Ghim and bear it

Writing from Birdieville (a.k.a. Silvis), Illinois

Thursday, July 3, 2025

Patience may be a virtue, but professional golfers aren’t known to be especially virtuous when birdies are available almost for the asking. The temptation is there to push a little more than might be prudent, say, when a pin is tucked next to a bunker or water as tightly as a newborn into a crib.

Doug Ghim is learning that. In his eighth year as a professional, Ghim, who grew up in Arlington Heights, played for Texas on a team with Jordan Spieth, and lost a U.S. Amateur in a sudden-death playoff, is still searching for his first PGA Tour triumph.

Could this be the week? He put his stamp on the first round of the 54th John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run with a 9-under-par 62 that, like every round in the history of the game, could have been better. Failed birdie putts at the final two holes might have left a bitter taste once upon a time, but instead Ghim has positives galore in his head, and why not? The 62 is his best round on the PGA Tour in 488 circuits.

Patient pays off.

“You learn,” Ghim said. “There were times earlier in my career that you try to shoot a 62. Not to say we’re not trying to every day, but you kind of have to let it come to you. On Sunday, if you’re behind the pack, you’re going to have to try to. On Thursday, you’re just trying to keep yourself in it.

“Putting yourself in the pack is the most important thing.”

Ghim, the first Illinois native to lead any Deere round since Gary Hallberg of Barrington led the opening round in 1997, managed to put himself in front of it with a bogey-free circuit of the D.A. Weibring design, scattering six birdies across his card and punctuating it with an eagle 2 on the par-4 sixth hole via a 90-yard wedge to the bottom of the cup, plus a near-ace at the 16th. As noted, his 30-32 reading might have been even better – say, 30-30 – but for skidding a birdie putt on the 17th 10 inches by the hole and coming up just short on a 37-footer at the last.

Again, no worries, figured Ghim, who holds a one-stroke lead on Max Homa and Austin Eckroat entering the second round of this four-lap trophy dash.

“It comes and goes,” Ghim said of his patience. “There are certain times I do it really well. Sometimes it comes easier. You’re hitting your shots. Scottie Scheffler is making it look really easy right now. In Vegas last year, I played well and almost won. Was patient all week, didn’t try to knock the grass off the course.

“Sometimes it’s just a little harder. It’s something that every year I’ve gotten a little bit better at.”

Sitting tied for fourth at 7-under 64 are David Lipsky, Sam Stevens, Justin Lower and 2018 Deere winner Michael Kim, another quartet of morning glories.

It was a somewhat unusual day at Deere Run in that all of the better scores were posted in the morning. Austin Potgeiter, last week’s winner in Detroit, made some noise on the back nine in the afternoon with eagles on the 10th and 14th holes – the latter by pitching in from the rough for a deuce from 98 feet – but his sloppy bogey on the par-4 17th ruined any chance of threatening Ghim. Potgeiter ended up at 4-under 67.

The best afternoon score was 6-under 65, crafted by erstwhile Illinois grad Brian Campbell and Kris Ventura. They’re in an eighth-place gaggle, as are notables Matt Kuchar and Rickie Fowler. Camilo Villegas sits joint 17th at 5-under 66, Beau Hossler is in a pack at 4-under 67, and defending champion Davis Thompson moseyed in with a 3-under 68 largely thanks to an eagle on the par-5 17th.

Zach Johnson, possibly in his last Deere, scored 2-under 69, while Jason Day needs to go to the whip in the second round to make the weekend and a check after an uncharacteristic 3-over 74 and is tied for 137th when only the low 65 and those tied will advance.

Around Deere Run

Stephen Jaeger withdrew after an opening 3-over 74 that included a triple-bogey 7 on the par-4 fourth hole. … Joe Highsmith was even par for 17 holes before hitting his drive at the last into the copse of trees to the right of the 18th fairway. His escape shot caromed off a tree dead right into more trouble. He could only wedge backwards and lost 19 yards skittering a shot across to the left rough. Finally able to aim at the green, he missed it right, the ball settling into a depression with a bunker between him and the hole. Highsmith chipped it to the far left fringe and two-putted from 37 feet for triple-bogey 7.and enters Friday’s play at 3-over 74. … Ben James was the low amateur at 3-under 68. … Pierceson Coody was high man in the field at 8-over 79. … Carson Herron, Monday’s final qualifier, started his PGA Tour career with a triple-bogey 8 on his second hole via a tee shot into a hazard and scored 5-over 76. … There were 102 players under par and 112 par or better, leading to a course average of 69.579, the eighth-easiest first round in Deere history.

– Tim Cronin

Zach Johnson, savoring the moment at 49

Writing from Silvis, Illinois

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Zach Johnson is the old lion in the 54th John Deere Classic field this week.

It’s a position he’s become accustomed to.

“I think I’ve been the oldest guy in the field every week this year, except one week when Padraig Herrington played, and at Augusta,” Johnson said Wednesday.

Johnson is 49. He’ll be 50 in February, instantly eligible for the senior circuit. Once upon a time, he was one of the Young Turks in any field, the kid from Cedar Rapids who wasn’t expected to make it, and made it big. A Masters triumph. A British Open championship. And, in 2012, capturing the Deere, the tournament closest to his heart, in a playoff with Troy Matteson.

“I did a thing with John Deere last night at headquarters,” said Johnson, a member of the tournament’s board of directors. “Felt like I was rubbing shoulders, shaking hands with friends I’ve known forever and in a lot of respects that’s true.”

Johnson’s game is up and down these days, which is to be expected. He played last week for the first time in six weeks, made the cut in Detroit and finished in a tie for 82nd. His best finish of the year was a tie for eighth at the Masters. He picked up the bulk of his Tour points there and enters the Deere 103rd in the standings.

In previous years, that would have been a comfortable spot in which to retain his PGA Tour playing privileges for next year. But the Tour is handing out only 100 cards next season, down from 125, so he has his work cut out to continue to be guaranteed to mingle with the youngsters in 2026.

“I hope I have the option of coming back here for the foreseeable future,” Johnson said. “I don’t know what the future will hold. A lot of what is going to transpire next year is going to be determined by the next so many odd weeks out here.

“Let’s just say if I can keep coming back here and playing – I’m not going to come back necessarily just to play, I want to come back here to compete. But I can’t hide the fact I have a high affinity for John Deere and the people. That goes without saying.”

With all that, he’s not a favorite this week. His stretch of five straight top-5 finishes, punctuated by the 2012 victory and built on 29 straight sub-70 rounds, is in the past. But this, his 23rd straight start in the Deere, offers opportunity.

“I don’t take that for granted,” Johnson said. “It’s amazing. I love every aspect of this, starting with the people and ending with the golf.”

The field is one of the best in tournament history, a product of the signature tournaments on the tour forcing other players to seek starts where they might not have otherwise in the past, and an awareness that Deere really treats its players well. Plus, Johnson’s talked up the tournament for years.

It’s difficult to pick a favorite, but the Deere’s history of creating first-time Tour winners – 24 of them, including defender Davis Thompson – augurs well for another, or at least from someone of the younger set.

Around Deere Run

Scott Piercy replaced Vince Covello in the field on Wednesday morning. … Tee times begin at 6:45 a.m. with threesomes off the first and 10th tees, with Trey Mullinax first off No. 1 and Kevin Kisner opening the show on No. 10. … Jackson Koivun is among three amateurs, all on this year’s American Walker Cup team, in the field.

– Tim Cronin

Clanton is but one of the new generation

Writing from Silvis, Illinois

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Luke Clanton accelerated his standing among amateurs last year by tying for second place in the John Deere Classic. A pair of 63s bookending his four rounds made for an eye-opening weekend.

Instantly, Clanton went from just another in a group of fine amateurs to a standout. Now the Florida State grad returns to TPC Deere Run as a newly-minted professional. This will be his fourth tournament playing for money. He’s cashed in the last two, with a tie for 34th at Hartford netting him $108,750 and a tie for 60th last week earning another $21,000.

But he finds no difference in teeing it up on the PGA Tour as an amateur or as a professional.

“It’s still a game,” Clanton said Tuesday. “It’s not really a job. It’s pretty amazing.”

That’s true. First prize on offer this week in the Deere’s 54th edition is $1.512 million. The only other way you can make that kind of money in the Quad Cities in a week is by robbing every bank.

So Clanton knows this is the good life, and he’s got company among his similarly-aged peers. There’s Aldrich Potgeiter, who won last week’s festival in Detroit on the fifth hole of sudden death and with it, $1.728 million. He’s 20, a South African with the hint of a gut, and had lost a playoff in Mexico City in February. He also tied for sixth in his outing before Detroit. Now he’s a winner and thus known for more than hitting the ball three miles off the tee.

There are others in this cadre of youngsters, including Carson Herron, the final of the four qualifiers in Monday’s clash at Pinnacle Country Club, thus earning his first start on the big tour. All this means pressure on the old guard to keep playing well, especially into next year, when the number of guaranteed PGA Tour cards drops from 125 to 100. Rickie Fowler, once one of the new breed and now in the wily veteran category, welcomes the pressure.

“I think going to 100 is the step in the right direction,” Fowler said. “We all want the PGA Tour to be the most elite tour there is.

“With guys getting fewer and fewer starts toward the back end, guys earning cards, whether it’s through Q School, through Korn Ferry, I feel their first year is almost like a tryout. You get a handful of starts and you better play good when you do.”

Clanton guaranteed his Tour card for the rest of the season with a number of good finishes, the best being last year’s Deere, while a collegian. Now he has to keep it.

“I think dollar sign would not change my point of view on anything,” Clanton said. “I think what PGA Tour U is doing is amazing. We’re kind of thrown int the fire immediately right out of college, and we get a little bit of a break fr a couple months to get some tournaments under our belt and play well. I think it’s exciting.

“Expectations are always going to be high. Obviously, finishing second as an amateur gives you very high expectation and goals in your life.

“I’m still 21 years old and still learning. I didn’t finish college yet. It’s been a lot. It’s about learning to plan though the weeks and how we prep and how we do everything.”

Let it be noted that neither Clanton, Potgeiter or Herron, nor the other recent graduates, is old enough to rent a car. Luckily, the tournament provides courtesy cars to every contestant, even the Monday four-spotters. But once they walk to the first tee, they’re on their own.

– Tim Cronin

Four-spot drama punctuated by a Tour debut

Reporting from Milan, Illinois

Monday, June 30, 2025

The four-spot Monday qualifier – General Qualifying, to use the formal term employed by the PGA Tour – is what makes the regular tour open. In a four-spot, any pro, or any low-indexed amateur, can tee it up across 18 holes with a shot at a place in big-time golf in the same field as the circuit’s regulars.

One with no status must play in a pre-qualifier first, and there are fees, of course, but if your pre-qualifying score advances you and the payments clear, there you are on the first (or 10th) tee. Each week there’s a regular tournament, wanna-bes, used to-bes and sundry other culprits follow the sun trying to make that week’s field. It also happens on the Korn Ferry Tour, and the Champions circuit. There’s a similar system on the LPGA trail.

Monday’s designated location for joy, heartbreak and trunk-slamming was Pinnacle Country Club, a hilly and tree-filled private course a few miles south of Quad Cities International Airport, from which a charter jet will leave Sunday night for Scotland and the British Open.

The odds that one of Monday’s four qualifiers are on that jet is about the same as winning Powerball, but people play that all day long, and golfers with stylish swings keep appearing at the first tee every Monday.

There were 96 starters at Pinnacle, all of them with pedigree and the belief that Monday would be their day. For many, it had been in the past.

Take Sean O’Hair, for instance. He won the Deere in 2005, but Past Champion status is so far down the exemption criteria on the PGA Tour, he teed it up at Pinnacle. The result: a ho-hum 3-under 69, all three birdies on par 5s.

How about Ian Gilligan, who needed 11 extra holes last year to capture the Western Amateur championship? His 1-under 71 didn’t even sniff contention. 

Then there’s newly-newly-minted pro Ben Sluzas of Lockport, who won three big state junior titles before a four-year career at Northern Illinois. He was even par through 11 holes, then quadruple-bogeyed the par-4 third. That started a cascade of trouble that brought him in at 8-over 80.

Blades Brown was like Sluzas in high school in Nashville, plus set the stroke-play record for U.S. Amateur qualifying at age 16, taking down Bobby Jones’ old mark. That and other achievements convinced him to skip college and turn pro. He fired a splendid 4-under-par 68 and was down the highway before lunch.

A final example: Patrick Flavin of Highwood, a tourist on the PGA Americas circuit – South America in the spring, Canada now – was 3-under through seven holes, then bogeyed three holes, then birdied three of his last four, including the home hole, to finish at 3-under 69.

The four who succeeded and will be chasing their dream at TPC Deere Run? Josh Radcliff of Grapevine, Tex., the 1,718th-ranked player in the Official World Golf Ranking, whose morning 9-under 63 led the way, Petr Hruby of Seattle and Zack Fischer of Benton, Ark., whose 64s were authored in the morning (Fischer eagled the 18th to set his score), and Carson Herron, who survived a three-way playoff with Michael Johnson and Blake Mcshea by wedging a downhill 153-yard tee shot on the third playoff hole – Pinnacle’s 15th – to a foot for a birdie to advance.

Herron should be a familiar name. His father Tim was a regular on the circuit for decades. Herron the younger turned pro three weeks ago and has played in two lower-level tournaments. This was his first Monday four-spot and he made it, two holes after watching Johnson chip-in for a birdie 5 on the first to extend the playoff.

“You don’t really expect it but that’s what happens in playoffs,” Herron said. “Crazy stuff happens, but you move on with it.

“On the third hole, I was pretty amped up so hit wedge. I’d been short and right before, so I made a good, committed swing.”

He heard from dad soon after his birdie fell.

“He gave me a little call,” Herron said. “I just hope he’s excited and proud of me. I’m really excited. You don’t really expect it. I was just trying to get experience.”

He’ll get a week full now.

Around Pinnacle

Austin Cook didn’t show up for his 12:40 p.m. tee time for the best possible reason. He got a spot in the tournament when Davis Riley withdrew. … Sluzas turned pro a few weeks ago and tied Bryce Emory for first with a 4-under in an Illinois PGA Open Series tournament at Hinsdale, earning $1,075, his second check as a pro. Emory scored 3-under 69 at Pinnacle.

– Tim Cronin

Radix Cup: A competition like no other

Writing from Chicago

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 

It features high-level golf on a testing course, pressure from within and a shot at glory.

Well, the United States Open, which commences Thursday morning at Oakmont Country Club, has all that too, but we speak of something nearer to Chicago, and to the hearts of many area golfers: the 63rd Radix Cup.

The annual gathering of the best players from the Illinois PGA and the CDGA’s amateur ranks takes place Thursday at Oak Park Country Club in River Grove, the usual haunt almost from when the first confrontation was staged in 1962. The only year it hasn’t been played is 2020, when COVID-19 played through.

Joel Hirsch, the eminent amateur who has played in a record 25 of these jousts, calls the Radix renewal “the best day of golf in Chicago.” There is no argument to that. It is the rare competition that is not only competitive but collegial, like a gathering of fraternity brothers from across the generations to hoist a mug or two.

The quaffing comes after the clash in this case. 

It’s called the Radix Cup because of Harry Radix, the golf superfan from the 1930s through his death in the 1960s. Pro pals Bill Ogden of North Shore Country Club and Errie Ball of Oak Park started it to honor him for all he’d done to boost golf when few others did. They used the Ryder Cup-style format employed by the Goldwater Cup in Arizona and, with modifications over the years, the best-ball Nassau format, with a point for each nine and another for overall, remains in use.

The pros, beaten in 2022 and 2023, spanked the amateurs 16-2 last year, the widest margin in Radix history, to extend their all-time margin to 38-22-2. The ams, however, have a 9-7 margin since 2008.

There’s no way to handicap this showdown, which makes it that much more fun, though the amateurs are largely new, with six of their 12-man squad Radix rookies and three more in only their second appearance. Here are Thursday’s pairings:

12:45 p.m.: Pros Travis Johns (Medinah) and Jeff Kellen (North Shore) vs. amateurs Rick Stewart (Arrowhead) and Joe Cermak (Mount Prospect)

12:55 p.m.: Pros Andy Svoboda (Butler National) and Chris Green (Glen View) vs. amateurs Daniel Stringfellow (Medinah) and Michael Cascino (Olympia Fields)

1:05 p.m.: Pros Andy Mickelson (Mistwood) and Carson Solien (Oak Park) vs. amateurs Justin Smith (Oak Park) and Brien Davis (Weaver Ridge)

1:15 p.m.: Pros Kevin Flack (Mauh-Nah-Tee-See) and Kyle Donovan (Oak Park) vs. amateurs Michael Munce (El Paso) and Lyle Burns (Lincolnshire Fields)

1:25 p.m.: Pros Matt Rion (Briarwood) and Frank Hohenadel (Mistwood) vs. amateurs Alex Creamean (Skokie) and Pierce Grieve (Knollwood)

1:35 p.m.: Pros Brian Carroll (The Hawk) and Chris French (Aldeen) vs. amateurs Graham O’Connor-Brooks (Glen Flora) and Chadd Slutzky (The Grove)

– Tim Cronin