59! Furyk runs the table at Conway

    Writing from Lake Forest, Illinois
    Friday, September 13, 2013

    It was just after Jim Furyk marked his approach shot on the ninth green at Conway Farms Golf Club, his 18th hole of the day. He was about three feet from the cup – and a share of golf history.
    Make it, and he scores a 59.
    Then the voice rang out.
    “Jimmy, I’ll give it to you!” said the South Side-accented man.
    The crowd cheered. Furyk waved at him. Then, after Jason Dufner and Gary Woodland had holed their putts, neither of them more than six feet, Furyk stepped up and the crowd stilled itself.
    Center cut. Fifty-nine!
    The man who first broke the barrier of 63 in the Western Open / BMW Championship with a 62 at Bellerive Country Club in 2008 had scored golf’s magic number, the sixth person to do so in PGA Tour competition.
    And with a bogey on his card. Al Geiberger, David Duval, Paul Goydos, Chip Beck and Stuart Appleby all had bogey-free rounds en route to their 59s.
    The 59, 12 under Conway Farms’ card of 71, is the greatest round of golf ever shot in Chicago, standing above the 62 scored by Ben Hogan at Ridgemoor in the Hale America National Open of 1941, the 62 Tiger Woods put on the board at Dubsdread during the 2009 Western / BMW, and any other low number from the history books.
    This one goes in the frame above the fireplace.
    Furyk did it the hard way, that bogey coming on his 14th hole of the day. Now he needed to birdie two of the last four holes. And he did it, a rally consisting of a routine par, a birdie and an up-and-down par on the par-5 eighth before the final drama at the ninth hole.
    He hammered a drive 281 yards down the right side of the fairway, with 103 yards left to a flag waving tantalizingly from the front left of the green.
    “I knew the pin was in a benign spot,” Furyk said.
    For Furyk, 103 yards left is a “smooth” gap wedge. He struck it purely. The crowd was roaring when it was halfway to the green, and got even louder when it hit about seven feet behind the cup and spun toward the hole. ShotLink measured it at 3 feet 3 inches. Furyk thought it a little under three feet. The gallery? Measured in decibels.
    “I noticed how many people came out to watch,” Furyk said.
    They were four deep on the right side of the green where almost nobody had stood for two days, and filled the ground and grandstands, including the back of the grandstand at 18, where Tiger Woods was finishing at about the same time. Everyone wanted to see history.
    Everyone did. He didn’t need the gimme from the fan. Furyk poured it in. He pumped his right fist several times. He doffed his cap and waved. He soaked it in.
    “It reminded me of the putt to win the FedEx Cup (in 2010),” Furyk said. “I always try to daw on times when I’ve done something well. Hell, I knocked that one in. I thought, ‘Left-center and let’s see what happens.’ I don’t remember really even striking the putt or what it felt like when it left the putter or anything. It went in the middle, I believe.”
    It did. And then into his right pants pocket. Furyk signed his glove for the World Golf Hall of Fame after signing his card, then signed some balls for those who walked with him, scorers, standard bearer and the like, but not the last ball of the round, the 59 ball.
    “That’s the one that went in on 9, and it’s staying with me,” Furyk said, holding it up. “I’ve got a place for those at home.”
    The path to that trophy case was fascinating. Furyk scored 1-over-par 72 on Thursday and stood nine strokes behind leader Brandt Snedeker at daybreak. Now, after his 59 and Snedeker’s ho-hum 68, they’re tied for the lead. (Oh, by the way, there is a golf tournament going on, and those two lads will play together in the last pairing at 12:50 p.m. Saturday.)
    Furyk started on 10 and birdied his first three holes, the longest putt a 9-footer on No. 10. He his his third shot on the par-5 14th to three feet and sank that. He holed out from 115 yards with a 9-iron on the par-4 15th, the eagle making him 6-under for the day in as many holes.
    “I knew the pin was only cut about five from the right edge there and really I watched the gallery,” Furyk said. “They started standing up and the arms went up and that’s how I knew it went in.”
    The game was afoot. A birdie on 17 – his second 2 of the round – and another on 18 brought him in with a 7-under-par 28 on Conway’s back nine. He had done that before, during his 62 at Bellerive five years ago, but didn’t recall it.
    “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,” Furyk said. “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.”
    Furyk than ran down birdie putts of 13, 26 and 5 feet on the second, third and fourth holes to reach 11-under for the day and 10-under for the championship. He was chasing history and close to catching Snedeker.
    Then came the fifth hole, the lonely hole near the railroad tracks where the gallery rarely ventures. And where Furyk, after hitting the back of the green – he missed only the 16th, and hit all 14 available fairways – three-putted. Bogey.
    “A little bit of a blip,” he put it. “Shoulda made the first putt (from 29 feet). That pin was tough and icy.”
    His par-saver lipped out on the low side. So he was 10-under for the day. Four pars equaled a 61. But there were birdie chances ahead, notably the par-5 eighth and the par-4 ninth.
    But he birdied the par-4 seventh, hammering a gap wedge to 11 feet from 126 yards in the middle of the fairway.
    “Seeing that putt go in was a big help mentally, knowing I figured eight was going to be reachable (in two) and 9 was going to be a short iron,” Furyk said.
    His approach on the eighth landed on the grassy edge of the big sod-faced bunker in front of the green, with the cup directly behind. He rapped the ball up and out to the back of the green and two-putted for par, and wasn’t happy.
    “I was bummed that I didn’t do it on No. 8, but was excited about the opportunity on No. 9 after I drove it down the middle,” Furyk said.
    Golf fans are an interesting breed. They root for birdies even when it’s not their favorite. Jim Furyk has been a Chicago favorite ever since he won the 2003 U.S. Open at Olympia Fields. He doubled up with a victory in the 2005 Western Open at Cog Hill. His fans agonized with him and the rest of the American team when his putts didn’t fall down the stretch at last year’s Ryder Cup at Medinah.
    Now here he was in the right center of the fairway, 103 yards from golf’s version of perfection – even with a bogey. Everyone was in his corner, and everyone let loose when, first, his approach covered the flag all the way, and second, when it disappeared into the cup.
    “Not many cities have treated me this well,” Furyk said.
    Not many players have accomplished what he has. No other scorer of a 59 has a U.S. Open title on his resume. Of the other five worthies, only Geiberger and Duval have won majors, a PGA and British Open respectively. None of them have won a Western Open, and Furyk now is in great position to win a second – this time under the BMW moniker.
    With the best round of a splendid career, he was the dominant player of the round, and by a wide margin. Furyk’s 59 was six shots better than the next-best score of the day, the 6-under 65s registered by Jordan Spieth and Jimmy Walker. And it was a dozen strokes ahead of the average of 71.086 turned in by the 70-player field.
    That’s how brilliant Furyk was on Friday at Conway Farms. Eleven birdies, an eagle, five pars and that bogey, just for laughs.
    “I always scratch my head and try to figure out how you get to 59,” Furyk said.
    Now he knows. Now we all know.

    Tiger, meet Sergio; Sergio, say hello to Tiger

    Maybe it was golf karma. Maybe it was negligence or stupidity.
    But Tiger Woods’ mistake on the first hole on Friday morning dropped him into a pairing with Sergio Garcia thanks to a two-stroke penalty administered late in the afternoon.
    Woods his his approach on the first hole into the wood chips under bushes behind the green. He moved one little twig, but when he touched another, his ball moved. He said nothing about it, but the movement was captured by a PGA Tour Entertainment video crew. When someone at PGA Tour Productions saw it, they forwarded it to the rules officials here, and Woods was questioned after his round.
    He said the ball had oscillated, and perhaps it had from his angle, looking down, but from the side angle on video, it was obvious the ball moved downward.
    Said PGA Tour rules official Slugger White, “He knew there was movement there, but he was very adamant that it oscillated, it stayed there. The ball did, in fact, move.
    “In that situation, had he put the ball back, it would have been a one-stroke penalty. He didn’t, so he gets a two-stroke penalty.”
    Woods made a hash of the hole anyway, dubbing the chip and making double-bogey. The penalty turned it into a quadruple-bogey 8, a snowman, and landed him at 1-over 72 for the day and at 4-under 138 for 36 holes. That’s where Sergio Garcia stood.
    And guess who are paired together for Saturday’s third round. Yep, Woods and the guy who made the “fried chicken” crack in Woods’ direction earlier this year.
    Instead of a starter at the first tee, maybe they need a bell and a girl in a skimpy outfit holding up a “Round 3” card when the two protagonists step into the ring for their 11:50 a.m. tee time.

    Around Conway Farms

    Don’t look now, but Winfield native Kevin Streelman is tied for fourth a 6-under 136 after adding a 70 to Thursday’s 66. He goes off with Jordan Spieth, whose quiet 65 on Friday was a six-stroke improvement on his opening round, at 12:30 p.m. ... Zach Watney (69 for 136) and Zach Johnson (70 for 134) are in the penultimate twosome, at 12:40 p.m. ... Defending champion Rory McIlroy is lucky there’s no cut in the 70-player field. He added a 77 to Thursday’s 78 and stands at 13-over 155 entering Saturday’s third round. That’s his highest score on the PGA Tour after 36 holes. He and Charley Hoffman are the dew-sweepers at 7:25 a.m. ... Along with the six 59s in PGA Tour history, there have been 28 60s scored by 28 players in Tour history. Two 59s have been scored on the web.com Tour this year. ... Even with all the low rounds, the scoring average each day has been over the par of 71. Patrick Reed’s 78 was Friday’s high round, followed by the 77s of McIlroy and Ken Duke.

    – Tim Cronin

Full barn of birdies at Conway Farms

Writing from Lake Forest, Illinois

Thursday, September 12, 2013

The first clue came less than a half-hour into play on Thursday morning, when John Merrick, not exactly a household name in most households, dropped his wedge shot on the par-4 third hole at Conway Farms Golf Club into the cup for an eagle 2.

The cascade of red numbers had begun.

Before it ended, Brandt Snedeker had surfed a wave of seven straight birdies into the lead of the BMW Championship, Zach Johnson was a stroke behind him after a similarly bogey-free round, and a trio including Tiger Woods was three off the pace.

Snedeker had visions of a really low number after his putt on the first hole, the 10th of his round, dropped for his seventh straight bird – tying the Western Open / BMW mark set by Hubert Green at the start of the third round in 1985.

“A 61 or 60 was very doable,” Snedeker said.

He settled for an 8-under-par 63 and the lead.

Johnson, crediting recent improvement to better driving, birdied the par-5 18th to finish at 7-under 64. For him, the low scoring at Conway Farms is a reminder of that other tournament in Illinois, which he won last year.

“It’s not quite the John Deere Classic, but it reminds me of the John Deere Classic, at TPC Deere Run,” Johnson said. “I’m not complaining.”

Nor is the sponsoring Western Golf Association. Spectators turned out in huge numbers, causing traffic jams and forcing the WGA to close the gates during the lunch hour, because it ran out of parking. If one person was traipsing across the leafy acreage, 40,000 people were.

The high attendance contributing to the bottom line will eventually benefit the Evans Scholars Foundation, but for the nonce the low numbers being posted will contribute to the mad rush to the pay window in this $8 million turkey shoot. The winner gets $1.44 million, and the way Snedeker posted birdies on Thursday – eight of them – each birdie might end up being worth its weight in gold.

For Snedeker, there wasn’t a great deal in his recent resume to anticipate such an outburst.

“It kind of came out of nowhere,” Snedeker said of the birdie binge. Given that he holed out from off the green on the 13th, 14th and 17th holes, the first two times from about 14 feet and the third time from 37 feet, a right-to-left curler from the fringe of the green, that’s understandable. Snedeker’s a good guy, but he’s not unconscious. On this day, his play was.

“When I do have these days, I try to go as low as I possibly can,” Snedeker said.

Everyone expected low numbers, and most delivered. Those who did not included Lee Westwood, whose 9-under 80 was exaggerated by back and neck problems. Said Westwood before trudging up a staircase, “I feel sick.”

Scott Piercy went him one worse, with a 10-over 81 lowlighted by a nine on the par-4 16th. Water was involved. He played with Rickie Fowler, whose neon blue shirt didn’t hide a 6-over 77, and Nick Watney, who fired a 4-under 67 and had to wonder why the pro-am extended over to Thursday.

Then there was defending champion Rory McIlroy. His mysterious year continued. A 7-over-par 78 featured a double-bogey 5 on his second hole, and a mid-round stretch of 5-over in three holes, including a triple bogey on the first hole. He was in a greenside bunker in two and made a hash of it.

But up front, everyone was smiling. Well, almost everyone. Woods, who annexed five Western Open / BMWs on Cog Hill’s demanding Dubsdread course, the most recent in 2009, found fault with his effort, never mind that 5-under-par 66 places him third after one lap of this 6,997-yard bull ring. (While the scoring average was an over-par 71.314, that’s surely the shortest course setup for a Western since the turn of the century; Dubsdread was listed as 7,051 yards in 2001. Since the move to the fall, the shortest setup had been for the first round in 2007, with Dubs at 7,196 yards.)

“I certainly wasted a lot of shots out there today,” Woods said. “I missed three short putts and played the par-5s ‘stupendously.’ One of those days. It was a golf course in which you could be really, really aggressive.”

Woods, who parred the three par-5s, said 3-woods were traveling over 300 yards, partly because the fairways were fast. But whereas it was 82 and sunny on Thursday, with a 21-mile-per-hour wind from the north-northwest much of the day, Friday is slated to be nippy, with a high of 62 and the wind from the northeast, almost a 90-degree shift and the opposite of what prevails in the summer. That will mean a new golf course in terms of clubs into each hole, and a wind the pros haven’t practiced with.

But will that mean low scores? A betting man would lean in that direction.

The object of this week’s game is both to win and to advance to next week’s 30-man Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. That means players like McIlroy, ranked 40th coming in and tied for 66th in the tournament after one round, need to step it up over the last three rounds.

Snedeker is a lock, a far cry from the situation he found himself in at Cog Hill in 2009. With one hole to play, he was headed to Atlanta. He four-putted Dubsdread’s last green and fell out of the final field. Last year, he won the FedEx Cup and the $10 million bonus that goes with it. This year, even if he withdraws, he’ll be ranked no worse than 17th heading to Atlanta.

Nice guys do finish first sometimes.

Traffic a nightmare, but ...

... that’s a good thing in the long run. First, it means the tournament, which languished in the fall at Cog Hill, largely because fans used to coming out in the summer no longer did so, has renewed its Chicago base, and in one fell swoop.

Second, there are plans to open auxiliary parking lots adjacent to the main lot for the weekend to lessen the strain on the main parking lot on Everett Road, which was filled by about 12:30 p.m. At 12:40 p.m., the WGA announced a sellout for the day – daily tickets are $55 at the gate – the first time they’ve had to do so. It had the look of a Masters practice round crowd in places. The IG estimate for the day is 40,000, the largest crowd for the tournament in Chicago since it moved to the fall in 2007. That equaled the WGA’s estimate for last year’s final round at Crooked Stick last year, which was whispered into NBC’s ear.

(There was no limit to the crowds at Cog Hill, which often topped 50,000 in the summer, because of the huge parking lots across the street.)

The morning’s headache, however, included a backup of about 1.5 miles on the northbound Tri-State Tollway at the Route 60 (Town Line Road) exit. The problem was increased by a lack of police overriding the traffic lights on the overpass or at the turn from Town Line to the parking lot. With poor traffic flow, there was no flow at all. Traffic also backed up to the east of the main entrance.

Around Conway Farms

Phil Mickelson, who didn’t play in the pro-am because of a family issue back home, rolled in Thursday morning and posted a 1-under-par 70 on his first trip around Conway Farms. (Luke Donald, who has played the course more than anyone, came in with the same number.) ... One must hope that the WGA is getting a cut of the concessions this week. Aside from a glass of wine, the most expensive item is a $7.50 veggie wrap that likely costs no more than a dollar to wrap together. ... Friday’s round starts at 10:20 a.m., the same as the first round, when the last tee time 12:21 p.m. Leader Brandt Snedeker will be off the first tee at 11:48 a.m. ...  The longest drive of the day belonged to Ernie Els, who belted his tee shot 361 yards on the par-5 eighth hole, which had a following crosswind.

– Tim Cronin

The password is: Birdies

    Writing from Lake Forest, Illinois
    Wednesday, September 11, 2013

    Professional golfers often talk in code.
    Rarely do they criticize a course outright – though Cog Hill’s Dubsdread layout was an exception after Rees Jones’ redo of the Dick Wilson original. Even Steve Stricker had harsh words.
    So it was interesting to hear Stricker comment on Conway Farms Golf Club after his pro-am round on Wednesday, a day in advance of the commencement of hostilities in the BMW Championship – the 110th Western Open, as it were – on the Tom Fazio layout.
    The key phrase from Stricker’s dissertation: “I think this venue is – I think the scoring is going to be a little bit better here than what we’ve seen at Cog Hill.”
    That’s code for: Birdies, baby. We’re going to shoot the lights out this weekend.
    As in the course record 11-under-par 60s Harris English and Patrick Reed fired during Wednesday’s pro-am. That wasn’t their team score. That was their individual scores. Sixty.
    Stricker didn’t know that, but he knew why low, low numbers are possible.
    “Conway Farms is, I think, a little bit more generous off the tees,” he explained. “The green complexes here are a little bit more old school, even though the course is not that old.
    “Cog Hill (has) a little bit harder green complexes, a little bit more manufactured, tougher to get to some of the pin locations. Here I think you can get to a lot of them.”
    Getting to the pins means putting for birdies, and Conway Farms’ greens were, even before Jones put Dubsdread’s greens on steroids, much flatter, built for the 11-foot Stimpmeter readings the club commonly boasts.
    Pros can sink straight putts all day long, even if they’re putting on marble.
    Stricker is not alone in his assessment. Henrik Stenson, leader in the PGA Tour’s playoff derby that concludes next week at East Lake, sees players able to be aggressive or conservative.
    “It gives you quite a few different opportunities and tactics,” Stenson said.
    “Par is not going to be a great score come four days, but we’re used to that,” Zach Johnson said, adding that he prefers it to Cog Hill. “Making birdies is part of it. This has got some teeth; it’s going to be based on wind.”
    Then there’s Jordan Spieth, the rookie sensation who won the John Deere Classic on TPC Deere Run, the birdie and eagle sanctuary in Silvis two months ago. Even though most of the fairways at Conway Farms are at least as wide as those at Deere Run, he sees challenges.
    “I think when the pins start getting put onto ledges, these greens are pretty funky on the back nine,” Spieth said. “If you’re attacking with an 8-iron, it’s going to make you think.”
    Tiger Woods, seeking his eighth victory in the Chicago area – five Western Opens and a pair of PGAs – has already thought it out.
    “We know we’ve got some easier holes out there, and if you drive the ball well, you’re going to have a lot of 8-iron on down, and those are some scoring clubs,” Woods said. “There’s a lot of funneling where you can get to some of these pins. You don’t have to fire right at the flag, you can funnel it in there.
    “You can get the ball pretty stiff. Yeah, the scores are going to be low.”
    Woods noted the weather is supposed to change on Friday – a 64-degree high, compared to the 90s of Tuesday and Wednesday – which would make things completely different, from wind direction to the distance a ball would carry.

    The Numbers Game

    Some of the numbers this week are obvious: the top 30 in the standings advance to East Lake and the Tour Championship, leaving 40 players to slam their trunks on Sunday, rather than Friday. There’s $8 million on offer, with $1.44 million shoved in the winner’s pockets.
    But there are also less obvious numbers, including five. Squeeze into the top five in the standings, and you can win the FedEx Cup and the $10 million bonus that goes with it if you win at East Lake. Arrive in Atlanta sitting from sixth to 30th, and other things have to happen besides a victory to bag the extra boodle.
    The other number of interest this week will be the attendance. Galleries at Cog Hill never warmed to a Western Open / BMW in September. The week’s attendance two years ago was only 49,000. Moving to Conway Farms, almost a different market given the 40-mile difference as the Titleist flies, and in the middle of the high-income district, has coaxed more corporate support from Chicago firms than the WGA has seen in years. Ticket sales are also up. The net may approach the $3 million earned at Bellerive near St. Louis in 2007, which will boost the Evans Scholars Foundation, the WGA’s caddies-to-college charity wing.

    Around Conway Farms

    A pair of brief showers cooled down the atmosphere in the early afternoon, but didn’t stop play. Had this tournament been played at Cog Hill, play would have been halted at mid-afternoon, when a severe thunderstorm rolled through the Lemont area, including 56-mile per hour winds. ... Golf Channel and NBC are combining for 22 1/2 hours of coverage, some of which will overlap on the weekend. Golf Channel will present “complementary coverage” of the final four holes for 5 1/2 hours while NBC is covering the whole tournament on Saturday and Sunday. Thursday and Friday, GC is on from 2-5 p.m. Chicago time.

    – Tim Cronin

Party at Luke’s place! (He gets to play too)

    Writing from Lake Forest, Illinois
    Tuesday, September 10, 2013

    Once upon a time, Luke Donald scored 61 at Conway Farms Golf Club, where he’s a member.
    Someone may do that this week, for the understatedly posh club in tony Lake Forest is hosting the BMW Championship – or the 110th Western Open, for the history buffs out there – and with the top 70 players in the field and the par-71 course listed at just 7,149 yards, a 61 could well be out there. So could an aggregate of around 20-under-par 264.
    But it would be an upset if Donald, the Northwestern grad who was ranked No. 1 in the world not too long ago, was the culprit.
    He’s fallen to 13th in the world ranking now, and that’s a generous placing, thanks to how  older scores decay slowly. The more accurate ranking is 54th. That’s where Donald sits in the PGA Tour’ s playoff standings through two of the first four tournaments. Thus, he was only 17 places from not making the show he helped draw to his home club. Donald’s game isn’t in tatters, but it isn’t close to where he wants it, either.
    That’s why he’s changing teachers. Longtime guru Pat Goss, the Northwestern coach who lured Donald from England to Evanston in the first place, and has remained his main man since Donald matriculated from NU to the professional ranks, will now work with Donald only on the short game. Chuck Cook will work with him on hitting the ball longer and in the fairway more often, which has always been a weak point.
    “It’s been very hard this year,” Donald said Tuesday. “It’s been frustrating at times, and I’ve had to make some tough decisions in terms of changing swing coaches. ... I feel pretty good about where things are headed and I’m excited about the future.
    “This year? I still have time to rescue it. I’m going to have to do it this week, and that’s the beauty of the FedEx Cup. It takes one good week to kind of rescue a year. I have a great opportunity.”
    Donald’s goal has been to win major championships, and he’s rarely contended in them. Several of Cook’s students have won majors, beginning with Payne Stewart and continuing to Jason Dufner, who has the Wanamaker Trophy in his house even as we write.
    Donald has a space for it, but it hadn’t happened with Goss working on the entire swing.
    “Outside of telling my brother I didn’t want him to caddie for me anymore, it was the second toughest decision I’ve ever had to make on the golf course,” Donald said. “I got to No. 1 and certainly would never take anything away from what we did together.
    “But it’s a feeling – as a player, you always know what you feel inside, and I want to just feel a little bit more in control of my ball when I’ve over it.”
    So he went to Goss with the news.
    “He understood it perfectly,” Donald said. “I felt like if I didn’t at least try something different, I would have regrets that I didn’t at least try.”
    Donald realized something was off when he played with Justin Rose in the final round of the U.S. Open. Rose shot 70 and went on to win. Donald shot 75 and finished tied for eighth, five strokes behind. It was similar to his pairing with Tiger Woods in the final round of the 2005 PGA at Medinah, when Woods shot 68 and won, while Donald shot 74 and tied for third. He was there, and it didn’t happen.
    Now, it was happening again at Merion.
    “A light went off in my head,” Donald said. “I was just very impressed with his ball striking. Major championships, if you want to win them and be consistent and have chances to win there, there’s a little bit more of a premium on tee to green at majors than most weeks.
    “I feel I needed to get a little bit more consistency in my game. I have a little bit of an old-fashioned swing where I use my hands a bit too much and not rely on just the bigger muscles, which is what Chuck is trying to get me to do in my swing now.”
    Swing changes can take months to implement, even for top players. Tiger Woods took more than a year to get used to his new swing when he went to Butch Harmon, and a long time again when he went to Hank Haney. His switch to Sean Foley hasn’t resulted in a major yet.
    Donald went to Foley and was told by Foley that he didn’t have enough time to work with him, given Donald’s plan to work long hours on the change. But Foley recommended Cook, and after a meeting at Firestone, they began working together at the PGA Championship the following week.
    “I’m a quick learner, and I should be able to get most of it down by the end of the year,” Donald said. “So far I’m seeing results.”
    So should the Western Golf Association this week. Corporate tents have sprouted across Conway Farms like dandelions in a golf writer’s backyard, ticket sales are booming, and there’s a buzz in the air that is different from the one at Cog Hill after the Western Open was switched from July to September. Donald, involved in the process, is thrilled.
    “It was nice to have an opinion,” Donald said. “I’m not sure they listened to me or not, but they certainly asked my opinion, and it’s nice to see it finally come here. I tried to steer them towards this course. Obviously selfishly because I know it very well, and I think it’s a good place to have a tournament.”
    Donald scored his 61 when the course was a bit shorter. New back tees have been added on a handful of holes since, and the first green was reworked as well.
    “They Luke-proofed it,” Donald kidded. “No, it doesn’t play that long, but they certainly made some good changes over the last couple years, and even asked my opinion, which was nice of them.”
    Donald is in the next-to-last grouping on the first two days, playing with fellow Brit Ian Pounter and Charley Hoffman. That’s a little out of the spotlight. It’s up to Donald to make it shine more brightly on him over the weekend.
    – Tim Cronin

This is not your father's WGA

    Writing from Fort Wayne, Indiana
    Thursday, August 29, 2013

    There was a time, not too many years back, when you could set your watch by the timing of the Western Golf Association’s three championships, and could drive to two of them in your sleep, so hardened was the pattern.
    The Western Open was on Cog Hill’s treacherous Dubsdread course around the Fourth of July. The Western Amateur was at Point O’Woods, just outside of Benton Harbor, Mich., in early August. And the Western Junior was in between, moving from site to site.
    That worked, and worked well, both in terms of player acceptance – the pros were pleased with Dubsdread, at least until they weren’t, the amateurs enamored with what Chick Evans once called “the peerless Point” – and in revenue. In some years, the Western Open sometimes cleared $2 million, all of it filling the coffers of the Evans Scholars Foundation, the WGA’s caddies-to-college charity wing.
    But times change. On the amateur side, crowds at the Point dwindled after the grand era of Phil Mickelson, Justin Leonard and Tiger Woods ended, and the club, which made money the great triumvirate of parking, admission and concession sales, began to ask the WGA for a site fee. After a year of that, the WGA took the Western Amateur back to its Chicago roots, establishing a rotation of metropolitan clubs that was amended this year for a jaunt to the Alotian Club, the Augusta Nationalesque spot just outside of Little Rock, Ark. Jordan Niebrugge, a Wisconsin lad of whom much more will be heard, emerged victorious.
    The emergence of the PGA Tour’s playoffs, which, as longtime readers will recall, the WGA was shoved into, has proven to be a boon for the organization. Leave aside that BMW, even while changing the Western Open’s name, has proven to be a far more worthwhile sponsor than Cialis, both from an image standpoint and from the marketing angle. Other benefits are mush more tangible.
    BMW has also filled the WGA’s coffers, both directly and indirectly. The automaker sponsors another Evans Scholarship every time a player makes an ace in what is now called the BMW Championship, and the move to the playoff season – when the tournament was played outside Chicago, at least – has returned bigger net results than ever to the operation.
    The lesson of the excursions to Bellerive in 2008 and Crooked Stick last year, where the BMW drew massive crowds – Sunday at Crooked Stick attracted about 45,000 people, compared to 49,000 at Dubsdread for seven days the year before – has not been lost on Western Golf’s leaders, from boss John Kaczkowski and tournament impresario Vince Pellegrino to the volunteer directors who wear green coats. Paraphrasing bank robber Willie Sutton, the lesson is this: Go where the money is.
    That’s why Dubsdread is in the WGA’s rear-view mirror and Conway Farms Golf Club is straight ahead. The last few weeks, Pellegrino has been looking at maps of the course and looking for more room for corporate hospitality, which goes for anywhere from $18,000 to $300,000 – the latter granting the ability to use the clubhouse for the week, and that’s spoken for. Suites weren’t nearly as valuable at Cog Hill, because there was more supply than demand.
    What’s more, advance ticket sales are up. If as many come to Conway Farms for the week as they did to Crooked Stick, it will be crowded, and that’s a problem the WGA would love to have. And have again in 2015, when, barring flood or famine, the tournament will come back to Conway.
    The pattern now seems set. Odd-numbered years somewhere in Chicago in a moneyed neighborhood – that likely leaves out the south and southwest suburbs – and even-numbered years out of town. Cherry Hills Country Club in Cherry Hills Village, Colo., just outside of Denver, is next week’s destination. In 2016, it’s expected Harding Park Golf Course, the ultra-tough municipal course in San Francisco, will be the host, whether or not BMW extends its contract to sponsor the Western beyond next year.
    Ticket sales in Denver have just opened and are boffo so far, boosted by a TV spot that includes John Elway, who was president of Cherry Hills when the 2014 deal was struck, and Peyton Manning. Nobody’s ever heard of those guys in Denver.
    All of this means more Evans Scholars at a time when educational costs are going nowhere but up. This autumn, two scholars are attending Notre Dame, the first time in over a half-century that the WGA and ND, which has no fraternities, have collaborated.
    But wait, there’s more. Many WGA staffers and directors are here in Fort Wayne this week for the Hotel Fitness Championship, the first of four tournaments in the web.com playoff series, a.k.a. the new version of PGA Tour School. Kaczkowski, having created the Match Play Challenge and Green Coat Gala, wanted to expand the WGA’s tournament slate, and this fills the bill.
    Thursday’s first round at Sycamore Hills Golf Club, a Jack Nicklaus design in a development with homes almost the size of San Simeon, was better attended than might have been expected for a tournament in a small city with a former Masters and Western Open winner – Trevor Immelman – as the biggest name. But the circus is in town, and the 2,000 car parking lot was more than half full by late in the morning, with more people coming in. Scott McCarron’s 8-under-par 64 brought him a one-stroke lead and matched the course record.
    If hanging the WGA shingle out at Sycamore Hills means a few more Scholars for the next academic year, on top of the publicity for the program, the goal will have been met. And after Sunday night, the next stop is Conway Farms, where today the welcome sign went up. Next week, the welcome mat will be rolled out.
    – Tim Cronin