On a day fit for Eskimos ...

    Writing from Chicago
    Monday, January 6, 2014

    No matter where you are in Illinois – or most of the country, for that matter, Kapalua excepted – it’s stupid cold. So while this winter hurricane plays through, let’s go around the area, for the golf news never stops coming:
    1. Over 130 players were scheduled to play in Sunday’s Eskimo Open at Cog Hill. Here’s hoping they had morning tee times, before the wind picked up and the bottom fell out. No word on scores. Who can write in below-zero wind chill?
    2. Mike Munro was pleased with the brisk business he was doing at the White Pines Golf Dome in mid-December, compared to the last two more mild winters. He should be really smiling now with Chicago in the deep freeze. In the past, his operation has gone gangbusters when it was frigid and the roads were clear. The same is probably true in Bolingbrook, where McQ’s, the dome and restaurant owned by Mistwood mogul Jim McWethy. The dome isn’t quite as long as White Pines’ facility, but hot food plus an off-track betting wing operated by Hawthorne Race Course are real pluses.
    3. Look for the Western Amateur to go back to Point O Woods Country Club, the Robert Trent Jones classic in Millburg, Mich., near Benton Harbor, in 2018 or 2019. The Western Am left the Point following the 2008 tournament, the club wanting a six-figure site fee to make up for declining attendance. But there’s been complete turnover on the club’s board, and the new crowd wants to show off a refurbished Point, which includes a new clubhouse overlooking the 18th green. The recent job posting for a new general manager notes the club’s interest. According to a highly-placed WGA official, talks between WGA and Point officials have been productive, but no deal’s been signed yet.
    Ideally, the club Chick Evans once called “the peerless Point” will take up a regular position in the Western Am rota. It’s at Beverly Country Club this year, Rich Harvest Links in Aurora in 2015, Knollwood Club in 2016, and Skokie Country Club in 2017. By the way, there’s no chance the Western Am would drop by Harbor Shores, the Kemper Sports-operated course in the heart of Benton Harbor that over Memorial Day weekend welcomes the Senior PGA Championship for the second time in three years.
    4. The WGA is also waiting on a multi-year renewal by BMW for the Western Open, so to speak. Everything was expected to be ready by the end of the year, but the final details are still being worked out. And while Conway Farms Golf Club is not yet a lock for 2015, that’s the leader in the clubhouse for the Chicago-area location. An additional fan entrance is expected to unclog the bottleneck spectators were stuck with in 2013.
    5. As noted in our year-end review, Woodbine Golf Course in Homer Glen will close at the end of the year, to be transformed into Homer Glen’s first park, the clubhouse to become the village hall until a new hall in built.
    That’s too bad for golfers, because Woodbine was the type of course the late Phil Kosin, impresario of the fondly-remembered Chicagoland Golf, always liked to see: the $25 golf course. It went beyond that price in recent years, but Woodbine, from the day it opened in 1988, has been a place where beginners could learn to play and not lose a dozen balls along the way. Unless you hit it into a pond, it was hard to lose a ball at all. And everyone was friendly.
    6. Illinois-born D.A. Points and Illinois-connected Bill Haas may be toward the bottom of the standings in the Tournament of Champions (29th and T21 entering the final round respectively), but they have two things going for them. They’re playing golf in Hawaii, and they’re warm. And the paycheck is a bonus.
    7. NBC / Golf Channel does a great job on golf, but really, enough with the matching Hawaiian shirts and the leis. That’s as much a cliche as tuxedos on boxing announcers, the notion being the sport needs to look classy. Just wear a jacket and tie, peacock on the breast pocket optional.
    8. Until Tournament of Champions co-leader Justin Spieth won the John Deere Classic last July, the best story of the week was the husband-wife player-caddie combination of Patrick and Justine Reed. That’s on hiatus for the nonce and for a great reason. Justine Reed is carrying a child instead of a bag. Justine is due to deliver a little girl on Memorial Day. But trouper that she is, she may be back on the bag in August, in advance of the PGA Championship.
    Meanwhile, her brother, Kessler Karain, who had a solid junior golf career, is doing the heavy lifting for Patrick Reed. So far, so good. Reed’s four strokes back entering the final round at Kapalua.
    9. It will get warmer. Here’s proof. There are only 95 days to The Masters. You can almost smell the flowers.
    – Tim Cronin

Furyk's 59 tops the feats of 2013

    Writing from Chicago
    Wednesday, January 1, 2014

    The image is indelible. Jim Furyk, in the mottled shadows of the ninth green at Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest late on a Friday afternoon, pumping his right fist, the crowd going wild, after his final stroke of the day.
    His 59th stroke.
    Golf’s magic number, on the scorecard and in the record books as the lowest round – by three strokes – in the long and lusty history of the Western Open / BMW Championship.
    And with a bogey, no less.
    Furyk’s 12-under-par round, amazingly, did not vault him to victory at Conway Farms. That prize went to Zach Johnson, while leader Henrik Stenson faded to 33rd and blew up a locker but rebounded to capture the FedEx Cup point playoff and the Road to Dubai playoff as well, making him the first player to double up as the postseason champion of both the PGA and European tours.
    But if Conway Farms’ members hunt around for a reason to put a plaque up commemorating the 2013 edition, it’ll be for Furyk’s fanciful feat.
    Scoring 12-under-par 59 in the caldron of the playoffs was simply the best round of golf in the history of golf in Chicago. Thus, it stands unquestionably as the highlight of the 122nd year of golf in Illinois – using Charles Blair Macdonald’s creation of the seven-hole course on the backyard of the Farwell estate and the edge of a city park in Lake Forest in 1892 as the beginning of the game here.
    What old C.B. might have thought of such an insane number penciled onto a scorecard can only be guessed at, but Furyk’s wonder round has relegated to a fight for second place such breathtaking feats as Ben Hogan’s 62 in the third round of the Hale America at Ridgemoor Country Club in 1942, Tiger Woods’ then record-tying 62 in the 2009 Western at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, and the back-to-back 62s of Annika Sorenstam and Rosie Jones to open the 2002 Kellogg-Keebler Classic at Stonebridge Country Club in Aurora.
    Opening on Conway’s back nine, Furyk had birdied his first three holes, made another birdie on the 14th, then eagled the par-4 15th by dunking a 9-iron from 115 yards. He was 6-under after six holes. Birdies on 17 and 18 equaled 7-under-par 28 on Conway’s inward half.
    Then, he took stock of the situation.
    “I’ve never shot 28 before to start with,” Furyk said. “It kind of dawned on me at the turn that it would only – only is a tough way to say it – it only takes 4-under on the (par 35) front to break the barrier of 60.
    “The way I played it out in my head was, the back nine was over. I was just going to play the front nine and shoot as low as I could. I was trying to take the nerves out of it. Heck, I’ve shot 4-under on nine holes probably 100 times in my career. Probably even more.”
    After a par on the first hole, it got crazy. A 13-footer for birdie on the par-3 second, in the shadow of the clubhouse. A 26-foot bird on the third, and a 5-foot bird on the fourth hole. He was 11-under for the first 13 holes, 10-under for the championship. Somehow, Brandt Snedeker, whose 63 on Thursday seemed a formidable score, was still in front.
    So Furyk stood in the fairway on the fifth hole, on the eastern edge of the course by the railroad tracks, where galleries were small, hit the back of the green with his approach, and three-putted from 29 feet. The birdie try slid by the hole and the comebacker lipped out on the low side.
    He was 10-under through 14 holes. Parring in would equal 61. He wanted better than that.
    Furyk parred the sixth, birdied the par-4 seventh via a gap wedge to 11 feet, worked for his par on the par-5 eighth after ending up in the grass face of a bunker when hunting the pin on his second, and came to the par-4 ninth needing three strokes for 59.
    The drive was long and perfect, 281 yards, middle-right.
    “I knew the pin was in a benign spot,” Furyk said.
    And 103 yards out. For Jim Furyk, on a windless day, that means a “smooth” gap wedge. It was pure. The gallery was cheering when the ball was at the apex of its flight, louder still when it hit the middle of the green, louder than that when it stopped three feet away.
    “I noticed how many people came out to watch,” Furyk said.
    He smiled when someone from the South Side – the accent was unmistakable – shouted, “Jimmy, I’ll give it to you!” while Furyk was marking his ball.
    There was no need. The putt was perfect. Fifty-nine!
    What else happened in state golf this year? Plenty. Herewith, the highlights:

Person of the Year
    Ed Magaletta, who was playing in a foursome at Annbrier Golf Course in downstate Waterlook on March 8 when he heard a shout from behind him on the par-5 14th hole. One of his pals, Mark Mihal, had disappeared into a sinkhole. He took a step, it opened up, and whoomph! Mihal was in the bottom of a hole with a dislocated shoulder.
    Playing partner Mike Peters got there first, with Hank Martinez, the fourth in the group. And when course general manager Russ Nobbe arrived with a ladder and rope, Magaletta, using his medical training and common sense, and amazingly having a flashlight with him – what well-prepared golfer doesn’t have one? – decided not to wait for paramedics. He went down the ladder, slid the rest of the way down to Mihal, and put a rope around his pal’s waist.
    Within 20 minutes, Mihal was back above ground, and Magaletta was a hero. He ought not have to buy a drink or round of golf playing with Mihal for the rest of his life.

Player of the Year
    Carlos Sainz Jr. nearly won the Illinois Open, falling to Joe Kinney in a three-man playoff at the Glen Club. But Sainz, who came into the state championship after winning the Players Cup in Canada the day before, rebounded nicely two months later, capturing the revived Chicago Open at Cantigny Golf. Coupled with his success north of the border, the P2 and 1 finish in the two big non-Tour tournaments in the state earned Sainz, a 26-year-old from Elgin, Illinois Golfer Player of the Year honors.

Shot of the Year
    Jordan Spieth came to the 18th hole at Deere Run on Sunday needing a birdie to keep alive the hope of falling into a playoff in the John Deere Classic. He’d birdied the previous two holes, but plopped his approach into the right greenside bunker at the last. The green runs away from you and toward the water from there.
    So Spieth, a mere 19 years old, merely holed the bunker shot for a birdie. That meant a spot in a three-way playoff with David Hearn and defending champion Zach Johnson when Johnson bogeyed the last. And Spieth, after the others had gilt-edged opportunities to win – hats were already off for the handshakes – won the playoff with a par on that same 18th, the fifth sudden-death hole, to jump-start his career.
    Suddenly, he had a spot in the British Open, a passel of playoff points, a PGA Tour card through 2015, and $828,000 burning a hole in his pocket. But it doesn’t happen unless the impossible happens.
    “I dodged a lot of bullets,” Spieth said. “Whatever it was, the Golf Gods up there, I just caught the breaks. They were hitting great shots, and I was just making the six-footer to go to the next one. Just somehow found an opening.”
    No teen has won on the PGA Tour since Ralph Guldahl, like Spieth a Texas, won the Santa Monica Open at Riviera Country Club in 1931. Eighty-two years later, here was Spieth posting 265 and surviving five more holes to equal the old legend.
    “I don’t know what I did to deserve those breaks,” Spieth said.
    Sometimes, there doesn’t have to be a reason.

Executives of the Year
    Carrie Williams, executive director of the Illinois Junior Golf Association, and IJGA president Marty Schiene, for spearheading the successful rebirth of the Chicago Open, an old title with a grand history. The 2013 edition featured a purse of close to $50,000, and many amenities, from player dining to live scoring, that bought it a cut above the usual fare for mini-tour players.
    The location – Cantigny Golf in Wheaton, site of several USGA and CDGA tournaments over the years – was also a plus. It was conducted impeccably, and next year, with dates earlier than October, should attract a larger field than the 114 who were exempted or qualified in 2013.

Hail and Farewell
    Notable deaths in 2013 included this quartet, all of whom made an impact in golf in Illinois and beyond:
    Dick Hart, 77, member of Illinois Golf Hall of Fame, retired pro at Hinsdale Golf Club who won eight state majors (three Illinois Opens, two Illinois PGAs, three Illinois PGA Match-Plays) and excelled in occasional forays on PGA Tour, notably beating Phil Rodgers in an eight-hole sudden-death playoff for the 1985 Azalea Open; also led the 1963 PGA Championship after 36 holes, April 10.
    Bill Heald, 85, member of Illinois Golf Hall of Fame, tireless chair of the hall’s selection committee, multi-national PGA award winner, rules guru, and retired pro at Riverside Golf Club, Dec. 6.
    Carl Hopphan, 80, member of Illinois Golf Hall of Fame, most recently oversaw the Sunshine Course at Midwest Golf House and raised funds for the Sunshine Through Golf Foundation; previously pioneering superintendent at Aurora and Evanston golf clubs, a total of 43 years at the helm, May 26.
    Ken Venturi, 82, twice winner of the Gleneagles-Chicago Open at the Lemont course and a television commentator on CBS’s decades of Western Open coverage from Butler National and Cog Hill, one month and a day after the death of broadcasting partner Pat Summerall (who also had a Chicago connection: he played for the Cardinals for two seasons), May 17.

The Champions of 2013
    BMW Championship / Western Open – Zach Johnson
    John Deere Classic – Jordan Spieth
    Encompass Championship – Craig Stadler
    Western Amateur – Jordan Niebrugge
    Western Junior – Collin Morikawa
    Women’s Western Amateur – Ashlan Ramesy
    Women’s Western Junior – Heather Ciskowski
    Chicago Open – Carlos Sainz Jr.
    Illinois Open – Joe Kinney
    Illinois Women’s Open – Elise Swartout
    Illinois PGA – Mike Small
    Illinois PGA Match Play – Curtis Malm
    Illinois Players – Eric Ilic
    Illinois PGA Senior – Doug Bauman
    Illinois Amateur – Tim Kelly
    Illinois Women’s Amateur – Bing Singhsumalee
    Illinois Junior Amateur – Brendan O’Reilly
    Illinois Junior Women’s Amateur – Renee Solberg
    Illinois Mid-Amateur – Todd Mitchell
    Illinois Senior Amateur – Dave Ryan
    Illinois Senior Women’s Amateur – Leslie Page
    Illinois Public Links – Mike Henry
    CDGA Championship – Bryce Emory
    CWDGA Championship – Rosanna Lederhausen
    IJGA-CDGA Junior Amateur – Robert Renner
    CDGA Mid-Amateur – Matther Minder
    CDGA Senior Amateur – Tom Miler
    CDGA Public Links – Ken Molnar
    Chick Evans Junior Boys – Orion Yamat
    Chick Evans Junior Girls – Jessica Yuen
    Symetra Tour Players Championship – Sue Kim
    Radix Cup – Illinois PGA Professionals

Thanks for playing
    Ken-Loch Golf Links was slated to close for good at the end of the 2013 season, but DuPage County has yet to rezone the 31-acre property in Lombard to allow apartment buildings, the only way co-owners Richard Kensinger and Linda Lies, whose father built the course in 1963, believe they can get a proper price for the land. Will Ken-Loch, a fun nine-holer, open for a 52nd season? Stay with us.
    Meanwhile, Tuesday brought the news that 2014 will be the 27th and final season for Woodbine Golf Club in Homer Glen. The village is buying the course for $3.3 million, with the clubhouse to become the village hall and the property to become a park, which the village does not have.

Finally...
    Congratulations to 2012 Western Open / BMW Championship winner Rory McIlroy on his New Year’s Eve engagement to tennis star Caroline Wozniacki. That’s the way to turn a bad year into an absolute winner!
    And birdies and eagles to all of you in 2014!
    – Tim Cronin

Remembering Bill Heald

    Writing from Chicago
    Saturday, December 7, 2013

    Illinois golf, and golfers everywhere, lost a legend on Friday when Bill Heald died after a short illness. He was 86.
    It will be disconcerting to attend an Illinois Golf Hall of Fame meeting without Heald running it. For all he did in the game – from teaching to mentoring to officiating – across 61 years, shepherding the Hall of Fame nomination process beginning in 1999 was his favorite activity. Selected for induction himself in 1997, he subsequently helped select those who sat on the committee, helped develop the two-stage voting process, and presided over the selection meetings with an eagle-eyed view toward getting the best class of inductees every time.
    His guidance was superb, his humor limitless. You knew Bill Heald respected you when he fired a one-liner in your direction, and on target.
    Those meetings were behind closed doors. More publicly, one could always find Bill Heald at an Illinois PGA tournament, whether it was big, such as the Illinois Open, or a routine Monday 18-hole affair. Heald’s knowledge of the Rules of Golf was all-encompassing, but like any good rules official, he stayed in the background until needed.
    It was a surprise when Heald was absent from the Illinois PGA Championship at Olympia Fields. Only then did word begin to spread that he was ill. But, while needing dialysis three times a week, he made a pair of appearances in October, including at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, wheeled in by his wife Margo. He had not missed a ceremony since his induction in 1997, and had presided over several of them.
    Heald arrived on the Chicago-area scene from Wisconsin in 1952, when he became the head professional at Riverside Golf Club. There he would stay, the professional for 45 years. In that time, he served countless years on the Illinois PGA board, and was the section’s president in 1976-77, when he spearheaded the move to create a full-time office and helped hire the first executive director.
    He became a PGA master professional in 1990. While he retired from Riverside in 1996, he never left golf. He only became more busy. In 1981 and 1999, Heald won the national PGA’s Horton Smith Award, bestowed for creating educational opportunities to fellow professionals, as well as the section’s similar award as well as the Bill Strausbaugh Award for club relations, and then was further honored by the creation of the Bill Heald Career Achievement Award.
    Heald’s interest in education was long ingrained. For several years in the 1950s, he coached golf and was an assistant basketball coach at Proviso High School – and the work on the basketball court came first. Somehow, he also found time to teach history at Proviso and the subsequent Proviso East and Proviso West.
    Heald began his golf career as an assistant in Bailey’s Harbor, Wis., for three years before becoming the head pro at Baraboo Golf Club in 1947. He was a graduate of Wisconsin State Teachers College.
    He is survived by Margo, his bride of 63 years, daughters Michele and Erin, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. A combined visitation and funeral service will be held Tuesday at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 2317 S. Wolf Road, Hillside. Visitation is at 9 a.m., with the service at 10:30 a.m., with burial on in the adjacent cemetery.

    – Tim Cronin

Sainz alive! Carlos comes through

    Writing from Chicago
    Wednesday, October 9, 2013

    Carlos Sainz Jr. came so close at the Illinois Open to hoisting the trophy, he could taste it.
    The taste was bitter. He lost a three-way three-hole playoff in July at the Glen Club when Joe Kinney scored 12 over the first, 17th and 18th holes to amateur Dustin Korte’s 14 and his 17.
    In contrast, Wednesday at Cantigny Golf in Wheaton tasted so good. Sainz won the reborn Chicago Open, and no playoff was needed.
    With birdies on five of the first seven holes, Sainz took command and hung on to score a two-stroke victory over 36-hole leader Matt Thompson to grab a firm hold on the Ken Venturi Trophy and the $7,000 first prize from the purse of about $50,000.
    The 27-year-old Elgin resident, less than a decade removed from working in the Cantigny pro shop during his summers back from college, had won on the Canadian PGA circuit this season, but there’s something special about winning close to home. And winning there helped his effort here.
    “I won on a bigger level this year, which was big for me, because I’d never done that,” Sainz said. “I’ve been improving little by little every year, and this year with the help of sponsors and being able to play full time it has really catapulted me into being a better player.”
    He proved that from the start on Wednesday, opening with birdies on the first two holes, adding another bird on the fourth, then two more on the sixth and seventh to go out in 5-under 31. He was 5-under for the round and 7-under for the championship until his only bogey of the day, at the par-4 15th.
    Sainz finished with a 4-under-par 68 for 6-under-par 210, with Thompson’s even-par 72 landing him at 4-under 212. Jordan Mitchell of Atlanta scored 71 for 2-under 214.
    Thompson, with six birdies in his Tuesday 67, played Wednesday’s first three holes in 1-over, and was 4-under for the tournament. He stayed there through the front nine, never getting untracked. While Jake Scott, a charger from Mooresville, N.C., opened by going 4-under through the first four holes – highlighted by holing out from the fairway on the par -4 fourth – he parred the next 10 holes and scored 5-under 67, the day’s best round. It earned him a tie for fourth with Brandon Holtz and Michael Schachner at 1-under 215.
    Illinois men’s golf coach Mike Small, who finished at 1-over 217, might have had the day’s most curious round. He parred the first eight holes, bogeyed the ninth, double-bogeyed the 10th, then reeled off six birdies in the next seven holes – two stretches of three interspersed with a par – and finished with a bogey at the last. It added up to a wacky 70.
    Fittingly, Sainz played much of his junior golf under the flag of the Illinois Junior Golf Association, which brought the Chicago Open back to life.
    “To be able to crown a former IJGA competitor helps us highlight the mission of the IJGA and helps underscore the purpose of our reviving this great championship,” IJGA executive director Carrie Williams said. “We are looking forward to having an even better event next year.”
    Under discussion is a plan to move the tournament into September next year, to take advantage of changes in the PGA Tour’s qualifying schedule for its developmental web.com Tour. This year’s tournament was expected to lead into that, but the PGA Tour rescheduled some of its qualifiers when it realigned its season and created the web.com qualifying series.

    – Tim Cronin

Thompson's 67 moves him to the front

    Writing from Wheaton, Illinois
    Tuesday, October 8, 2013

    Matt Thompson has been on the verge for a while. The 24-year-old native of Battle Creek, Mich., was the runner-up in the 2009 Michigan Amateur, and fell a stroke short in the 2011 Michigan Open despite birdies on two of the last three holes.
    He’s on the verge again. After a 5-under-par 67 on Cantigny Golf’s lush Woodside-Lakeside layout, Thompson has a one-stroke lead entering the final round of the Chicago Open. Thompson’s 36-hole aggregate of 4-under 140 is one swipe better than the 140 of Minneapolis’ Thomas Campbell, who stitched a 70 to his Monday 71.
    Thompson, who turned pro after graduating from Michigan, has won in Illinois before. He captured Northwestern’s Windon Memorial in the fall of 2011.
    This field, full of seasoned pros chasing the $7,000 first prize, is as deep or deeper than the one Thompson faced in that Michigan Open. Campbell, to note Thompson’s closest pursuer, already has a pro victory this year, and while it’s on the Dakotas Tour, in some ways as far as you can get from PGA Tour headquarters in the U.S. and still play for money, he has the oversized check and the bragging rights that go with it.
    And that duo has company. Michael Schachner and Carlos Sainz Jr., from Libertyville and Elgin respectively, are two behind at 2-under 142. Atlanta’s Jordan Mitchell is at 1-under 143. A gaggle of seven at even par 144 includes Milo French and Tim Streng, two of the three overnight leaders, while Eric Sipple, who joined French and Streng in front after his opening 70, is at 1-over 145.
    In all, there are 14 players within five strokes of Thompson as the third round commences, and lurking at 147, seven strokes in arrears, is Mike Small, the soon-to-be Illinois Golf Hall of Famer. He’d have been two strokes closer but for a penalty for stepping on his ball while searching for it in the rough during the first round. That woe was felt by three other players as well.
    Thompson was not alone in carding a tournament-best 67. Daniel Zimmerman of Middleton, Wis., matched that score, and did so after an opening 80, the best recovery of any player. He did so by making nine birdies, offset by four bogeys, at Cantigny.
    The cut fell at 8-over 152 and encompassed 55 players, including three amateurs. Among those missing the cut: Medinah teaching pro Connie DeMattia, erstwhile Aurora fixture Bob Ackerman, and amateur Toni Kukoc, who prizes his 2010 Croatian Amateur title as much as his three NBA titles earned with the Bulls.

    – Tim Cronin