that week in the first round of the Memorial Tournament with a sore wrist.
I feel the pain because I’ve got a splint on my right hand and it’s there because I didn’t keep the ball in the fairway at a northern Michigan course. They’d had two heavy rains in the week before I got there and you would have thought the rough was on steroids. It would have flunked an Olympic Games test.
I was in it on two successive holes, the sixth and seventh, got an ice bag at the turn and spent the rest of the round holding the flag stick for my three companions who disgustingly kept the ball in play.
I should have played under the rules of the nine-hole old fart league I’m in. Winter rules at all times. They fluff it up, nudge it with clubhead or toe…and enjoy themselves. Why not? Guys in their 80s, World War II vets, some retired judges.
No clergy but a friend of mine whose best friend is a man of the cloth, said that while playing at a private club with a woman member, the clergyman had a difficult lie and improved it. Without divine intervention.
My friend heard that the member was shocked.
I’m not a clergyman. I should have followed the Rev’s example, especially since we’re about in September and the golf days are dwindling down.
Wonder if Michael Phelps plays golf?
Poor putters will make quick exit from Oakland Hills
August, 2008
Put the 90th PGA Championship at Oakland Hills this way: If you and your buddies wanted to have a good time and a lot of laughs, you’d love to have a putting contest on Oakland Hills’ greens. Try to play all the angles, just try to lag it close, try to stop it from above the hole. You’d all go silly laughing.
It would be like going to an amusement park and riding the biggest, twistiest roller coaster with hold-your-breath climbs and then over the top and diving straight down. Over and over before finally stopping.
Giggles, laughs and thrills by the load.
But do it 18 times a day for four straight days for a major championship, big money and a place in history and there aren’t any laughs. No giggles. No high five slaps with your buds.
Take the par-3 ninth. It’s been stretched 37 yards and now is 257 from the elevated tee to the green that sits just below the beautiful white clubhouse ($16.5 million several years ago when the whole insides of the building were gutted and new electrical and plumbing were installed – clubs make major money from major tournaments).
Now that green. Front left is a bunker. Back right another bunker. The green slopes severely down from back to front. Hold your breath on putts there. And it will take a wood or hybrid for most players... and usually into the prevailing wind.
Or 10, a crown in the center of the green and the right side slants severely. Severe is a word used most often to describe Oakland Hills’ greens.
The 11th is in a saddle, a two-tier green, and Ricky Barnes made an incredible putt there while winning the 2002 U.S. Amateur. He was on the right side of the green and was afraid of putting at the cup. If he missed, the ball could roll right off the green and down the hill. He putted across the green, got the angle right and it banked perfectly left and slowly down to the cup. The 18th green is a beauty. Seems a monster is buried in the center, dividing the green right and left. It was designed as a par-5 green and that’s the way members play the hole. For the professionals, it’s a 498-yard dogleg right par-4 with seven bunkers protecting the dogleg (an increase of five from the 2004 Ryder Cup) and the green is very shallow, meant to receive short irons, not the middle and long ones the pros will need.
It’s nerve-wracking. Your brain hurts but you need the oh-so-careful delicate touch of a brain surgeon. The nerves of a tightrope walker. The imagination of Tiger Woods. Oh yeah. He won’t be here.
So who has what it takes? Jim Furyk, seemingly always in the top 10 of a major but able to close just in the 2003 Open at Olympia Fields. Vijay Singh won a pair of PGAs, but neither Whistling Straits nor Sahalee had greens to match Oakland Hills. Davis Love III won the PGA at Winged Foot, which yielded loads of scores in the 60s. But Love three-putted the 18th at Oakland Hills in the 1996 Open and finished a shot back of Steve Jones.
Paddy Harrington is a good putter with steel nerves, but after winning his second straight British Open in ungodly conditions three weeks ago his nerves may be on “Don’t bother me, I’m resting status.”
Al Watrous was the golf professional at Oakland Hills Country Club for 33 years. Watrous knew golf and was one of the outstanding players not only in Michigan, but nationally and internationally. He lost the 1926 British Open by a shot to Bobby Jones,
He played on the first two Ryder Cup teams, won the Canadian Open and as a senior won three PGA Seniors championships. Watrous was host professional when Ben Hogan tamed that “monster” in the 1951 United States Open and again in the 1961 Open when Gene Littler triumphed.
Watrous knew his golf course and the words he said a half century ago are as true now as they were then: “At Oakland Hills, the game begins on the greens.”
Jack Nicklaus said the two toughest sets of greens are Oakmont and Oakland Hills.
The field of the 90th PGA Championship this week can be expected to mutter “Amen” to that.
Geoff Ogilvy, 2006 U.S. Open champion, and fellow Aussie Adam Scott explored Oakland Hills a week before the tournament and quickly said “The greens,” when asked to assess the course.
Donald Ross designed them and he did it just after World War I when designers didn’t move dirt the way Pete Dye does. They fit their greens into the land and if the land was rolling, had humps and valleys, John Deere or Caterpillar wasn’t brought in to level them.
After World War II, when equipment advances made it easier to reach the greens, another set of designers started working to restore the challenge. Robert Trent Jones did it at Oakland Hills and his handiwork for the 1951 Open made his reputation – fairway bunkers moved farther out, greenside bunkers made more demanding, longer tees and very deep rough enclosing narrowed fairways.
Once again equipment, exotic shafts, big heads and balls born of rabbits made it easier to reach the greens. After amateurs led by Barnes and Bill Haas burned up Oakland Hills, the club called Robert Trent Jones’ son, Rees, to put the teeth back in the Monster.
The result: 400 additional yards (now 7,445), more and deeper sand pits, water more into play on the seventh and 16 holes, and removal of unnecessary trees planted over the years. But he didn’t touch the greens.
“When I moved to Michigan in 1981 and first played Oakland Hills, I couldn’t understand the big deal (about its reputation),” said New Jersey-born Evan (Big Cat) Williams, a two-time National Long Driving champion.
“I was six-under-par after 12 holes. “I finished even,” Williams said, laughing. “I double-bogied the little (171 yards) par-3 13th, then bogied the 14th, a really tough par-4, bogied the little (401 yards) dogleg 15th, and finished bogey-bogey. “The more you play it, the more you appreciate it, all the little subtleties, knowing where to hit it, how to get to the best spot around the greens, how to get up and down, and you realize how great those old architects were, Ross and Tillinghast.” The Europeans who crushed the U.S., 18½ to 9½ four years ago in the Ryder Cup, loved Oakland Hills, Harrington, Darren Clarke, Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Lee Westwood, Paul Casey and Ian Poulter. But it’s a toothier monster this year thanks to Jones. And the PGA isn’t a team sport.
HOW OLD? Big Cat Williams is a PGA member and still gives exhibitions and clinics and plays customer golf, but he’s settled down more and gives some lessons. Fellow PGA member Jerry Prieskorn, owner of Bald Mountain Golf Club, asked Williams to work with his grandson, Brandon Barrows.
Brandon shot 80 in a qualifier for the Michigan Junior Amateur where the age limit is 18 and the teens are talking about what college they’re aiming for. After the round Brandon was talking with a group of other players. They were asking each other what school they went to. Brandon said he went to Delta-Kelly. The others said they’d never heard of it. Then he said he was going to another school next fall. One of the boys said “That’s a junior high.”
Big Cat said Brandon told them “I’m in elementary school. I’m only 10.”
“He’s a good one and he’s going to keep getting better,” Big Cat said. Jack Berry wrote golf for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press for over 40 years. He is an inductee to the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame and the 2007 winner of the PGS of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism.
Watching millionaires struggle at Open... enjoyable?
Mid-July, 2008
If you enjoy watching millionaires struggle, the 137th Open Championship at Royal Birkdale should have had you cheering and shouting “Yessss!!!”
Of course, if you’re Irish, you would have been cheering with a pint of Guinness in your hand and foam on your lips, toasting Dubliner Paddy Harrington’s brilliant string of an eagle and two birdies in the last six holes to repeat as Open champion, the first European to successfully defend the claret jug since James Braid did it 102 years ago.
“We like a breezy Open but this one was a bit too breezy for comfort,” said Peter Dawson, chief executive of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews.
Breezy? “Brutal” was the description most often heard of the unrelenting gale-like winds that averaged in the mid-30s with gusts to 50 miles an hour. Fortunately the rain that blew in sideways during the first two rounds didn’t stick around for the weekend.
It truly was what we like to call “British Open weather”, although the two I covered at St. Andrews and two at Muirfield were perfect. This one earned that epithet.
“Even the seagulls are walking,” said Peter Alliss who played in and now broadcasts the Open for more than half a century.
Touring professionals can handle driving rain, bitter cold, dry heat, humid heat, sloppy ground, hard ground, you name it. But not wind. Wind that knocks shots out of the air as though they hit a brick wall. Crosswinds that make shots a guessing game of how much to allow and winds that whip trouser legs as though they’re in a wind tunnel and cause balls to tremble – they call it “oscillate” – on the green.
Justin Rose, who as a 17-year-old amateur 10 years ago, pitched over a bunker and into the cup on the 72nd hole at Royal Birkdale tied for fourth, shot 12-over-par 82 in the worst conditions of the third round and left the course saying “This isn’t golf.” But in spite of the conditions and the absence of Tiger Woods – oh, did we forget to mention Tiger didn’t play? – it was an Open for the ages, up to 53-year-old Greg Norman who led by two strokes after 54 holes and by one after 63 holes, but whose lack of preparation and leg strength finally took its toll and he tied for third.
Leading into the Open some folks in the media seemed to think there was no sense in playing without Woods, that it would be a non-event. Please remember he played last year and never was a factor. There were plenty of stories without him, chiefly the performance of Norman who, as was often said, “was Tiger before Tiger.” The Great White Shark was No. 1 in the world for more than 300 consecutive weeks.
Now Norman is a multi-millionaire with jets, helicopter, a luxurious ocean-going yacht and a new wife, former Florida neighbor Chris Evert, winner of 18 tennis Grand Slam tournaments. She has Norman playing tennis for an hour every day and that’s more than he’s played golf. And she talked him into playing the Open since he’d already entered the British Senior Open to be played this week at Royal Troon.
Norman and Evert were a godsend for the British tabloids, but for the fans, and it didn’t seem as though any stayed away because Woods wasn’t there and the weather was abysmal, there was the golf.
And no one plays links golf better than Harrington. Like the absent Woods who used irons from the tee at dusty, dry Royal Liverpool two years ago, Harrington rarely hit driver. It was a 3-wood, a hybrid or an iron, going for the fairways that seem to swing side to side in the wind. He hit runup shots, deft pitches, was brilliant from bunkers and his left-hand-low putting stroke was near infallible. He played the way he always does, smart and methodical. On Tuesday night, because of a sore wrist, he wasn’t sure he would play. The same Wednesday night. But after intense treatment, he was ready.
Norman opened with three bogeys before settling down and Harrington, in the final pair of a major for the first time, bogied seven, eight and nine before righting himself. He had birdies on 13 and 15 and the eagle on the quirky 17th from three feet, after a brilliant 5-wood, in his arsenal on the back nine and Norman managed only one birdie.
Five-time champion Tom Watson, who places the Open above all other championships, calls it the “World Open” and it definitely was. The first four finishers were from Ireland, England, Sweden and Australia. Only four Americans were in the first 15. Jim Furyk tied for fifth and 2003 champion Ben Curtis, Steve Stricker and Anthony Kim were in a nine-way tie for seventh.
The 23-year-old Anthony, a two time winner on the PGA Tour this year, was the best American from tee to green, but he couldn’t master the slower, windswept greens. Watson, 58, who defends his British Senior title this week, played well from tee to green, but was done in by his late career putting ills, especially on those pesky 3- to 5-footers.
K.J. Choi also was done in on the greens and 2001 champion David Duval, one of the feel-good stories of the first two rounds, fell apart when paired with Harrington in the third round, starting with a triple-bogey on the first and finishing at 83. To his credit, Duval rebounded with a final round 71 and tied for 39th.
Two-time champion Ernie Els, so often in a “What am I doing?” mode, also fought back after a first round 80 in the worst weather, and tied for seventh. Phil Mickelson and Adam Scott, ranked 2-3 in the world going in, never threatened. Scott finished tied for 13th, 10 shots behind Harrington and Mickelson, saying he’s got to concentrate on his putting, was 11 back and tied for 19th.
Sergio Garcia seemed to recover from losing the Open to Harrington in a playoff last year at Carnoustie by winning the Players Championship in May. But he still looks out of sorts, looks careless at times and he isn’t never-give-up Seve Ballesteros reincarnated.
The next big one, the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills, is only three weeks away, Aug. 7-10. Many of the candidates for Europe’s Ryder Cup team remember Oakland Hills fondly. They crushed the U.S.A. 18½ to 9½ there just four years ago.
And mentioning the Ryder Cup, 13 candidates for Nick Faldo’s team to play at Valhalla in September, finished among the top 19 at Royal Birkdale led by 1-2 Harrington and Poulter. Eight Americans were in the top 19. Can’t do the math? Thirteen players tied for 19th.
THE DOUBLE JJ RESORT in Rothbury, MI, responded to an $18 million foreclosure lawsuit by a South Dakota bank by filing for bankruptcy. The resort includes the Arthur Hills-designed Thoroughbred golf course, a dude ranch, housing accommodations, campground and an indoor water park.
The 2,000-acre property was rented in early July for a music festival that drew a crowd announced at 40,000.
The property began as the Jack and Jill Dude Ranch in 1937 and drew riding wannabees from around the Midwest and East. It was purchased by Bob and Joan Lipsitz and Wally Womack in 1988. They upgraded it and added the golf course. It is 25 miles north of Muskegon, off US-31.
BLASTED GEESE – During the final round of the Michigan Amateur at the Moors Golf Club in Portage, play was halted on the 15th green because it was littered with fresh deposits from Canada geese. The green was clean during the morning semifinals, but several families of geese waddled from the pond behind the green during the lunch break and relieved themselves all over the green.
A Golf Association of Michigan official called to the media and officials “Bring the green towels from your carts!” Then the officials, players and caddies started sweeping the fecal matter out of the putting lines.
“It used to be that you could only use your hands or a golf club,” rules official Dr. Roger Ostrander said. “Then during the 2004 United States Open at Shinnecock one green was covered even worse than this. Tom Meeks was the director of rules and competition and he made an executive decision. He said use towels, use whatever you have, even a portable hair dryer.”
But how about a club even having suitably colored towels on hand!
A DILBERT? – A true story from a Michigan golf facility and the names have been withheld to protect the innocent: An I-know-everything-you-know-nothing boss could be heard coming down the hall to a conference room where all his minions were settled.
“Prepare to be stupid,” one of the suffering minions whispered to his colleagues, who stifled laughs.
Sounds like one of those Dilbert cartoon strips featuring the pointy-headed boss.
THE RULE IS AN ASS – Pardon the takeoff on Charles Dickens, but the disqualification of Michelle Wie for not signing her scorecard before she left the scoring area after the second round Friday was ridiculous. My, but that LPGA official must feel proud of herself for upholding all of golf! And a day later! It’s like those dorks who telephone a tournament to say they saw a player break a rule.
Please tell me why the person receiving the cards doesn’t say, “Would you like to sign this?” Is that so doggone hard?
Jack Berry wrote golf for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press for over 40 years. He is an inductee to the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame and the 2007 winner of the PGS of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Journalism.
Birkdale must wait to add Tiger to its champions list
July-08
The golf world definitely is feeling Tiger’s pain with empty seats in the stands and plenty of room to move around the course during the Buick Open.
Even the field nose-dived, rather surprisingly because they didn’t have to think about Tiger winning again. Only three of the top 30 showed up – Kenny Perry, who won for the second time at Warwick Hills and second time this season to virtually cement a Ryder Cup spot, and Jim Furyk and Justin Leonard – and neither of those contended.
Vijay Singh, the tournament’s only three-time champion, didn’t show, or Phil Mickelson, whose last Buick entry was six years ago.
Television ratings nose-dived after Woods went in for knee surgery and despite TV promos for his tournament at Congressional, saying he would host it, he said in an early week hookup from his home in Florida that he wouldn’t be there.
And despite players saying at the Buick that Tiger should attend the Ryder Cup in September – Kenny Perry said “Tiger’s great to be around [in team competition]. He’s just a fun-loving kid. He loves to compete. He can’t beat me in ping-pong, though. I wear him out.”
The ping-pong games will have to go on without Woods who said he won’t go to Valhalla. He knows that if he goes, all the attention would be on him instead of the team and the competition.
Even golf’s oldest, and many feel its premier, championship, the British Open, will feel the loss of Woods. Since Tiger’s first start as a professional in The Open Championship (its proper name), he’s won three times, has four top tens and is the biggest draw, just as he is everywhere else in the world.
The Open this summer is at Royal Birkdale in Southport, northwest England by the Irish Sea. It’s a course packed with history since moving into golf’s top rank after World War II.
Peter Thomson, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, your buddy Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Ian-Baker Finch and your real buddy, Mark O’Meara, won at Birkdale, which has hosted two Ryder Cups including Cup rookie Jack Nicklaus’s conceded two-foot putt to Tony Jacklin to give Britain and Ireland a tie in 1969, a bit of sportsmanship that didn’t please Captain Sam Snead.
Birkdale hosted the Curtis Cup and the Walker Cup, both won by the United States; three British Amateurs, four Women’s Opens and coming up is its ninth Open Championship. No British courses have staged so many international championships in such a short span.
Birkdale differs from most links courses in that the fairways don’t ripple like washboards with humps and bumps to misdirect the ball. The holes are through sandy hills with few blind shots, but there are the requisite deep bunkers that almost seem like mine entrances and deep, gnarly rough.
Thomson won the first of his five Open titles at Birkdale in 1954 and his last in 1965. Those were the pre-television days and while the Australian is in the World Golf Hall of Fame, he is unknown to most of today’s golf fans.
Palmer rescued the Open from near obscurity outside of the British Commonwealth when he entered in 1960 after he’d won the Masters and the U.S. Open. Palmer finished second to Kel Nagle at St. Andrews, but returned in 1961 and at Birkdale won the first of his two Opens with a spectacular shot out of heavy rough that defined his go-for-broke game.
The 100th Open was played at Birkdale in 1971 and Lee Trevino won it, the first of back-to-back victories – Trevino stopped Jack Nicklaus’s Grand Slam drive in 1972 at Muirfield.
Miller won the 1976 Open by six shots over Nicklaus and Seve Ballesteros, matching Palmer’s 1962 decision over Kel Nagle for the biggest post-war margin until Woods won by eight at St. Andrews in 2000.
Watson won the last of his five Opens in 1983 and it was his only one outside of Scotland.
Royal Birkdale will just have to wait to add Tiger to its list of champions.
TOUCH OF CLASS – Kenny Perry has it. Before the Buick Open began, Perry said he wouldn’t attempt to qualify for the British Open because he was going to the Milwaukee Open, a tournament he won in the past and has been in the top 10 for 12 years straight.
And after winning the Buick, Perry repeated there was no way he’d stiff Milwaukee for the British. He made his schedule with the goal of getting into the Ryder Cup in home state of Kentucky and he picked courses he likes and has played well on. So he skipped the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines, where he said he’s never played well, and his formula certainly should put him at Valhalla in September. Perry said he’ll play all the majors next year.
“I take a lot of pride in being a champion of a tournament and I try to make sure I come back each and every year to represent that tournament... Buick put up $5 million, to give us an opportunity to come and play and make a living.”
Two friends, John Hawkins of Golf World and Digest, and Len Shapiro of the Washington Post, dumped on Perry on the Golf Channel for not going to Royal Birkdale. They lamented about the few headliners at Congressional for the Tiger Woods-hosted AT&T National (Fred Couples stood in for Tiger) and Sergio Garcia, a past Congressional winner, for not playing. They’ve got it all wrong. Perry did the right thing, something of a surprise these days among the super-rich Tour players.
And it’s not as though Perry’s been a red-hot contender in the British. He didn’t play the last two years and his best finishes were ties for eighth, 11th and 16th.
NEW SEVE? Renton Laidlaw of the Golf Channel, the best color man on TV, compared 25-year-old Spanish rookie Pablo Larrazabal to the dashing Spaniard of the 1970s and 1980s, Seve Ballesteros after Larrazabal won the French Open going away.
“We remember when Seve came out and with Larrazabal we’ll think we have another Seve,” Laidlaw said after Larrazabal, who passed a 36-hole qualifier to get in the tournament, beat Colin Montgomerie by four shots with Lee Westwood, who was one shot shy of the Tiger Woods-Rocco Mediate playoff, farther back.
For those of you who don’t remember the young Seve, think of the Sergio Garcia of the 1999 PGA at Medinah. Larrazabal was a real crowd-pleaser. The Barcelona native was exciting, played fast, smiled a lot, did fist pumps and smiled at the cameras. He was having a great time and showed it.
Fellow Spanish players and caddies rushed him after he dropped his last putt, sprayed him with champagne and pushed him to dive into the lake fronting the 18th green. Larrazabal, soaking wet, climbed out of the lake and hugged and lip-locked his long blond-haired girl friend. He’d just won over $1 million.
Afterward, Larrazabal said he has no desire to play in the United States because “the greens are too fast and my girlfriend wouldn’t like it.”
Asked if Ballesteros was his idol, he said “No, I want to hit the ball straighter than that. There is no better role model than Tiger Woods.”
Take that, Seve!
Pablo’s brother Alejandro won the British Amateur in 2002 and Pablo caddied for him in the 2003 Masters so he got a look at fast greens. He went home and wanted to turn pro but his father put him to work at the family fish farm so he would learn the lesson of hard work.
“I’m going to sleep with my putter tonight,” Larrazabal after negotiating the National course outside Paris in 101 putts for the 72 holes.
The French Open isn’t the British but it has a long history of great champions including Walter Hagen, Bobby Locke, Byron Nelson, Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman. And the victory puts him into the British at Royal Birkdale.
Montgomerie’s finish was his best this season on the European Tour as he drives to make the Ryder Cup team for the ninth time. Only Nick Faldo and Bernhard Langer have better European Ryder records than Monty who will captain the 2010 team.
Watching Montgomerie, angry after a bad shot, Laidlaw said “He would have loved being a policeman. He’d go around arresting people.”
“I’m going to sleep with my putter tonight,” Larrazabal after negotiating the National course outside Paris in 101 putts for the 72 holes.
The French Open isn’t the British but it has a long history of great champions including Walter Hagen, Bobby Locke, Byron Nelson, Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Greg Norman. And the victory puts him into the British at Royal Birkdale.
Montgomerie’s finish was his best this season on the European Tour as he drives to make the Ryder Cup team for the ninth time. Only Nick Faldo and Bernhard Langer have better European Ryder records than Monty who will captain the 2010 team.
Watching Montgomerie, angry after a bad shot, Laidlaw said “He would have loved being a policeman. He’d go around arresting people.”
Tiger’s 14th puts him on the same plane with Hogan
Mid-June, 2008
Tiger Woods’ knee problem was worse than he let on and as he went into surgery to repair his left anterior cruciate ligament (ACL), the golf world faced sharing his pain all year.
No Buick Open. No AT&T – his own tournament. No British Open. No PGA. No Ryder Cup. It’s especially tough on southeast Michigan, where all the advertising for the Buick and the August PGA at Oakland Hills centered on Tiger.
Woods admitted, two days after beating Rocco Mediate in sudden death in the 108th United States Open at Torrey Pines for his 14th major championship and third U.S. Open, that his knee has been bad since last summer and he compounded his problems by causing two stress fractures in his left tibia (the large bone between knee and ankle) while overdoing his rehabilitation from April 15 arthroscopic surgery on the knee.
He had the scope procedure in an effort to get him through the season, but the 91 holes it took to win the Open, his 10th victory in 13 starts since injuring the knee last summer while exercising after the British Open was just too much.
Wonder what Mike Milbury thinks now. The ex-hockey player and now TV colorman ripped Woods for being a “wuss” before the Open.
But then Tiger, who is more guarded about his private life than anyone who is as much a world figure as he is, refused to say how bad the knee was. He said he didn’t want to distract from the Open, although every time he made a hard swing, it was obvious the knee wasn’t right.
To me, as a veteran of two left knee arthroscopies it seemed something was seriously wrong with him.
Tiger exits center stage after raising golf to perhaps its highest point, thanks to his almost unbelievable play on the gimpy left knee, soaring with eagles and putts as dramatic as that big left to right breaker at the Masters three years ago when the Nike Swoosh hesitated for the cameras on the lip of the 16th cup before falling in.
Normally golf is off the tube before the six o’clock news but the United States Golf Association and NBC put this Open in prime time for the first time and it captured not just golf addicts but sports fans of all stripes and even non-fans. Golf frequently is derided as a “white country club sport.” Tiger’s made it for the masses more than anyone. He’s the most recognizable athlete in the world.
A few years ago I played a course that’s on the border of Finland and Sweden, up near the Arctic Circle. There was a full-size cutout of Tiger in the pro shop.
David Brooks, an op-ed page columnist in The New York Times, rhapsodized about Tiger after Torrey Pines as the “exemplar of mental discipline” and quoted a science writer, for crying out loud, saying he “never in my life has seen a wider chasm between the look in someone’s eye and the surrounding environment.” What else would you expect from the op-ed page?
Before the Celtics polished off the Lakers, Celtics coach Doc Rivers was asked about the health of one his players and Rivers said he’d just watched a gimpy-legged guy win the Open and he figured his guys should be able to suck it up and play hurt.
That’s Tiger. He’s everywhere.
But not now.
He will miss the year’s last two majors and the Ryder Cup for the first time in his career. Speculation is sure to come over how well he will play when he returns from the most common knee injury sustained by athletes.
His injury is somewhat reminiscent to Ben Hogan’s in 1949. Hogan nearly was killed when a Greyhound bus crossed the center line on a west Texas highway when Hogan and his wife, Valerie, were headed east after tournaments in California. Hogan suffered severe damage to his knees and was out all year. But, incredibly, bad knees and all, he returned to win the Open in 1950 and 1951. Since he’d won in 1948 he won three straight Opens – with an asterisk. And in those days, the Open closed with 36 holes on Saturday. The four-day Open didn’t come until 1965.
Hogan was 37 when he returned to win in 1950 and he won the Open three times in four years after the accident. Hogan had 64 career victories. Tiger passed him for third place on the all-time list when he won his 65th and he called that his greatest major tournament victory. Tiger will be 33 when he returns for the 2009 Masters. Should be plenty of time for more majors and a fourth Open to join Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Bobby Jones and Willie Anderson.
Halfway through this Open, before Tiger’s eye-popping 66 and 30-foot eagle putts and hit-the-stick chip-in in the third round, NBC’s Johnny Miller, in reply to the question “Who was the greatest U.S. Open player?” picked Hogan who won four of them, lost one in a playoff, and played in the era of Sam Snead (who never won an Open but holds the record for most tournaments won in a career – 82), Byron Nelson, Jimmy Demaret and Cary Middlecoff and Julius Boros among others. He talked of Hogan’s great tee to green game and his play under pressure.
After Torrey Pines and Tiger’s disclosure of the severity of his injuries, Miller might reconsider his choice of Hogan. Or at least put Hogan and Tiger on the same plane.
JUST PLAY – Phil Mickelson seems a victim of the “paralysis by analysis” cliché and Judy Rankin said it best: “Put a blindfold on him and send him on the course.” Mickelson always was a great feel player and his short game ranks with Tiger’s. But Mickelson has gotten so wrapped up in all the percentages, all the different wedges and drivers that he’s lost the way to the game he used to play so well. It’s agonizing to watch.
With Tiger absent, the focus will be on Mickelson. So Phil, stop taking so many notes and send Dave Pelz back to Texas. Play your own game. You’re not a robot.
NOT BOB – Justin Hicks, the 33-year-old University of Michigan alum and Nationwide Tour player who shared the first round lead with Kevin Streelman at 3-under-par 68, was the first Michigander to lead the opening round since Bob Gajda did it in 1963 at The Country Club in Brookline, Mass.
Gajda, pro at Forest Lake CC in suburban Detroit, set a record that hasn’t been broken. He’s the only player to play all four rounds without one of them in the 70s. Gajda started with a 2-under-par 69 and his next three rounds were in the 80s. Walter Burkemo, the 1953 PGA Champion, roomed with Gajda and said all night long he heard “Click-Click,” “Click-Click.” It was Gajda, all nerves, opening and closing his Zippo lighter to fire up a cigarette.
Nerves led to an 80 in the second round for Hicks but then he outdid Gajda, shooting 75-78 the last two rounds.
SALES! SALES! The combination of high gasoline prices and a tough economy have Michigan resorts hoping that midwesterners will stay close to home this summer (read that: Come to Pure Michigan) and scrambling to put packages together. Hit the websites and see what you can come up with.
EXCUUUUSE ME – The USGA followed the Masters (which dumped longtime sponsor Cadillac) lead and signed on Toyota’s Lexus as its official vehicle. After all, Detroit products are all gas-guzzlers, but not Toyota. How come, then, that the Lexus commercials during the Open featured tire-smoking donuts in a parking lot and a presumably gas-guzzling race between Annika Sorenstam, Chi Chi Rodriguez, Raymond Floyd and Charles Howell III. Is that for “The good of the game”... or fuel conservation?
Then there was the USGA promo with a young guy supposedly emulating Ben Hogan’s 1-iron at Merion. Hey... USGA! No one uses a 1-iron anymore and hasn’t used one in years. Heard about hybrids?
Defending champ has rocky history at Oakland Hills
June, 2008
It’s Media Day for the PGA Championship at Oakland Hills in suburban Detroit and the main ballroom is filled with writers, broadcasters, television cameras, officials and two large screens. Tiger Woods, wearing one of those newly fashionable old military style caps, this one black with a white Nike swoosh, fills the screen via satellite from his home in Florida.
“Mr. Woods, Julius Mason here,” says the senior director of communication and media relations for the PGA of America. “We’re joined by about 75 of your closest friends and I think off the top of their head they have one burning question for you, Detroit or Pittsburgh tonight?”
Woods looks as though he didn’t hear a word. His expression doesn’t change.
“In the Stanley Cup finals,” Mason adds.
Finally Woods, not realizing, or caring, that he’s in Hockeytown, answers.
“I don’t really care. Let’s talk about the Dodgers...I don’t think anybody really watches hockey anymore.”
Woods knows golf but he obviously doesn’t know Detroit and hockey and the audience laughs.
The Red Wings lost in triple overtime that night but two nights later they won their fourth Stanley Cup in 11 years and no matter how big Woods is, if he wins in August and ties the record of five PGA Championships won by Walter Hagen, Oakland Hills’ first professional, and Jack Nicklaus, he won’t get near the outburst of emotion in Hockeytown that the Red Wings got. No downtown parade, no rush to buy Swoosh and TW-logoed caps and shirts. No full front-page coverage in the newspapers or radio and TV specials.
The line from “The Music Man” came to mind – “He doesn’t know the territory.”
But then, Woods has only played Oakland Hills twice and neither visit ended very happily. Four years ago there was the Ryder Cup wipeout, worst defeat in American team history, 18½ to 9½, and the first day “dream” matchup of Woods and Phil Mickelson was a disaster as they lost to Colin Montgomerie and Padraig Harrington in the morning and Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood in the afternoon. Woods got only two of a possible five points.
Tiger’s first trip to Oakland Hills was for the Open in 1996. He was an amateur and had won the two previous U.S. Amateurs and was wondering if he should turn pro. Wood was with John Daly in one of the marquee pairings.
“Oakland Hills was a big turning point for me as an amateur. I led the U.S. Open at one point. I was tied for the lead [3-under-par] early in that back nine on Thursday. Collapsed on that coming in, all predicated on a ruling that I had.”
It was the 14th hole, a tough par-4, and Woods missed the green and asked for relief because a sprinkler head was in his line to the flag. If he had gotten it, a USGA official recalled that he could have putted. He didn’t get it, chipped and made bogey. “I just let that upset me and then played terrible coming in,” Woods said.
Two holes later, the dogleg par-4 around the water on the 16th, Woods made eight and finished with a six-over-par 76.
“But the second round is what really turned my sights into possibly turning pro later that summer. I shot 69 to make the cut and then I played well at the British Open [low amateur] and then won the [his third] Amateur.”
The Oakland Hills of 1996 and 2004, the “Monster” prepared by Robert Trent Jones and tamed by Ben Hogan in the 1951 Open, has been muscled up and cleaned up for today’s play by Jones’ son, Rees, who toughened Torrey Pines, one of Tiger’s favorite tracks with six Buick Invitational victories, for this year’s Open.
Woods indicated he’ll get a first-hand look at Oakland Hills when he’s in Michigan for the Buick Open (June 26-29) less than an hour up the road at Warwick Hills.
Woods was ripped for dissing hockey by NBC analyst Mike Milbury, an 11-year member of the Boston Bruins and later coach of the Bruins and New York Islanders. Milbury called Woods “a wuss” for taking nearly three months to recover from arthroscopic knee surgery.
Tiger may not know hockey but Milbury obviously doesn’t know golf.
Woods said his left knee takes the brunt of his golf swing and, while most of us think of him as a young guy, Woods said “I’ve been playing golf for basically 30 years now.”
Woods said he’s ready. We’ll see.
EVER GET that feeling “I’m going to quit this blankety-blank game?” I think it happens to a lot of us after a round of lousy drives, shanked pitches and a plague of three putts. That’s the time to see a pro.
I did. Jeff Goble, a short game wizard who has worked for Rick Smith at Naples in Florida and Treetops in Gaylord, northern Michigan. Now he’s at Miles of Golf in Ypsilanti, working for Dave Kendall, the Michigan PGA Section president and twice Teacher of the Year, and Chris Mile, a marathon runner who also was runnerup in the Michigan Amateur twice.
On a rainy day in May, Goble gave me hope in my chipping and pitching – I still don’t get it as close as I’d like but I’m out of the Chunk! phase after several years of gripping it this way, gripping it that way, shaft forward, shaft back, changing stance and generally just messing up the whole thing. Instead of being near the green where a nice pitch or chip would leave a short putt for par, it would be double bogey.
If you’d like to get some free advice from Jeff, go to www.youtube.com and punch in Jeff Goble. You’ll get his tips on chipping, pitching, putting, the works. I especially like the chipping and pitching and each segment is brief, from two to five minutes.
Then there were the expletives-deleted tee shots. Infield fly rule shots. How high can you go? And short, of course. Finally, a quarter of the way through a large bucket of range balls, I remembered the advice of my longtime friend and pro, Chet Jawor, who was head pro of the Detroit city courses and then ran the best range in the metropolitan area – with the best balls – of anyone in the business.
Unfortunately Chet, one of five brothers who were PGA members, has passed on but one of his repeated instructions finally clicked in and I started hitting the ball straight again and well past the infield fly rule.
I am a real believer in “See your PGA pro” for help when your game goes south and I don’t mean Florida.
CHEERS to the PGA of America for doing even better than the Royal & Ancient and the Masters and giving free admittance to the PGA Championship for two juniors, age 8 to 17, with a paying adult. The R&A started admitting one junior with an adult three years or so ago at the British Open and the Masters this year did it for the first time.
PGA president Brian Whitcomb said it’s a natural as golf’s powers-that-be try to grow the game.
I wrote in the last issue of Chicagoland Golf that all of the tours, PGA, LPGA, Champions and Nationwide, should let a kid in free with a paying adult. Golf tournaments aren’t football, baseball, basketball or hockey games – there’s no assigned seating in golf and where there are grandstands, they’re mainly open seating.
The PGA initially had a $15 junior ticket for the practice rounds and $30 for the championship rounds at Oakland Hills.
Fortunately someone realized that wasn’t walking the walk after talking the talk about growing the game, First Tee and the other programs aimed at getting youngsters interested in playing the game.
Besides, those kids eat hot dogs and chips and drink pop and buy souvenirs. And at Oakland Hills, it’s likely that more than a few will be wearing Red Wings shirts.
Jack Berry covered golf for over 40 years for the Detroit News and Detroit Free Press. He is an inductee to the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame in his home state and was awarded the 2007 PGA of America Lifetime Achievement Award
For 50 years, title sponsor Buick's been good for golf
Mid-May, 2008
The Buick Open celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and Buick spokesman Tiger Woods said he not only will play the June 2629 tournament but he will do a special clinic June 24 at Comerica Park in downtown Detroit during Buick Open week. It will be all Tiger, not the toothless baseball Tigers, but since he likely could land a wedge on the roof of neighboring Ford Field, the home of the toothless Lions, he might have to use a limited distance ball.
Twice a winner at the Buick at Warwick Hills G&CC in Grand Blanc, north of Detroit, Woods skipped last year to be with his wife, Elin, and newborn daughter, Sam.
To tee off the 50th anniversary, Billy Casper, winner of the first Buick in 1958, was the star of Media Day for the tournament and Casper had some Tiger tales as well as memories of 1958.
“Tiger is the bestequipped player I’ve seen in professional golf,” said Casper who won two United States Opens, the Masters and four Western Opens in a World Golf Hall of Fame career.
“I’m asked to compare Jack Nicklaus with Tiger and Tiger has two things Jack didn’t – a super short game and imagination. Jack’s short game was just a little above average, except his putting. And Tiger has the imagination to pull off any shot and Jack didn’t have that.”
My editorial comment is that Nicklaus rarely got himself into the trouble that Woods often finds himself. But back to Casper on Tiger.
“I don’t follow Tiger too closely,” Casper said, tongue firmly in cheek. “We played in the proam at San Diego [for the Buick Invitational] and I marked up my Titleist, wrote all over it. I hit 230. Then Tiger hit about 330. I told him to not mistake my ball for his because I had writing all over mine.
“During the tournament Tiger was in trouble and the TV commentators were saying ‘If he gets it within 30 feet of the hole it’ll be a miracle.’ He hit it one foot from the cup.”
In the Champions locker room at the Masters, Casper said he was talking with Woods when defending champion Zach Johnson walked in and asked Woods who he was playing with.
“He said ‘Kitchen.’ Zach said ‘Who’s Kitchen?’ and Tiger said ‘Cink.’”
And new family man Woods told old family man Casper that his daughter now recognized Dad’s voice when she hears it on television. If that’s the case, Tiger better watch some of those expletives when he does hit a bad shot.
As for Buick memories, Casper said Waldo McNaught, the Buick public relations director who started the tournament, “made us feel like family. I went to the plant and talked to the workers. A member of the club lived on a private lake south of the club and he’d take me there. It was a great fishing hole – bass and pike. And I always took my fishing rods with me when I played.” Unlike today’s players with swing coaches and psychologists and personal trainers, Casper, winner of 51 PGA Tour tournaments, said “I did it all myself. I didn’t work with anyone. At 50 I lost my swing and went to Phil Rodgers and he got me to hit that big hook. It would start out over the right rough, then the right edge of the fairway, then the middle and it would land on the left side of the fairway.
“One day I was playing with Don January and a woman in the gallery said she thought the ball was going out of bounds. January said ‘Just wait and watch.’ ” And Casper laughed.
Buick had a final touch for Media Day. They put Casper behind the wheel of a salmonpink 1959 Invicta, like the one he was given for winning the first Buick Open on June 23, 1958.
The Buick’s contributions to Michigan golf over the half century were recognized by the Michigan Golf Foundation, which gave the tournament a special award at the Michigan Golf Hall of Fame induction dinner at Indianwood G&CC. Buick was the first major corporation to sponsor a golf tournament. And while most tournament purses were $25,000 to $35,000, the Buick started at $52,000 with $9,000 and a car to the winner. Casper said the money enabled him to pay back his sponsors. And over the 50 years, the tournament has donated more than $9 million to southeast Michigan charities.
SHORT SHOTS – TV lines guaranteed to jinx: “He’s the only player in the field without a bogey,” and, before a threefooter, “He’s in the Top Ten of putting.” Then there were the three words not uttered after a round at The Players: “That was fun.”
Gary Koch, an underrated TV voice in my book, said that he first saw Sergio Garcia when Sergio was winning everything as an amateur. Koch said Sergio wasted no time in putting, just took a look and did it. And I remember Phil Mickelson in his closing amateur days. Same thing. Now they’re both into putting gurus and seem to miss an inordinate number of putts they used to regard as near kick-ins.
Mentioning Koch, last fall I played the course he codesigned with Rick Robbins at the Otsego Club in Gaylord and it is sensational. It overlooks the Sturgeon River Valley, like neighbor Treetops Resort, and the vista is solid trees all the way to the horizon. The course is one elevated tee after another with the holes bordered by huge trees. That is one course I bet you’d leave saying “That was fun.”
Gasoline prices aren’t the only things that have jumped. I ran across a column I did on golf in Scotland in 1990. I played 36 holes one day at Royal Dornoch, the course where Donald Ross grew up. It cost 25 pounds and the pound then was $1.80 American. So I checked the Dornoch Web site to see what it is today. It’s 82 pounds weekdays and 92 pounds weekend. A second round is 55 pounds. The pound now is $2 American.
With all of golf’s major associations trying to get more people to play – “Play Golf America,” “Free Lesson with a PGA Pro,” “First Tee” – I wonder why all pro tournaments, PGA Tour, LPGA, Champions and Nationwide, don’t follow the lead set by the British Open three years ago and picked up this year by the Masters Tournament. Let in a kid, age 8 to 16, free with a paying adult. Not only might they encourage young people to play but those kids will buy concessions and souvenirs too. Glenn Johnson, fivetime Michigan Amateur champion, played in U.S. Opens, Senior Opens, helped found the Society of Seniors, largest old boy association in the country, has lost the urge to play. He’s 85 and can’t accept that his game isn’t what it used to be. And after a lifetime of playing by the Rules of Golf, he can’t take dropping another ball, nudging the ball, gimmes. “You play the ball and put it in the hole,” he said. I told him that since I never was a good player, it doesn’t bother me (much) the way I am now... although I did go for a desperate short game lesson a couple weeks ago. And I cringe at the Winter Rules in force all summer at the 9-hole old fart league I’m in.
Remember the slogan of the first Clinton campaign? “It’s the economy, stupid.” That was meant to keep Bubba on point. It’s too bad the Big Four of golf in Michigan – the PGA, the Golf Association of Michigan, the Golf Course Owners Association and the Michigan Turfgrass Foundation – can’t be that blunt when they talk to the state government, from the governor down through both houses of the legislature.
As one convention and visitors bureau executive said last summer of the folks in Lansing, “unless they see something coming off an assembly line, they just don’t get it.”
The point of the Big Four is that golf is much more than a game. It is very big business in Michigan which has more than 865 courses and resorts, first in the nation in number of public courses. They commissioned a survey to produce the facts of golf’s importance to the state economy.
It showed that in 2006 the state’s direct golf economy was approximately $2.2 billion and those direct revenues exceeded or were comparable to automotive suppliers of steering and suspension components ($2.8 billion), medical equipment and supplies($1.6 billion) and breakfast cereal manufacturing ($1.3 billion).
What the associations want is for the state to accentuate the positive, promote the courses from the Indiana and Ohio border all the way up to Lake Superior with not only great golf but fishing, boating, beaches, camping, and terrific small towns up the west coast like South Haven, Grand Haven, Saugatuck, Ludington, Manistee, Frankfort, the Leelanau Peninsula and its wineries and cherry orchards, Traverse City, Charlevoix, Petoskey and Harbor Springs and the unbeatable Lake Michigan sunsets.
Undeniable factoid: Golf has truly gone global
May-08
Enough about that Masters Tournament runnerup. Let’s hear it for the non-American winners. Did you realize that three of the last four winners of the men’s majors have been a South African, an Argentinian and an Irishman?
And since the year 2000, non-Americans have won one-third of the 33 major championships played and have dominated our very own national championship, the United States Open, with five victories – two by South African Retief Goosen and singles by New Zealander Michael Campbell, Australian Geoff Ogilvy and Argentinian Angel Cabrera.
But the biggest domination has been in women’s golf, where the world has taken over. Not since 1994 has an American been Player of the Year on the LPGA Tour. Beth Daniel did it then and it marked the end of American superiority since Rolex began the Player of the Year award in 1966.
From 1966, when Kathy Whitworth won it seven times in an eight-year span, to Daniel in 1994, only one non-American managed to wedge in, Ayako Okamoto from Japan. The Vare Trophy for best stroke average started in 1953 and was as American as a Ping putter.
That changed with the arrival at the top of Sweden’s Annika Sorenstam in 1995. She won the Player of the Year and the Vare Trophy. British belter Laura Davies was Player of the Year in 1996 and then the twosome of Sorenstam and Aussie Karrie Webb took over. Sorenstam won seven more Player of the Year trinkets and Webb won a pair before Mexico’s Lorena Ochoa took control and won the last two.
Sorenstam, 38 and Webb, 34, aren’t ready for rocking chairs, however. Sorenstam beat Paula Creamer in a playoff at Coral Gables, Fla., and Webb’s closing 64 earned her a third place tie. Of course, Ochoa did take that week off.
And as good as Ochoa has been, Norwegian Suzann Pettersen and most of South Korea are just behind her. Rookie of the Year on the LPGA also has been dominated by non-Americans. The only American winners since Tammie Green in 1987 were Brandi Burton in 1991, Pat Hurst in 1995, Beth Bauer in 2002 and Paul Creamer in 2005. Five South Koreans have won since 1998.
Are these folks making a pitch for golf in the Olympic Games?
“Golf definitely has gone global,” said Lisa Mickey of the Duramed Futures Tour, the feeder tour for the LPGA. “We have two Russians on the Tour and we’ve had a player from Iceland and another from Vietnam.
“I think Tiger and Anna and now Lorena have made it cool for young people. Lorena has created interest in Latin America. There are two Mexicans on the LPGA this year and we have five on the [Futures].”
Mickey, communications director for the Futures, has covered golf since 1983 and been a major award winner in the Golf Writers Association of America writing contest the last two years.
“It’s been fun to watch the game grow and diversify,” Mickey said. “When Liselotte Neumann won the Women’s Open in 1988 it was like ‘The Swedes play golf?’ Then Se Ri Pak won the Open and the LPGA championship in 1998 and it was ‘The Koreans play golf?’
“Now you’ve got the internet and global-wide television and more people see and read about golf,” she said. And where big-time tournament golf was played in America, the British Isles and Australia, now it’s spreading around Asia with the European Tour going to China, India and the Arab Emirates. The Women’s tour plays in South Korea and Japan and there’s a Chinese rookie on the LPGA Tour this year, Shanshan Feng.
Mickey credits corporate and government financial support for the growth of golf in Sweden and South Korea and said financial support for American girls basically comes down to family and friends. She said a major Korean corporation has funded players and the Swedish government has a strong athletic support program.
In the U.S. most candidates for the LPGA Tour begin as college players, but college golf scholarships aren’t quite like football or basketball scholarships. And then from amateur golf it’s a major step to winning as a professional and the 18 Futures Tour purses range from $80,000 to $115,000 with the season-ending event this year the biggest purse of all – $150,000. That’s a long drive from the PGA Tour’s development league, the Nationwide Tour, which has 30 tournaments and the purses range from $500,000 to two $1 million events. Most purses go from $600,000 to $750,000.
“It’s expensive to travel and play the tour,” Mickey said. “Players drop off and say they have to go home and make some money to get back out. They’re on macaroni and cheese dinners.”
Obviously Americans do make it, like Creamer, Morgan Pressel, Natalie Gulbis and Cristie Kerr and Michiganders Meg Mallon and Kelly Robbins who were dominant players before the Swedish-Australian-Korean invasion.
Three Big Ten graduates finished in the top five of Futures Tour money winners last year, Emily Bastel and Allison Fouch from Michigan State and Mollie Fankhauser-Cavanaugh from Ohio State and that earned LPGA cards this season.
And United States golfers hold the Presidents Cup, the Solheim Cup, the Walker Cup and the Curtis Cup.
Now about that Ryder Cup. Hmmmm.
TRIPLE DIGITS – It’s getting to be that time of year in Arizona, 2-3 months of daily triple-digit temperatures. Snow-averse Arizonans dismiss the asphalt-melting days with “Sure it’s hot, but we don’t have to shovel heat.”
So it’s back to cool green Michigan, leaving behind the best next-door neighbor a 10-thumb guy could have. He has a home repair business with all the tools. And he cooks! He’s also an Illinois guy, born in Creve Coeur. Like me, his name is Jack. He does spray golf balls into the desert though and those triple-digit days bring out the no-shoulders types. Diamondbacks. And I don’t mean the baseball team.
Masters more friendly to fans, but not to scoring low
Mid-April, 2008
AUGUSTA, Ga. – The week that was the 72nd Masters Tournament started with the first-ever televised happy-family scene of the Par-3 Tournament, with relaxed players shepherding their toddlers, dressed in white caddie jumpsuits, swinging wildly, missing putts and hitting balls into the ponds as their proud parents smiled and the gallery laughed and applauded.
The week ended with some wild swings, balls in the water and a great many missed putts – by the players, not their toddlers.
And the only one smiling at the end, a very relieved smile, was South African Trevor Immelman.
Despite an impressive international record, Immelman likely was better known in Chicagoland than around the rest of the country, thanks to his 2006 victory over Tiger Woods at Cog Hill in the Western Open. The Masters was his second PGA Tour victory and once again, Immelman topped World No. 1 Woods, this time by three shots. Tiger Killer?
Like his 5-foot-7 South African idol, Gary Player, the 5-9 Immelman is a grinder and in the last year overcame two serious health issues with great fortitude. First was a mysterious stomach disorder he picked up at the Masters last year and wound up losing 22 pounds from an already lean body. Then it was a golf ball-sized tumor, fortunately benign, that was removed last December, a week after he’d won the elite Nedbank Challenge in South Africa. He couldn’t walk or talk for two weeks and, of course, lost more weight.
Overcoming those two maladies and winning the Masters should make Immelman the leading candidate for the Golf Writers Association’s Ben Hogan Award which would be especially fitting. Immelman’s swing has been described as perfect, just like Hogan’s.
He led the Masters in driving accuracy, tied for second in greens in regulation and tied for fourth in putting, figures similar to Zach Johnson’s winning form last year.
Hitting fairways and greens in Sunday’s pant-leg-flapping, swirling winds was magical. Despite the toughened, beefed-up courses, 18 players were under-par going into the final round and four were even. When Immelman holed out in setting sunshine, only 10 players were under-par and three were even. Only four players broke par Sunday – Miguel Angel Jimenez with 68, Heath Slocum with 69 and Stuart Appleby and Nick Watney with 71s. And they were in the first half of the 45-man field, before the winds reached peak force.
Before the tournament began, Woods said that, discounting bad weather, the Augusta National has been much more forgiving than the U.S. Open. A few days later Tiger said the Masters had become like the Open, that you didn’t hear the roars coming up the hills from Amen Corner, the two water-guarded par-5s, 13 and 15, and the par-3 16th.
“This is the most complete test of golf,” Phil Mickelson said. “The U.S. Open is the toughest, just a brutal test but it doesn’t test all parts of the game.”
Both Woods and Mickelson, with six Masters green jackets between them and always renowned for their putting, lost to the greens this time. Getting the right line was like trying to decipher the Rosetta Stone.
“You have to putt perfect all week and I didn’t putt well all week,” said Woods, stuck two-thirds of the way to Jack Nicklaus’ record of six Masters victories. Tiger did get up a notch toward another Nicklaus record, however – finishing second in major championships. It was Tiger’s fifth runnerup in a major. Nicklaus had 18.
Woods can only blame himself for the muscled-up golf course. When he won his first Masters in 1997 and trashed the record with an 18-under-par 270 and went 16 under in 2001, the Masters fought back. Fourteen holes have been lengthened, most of them about 35 yards but the seventh, formerly a drive and wedge, is 85 yards longer – it’s now 450 – and Mickelson said it’s as tough as the downhill 505-yard par-4 11th.
“The seventh green is shallow,” Mickelson said. “It was designed for a short iron. Now you’re hitting mid-irons.”
The Masters, once so joyous because of the birdies and eagles, now is a brain-bruiser for the players. They’re exhausted when they finish.
“It’s like trying to breathe air at the top of Mt. Everest,” Stewart Cink said.
Masters rookie Boo Weekley said the experience was “just unreal,” called the course “pretty” and was impressed by the galleries and wondered if the greens were kept at that pace year-round, but doubted because “the members wouldn’t enjoy it.”
And when he was asked if he was “a regular player” would he want to play the course again he replied: “No. No.” And then if a Tour player would play if it wasn’t a major, Weekley, who tied for 20th at 291, said “That’s a good question… I’ll leave the rest of it alone.”
Then there was Jim Furyk on the infamous guesswork winds by the water-fronted, 150-yard 12th. “Everyone’s puckering on 12.”
It was a very difficult day and the players won’t see another one like it until June, in the Open at Torrey Pines.
That will be another pretty site, on the cliffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. But it won’t be Augusta and the Masters, a tournament and a setting like no other, as CBS likes to say. Every year there are changes, sometimes major, sometimes tweaks, from the gates off fast-food-lined Washington Road into the course.
For the first time in my memory, I saw turnstiles at the entrances. No attendance figures were announced, however. They never are, but I’d like to see turnstiles installed in Phoenix, where they claim six-figure crowds.
There are signs that the new short-game practice area is growing – it will be in use for the 2010 Masters – and the hillside on the 16th hole has room for a couple thousand patrons, framed by countless numbers of azaleas and the tall Loblolly pines. It’s said that a storm damaged trees in that area so they were taken down to permit more viewing and it’s a perfect spot, the 16th and sixth greens and 15th green are all visible.
I don’t recall mention of a storm in 2006 and it may have been the traditional golf course superintendent’s explanation when some trees favored by some members suddenly disappear – “They got hit by rot” or “Yeah, that lightning got them.”
Televising the Par-3 and admitting free a youngster, age 8 to 16, with an adult badge holder all four days were two more fan-friendly moves by Masters chairman Billy Payne. The masterful moves by the public relations-conscious Payne put a dent in the reputation of the club as being insular and stuffy. Each youngster was welcomed by a green-jacketed club member who told them how Masters patrons behave.
Incidentally, the British Open has admitted kids free with a paying adult for the last three years. If golf administrators say they want to “Grow the Game,” maybe all the tournaments will catch on.
Many players now in good form heading to Augusta April, 2008
He’s human!
Just when it appeared Tiger Woods would leap golf’s all-time record book in a single bound, he…well, hard to call it a collapse when he finished fifth after opening Doral, one of his favorite courses with rounds of 67-66.
But Tiger was passed like he was in an old Model-T instead of one of his slick Buick rides with his par 72 third round in his last tuneup before the Masters. Still, a final 68 in the raindelayed tournament left him just two shots behind 2006 U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy. The Puma – Ogilvy’s clothing and shoe sponsor – raced past the Tiger.
What does it mean going into this year’s Masters Tournament?
Well, two-time United States Open champion Retief Goosen, who has finished second twice and third twice in the last six Masters, was a shot up on Woods and seems back on his game. Three-time major champion (one the 2000 Masters) Vijay Singh and Jim Furyk also were ahead of Woods. Singh’s been going back and forth with his putters, traditional to belly and back again but he’s been consistently better with the belly blade.
Defending Masters champion Zach Johnson and When’s-he-going-to-get-a-major Adam Scott tied for ninth.
Johnson’s smart. He played his game last year, laying up on all the par-5s and he birdied 11 of the 16 for the tournament. Scott is a Butch Harmon pupil who has the game and has won the Players and Tour Championship, but not a major.
Woods certainly is the favorite to slip into the green jacket for the fifth time but not often have so many tournament winners been at the top of their game. Include two-time Masters champion Phil Mickelson, a winner earlier this year and working well with Butch Harmon for a year now.
The caution is the two weeks of the ho-hum New Orleans and Houston tournaments between Doral and the Masters. Will they all be ready? Scott, Mickelson, Ogilvy and British Open champion Padraig Harrington entered Houston while Woods stayed home, but it’s a given he’ll be ready. He’s said he expects to win every tournament he enters, but when it’s a major, he really expects to win.
One thing is certain. Woods won’t be startled by any cameras, as he was at Doral when he threatened to break the neck, in Tour fine-provoking language, of a photographer. Only Tour-veteran photographers make it to Augusta and not even they are permitted inside the ropes. And fans’ (“patrons”) cell phones and cameras are confiscated at the gates.
Nor does anyone yell “In the hole!” at the Augusta National Golf Club.
Woods respects Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and while he will pass them in virtually every category, the one he won’t is temper control. In 40-plus years of covering Palmer and Nicklaus at major championships, I never heard either one even say “damn” or “hell” let alone cuss out anyone.
Now about the tournament. As always, there’ve been some tweaks in the course that baffled everyone last year – Johnson’s 1overpar 289 matched the highest winning score in Masters history. Sam Snead won with that in 1954 and Jackie Burke in 1956.
Last year’s Masters was a cold one with temperatures in the 40s to low 50s and wind gusts of 33 miles-an-hour for the Saturday round. Goosen was the only one of the field of 60 to break par and he did it with a 70. Johnson had a 76. Only 13 players broke par Sunday and the low scores were 69s by Johnson and Goosen and Rory Sabbatini who were tied with Woods. Tiger failed to break par in any round.
Wind and slick greens is a combination to beat the best and it did.
The course changes this year are minimal, but two will make it better for gallery viewing – adding 10 yards to the front of the first tee and removing some of former Chairman Hootie Johnson’s pine forest on the right side of the 11th fairway. Strong northwest winds made it difficult for some players to get it past the bunker on the right side of the uphill first fairway and moving the tee up opened room for the gallery to move behind it. The area by the first and 10th tees with the ninth and 18th greens in between plus the putting green resulted in gallery gridlock.
The seventh hole, formerly one of the shortest on the course, has had 75-85 yards added, but the shallow, shelved green need more room and six feet were added to the left and a bunker moved back. The uphill ninth green, where many approach shots rolled back down the steep hill, should be easier with softening on the right side.
Like all three of the American majors, the Masters is lengthy at 7,445 yards. The changes over the years since Bobby Jones invited friends over in 1934 for a little event have kept the Masters the favorite of the majors – Spring in Augusta, the masses of azaleas along the 13th hole, rhododendrons, massive Spanish mossdraped oaks, towering Loblolly pine trees, dogwoods in bloom, centuryold magnolias at the club entrance – Magnolia Lane, and only members and players drive up it and no one is permitted to walk it.
Augusta was President Eisenhower’s favorite retreat with a cabin built for him in 1953. He made 45 trips to Augusta, 29 times during his presidency. But famously, the Commander-in-Chief did not rule Augusta. When Eisenhower suggested at a club meeting in 1956 that a tall and wide pine tree in the 17th fairway that caught many of his drives be removed, crusty chairman Clifford Roberts, who co-founded the club with Jones, ruled Eisenhower out of order and closed the meeting.
The history of the tournament is known to all golf fans, the shots – Gene Sarazen’s double eagle on the 15th that got him into a playoff, Larry Mize’s long chip to beat Greg Norman in the 1987 Masters, Fred Couples’ ball hanging on the bank of the 12th hole, Nicklaus’ birdie on the 16th, Tiger’s logoed Swish pausing and falling in the cup on 16, the victories of Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Ben Hogan, then Palmer and Nicklaus and now Woods and Mickelson and three victories by Englishman Nick Faldo and doubles by Spaniards Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal.
This year another of the Masters’ special places and events, the Par-3 course, will be televised for the first time, 2-4 p.m. CDT, on ESPN.
The No. 1 constant of the Masters is that it continually moves forward. And always with excitement.
This year Jack Berry is working his 39th Masters.
Woods has everything, mechanics, all phases of game March, 2008
Tiger Woods has taken golf to a height of excellence never reached before, not by Old Tom Morris or his son Tom Jr., not by Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Gary Player, Arnold Palmer or Jack Nicklaus.
Think, for a moment, of the millions of people around the world who play golf and there is just one who is the best. And there’s no argument.
Lee Trevino used to say “The Man upstairs doesn’t give any one every thing” and he noted the absence – a missing short game, uncertain putting, an errant driver – in a number of top players.
But Woods has every thing, all the mechanics, all the physical attributes, all the phases, driving, iron play, short game and putting, course management and unmatched desire and the ability to make the big shot or the big putt when the game is on the line.
He did it on the 18th at Dubai, did it against J.B. Holmes in the first round of the Accenture Match Play when he was three down with five to play and he did it on the 18th at Bay Hill with a slippery, big-breaking 25-foot birdie while Palmer watched approvingly after praising Woods for four days while sitting in on the Golf Channel and NBC telecasts.
Palmer said Tiger can slam the four majors and that he can double anything he had done. This after Tiger passed Palmer’s record of 62 Tour victories with his Match Play victory and tied Hogan’s 64 with the Bay Hill victory.
Along the way Woods has drawn golf’s biggest galleries and its best television ratings.
But, saying all that, Tiger hasn’t and I don’t think ever will, match the warmth golf fans feel for Palmer. That isn’t in Tiger’s personality. He doesn’t work the rope line signing autographs and no one has signed more than Palmer. The fans are Palmer’s oxygen and that never has changed.
When he played his first U.S. Senior Open in 1981 at Oakland Hills, a woman telephoned the tournament office and said she wanted tickets “for the Arnold Palmer tournament.”
When Palmer stopped his black Cadillac at the bag drop at Dearborn Country Club early in the week of the 1990 Senior Players Championship, a huge crowd materialized seemingly out of thin air. Arnie popped the trunk, took out his bag and stood and signed and signed and signed. That never will happen with Tiger.
When Palmer was in heavy rough at Inverness in the 2003 Senior Open and failed to advance the ball more than a couple of yards, his usual big gallery groaned and one said “That’s all right, Arnie. We still love you.”
It’s hard to believe Tiger ever will play senior golf, but then Nicklaus wasn’t enthusiastic about it, but he did play and did win. And Tiger’s personality matches Nicklaus’ more than Palmer’s.
He has Palmer’s fire, but isn’t quite the risk-taker now that Palmer was. It was good to hear Palmer’s answer in one of the weekend NBC sessions with Johnny Miller and Dan Hicks how he’d do against today’s players. “I’d kick their butts,” Palmer said and then laughed.
It doesn’t seem as though there is anyone today on any of the tours who could say that, and do it. Not Rory Sabbatini, not Stephen Ames, not Woody Austin and not Ian Poulter.
Woods will lose eventually. Maybe at Doral, although the south Florida course has been like a home course for him. Like Torrey Pines. Like the Augusta National. Like Cog Hill.
There’s no one like No. 1. He’s been on Tour just 12 years, is 32 years old and has won 64 times, four of them this year and he feels as though he’s playing better than in 2000 when he won nine times including the U.S. and British Opens and the PGA. He’s nine victories behind Nicklaus who won his last at the age of 46 and 18 behind Sam Snead who won his last at age 53.
Woods is a joy to watch. Imagine being able to watch Michelangelo sculpt, Da Vinci paint, Mozart compose. Woods is as much an artist at what he does as they were. And he’s getting paid a whole lot more.
From No. 1, drop way, way down to… No. 569 on the World Golf Rankings. Two-time major championship winner John Daly. Begging for sponsor exemptions and then spending a 2½-hour rain delay at Innisbrook in a party tent, getting canned by swing coach Butch Harmon because of it, blowing his pro-am tee time at Bay Hill and thus DQ’d from the tournament after Palmer gave him a spot in the field. Big John just doesn’t get the picture.
Talk about Trevino’s Man Upstairs line. Daly’s the Scarecrow in the Wizard of Oz – no brain. Great talent, big heart, no brain.
Closing the books on another remarkable season
Novermber, 2007
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.
After Rees Jones’ tweaks for 2008 PGA, Oakland Hills never looked better
October, 2007
Oakland
Hills, host to next summer’s PGA Championship, is closing in on its
100th birthday and never, since it opened in 1916, has it looked better.
I drive by the suburban Detroit course almost weekly, but hadn’t driven
in and played there in the three years since the United States Ryder
Cup team went down to its worst defeat. The course sparkled then under
cloudless blue skies, but it was nothing to what it is now thanks to
Rees Jones, who may be doing some of the same magic at Cog Hill.
Oakland Hills has a rich pedigree – designed by Donald Ross, then
modernized for the 1951 United States Open by Robert Trent Jones, Rees’
father, tweaked a bit by Arthur Hills and then, after the Ryder Cup,
got an incredible “spa” treatment by Jones, the “Open Doctor” who
besides his own superb courses has “treated” many U.S. Open courses
including next year’s Open site at Torrey Pines.
Thanks to a tree removal effort by Rees Jones, the clubhouse at Oakland Hills CC can be seen from all over the course. The trees weren’t in the original Donald Ross design; they were added by members over the years. (Photograph by Montana Pritchard/The PGA of America)
So the world’s best golfers will play two of their major championships
on courses that Jones has not only muscled up, but beautified as well.
No one has an exact count, but Jones removed many trees. The course had
few trees on it when Ross designed it, but over the years, club members
planted a lot of trees. Now it has an open, airy look again. The day I
played, a perfect fall day with pure blue sky and leaves on the
remaining trees turning colors, the huge white clubhouse could be seen
from many holes on the course.
Like his father, who had watched the post-World War II players fly
their tee shots over bunkers that were relics of the 1920s and 1930s,
Rees added big sand pits beyond the ones the pros flew during the Ryder
Cup.
Like his father, he enlarged and drastically deepened greenside
bunkers. On the dogleg par-4 15th hole, which had one bunker in the
center of the fairway where it turned left, there now are three bunkers.
The par-4 seventh was a nothing hole that never seemed right, although
Rees’ father tinkered with it and even flattened the putting surface,
which was strange at Oakland Hills, where its best feature are its
greens with more movement than a hula dancer. Rees did not touch the
greens.
Rees drained the small pond leading to the right side of the green, dug
deep for dirt to build a new elevated tee to make it a 449-yard hole
and greatly expanded the water. Even more expanded is the lake on the
par-4 16th, Oakland Hills’ signature hole where Gary Player flew a
9-iron shot over willow trees to within four feet of the pin for a
birdie that clinched the 1972 PGA Championship.
Great players win on great courses and Ben Hogan, Arnold Palmer and
Jack Nicklaus have won at Oakland Hills, as well as two-time U.S. Open
champions Andy North and Ralph Guldahl, PGA and Open champion David
Graham, and World Golf Hall of Famer Gene Littler.
The willow trees are gone and the hole has a clean, green look… and a
greatly enlarged lake that curls around the back of the green.
On the day after the Buick Open this year Oakland Hills hosted the
American qualifier for the British Open and many of the Buick players
showed up, including J.B. Holmes and Tom Pernice.
Holmes hit one of his monster drives on the hole, leaving only a wedge
to the green. Then he turned into Kevin Costner in “Tin Cup.” Splash.
Splash. Splash. Three water balls. He putted out for a 10 and threw
that ball into the water, too.
A woman spectator said “Eleven.”
“No, lady, Holmes said. “Ten.”
He didn’t make the flight to Carnoustie.
Neither did Pernice, who complained that Jones shouldn’t have put so
many humps into the 10th fairway which slants drastically from left
downhill to the right.
Sorry, Tom. The glaciers did that a few thousand years ago.
But Jones did put a bunker down at the right side of the landing zone,
which might be just a little too devilish and don’t blame the Glacier
Age.
Some players complained the course was too hard. Oakland Hills members,
a bit touchy after Billy Haas and Ricky Barnes torched the course in
the 2002 U.S. Amateur, smiled. Music to their ears.
In order to get 300 more yards on the course, Jones put some tees so
far back that three of them are just about in backyards and if anyone
drops a pan in one of those houses it will be heard on the tee.
Ted Woehrle, who left the superintendent position at Beverly Country
Club [Chicago] for Oakland Hills and served there for 24 years, returned for a
look this summer at the course he prepared for two PGA Championships,
U.S. Open and two U.S. Senior Opens.
“It’s as nice as it can be. It’s gorgeous. They’re the most elaborate changes I’ve seen there. I love it,” Woehrle said.
Oakland Hills is ready for another closeup. And it’s never looked better.
RYDER vs. PRESIDENTS Several times during the American victory
at Montreal, the TV heads wondered why the Yanks didn’t play that way
in the Ryder Cup.
It’s a simple answer: The core group of the European Ryder Cup team is
from Great Britain and Ireland. Putting it simply again, they hate us.
In contrast, the International team in the Presidents Cup, doesn’t have
a core group and they like us, or at least don’t have any great
animosity.
They’re from all over the world, Korea, Argentina, South Africa,
Australia, Fiji and Canada. And now they live in the United States, in
Florida, Texas, Utah and Arizona.
On paper, the U.S. sends far superior teams to the first tee than the
Europeans. The Euros had only one winner of a major championship on
their recent teams – Jose Maria Olazabal, winner of two Masters. The
American team at the last Ryder Cup had four winners of majors, Tiger
Woods, Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk and David Toms. But the U.S. got only
four points out of their stars in the 18½ to 9½ pasting.
The Euros got 15½ points from the singles and games in which at least one of the partners was from GB&I.
Great Britain and Ireland long have had an inferiority complex when it
comes to America. They resent the huge pots of the American tour. They
resent the fine golf courses and practice facilities. Or maybe it’s
jealousy. They feel they play a finer game despite more difficult
conditions, hop-scotching all over Europe to courses that aren’t as
finely prepared, and now, even to Dubai and Qatar for European Tour
events while Americans turn their noses up at traveling overseas when
they can stay at home, be comfortable, and win so much more money.
And the PGA Tour is the “home” tour for almost all of the Presidents Cup’s Internationals.
All that comes together at the Ryder Cup when the Euros relish the role
of Underdog beating up on Uncle Sam. And there’s none of that in the
Presidents Cup. The Internationals want to win, of course, but it’s a
sports event to them. It isn’t for Queen and Country. The
Internationals don’t show up with a recognizable team flag.
Meanwhile, the Americans have been freezing up ever since GB&I
enlisted strong players from Spain and Sweden and occasionally Germany,
Italy and Denmark.
PREZ BUT NO PRESS PGA
Tour Commissioner Tom Finchem came up with the Presidents Cup as the
Tour’s answer to the four major championships and Ryder Cup, none of
which is owned by the Tour. But it doesn’t come close to the Ryder cup
in coverage. Not even The New York Times staffed the Presidents Cup and
gave the first day’s play only two paragraphs in Sports Briefing.
The event was buried by NCAA football’s Upset Saturday, the NFL, the
close of baseball’s regular schedule, the opening of the National
Hockey League season, and NBA training camps.
Woody Austin’s plunge into the pond on the 14th hole Friday was the
Cup’s TV highlight and then Aquaman’s goggles when he arrived at the
14th on Sunday. At 43, Austin gave the American team a jolt of energy
and fun that’s been lacking on Ryder Cup teams and I hope he makes the
Valhalla team next year. I feel John Daly should have been a Ryder
Cupper after he won his second major, the British Open on the Old
Course, but he was too much wild man for our stiff upper-lipped team.
Nice for Phil Mickelson to find a relatively straight-and-narrow game
and win matches to break his 0-for-9 streak in Ryder and Presidents
Cups.
And, please, get rid of that stuffy Foursomes and Four-Balls
terminology. No one knows what they are. That’s Olde English. Over here
it’s Alternate Shot and Best-Ball.
