Woodland feels home at home

Writing from Town and Country, Missouri

Thursday, August 20, 2026

Gary Woodland has been through the wringer, and still feels caught in it at times.

In the first round of the BMW Championship, he felt at home, and it paid off with a round of 6-under-par 64 on a Bellerive Country Club course that yielded no lower score and only a handful, authored by fellow U.S. Open champions Rory McIlroy, Wyndham Clark and J.J. Spaun, and current John Deere Classic winner Chris Gotterup, to match it.

Meanwhile, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler stumbled to an opening 2-over 72. He was 4-over and last in the field of 50 at one point.

Woodland won the 2019 U.S. Open, and four years later was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Surgery was successful, but a bit of the tumor could not be removed and Woodland was left with post-traumatic stress syndrome, notably the fear of being approached from behind.

He played with no fear on Thursday, hitting 11 of 14 fairways and 17 greens – all but the last in the latter case, which cost him his only bogey of the round.

Mostly, Woodland felt comfortable, in part because, at about three hours from his boyhood home of Topeka, Kan., this is as close as the PGA Tour comes to it, and because he’s played well at Bellerive before.

“I looked at some videos of the 2018 PGA,” Woodland said after signing his scorecard. “My swing was a little shorter then. I've been working on some other things and kind of got away from that a little bit. I like a lot of the things I'm doing better now than I was doing there, but I just tried to get a little more solid at the top and, man, it allowed me to control the ball really well.”

That translated into the best numbers he’s posted since winning the Houston Open earlier this season. Among his highlights were a 54-foot birdie putt on the par-4 seventh and a 102-yard holeout for eagle on the par-4 11th.

“We were trying to hit it 105,” Woodland said of his sand wedge from the fairway. “I probably flew it one or two past where I wanted to, but it was nice to spin back into the hole.”

Now to keep it up. In 2018, he led the PGA after 18 and 36 holes, opening with a 64 then as well setting a record for the halfway point (10-under 130) and eventually finishing tied for sixth, six strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka.

For Woodland since his surgery, golf is one thing and inspiring others just by playing is another.

“I know I'm fighting for a lot more than playing golf,” Woodland said. “I'm hopefully having a positive impact on a lot of people's lives just showing up and fighting. Knowing that I'm struggling every day and hopefully – I mean, I had a kid follow me last week from came over from New Zealand who's got an inoperable brain tumor. He was 11.

“So there's, hopefully I'm having a bigger impact than just showing up and showing that I can still compete and play out here and live my dreams. The big deal is I'm struggling and I'm still living my dreams. I hope people see that and try to do the same thing.”

The five-way tie at the top is the largest in the tournament after 18 holes since the quintet of Bob Gilder, Bill Glasson, John Huston, Phil Mickelson and Sean Murphy were deadlocked at sunset Thursday at Cog Hill in 1994. The record is a seven-way tie after 18 in the flood-shortened 1987 Western on the combined Butler National-Oak Brook layout.

Clark birdied the last three holes to match Woodland, his 64 coming in the heat and humidity the St. Louis area is known for. His 38-footer for a deuce on the par-3 16th was followed by 5 1/2- and 6 1/2-footers, the latter set up by what he called a chipped 8-iron, on the last two holes.

“I just maybe added a little bit more speed in my putts,” Clark said. “I was leaving everything just short or just missing on the front nine. It's amazing on greens like this, you see a couple go in and then you feel like you can make all of ‘em.”

For McIlroy, the return to form was a reverse from last week in Memphis, where he struggled from tee to green in the St. Jude sauna.

“Days like this are encouraging, obviously,” McIlroy said of the bogey-free jaunt. “There's still a lot of work to be done. But for first round with what I'm trying to do, middle rehearsal on the takeaway, all that sort of stuff, it went as well as it could have today."

As for Scheffler, who drew many in the gallery of approximately 28,400 that McIlroy did not, his aim and distance control was off from the start. He bogeyed four of the first seven holes, then steadied himself and was 2-under the rest of the round. He was also heckled at least once, on the 12th tee from a presumably overserved patron in The Ridge, one of the many hospitality areas on the course. Scheffler glared in the direction of the voice for a long time, then drove into the right rough and salvaged par.

Around Bellerive

The scoring average of 68.500 on the par-70 layout is the second lowest first round in Western Open / BMW history, surpassed only by the 68.130 at Aronimink, also a par 70, in 2018.   It’s also the fifth-lowest overall. … Chris Gotterup, one of the co-leaders, called Bellerive “a good golf course that's not overly penalizing. I think you can get it around and make some birdies here, but you can also make a couple easy bogeys. Where, last week (at TPC Southwind), you could make a triple in a heartbeat. I don't think you're going to see anyone shoot a 10-under out here either. I could be wrong, someone's probably going to do it tomorrow now.” … Of the nine first-timers in the BMW (a.k.a. the 123rd Western Open), Ryo Hisatsune had the best start, a 5-under 65. The other rookies are Michael Brennan (69), Nico Echavarria (69), Alex Fitzpatrick (66), Nicolai Hojgaard (73), Jake Knapp (67), Matt McCarty, Kristoffer Reitan (67) and Michael Thorbjornsen (66). … The big gallery prompted the WGA to ask fans to ride share or car pool the rest of the weekend. The main public parking lot at Family Arena nearly filled up for the first round. The weekend is sold out and Friday is nearly sold out.

– Tim Cronin

Who's playing for second?

Writing from Town & Country, Missouri

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Walter Hagen, the swaggering swatter who made professional golf a spectator sport a century ago, used to waltz into locker rooms and say, “Who’s playing for second?”

Scottie Scheffler, who swaggers quietly but swats similarly to Hagen, could ask the same thing if he was similarly boastful.

Scheffler, the defending champion, is the favorite for the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club for a simple reason: he’s here. He’s tops in the world ranking, he won last week in Memphis, and while it was only his second win of the season, he won by eight strokes.

That’s a margin of victory Scheffler has brought back into vogue in the post-Tiger Woods era, and it sends a stark notice to the rest of this elite field – the 50 best players on the PGA Tour – that his midseason slump, which lasted a whole week when he missed the cut at the Scottish Open, is over. He has two wins and 11 other top-four finishes this season, and 50 top-threes in his career. Jack Nicklaus, he was told, had 165 top-threes, 46 in majors.

“I think (consistently) giving yourself chances to win says a lot,” Scheffler said. “I talk a lot about how hard it is and difficult it is to win out here on Tour. The best way to win tournaments is to give yourself as many opportunities as you can. So that is nice for me to have some numbers where I'm giving myself opportunities to win.

“Hopefully I'll be able to continue to do that going forward. But I think the consistency of putting myself in contention week in, week out is something that I'm very proud of.”

Aside from who lifts the J.K. Wadley Trophy this week and the Tour Championship bowl next week, most things have already been decided. Scheffler locked up the top bonus from the pot of gold FedEx distributes by winning last week. He’ll soon find an extra $23 million in his Tour account for leading the playoff parade, that on top of the $10 million bonus for leading the regular season. His pile of finishes should lock up player of the year honors from both the players and the writers.

Asked if winning the Masters and next week’s Tour Championship could change some minds, Rory McIlroy, the only player who could accomplish that, nixed the notion.  

“I’m not the player of the year,” McIlroy said. “No chance. Scottie is.”

“There's two weeks to go, but I firsthand watched him for the first two days last week, and he if he keeps playing like that, if he gains nine strokes on the greens every week, we're all F’d,” said McIlroy, using the initial.

There’s one more monetary stat attached to Scheffler this week. If he finishes in the top three, he’ll pass Tiger Woods in career earnings. Scheffler comes in with $119,964,411 to Woods’ $120,999,166. (Rory McIlroy is third with $116,488,372, and can got no better than second if he wins the tournament and with it the $3.6 million first prize.)

“I’m not really close to him in terms of career wins,” Scheffler, with 21 Tour wins to Woods’ 82, said. “What, am I like a fourth of the way there?

“Tiger did a lot for the game of golf and he put us in a position where we're able to earn some pretty good stuff financially, so that's something we're very grateful for. Tiger's contributions to the game, when you look at where the purses were at before he came out on Tour to where they're at now is a pretty stark difference and we're very thankful for his contributions to the game, and hopefully we'll see him back out here competing again soon.”

Scheffler, whose first victory under the PGA Tour umbrella was the WGA-sponsored Evans Scholars Invitational at The Glen Club in 2019, recalled the mini-tour days when of 2018 and prior when he and Doc Redman were barnstorming the country, trying to cash in the small tournaments and make the big time in Monday qualifiers.

“I played I think three mini-tour events, and a couple of them I traveled with my mattress pad in my car because I could sleep on the floor, it was going to be more comfortable than the hotel bed, so I slept on the floor in the hotel rooms,” Scheffler recalled. “I think it was maybe in, I think we were in Lufkin, Texas, I stayed at this house and I just brought my mattress pad, I just slept on the ground, it was just easier. I knew it was going to be a quality bed. Just little stuff like that. Like, good memories and fun stuff and good buddies I still have from this day that I met just from playing golf.”

If that was luxury to Scheffler, there were real rough spots.

“I think my car was running out of oil,” he continued, remembering one trip with Redman. “It was the old Yukon, and I literally had to call my dad, because my dad is Mr. Fix-it, so I never had to fix anything growing up.

“We were somewhere in Nebraska, and I had to call him and say, ‘Hey, dad, this is embarrassing, but can you help me figure out how to check the oil in this car.’ Like, it says it's run out of oil, but everything's fine. Where is it in this car. It was easier than me trying to Google it in the middle of nowhere, I was like, I'll just call my dad, he'll help us figure out.

“Now I know how to check the oil.”

Not that he has to. Just his bank account. And trophy case.

A vote for the Western Open

Rory McIlroy values the traditions of golf. Asked Wednesday if there’s too much money in the game, he first said, “We’re not Bobby Jones out there, not playing for prize money,” and then added, “We turned pro to make money playing golf. I mean, that's a part of it. But I don't think it should be front and center in terms of, like, what we're talking about, right. Like, it should be about other things.

“We should play into the history of, this is the Western Open. This was started in 1899. We should play into that history. That should be what we are talking about when we come to these tournaments. Yes, BMW are putting up the money and that's amazing that they do, and they support golf all over the world. But this tournament has so much history, and I think that some of that as we've gotten into, like, commercializing the PGA Tour, has gotten lost. I think there's a way to thread that needle and be able to do both.”

McIlroy never played in the Western Open when it went by that name, a sponsor, beginning with Beatrice, attached to it beginning in 1987. His first appearance was in the fourth edition sponsored by BMW in 2010. He finished tied for 37th in his only start at Cog Hill, didn’t play in 2011, then won at Crooked Stick in 2012. He has six top-eight finishes since.

Around Bellerive

Adam Scott is the only player in the field who played in the 2008 edition at Bellerive. Then 28, he’s now 46 and still ranked 51st in the world, along with 27th in this week’s field. He also played in the 2018 PGA Championship here, playing in the final group with winner Brooks Kopeka on Sunday. “It’s pretty fresh in my memory, really. Probably because I played well that week,” Scott said. … With a 50-man field, all play is off the first tee all four days. Thursday’s first tee time is 9 a.m. TV coverage starts on ESPN at 9 a.m. and moves to Golf Channel at 1 p.m.. … Cardinals legend Ozzie Smith played in the Akshay Bhatia-Nic Echavarria group in the pro-am. … IndyCar’s Graham Rahal was with So Woo Kim and Tommy Fleetwood. … U.S. senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) played with Scheffler and Scott. … A $20 million purse goes a long way. Last place in the 50-man field gets $66,000. The winner banks $3.8 million, or about 62.8 percent of what Jack Nicklaus earned ($5,734,031) in his regular PGA Tour career. Nicklaus, the best player in history, stands 350th on the career money list.

– Tim Cronin

Olympia Fields lined up for 2028 BMW

Writing from Town and Country, Missouri

Wednesday, August 19, 2026

The Western Open, as Rory McIlroy called it after his pro-am round, will return to Olympia Fields Country Club in 2028, billed, of course, as the BMW Championship, two sources confirmed Wednesday.

The third visit to Olympia in nine years and eighth overall was expected, given the strong relationship between the club and the Western Golf Association. Olympia Fields trails only Beverly Country Club in the number of caddies who earned Evans Scholarships.

Preliminary work on Olympia’s already-testing North Course is already going on, accelerated by last week’s derecho, which took out a number of trees. The course shuts down completely on October 1 for the heavy lifting and is expected to reopen on or near Memorial Day 2027. Among the changes is a new par-3 sixth hole.

The 2028 BMW is expected to effectively be the penultimate playoff tournament, as it is now, in the PGA Tour’s restructured season, but the field is expected to be larger than the current 50 players and it is also expected to have a cut after 36 holes.

Along with work on a contract renewal with BMW that could run through 2032, the WGA is expected to return its big championship to several familiar haunts. Castle Pines in the suburbs of Denver is expected to host again in 2029 after a rousing success in 2024, and Medinah Country Club, currently gearing up for next month’s Presidents Cup, is in line for the 2030 BMW, which will coincide with the 100th anniversary of the first two Evans Scholars entering Northwestern.

Medinah last hosted on its No. 3 Course in 2019, when Justin Thomas obliterated the course record with a 61, triggering a massive renovation that cost $30 million. A 61, by North Carolina star Grant Roscich, has already been registered on the revamped No 3, albeit from the member tees.

– Tim Cronin

A Fox and his bounty

Writing from Town and Country, Missouri

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Have Claret Jug, will travel.

So it goes for Ryan Fox these days.

When you win the British Open, as Fox did at Royal Birkdale last month, you are not only presented with the trophy – and your name engraved upon it – but a replica as well.

The latter, you get to keep. The former, you bring back to the R&A before the tournament next year.

The only problem, and it must be a delightful one to have, is lugging the old jug – officially known as the Golf Champion Trophy – around.

Fox’s first issue was stuffing both trophies – encased in protective cases – into the overhead carryon on his flight from Scotland to London and then again to Miami.

“So I get to the check in desk and I go, ‘Can these things go on the plane?’ ” Fox said to the attendant. “Like, they're probably a little bit too valuable to go underneath. And she's like, ‘What are they?’ And I'm, ‘Oh, they're the trophies. It's the Claret Jug.’ And then I had to explain that it was the British Open trophy and I had won it yesterday and everything.

“So she's like, ‘Yeah, no problem. Normally you would call us.’ I said, 'Well this only happened late last night, and I wasn't in really any state to call anyone about it.’

Security was interested as well, but eventually Fox got on the plane and searched for a spot to stash them.

“Getting on the plane I felt bad, like, I'm, I never like holding people up when you get on a plane,” Fox said. “Like, everyone just wants to get to their seat. And I'm trying to figure out how to fit these two boxes in the overhead and take up all the space. Obviously I'm not in a really good place mentally at that point either. Like, all I want to do is just go to sleep and maybe have a couple glasses of water and stuff like that. So, yeah, it was interesting. But I made it to London and made it on the flight back to Miami.”

And with Cameron Young, whom he beat down the stretch at Birkdale, right in front of him.

“I’m like, ‘Oh no.’ I feel a bit guilty about this. Cam was brilliant. We chatted and everything like that.”

It turns out the Claret Jug is akin to the Stanley Cup or the Masters green jacket. Everyone wants to see it, touch it, get a picture with it, and in the case of the cups, have a drink out of it. So Fox, as affable as they come, first took it to his native New Zealand for another celebration and at the moment has it in the trunk of the BMW courtesy car he’s tooling around with this week while chasing the J.K Wadley Trophy in the BMW Championship – a.k.a. the 123rd Western Open – at Bellerive Country Club.

“It's been cool,” Fox said with a canary-munching grin. “Last week we had a celebratory dinner with Srixon and I was like, ‘Well, do you want me to bring the trophy?’ And they're like, ‘Of course.’

“So we chucked it on the table of a steakhouse and the boys put some wine in it and had a little drink out of it at dinner which was really cool to be able to do. It was with me last week, came straight here, so made sense. I'm going to do it a lot this year, to be honest, it's cool to be able to show it off. Yeah, like I figured out how it fits in an overhead compartment now at least, so it's a little bit easier to travel with.”

There was also fun back home.

“To go home while it was still fresh, while it was still in everyone's like front of mind was I think the right thing to do,” Fox said. “Yeah, it was a cool experience for me. We had a public appearance and the middle of the city there and we had a few thousand people turn up. And I had the Claret Jug and did a little Q&A and we had a press conference at home. Which, like all of that stuff was a little bit foreign. It seemed like more than what I expected it was going to be. But the reception was amazing. I'm glad we did it. Yeah, we certainly also celebrated pretty well. We had a couple of, we had one really good party and got to celebrate, got to have some drinks with some family as well out of it as well.”

One gets the feeling it gets a nightly washing out at the kitchen sink. By hand, of course. Never the dishwasher.

“I took the Claret Jug out to our golf course and said to the guys in the pro shop, ‘Do you guys mind if I just leave it here?’ ” Fix said. “And a bunch of the members came out and took photos with it and stuff like that. It was great to be able to do that. Definitely do it again when I go home at the end of the year. But the buzz around the golf course was pretty incredible as well with it.”

Ya think?

Around Bellerive

Fox played the front nine holes Monday to refamiliarize himself with the course finished 27th at in the 2018 PGA Championship. “It’s strong,” he said. “You’ve got to control your ball really well. Even with all the rain it didn't feel like there was a blade of grass out of place yesterday. Yeah, just a place that you walk off and just go, yeah, that's a lot of good holes, a lot of good shots you have to hit around here.” … “It’s just a big golf course,” said Viktor Hovland, seeking a second BMW title to go with the one he won in record-setting fashion at Olympia Fields.  “I can't believe it's already gone three years, but, yeah, I really enjoy playing this tournament,” he added. … The tournament is proving more popular than its previous visit in 2008, when it set a since-broken record for revenue returned to the Evans Scholars Foundation. The only weekend tickets remaining in WGA hands are for the Trophy Club on Sunday, at $55 to $225. An online scalper is asking $278 to $425 for a simple grounds ticket for Sunday.

– Tim Cronin

Nikitas doubles Illinois Open pleasure

Writing from North Barrington, Illinois

Wednesday, August 12, 2026

It was a first for Charlie Nikitas, who has accomplished a lot in 27 short years on this rock.

He was awarded a trophy with his name already engraved on it.

Not as “champion golfer of the year,” as the R&A so preciously calls the winner of the British Open when the Claret Jug is handed out.

No, something more dear to Glenview native Nikitas’ heart: The Illinois Open trophy, a two-foot tall piece of re-engraved metal which he won at Flossmoor two years ago.

“So cool,” Nikitas said after demolishing the field by adding a 2-under 70 to a pair of 9-under 63s – the new Club at Wynstone course record – for an Illinois Open record of 20-under-par 196 and a four-stroke victory.

Nikitas said it wasn’t over as far as he was concerned until his approach on the watery 18th hole hit the green and stopped six feet from the cup. That set up the 23rd and last birdie of his three jaunts around Wynstone, a Jack Nicklaus design that, when it isn’t soaked by nearly three inches of rain just before and during the tournament, is considered one of the more formidable tests in the midwest.

For Nikitas, the pillow-soft greens meant it was a pushover. His lead Wednesday was never less than two strokes, that on three occasions, the last time midway through the back nine when Luke Gannon of downstate Monticello, just ahead of Nikitas in the day’s penultimate group, was stitching together a 3-under 69 for second and 16-under 200.

Nikitas’ birdie on the par-4 10th elicited his first fist pump of the week, and moved him up three strokes on Pierce Grieve of Lake Forest.

“It just came out,” Nikitas said of the gesture. “That one felt really important.”

As did getting up and down for par on the 13th, just after Grieve chipped in from 30 feet to save par, and thus remained three strokes ahead.

“The tee shots I hit last three or four holes, I just let it loose,” Nikitas said. “I wasn’t going to guide it around.”

Nikitas won $23,576 for his effort, Gannon $12,859. Tommy Kuhl, whose 5-under 67 was the round of the day, took third at 15-under 201 and took home $8,573. Grieve ended up in a tie for fourth with Timmy Crawford of Arlington Heights, each earning $5,948 from the record purse of $123,000.

The low amateur was Illinois junior Dujuan Snyman, whose even par 72 gave him solo sixth. He had been one off the lead after 18 holes, and hung around all week.

“I’m glad the hard work I’m putting in is paying off,” Snyman said. “It’s more work on the mental game than the golf game specifically. I wasn’t hitting it as nicely (today), but stayed in it by staying patient."

Two years ago, Nikitas toured Flossmoor in 209 strokes and beat Luke Guthrie and Mattis Besard by a stroke. That was nerve-wracking as well, but he thought the second time around was more challenging.

“This one, I had to sleep with the lead and I didn’t eat today,” Nikitas said. “I was hungry but couldn’t eat.”

Clearly, the man was starved for victory. What a feast.

Around Wynstone

Nikitas is the 15th multiple winner, the most recent being Vince India (2018, 2023), who finished tied for 15th this year. … Timothy Lim of Hoffman Estates aced the fourth hole, sinking his tee shot from 185 yards. … The third round scoring average was 71.78, best number of the week thanks to fine play, albeit with lift-clean-and place for the third straight day, from the 50 players who made the cut.

– Tim Cronin