Expect a slow start to the season

    The Morning Nine for Monday, March 3, 2014

    As the deep freeze continues here in Chiberia, some warming thoughts.

    1. Don’t expect your favorite local golf course to open immediately after the last flake of snow melts. (It will melt, won’t it?) A superintendent at a local private club says there’s no way his course will open before April 1, and that’s a stretch.
    The problem won’t be muddy turf after a few people walk or ride over it, it will be the need for the turf, especially greens, to recover from the ravages of winter. Ice is the biggest culprit, killing grass because it effectively smothers it. As the guru explained it, there’s no way for gases to escape, and that causes winterkill. That can mean reseeding or returfing the dead areas, which will look blighted until that happens. And no amount of warm weather will bring back dead grass. Good grass will come back from the natural dormancy of winter and regular snow cover. Dead grass is dead.
    Some courses will open instantly, of course, but don’t expect those fee factories to be in anything near good shape until May or June. Waiting a week or 10 days will pay off in better conditions down the line.

    2. To steal the old line from Ken Venturi, Paula Creamer could have dropped a small bucket on the green and not made that 75-foot swinging putt for eagle to win in Singapore a second time. But she only had to make it once, and she did. Left turns in NASCAR aren’t that severe. Great stuff, and the leading candidate for putt of the year.

    3. It’s hard to believe that Creamer hadn’t won since the 2010 U.S. Women’s Open. It’s also hard to believe she’ll go another four years without winning more. This could be her year.

    4. Meanwhile, the final round of the Honda Classic turned into a demolition derby. Rory McIlroy crashed on the back after taking a three-stroke lead early in the round, and after a four-man playoff in which ol’ Rors was fortunate to be a part of, Russell Henley emerged the winner with a 54-foot two-putt birdie on the first extra hole, the 18th at PGA National in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. All right, not exactly Creameresque, but it got the job done, which McIlroy, Russell Knox and Ryan Palmer did not.

    5. McIlroy, whose birdie on the 18th at least made the playoff a foursome, might be talking to himself still, though he put a good face on his failure to hold the lead after the round. Hey, who hasn’t hit into the water from a bunker? And Knox and Palmer had their chances as well, especially Knox, who dunked a tee shot into the water on the 14th hole.

    6. By winning, Henley gets into this week’s WGC cash cow tournament at the redone Doral Resort near Miami, and also returns to the Masters and PGA Championship. Some regarded him a one-shot wonder when he won in Hawaii last year at the “Big W,” but no more.

    7. There was one other casualty on Sunday. Tiger Woods, who flirted with missing the cut and then threatened to become a contender on the previous two days, withdrew with a bad back after 13 holes. Yes, he was 5-over on the day, but his erratic tee shots were the hint that something was wrong. And back spasms are killer for a golfer walking five miles or more, much less under tournament pressure. Will he back at Doral? Or Bay Hill? Or Augusta? We hope so.

    8. Doral will be interesting if only because the Blue Monster been completely revamped by Gil Hanse since last year. (Ah, the wonder of year-round warmth in which to work.) Most of the Dick Wilson-Joe Lee routing was retained, and the 18th still is a liquid torture chamber, but the Wilson-styled bunkering is deeper, and some holes are completely new. In other words, Hanse did at Doral what Rees Jones did with Wilson’s Dubsdread layout at Cog Hill, only more so.
    All of this bulldozing and shaping and whatnot was underwritten by Donald Trump, who bought the place and is pouring $250 million into the five-course complex and hotel. The name – Trump National Doral Golf Club – is a handful. Then again, so is the mop on the head of The Donald.
    But someone will shoot 65 this week. Notwithstanding the Keystone Kops finish at PGA National, these guys are good.

    9. Finally, are the Oscars over yet? We lost faith in them when “Caddyshack” didn’t win best picture for 1980. (But a tip o’ the Hogan lid to Bill Murray for remembering Harold Ramis, whose death came after the memorial tribute was made.)

    – Tim Cronin

Golf needs more players and players playing more

    The Morning Nine for Tuesday, February 25, 2014

    How cold is it? Cold enough for a day’s delay in the Morning Nine. This comes straight from the Deep Freeze, still fresh on a Tuesday afternoon.

    1. Walking the aisles of the Chicago Golf Show last Friday, two things were evident.
    First, people who play golf still love golf. Maybe not as many as 10 years ago, but there was a crowd for the first day, with some inspecting clubs for sale in the bargain racks, some taking practice swings on the indoor range, others listing to pros pontificate about the finer points of the game, and some just scooping up brochures from courses near and far.
    Second, that those in the business are worried about the business because of those people who have disappeared from the links in the last decade. They wonder if players will play more after a wicked winter, if improvements at courses will pay for themselves, if rock bottom has been reached, and if it has, will a real rebound commence soon?
    The problem, of course, is that there aren’t enough golfers playing enough rounds to cover each course with players at every hour every day in season. Or even some of the hours on some of the days. At public courses, outside of the weekend morning hours that have been locked up on subscription for years, there are time slots available all summer.
    How do those get filled in? With new golfers. Where will those new golfers come from? And how can players who do play find the time to play more? Those are the billion-dollar questions. From the First Tee to Play Golf America to Play It Forward, a gaggle of new golfers has yet to materialize. If we had an easy answer – or a complicated one, you would read it here.
    2. The CBS golf bigwigs have to be scratching their heads. They get the early network run of the PGA Tour, and end up with winners like Scott Stallings and Jimmy Walker, plus talented-but-unknown Jason Day knocking off Victor Dubuisson in the World Match Play final. NBC starts this weekend after its Olympics run, and has everybody but Walter Hagen in the Honda Classic field. Woods, Mickelson, McIlroy, Scott, Fowler, you name a name and he’s playing.
    3. Next CBS tournament? The Masters. The field should be decent there, no?
    4. A bit of a tournament shuffle in the Midwest finds the Big Ten men’s and women’s championships leaving the French Lick Resort after this spring for parts unknown, with the Senior PGA Championship takes its place there next year.
    5. Len Ziehm notes on his website that there’s a local golf centennial that some (including your obedient servant) have missed: Wilson Sporting Goods, founded in 1914 as Thomas E. Wilson and Co. Wilson’s gone through tough times but has persevered, and still stands tall in River Grove.
    6. Every best wish to Scott Stricker, brother of Steve, on a continued recovery from his recent liver transplant.
    7. Good news from far-off Furman University. The Paladins men’s golf program will live on. The school has canceled canceling the program. Must have been the ghost of Richard Boone haunting the administration that made the difference.
    8. A moment of silence, please, for Harold Ramis, director of “Caddyshack,” still the ultimate golf movie, and one of the most quotable movies of all time. The flag at Bushwood is at half staff.
    9. Finally, this would have appeared yesterday, save for the inability to spell Dubuisson.

    – Tim Cronin

RIP The Eisenhower Tree

The Morning Nine for Monday, February 17, 2014

    A dispatch from the arboreal world leads off this edition of the Morning Nine for an eventually snowy Monday:

    1. The news came suddenly, but it probably shouldn’t have been so unexpected.
    Augusta National Golf Club’s Eisenhower Tree is dead. It was believed to be about 150 years old.
    The killer was last week’s ice storm that roared through the south. The old loblolly pine tree on the left edge of the 17th fairway – from afar, as the adjoining photo from 2013 illustrates, it looked more like an oak – lost too many branches under the weight of the ice, and was taken down over the weekend after arborists said it couldn’t be saved.
    The word came Sunday, when Augusta Chronicle reporter Scott Michaux wrote about it, including a photo, on his web site.
    It looked like a carcass torn apart by a ravenous beast. Lightning couldn’t have done a better job of taking apart the tree named after the president and Augusta National member who hit it on a regular basis and whose request to remove it was denied by Cliff Roberts in 1956.
    It was no longer a factor for most drives in The Masters – players hit over it, not into it – but it stood there like an old uncle visiting at Christmas, as much a part of the lore of Augusta as the wild MacKenzie bunker on the 10th fairway, the little corner of heaven called Amen Corner, Magnolia Lane and the pimento cheese sandwich.
    Now? No more.
    For a while on Sunday, Twitter was alive with the news of the tree’s fate, much as it was filled with pictures of the damage to the magnolias on the world’s most famous driveway on the morning after the storm. Even the sign in front of the club was cockeyed, hit by a falling branch.
    Ike’s tree was held up by a series of cables – the same is true of the Big Tree, which stands majestically behind the clubhouse and where everyone who is anyone in golf uses as a meeting point during The Masters – but the club was concerned enough that a similar pine was planted about 20 years up the hill and closer to the 17th green some years back.
    It was wiped out as well. (No word on the Big Tree.)
    Augusta boss Billy Payne called the tree’s demise “difficult to accept.” In a statement, he said, “We have begun deliberations of the best way to address the future of the 17th hole and to pay tribute to his iconic symbol of our history. Rest assured, we will do both appropriately."
    The hunch here: On Masters week, if not before, a new pine will be standing in just about the same spot as Ike’s Tree, ready to accept a low liner hugging the left side of the fairway. Augusta has rebuilt the 11th and 12th greens after Rae’s Creek turned into a whitewater canoe run. A little ice storm isn’t going to get in the way of a tradition unlike any other.

    2. Last year’s go-to spot for Masters week visitors to Augusta was the spot off the 10th fairway from which Bubba Watson hit his impossible shot to set up his winning playoff putt in 2012. This year, it’ll be the 17th fairway, to see what the answer the Lords of Augusta have for Mother Nature.

    3. If this had happened Masters week, the tree might have been replaced overnight. Buildings have been repaired that quickly. In 2012, a severe thunderstorm tore through central Georgia late on Tuesday night. At Augusta, it felled a tree that smashed through the roof of a new restroom building – a big one near the rear entrance behind the fifth green and sixth tee.
    At most golf courses, the plan would have been to bring in portajohns as a temporary replacement.
    Augusta National does not do portajohns. Augusta National rebuilds buildings overnight.
    By about 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, when the course opened to spectators a half-hour late for the day’s practice rounds and the Par 3 Tournament, the tree had been removed and the restroom had been rebuilt. Completely, with a new roof, new fixtures, the works. Those who had been in the day before say you couldn’t tell the difference.
    At Augusta National, they can do anything, and apparently don’t need no stinkin’ building permits.

    4. Closer to home, the Chicago Golf Show begins a three-day run on Friday at Rosemont’s Stephens Convention Center. Bigger by a factor of about four than the Tinley Park Golf Show, admission is $5 on Friday, $10 on Saturday and Sunday, with children under 12 free and those from 12 to 15 in for just $4. Of course, parking in Rosemont is maddeningly expensive, but if you car pool with a golf buddy, that’s a help.
    There are 186 exhibitors listed on the show’s web site, with a mix of Chicago area courses and those from afar, all the way out to Florida and, of all places, Atlantic City, N.J. NBC’s Mark Rolfing, a Chicago native, will host special lesson sessions with Jeff Sluman and Bears kicker and golf nut Robbie Gould on Saturday.

    5. Bubba Watson shed a tear or two after winning Sunday at Riviera with a second straight 64. He’s often moved to tears. Wait until he hears about Ike’s Tree. Or is interviewed by NBC skiing analyst Cristin Cooper. He could solve California’s drought singlehandedly.

    6. Wednesday brings the start of the year’s most unpredictable tournament, Tucson’s WGC World Match Play. This was the Tuscon Open in the old days, and might disappear from Tuscon completely after this year. Tiger Woods, Phil Mickleson and Adam Scott sent their regrets, meaning there’s that much less star power to get knocked out in the early rounds, and the picky pro players generally regard Dove Mountain as a dog track. Even when it doesn’t snow.

    7. KemperSports is now running Cantigny Golf in Wheaton for the McCormick Foundation, except all the same people at Cantigny are still going to be running Cantigny. So what’s the deal? One advantage may be to take advantage of volume pricing. Kemper has so many courses in its portfolio, it can probably buy golf course chemicals and other things in bulk for its entire group.
    All the familiar faces, including head pro Patrick Lynch, will be back this year, and Cantigny brass indicate that there would not have been a deal with Kemper if that was not the case. KemperSports knows the business of golf and delivers value, and has increasingly worked the high end of the market, from Bandon Dunes in Oregon to, more recently, Harborside International on the southeast side of Chicago. This should work out fine.

    8. The Dallas Morning News reports Dallas Country Club has welcomed its first black member into its ranks. Private equity tycoon Kneeland Youngblood was recently admitted – after a 13-year wait to join the ultra-exclusive club. The story indicates there was some dissension in the ranks because Youngblood has connections with the Rainbow/PUSH coalition headed by Rev. Jesse Jackson.
    Youngblood said he plays neither golf nor tennis. But making one deal over lunch would make the $137,000 entrance fee seem like chicken feed. Happily, where people of his color might have only been waiters or busboys to the members before, now he has the chance to make that deal.

    9. Finally, a look out the window and a reading of the forecast indicates the groundhog should not have been consulted on Feb. 2. This could be a muddy wet spring. The best investment this year might not be new clubs, but new DryJoys.

    – Tim Cronin

Give D.A. points for class

    The Morning Nine for Monday, February 10, 2014

    The thermometer reads zero as this is typed. Does that mean Mother Nature is at even par? While we chill out on that question, here’s the Morning Nine.

    1. Pekin native D.A. Points may not know every rule in the book, but he knows how to act. Disqualified on Friday for using a training aid while practicing his swing during one of the many lulls in the Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, he came back anyway on Saturday for the benefit of his pro-am partner, former Secretary of State (and Augusta National member) Condoleezza Rice.
    “She’s such a sweet, warmhearted woman and loves golf,” Points, who won at Pebble Beach three years ago, told the San Jose Mercury News. “I signed up to play the Pebble Beach AT&T Pro-Am. It’s not just about me and the golf tournament. It’s about playing with our amateurs and making sure they have a good time.”
    There is the definition of class. And Rice responded in kind.
    “It meant an enormous amount to me,” Rice told the paper. “He didn’t have to do that. I, more than anybody, know what it’s like to be on the road a lot and perhaps get to go home early. But he’s a wonderful, wonderful person, and it really speaks well for him and the Tour that he came out and played anyway.”
    The duo finished 147th, near the bottom of the 156-team field, and didn’t make the cut for Sunday.

    2. So what did Points do? While waiting on the 18th tee at Pebble Beach, he grabbed a green foam ball out of his bag and tucked it under his right arm while making a practice swing. Since the ball was a training aid, that was illegal under the rules, and once the Tour officials found out via a video, he was disqualified.
    Points didn’t know the rule, which isn’t unusual for a pro, especially for something this obscure.
    Here’s something odder: Had Points just grabbed a head cover and done the same thing, there would be no penalty, since a head cover isn’t a training aid.
    Does that make sense? Of course not. The rule should be “You can’t use anything during a round.”
    And, curiously, Points wasn’t disqualified from the Pro-Am. Were’t the Rules of Golf in effect for that?

    3. Congrats to Point O Woods Golf & Country Club and the WGA for making official what was reported here on January 6, that the Western Amateur is returning to what Chick Evans once called “the peerless Point.” The Western Am returns to the course just outside of Benton Harbor, Michigan, in 2019. It was played there in 1963, 1965, and from 1971 through 2008, when disagreements over financing ended a long run that featured wins by, among others, Tom Weiskopf, Ben Crenshaw, Andy North, Curtis Strange, Phil Mickelson, Justin Leonard and Tiger Woods.
    Expect a big promotional push in 2019. The Point has a new clubhouse and members with a new outlook, but the classic course designed by Robert Trent Jones is still a tremendous test, even for big hitters. They still have to hit the fairways and the proper portion of the greens.
    Said Point president Mark Matthews in a WGA release, “We’ve hosted many great Western Amateur championships. A good number of our champions, and scores of other top amateurs who have competed here, have gone on to enjoy highly successful professional careers. We’ve enjoyed giving back to golf by hosting such a prestigious championship, and we’re thrilled now to be back in the Western Amateur rotation.”

    4. There was a changing of the guard in the USGA over the weekend, Glen Nager leaving the presidency and Tom O’Toole taking over. Or Thomas J. O’Toole Jr., if you want to get formal – and the USGA suffers from formality. But that may change. In his incoming chat, O’Toole spoke of wanting to diversify the game, of the USGA’s failure to do so in the past.
    He even said the recent push for alternative golf – cups the size of hubcaps, non-conforming clubs – is a way to increase the interest in the game.
    Quoth O’Toole, “I think some of these things that would enhance or entice people to play golf by playing a different game, that's perfectly okay with us.”
    But O’Toole also said, “We’re not going to call that golf.”
    He’d better call it golf, or someone else will come up with a name for it, and those who play it will pay attention to that someone else and not the USGA. And the boys in the blue coats will be on the outside looking in. Golf is golf, in all its forms, formal and informal, and the sooner O’Toole embraces that, the sooner the game stops its downward slide in participation and begins to grow.
    Or does he not recall how someone picked up a soccer ball one day and ran with it, thus inventing rugby?

    5. Nager? He defended his wild last few months, in which he tried to overhaul the USGA’s governing structure and install himself as the overseer of the staff and the executive committee, to which the executive committee said, “You’re out of bounds.” Nager, a Washington lawyer, accepted a thank you gift from O’Toole and left the annual shindig without hanging around for dinner.
    Meanwhile, Gary Stevenson, the one-term member of the executive committee who, with Nager, helped push through the Fox Sports television contract, has also left the building, having his duties increased at Major League Soccer, his real life job.

    6. The USGA also joined the R&A in its recent declaration that it will allow electronic distance measuring devices in its amateur competitions, invoking the local rule it’s had on the books since 2006. The idea is to speed play.
    How many seconds per stroke it will save compared to searching out a yardage marker, nobody could say. How much natural feel it will take out of the game, nobody could say. The guess here is that a player who can’t judge distance on his or her own will end up taking more time, not less, no matter how much gadgetry is in use.
    But the USGA will call that golf.

    7. Parkas. Hand-warmers. Weather delays. The Winter Olympics? Nah. Crosby weather at the Crosby. All that was missing over the weekend was Phil Harris. But the best save at Pebble Beach wasn’t from a bunker, it was 83-year-old Clint Eastwood’s performing the Heimlich Maneuver to save tournament CEO Steve John from choking on food during a Wednesday night volunteer party. Talk about making a guy’s day.

    8. Hey, Woods finally won a tournament. No, not Tiger Woods.
    His niece, Cheyenne Woods, captured the Ladies European Tour tournament in Queensland, Australia, over the weekend. She birdied two of the last four holes to close with 69 for 16-under-par 276 and beat Aussie amateur Minjee Lee by two strokes. Remember when ol’ Uncle Tiger would win with monotonous regularity? Ah, the days before fire hydrants.

    9. Finally, if you can’t get the Olympics out of your head these days, here’s more good news: Golf Channel confirmed the other day that it will televise the Olympic golf competitions from Rio de Janeiro in 2016. This was a foregone conclusion, since Golf Channel is part of the NBC behemoth, but now we know for sure.
    Of course, it would help if the golf course is ready by then. Architect Gil Hanse says it will be. He thinks. He hopes. Don’t run to Vegas on that.

    – Tim Cronin

Tinley Park Golf Expo tees off local season

The Morning Nine for Monday, February 3, 2014

Writing from Chicago

    Golf can enlarge one’s vocabulary, and not just when someone in your group hits his third straight ball in the water. Here’s how: Ever hear the word “tributary” outside of the Masters, when CBS’s guys talk about the tributary of Rae’s Creek that runs through the 13th hole? Of course not.
    This week brings the traveling circus of the American tour to Pebble Beach, and that means the word is “felicitous.” As in Robert Louis Stevenson, that old 3-handicapper, calling Pebble Beach “The most felicitous meeting of land and sea in creation.” So if you ever need to use felicitous in a sentence, there you go. And here we go with the Morning Nine.

    1. So here it is the first Monday in February, there’s too much snow on the ground, it hasn’t been above freezing since Thanksgiving, more snow is on the way, the Super Bowl is over – it was over by halftime, come to think of it – and they could play the Winter Olympics in your driveway.
    What to do? Go to a golf show. The third Tinley Park Golf Expo at the town’s convention center begins a three-day run on Friday. New this year is an emphasis on junior golf, with lessons for kids provided by the First Tee of Chicago. There’s a hitting area for adults as well.
    Based on the list of exhibitors through Sunday, about two dozen courses, more of them local than regional resorts, will be represented. Several manufacturers will also be on hand, along with equipment sellers.
    The Tinley show runs from noon to 7 p.m. on Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday. Go on Friday, when admission is just $5. It’s $10 on Saturday and Sunday. Parking’s free. The Tinley Park Convention Center is at Interstate 80 and Harlem Ave.
    Tinley’s show is the first of two in the Chicago area, the Chicago Golf Show in Rosemont  on Feb. 21-23 being the other.

    2. Cue the Augusta music: Kevin Stadler wins the Phoenix Open, will join dad Craig in the field for the Masters. And Craig says this will be his farewell appearance. He was waiting to for his boy to win to play just one more. Neat.

    3. Don’t know if there were really 189,000 people at the Phoenix Open on Saturday, but the aerial shots show there certainly was a throng on hand. And they were able to get in and out without a great hassle, unlike a certain football game in East Rutherford, New Jersey. The most impressive stat of the weekend wasn’t Stadler’s winning score, but this one: 200 suites encircling the par-3 16th hole, sold at $46,000 per. That’s $9.2 million in revenue, a boatload of it going to charity.

    4. The best and worst of golf television arrives this week. The best are the views of Pebble Beach – and the traditional aerial shot of Cypress Point – during the Crosby Clambake. The worst is Saturday’s telecast, three hours of inanity that features the quasi-celebrities who play in the amateur portion of the tournament.
    The problem is, nobody’s cared since Jack Lemmon died. Jim Nantz hamming it up with Larry Gatlin just doesn’t cut it.
    How about a three-hour show explaining why Pebble Beach is an architectural masterpiece, and how Cypress, which used to host a round of the tournament, is even better? Go into the risk-reward on the eighth, ninth and 10th holes along the cliffs. And come on the air before they play the fifth and sixth holes, for crying out loud. The golf course starts on No. 5.

    5. Maybe we shouldn’t feel bad about the lousy weather. Reporter and radio broadcaster Rory Spears, who never saw a golf course he didn’t want to play at least once, was in Pinehurst a few days ago, and was snowed out of a round on No. 2. That’s a long way to go to see a new site for the NHL’s Winter Classic.

    6. Kevin Streelman, the Winfield native, might as well have stayed in bed rather than play for the first time in a month. He tied for 53rd at 1-under-par 283 at Phoenix, making $14,284.80. His previous outing was a tie for third at Kapalua (worth $382,000).

    7. Streelman’s finish was better than that of D.A. Points. He missed the cut for the first time this year (and season), and hasn’t cracked the top 25 in six tournaments.

    8. Golf history department, division of “How crazy is this?” Lloyd Mangrum won the 1946 U.S. Open in a double-round playoff, surviving after he, Byron Nelson and Vic Ghezzi tied after 72 holes and after an 18-hole playoff. And survived is the proper word, for they played the last three holes of a playoff in a thunderstorm.
    Writers opined that Mangrum wasn’t concerned since he’d survived being wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. They didn’t have a 2-iron in their hands. What was USGA boss Joe Dey thinking?

    9. Finally, when does the Super Bowl start? A Seattle safety via a Denver miscue and two Seahawks field goals in the first quarter almost made the commercials interesting by comparison. Haven’t seen a favorite look so out of place since Tiger Woods in the Dubai Desert Classic, 18 hours earlier. But at least it wasn’t freezing.

    – Tim Cronin