Women's PGA is wide open

Writing from Olympia Fields, Illinois

Wednesday, June 29, 2017

It’s hard to pick a winner in this week’s 63rd KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, the third under that name since the LPGA and PGA of America went in together on the second major championship of the year.

The reasons are myriad. First, everyone is at Olympia Fields Country Club this week. All of the top 100 players in the rankings are playing. Nobody’s ill, or hurting, or worn out and resting. That indicates a strong interest in glomming onto the big trophy and the $525,000 that goes with it.

Second, the battlefield is new to all. There’s no track record of who played well on the North Course in the past. It’s the first women’s major here in 84 years.

Third, the prize is significant. This was known as the LPGA Championship, the top competition in the organization, until three years ago, when the big partnership with the PGA of America and the luring of KPMG brought a new name to the old trophy. But most everyone of note in women’s pro golf since 1955 has won the title, from Louise Suggs and Mickey Wright to Inbee Park and defending champion Brooke Henderson. The notable exception from days of yore: Carol Mann, who learned how to play golf as a junior at Olympia Fields and is a member of the World Golf Hall of Fame.

Here are the likely contenders for the crown on the 6,588-yard par-71 course beginning – expected overnight storms permitting – at 7:30 on Thursday morning:

• Henderson. The defender, a winner at Blythefield near Grand Rapids two weeks ago, jumping her to 12th in the world ranking. A big driver with decent short game, and when she’s on, deft with the putter.  Her stats are baffling. She’s third on the LPGA Tour in birdies but 83rd in putting and averages 1.78 putts when hitting a green in regulation.

“When I won Meijer, I think I kind of proved to some of the naysayers and proved to myself that I’m in a great position,” Henderson said. “This course is very tough. You’ve got to really think your way through. Hopefully that means I’m hitting a lot of fairways and keeping the ball below the hole on my second shots.”

• So Yeon Ryu. The winner last week in Arkansas, a feat that jumped her to No. 1 in the rankings from No. 3. She has a solid short game, as a 10-under 61 in the second round last week proved on top of her lead in season greens in regulation, and enough distance to keep up with the big kids. Nine top-10 finishes in 11 starts this season and the money lead – $1,212,820 – make her the favorite in a crowded field.

“I thought I was kind of far away from No. 1,” Ryu said, “but yeah, here I am, finally No 1. I’m living in a dream. I want to keep this position as much as I can, as long as I can.”

• Aryia Jutanugarn. Champion of the 2011 U.S. Girls Junior on Olympia’s South Course, she can duplicate Walter Hagen’s feat of clinching a national title on each side of the clubhouse by winning this week. She arrived at Olympia in form, having won in Canada a fortnight ago to sit briefly at No. 1, and hasn’t scored over par in her last 15 rounds, as befitting someone first on the LPGA Tour in birdies. So is regaining the top ranking a big goal? 

“It means a lot to me, but the most important thing is not about the ranking,” Jutanugarn said. “It’s more like how I’m going to play golf. I really want to be happy on the course. The ranking is like, if I get there, I get there.”

• Lydia Ko. The longtime No. 1 is now No. 3 and hasn’t won in a year, but recently has shown flashes of jumping back into contention. A tie for second at the Lotte Championship, advancement to the sweet 16 in Lorena Ochoa’s match play tournament, subsequent ties for 10th including a 65 and 64 on the card auger well for a big showing this week for Ko, ninth in scoring this season.

“I’m thinking more about how can I be more consistent and put myself in contention rather than thinking about, ‘Hey, I really want to be the No. 1 ranked player again,’ ” Ko said. “I think we all motivate each other.”

• Lexi Thompson. The world No. 4 shoulda-coulda-woulda won the first major of the season, the ANA Inspiration, but never got her hands on the Dinah Shore Trophy thanks to mismarking her ball on Saturday and getting penalized for it on Sunday. She fell to Ryu in sudden-death, but has won since, at Kingsmill in Virginia, on May 21, and has followed with a pair of joint runner-up finishers in her last two starts. She’s $410 from winning $1 million this season.

Unfortunately, her mother Judy took ill recently and was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Judy Thompson had surgery June 6. Thompson hasn’t spoken with reporters this week, but her agent said she will beginning Thursday.

• Michelle Wie. Apparently out of a long slump, Wie has contended enough to score six top 10s this year and rise to eighth on the money list. A fan favorite, she tied for fourth in Arkansas and tied for second at Blythefield.

Stacy Lewis, whose personal sponsorship by KPMG aided the arranging of tournament sponsorship, doesn’t think Olympia North is a bomber’s course.

“So I think it’s good,” Lewis said. “This golf course is opened up to a lot of different types of players. It’s really going to be a thinker’s course, plotting your way around because there’s quite a few holes here that I don’t need driver on. Ariya never hits driver, but for someone like Lexi’s length, there are holes where driver is taken out of play, and there’s opportunities for her to hit driver and go over bunkers.”

Ryu noted that the rough wasn’t as long as the previous two WPGAs, at Westchestern Country Club in 2015 and Sahalee Country Club in 2016.

“Easiest so far,” she said. But there’s a catch.

“Very different, these greens compared the last two years and any other major tournament course. To me, smaller, and really slopey, so the greens, one of the toughest for sure.”

At Olympia Fields, it almost always comes down to the short game. This week should prove no different.

Around Olympia

Golf Channel has offered a pair of special previews and a host of other programming from Olympia Fields this week, but live tournament coverage is only three hours a day, and from 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday. Commitments to PGA Tour play take up the rest of the daylight hours. ... It’s hard to say how many people will turn out. While organizers are hoping most fans take the train, the main public parking lot on Dixie Highway appears to hold only about 500 cars.

– Tim Cronin

Olympia prepares for the WPGA

Writing from Olympia Fields, Illinois

Tuesday, June 27, 2017

Off the course, the big news Tuesday at Olympia Fields Country Club was the extension of the agreement between the LPGA, the PGA of America and title sponsor KPMG for the Women’s PGA Championship through 2023, four years added to the original five-year term that began in 2015.

“If we’d have been in player dining and told them this is going on through 2023, you’d have gotten a 10-minute ovation,” LPGA commissioner Mike Whan said.

The deal includes a purse increase next year to $3.65 million. This year’s kitty is $3.5 million, with $525,000 to the winner.

“We’re going to continue to make sure that we make this one of the very best events not just in women’s golf, but in golf,” PGA of America CEO Pete Bevacqua said.

The news on the course during the KPMG Pro-Am was the course springing a leak. In the afternoon, a sprinkler head near the 17th green went haywire, the leak so severe that the ground was damp all the way to the 18th tee. But grounds superintendent Sam MacKenzie’s crack grounds crew was on it so quickly, no damage was done to the course.

Photo for Illinois Golfer by Phil Arvia

Meanwhile, among early finishers, Ariya Jutanugarn’s team scored a best-ball 58, beating Angela Stanford’s squad by four strokes.

Wednesday at Olympia

Players have the course to themselves for final practice rounds before the first ball is struck in anger at 7:30 by England’s Holly Clyburn on the first tee on Thursday morning. Of the course, the KPMG Leadership Summit takes place in the pavilion overlooking the tournament’s 18th green.

– Tim Cronin

Women's PGA week starts with shotmaking clinic

 

Writing from Olympia Fields, Illinois

Monday, July 26, 2017 

There were about 700 people, many of them children by turns attentive, awe-struck, giggling and eventually eager for autographs, crowding the eighth tee at Olympia Fields Country Club’s South Course on Monday, delighted to see Brooke Henderson, Lydia Ko, Stacy Lewis and Phil Mickelson put on a shotmaking exhibition.

One of that quartet is not playing in the 63rd Women’s PGA Championship, which commences on Thursday on Olympia’s testing North Course, which hasn’t hosted a women’s major championship in 84 years. Since then, there has been a PGA Championship, a U.S. Open, an NCAA Championship and two Western Opens, plus the 2015 U.S. Amateur.

Lewis, for one, can’t wait.

“Frankly, we can play here,” Lewis said. “To add a female to that list of past champions where guys have played U.S. Opens, it’s really an honor for us to be here. It’s nice to see things changing and going in that direction.

“It’s awesome. You walk on property and you can feel it’s a major championship.”

Henderson had similar feelings.

“What’s so amazing about this major championship is we play the best golf courses,” Henderson said. “Watching Jim Furyk win (the 2003 U.S. Open), maybe I’ll have to go back and watch some highlights to see how he did it.”

Henderson was 5 when Furyk held off the field to win that Open.

Now 19, Henderson has played the North Course twice so far, and has the logical assessment.

“It’s a tough golf course,” Henderson said. “Especially if the wind picks up like this. It’s not going to be super-low scoring. If you get solid under-par rounds each and every day, your chances are really high.”

Mickelson, once again heaping plaudits on caddie Jim “Bones” Mackay, said brother Tim Mickelson will carry his bag for the rest of the year, and that he has no idea whom Mackey will work for next.

“There’s going to be a lot of great players (asking), but one great player is going to be lucky enough to have him, and he’s going to bring a lot to his game. They’re going to be a great team.”

The quarter-century Mickelson and Mackay were together is unusual in the player-caddie realm. Even Jack Nicklaus and Angelo Argea were together only about 20 years.

“We’ve gone through highs and lows on the course and highs and lows off the course,” Mickelson said of his relationship with Mackay. “We wanted to end it at the U.S. Open, because that’s where it started in 1992. We wanted to make it exactly 25 years, but technically it was, because our first event was the qualifier in Memphis in 1992. We knew that final round in Memphis (this year) was our last round together, most likely, and it was an emotional day.”

One prospect is Jon Rahm, whose agent is none other than Tim Mickelson.

The appearance of Mickelson, who tied for 55th in the 2003 U.S. Open, was not by happenstance. He, like Lewis, is paid to represent KPMG, the title sponsor of the Women’s PGA.

Tuesday at Olympia

There’s a pro-am, in which a few hundred amateurs will torture themselves on the course while playing with the pros, who will try to get in some serious practice. It runs all day.

– Tim Cronin

Jackson Park redesign unveiled

Assumes closure of two streets within park

Wednesday, June 21, 2017

By Tim Cronin

The redesign of the Jackson Park and South Shore golf courses from 27 holes to 18 has been revealed, and, aside from a 7,354-yard, par 70 golf course largely designed by Beau Willing of the golf course architecture firm headed by Tiger Woods, calls for the closure of part of Cornell Ave. from about 65th St. to 67th St., and Marquette Dr. from Stony Island Ave. to Jeffrey Ave.

If built as planned, there would be two underpasses, one under Jeffery and another under Richards Dr., next to the lakefront, to connect what are envisioned as three parcels for the 18-hole course plus a six-hole short course and junior golf area on what is currently the 18th fairway of Jackson Park, adjacent to the current clubhouse on Richards.

“We are looking to maximize playability with ample width and low cut green surrounds while still offering a strategic test for players of all skill levels,” a statement by Woods’ TGR Design explained. “We want to ensure that we provide a memorable course for all ages to enjoy, but also one which will stand up to the world’s best players.”

Willing’s routing provides for wider fairways than those on the current courses. The footprint of the property meant he came up with a routing with five par-3s and three par-5s, rather than the usual four of each.

The course would start by a new building, called the pavilion, with 10 holes on the largest footprint of the three, between Richards, Jeffrey, 67th St., Stony Island, the truncated Cornell, and Hayes Dr. Three holes would be located east of Jeffrey and serve and the connection to the South Shore property, where the 10th through 14th holes would be wrapped around the South Shore Cultural Center – the old clubhouse for South Shore Country Club – and a public beach. If a tournament is held there, tees adjacent to the par-3 12th hole would be used to drive over the beach to the 13th fairway, bringing Lake Michigan into play.

From the 11th green to the 14th green, the lake will be on the golfer’s right, with the 12th green on a peninsula currently not used for golf and the 13th fairway running aside the shoreline.

The last four holes of the course would be along the perimeter of the property with out-of-bounds to the left. The par-5 18th hole would be a slight dogleg right, going north from 67th St., with Cornell in play for a really wayward left second or third shot to the final green.

The original plan called for $30 million for construction and an endowment of lower green fees for city residents. That does not include the underpasses or expected reconstruction or reinforcement of lakefront shoreline walls. One estimate for one underpass was $11 million.

The first public comment on the plan and other aspects of the Jackson Park-South Shore renovation and the Obama Presidential Center will come tonight at 6, when a public meeting is held at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 South Shore Dr. Other meetings are Saturday at 10 a.m. at Hyde Park High School, 6220 S. Stony Island, and Tue., June 27 ay 6 p.m. at La Rabida Hospital, within Jackson Park on the lakefront.

Note: An earlier version of this story stated there were five par-5s on the course.

Koepka's 67 cops U.S. Open

Writing from Erin, Wisconsin

Sunday, June 18, 2017

Outside of members of his family, Brooks Koepka wasn’t anyone’s first pick to win the 117th United States Open at the start of the week at Erin Hills.

He’s the toast of the town – and destinations beyond – now.

Koepka won the big prize on Sunday with a 5-under-par 67 for 16-under 272 that pulled him away from a field of close contenders and pretenders who, like him, had never won a professional major championship.

The 27-year-old Florida native excelled when overnight leader Brian Harman could manage only par 72, when Hideki Matsuyama’s best-of-the-day 6-under 66 to match Harman at 12-under 276 was too little, too late, and when the rest of those in the hunt – here’s looking at you, Rickie Fowler – barely got a sniff.

Whereas many U.S. Opens are won by the winner fading less than the rest, Koepka went out and won it. He’d grabbed the lead momentarily with a 20-foot birdie putt on the devilish par-3 ninth hole, a hint of what was to come. Bogey on the 10th brought him back to 13-under with Harman, who would bogey the 12th and 13th holes, sliding to 11-under, while Koepka made this run:

• a 6-foot birdie putt on the par-5 14th after hitting his 300-yard approach into a bunker, moving him to 14-under and two strokes ahead;

• a 10-foot birdie putt sliding ever so slightly from right to left on the par-4 15th, for a three-stroke lead and all but lock it up – recognized by a baby fist pump;

• and a 15-foot birdie putt on the par-3 16th, to go up by four.

To Koepka, it all started with a par save on the par-3 13th.

“Massive,” Koepka said. “I needed to make that if I was going to win this golf tournament. That’s the reason I felt I had so much confidence coming down, especially with the par-5 coming up, knowing you needed to birdie that.”

While Koepka was winning it, in part by hitting 17 greens in the final round and a mind-boggling 62 of 72 for the week, Harman, hitting only eight of Erin Hills’ 14 broad fairways, was throwing his way his best chance at a major so far.

Maybe it was the wind, a good 15 mph most of the afternoon, or maybe it was him. Visiting belt-high fescue at one point, he bogeyed three holes on the back nine after not bogeying any of them in the first three rounds. With three holes to go, a birdie-birdie-eagle finish would have brought him a tie with Koepka, but Harman could manage only the one birdie, at the par-3 16th via a brilliant approach to a foot. When his tee shot on the par-5 18th ended up in a bunker, even his shot at an albatross for a miracle tie flew away.

“I just wish I was able to put a little more pressure on the course,” Harman said. “ I just didn’t drive it as well today as I wanted to,” Harman said. “That would be something I’d work on going forward.

“I don’t feel as though I lost a golf tournament. I think Brooks went out and won the tournament.”

True. And Matsuyama, aside from being put on the clock with John “J.B.” Holmes, was in the same mental vicinity.

“If I learned anything, you’ve got to put four good rounds together,” Matsuyama said though an interpreter. “I played two good rounds, but it wasn’t enough. Hopefully in the fiture I can play in either the last or next to last group to give myself a better chance.”

Matsuyama birdied the 18th hole via a 2 1/2-foot putt to get to 12-under 276 when Koepka was 13-under with four holes left and Harman had just fallen to 12-under on the 12th. That was a good number to be sitting on in the clubhouse until Koepka’s birdie barrage.

All this had been building for Koepka, or so it seemed. He made his way to the PGA Tour via Europe, hardly conventional for a Florida State grad. He’d won at Phoenix two years ago. He’d scored four top-10 finishes in majors since 2014, including a tie for fourth in the 2014 U.S. Open. He went 3-1 in last year’s Ryder Cup.

He had length – a 379-yard 3-wood off the 18th tee drew gasps from the gallery of 35,000 – and smarts and everything needed to win. He just hadn’t often won, underachieving by his standards after a handful of European Challenge Tour wins, a European Tour title, a win in Japan, and the triumph in Phoenix. Now he has a major and a share of the U.S. Open under-par scoring record. Rory McIlroy, who watched the final two rounds of the weekend from afar, went 16-under at Congressional in 2011.

“I felt like I put myself in contention so many times,” Koepka said. “I don’t want to say I got unlucky. I felt like I just never fully came together. I put myself in some good chances over the last few years and never really quite came through.

“I just felt like I should be winning more. I don’t know why. Not a big fan of losing; I don’t think anyone out here is. And I just couldn’t stand the fact that I’d only won once.”

A phone call Saturday night from Dustin Johnson, who missed the cut in defending his title, might have been the last piece of the puzzle.

“It was a long phone call for us,” Koepka said. “It was like two minutes.”

The message: “Just stay patient.”

“I’ll win if I stay patient and just keep doing what I’m doing.”

Koepka also alluded to a better mental attitude compared to early in the year.

“I couldn’t get my mind to free up, but I’m past that now,” Koepka said.

He certainly is. So focused was he this week he forgot a certain holiday.

Said Koepka, “I didn’t exactly get my dad a card, so this works.”

Around the Open

Koepka earned $2.16 million, a U.S. Open record, for the victory. Harman and Matsuyama each collected $1,050,012. Tommy Fleetwood, tied for the lead for seconds early on the front nine, finished at 11-under 277 and made $563,642. ... Gallery favorite Steve Stricker’s 3-under 69 for 5-under 283 tied him for 16th, making the 50-year-old the low Wisconsin native, and should sell tickets to his Champions Tour tournament this week at University Ridge in Madison. ... Scottie Scheffler was the low amateur, tying for 27th at 1-under 287. ... The course averaged 73.926 strokes on Sunday and 73.204 for the week. ... The United States Golf Association gave everyone on hand an Arnold Palmer commemorative pin upon entering, plus switched out the usual 18th hole flag for one with a silhouette of Palmer throwing his visor after winning the 1960 U.S. Open. ... Fox Sports managed to improve its coverage overall, but had several faux pau down the stretch, including an incorrect graphic when Rickie Fowler was on the 15th hole, deciding not to show an interview of Matsuyama because it was through a translator, and losing contact with Curtis Strange before he interviewed Koepka. Nobody told Strange to get his shadow out of Koepka’s face.

– Tim Cronin