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

The Grill Room – Anticipation unlike any other

Writing from Chicago

Wednesday, April 9, 2025

There was a time when the Masters Tournament snuck up on you. There were stories in newspapers, and Sports Illustrated invariably devoted a cover story and color photo essay to it, and the golf glossies did the same, but that was about it. Maybe there was a short preview report on the local news. Maybe not.

You didn’t see the Masters until late Thursday night, when CBS ran a 15-minute highlight show. And if you were a kid interested in golf, you were in bed on a school night. So Friday night’s highlight show was the first look at Augusta National in a calendar year.

Saturday brought a 90-minute broadcast focused on the last four holes. Sunday, two whole hours, and coverage extended all the way back to the 14th green. And we were grateful to see that much. In black-and-white.

Today? This is being written at the 9 a.m. hour on Wednesday. In the previous two days there have been, between cable and online coverage, about 10 hours of broadcasts and interview feeds from Augusta, and that doesn’t count the endless hours Golf Channel provides on “Live From,” its best-in-class preview-preview-review shot.

At this hour, “Live From” is in full swing. So is “Masters On The Range” on CBS Sports Network and the CBS/Paramount and Masters websites. So is a two-hour practice round preview show on ESPN+. Three separate broadcasts, and it’s only Wednesday morning. Later comes four hours of coverage of the Par-3 Contest and more previews.

Come Thursday, when Scottie Scheffler attempts to match Jack Nicklaus with three victories in a four-year span, and Rory McIlroy attempts to slay the grand slam dragon that has vexed him for a decade now, there will be even more.

The 15-minute highlight show on CBS remains, a gift to cord-cutters. But ESPN is on all afternoon, has a morning edition of “SportsCenter” that cuts to Augusta early and often, and the Masters offers unparalleled online live coverage, with four channels, one for featured groups, one for the fourth, fifth and sixth holes, one for Amen Corner and one for the 15th and 16th, that run from when play begins at that point until it ends. You need a smart TV, two laptops and a phone to take it all in. It must add up to 40 hours a day on Thursday and Friday.

The Masters has gone from being the least seen major championship to the most seen. And, while it may not be the most important championship in the game – Jack Nicklaus, who reveres the U.S. Open above all, once called the Masters he won six times “the championship of nothing” – it is by far the most anticipated.

It arrives in the spring, when golfers in the frozen north are eager to swing a club themselves and work out the kinks accumulated over a winter’s hibernation. It takes place at a course unique for the combination it offers in beauty, strategic challenge, and, thanks to a rollicking succession of difficult and gettable holes on the back nine, the potential for seismic shifts on the leaderboard – manually changed in person, of course.

No tournament guards its traditions more faithfully. Lifetime exemptions to the winners. The green jacket emphasized over greenbacks. Genteel behavior on the premises, from the exclusion of cell phones to prohibitions against running and please, no hollering. And rock-bottom concession prices, more than made up for by the volume – at standard prices – of sales in the golf shops. Does anyone go to Augusta National and not buy something?

All of that would be unknown to all but those who attend except for one thing. The television coverage on CBS and ESPN is overseen by Augusta National with a velvet-covered iron fist. One-year deals and a list of dos and don’t longer than an omnibus bill assure that.

There are benefits and drawbacks to this. The benefits are an average of four minutes of commercials per hour – PBS might have more underwriting time per hour – and none of the sponsored malarky. A swing analysis isn’t sponsored by a copier company, it’s just presented. There’s more golf and less babble than any other sports broadcast around. CBS isn’t even allowed to smack its logo in the corner. If you’re watching the Masters on the weekend, you know you’re watching CBS.

That’s great. The drawback is the lack of journalism. CBS golf producer Sellers Shy already said there won’t be pre-and-post hurricane comparisons noting all the trees knocked down last fall, never mind that the more open look of the course is the story of the week. Jim Nantz still hasn’t mentioned Sam Snead shanking a shot on his last ceremonial tee shot that bloodied a spectator right between the eyes. Jack Whitaker once called the gallery “a mob” and was banned for right years. Gary McCord mentioned “body bags” and “bikini wax,” and after Tom Watson wrote a letter, was never seen again. And spying the first video – or still photo, for that matter – of a drunk who jumped into a bunker by the 17th green a few years ago will be a surprise.

The verbal contortions CBS announcers get into are worthy of needing traction to recover from. “Second nine” instead of back side. “Tributary” of Rae’s Creek instead of fork or arm. “Patrons,” a relatively recent must, instead of spectators or fans. It’s hilarious. And many writers gutlessly follow along. Maybe they think they’ll have to pay for lunch otherwise.

The golf, of course, is sublime. The course still has next to no rough and presents a challenge thanks to greens with more rumples than a frayed carpet. One most think their way around Augusta. The bomber-like length everyone has today has mitigated against that to some degree – the Women’s Amateur the club now hosts, at least for one of the there rounds, really brings out the strategy of placing the tee shot in the right place – but hit it in the wrong place too often, and you’ve got no shot at adding to the wardrobe on the back nine on Sunday.

When, Dan Jenkins once wrote, the Masters starts. But tune in before. Wallow in the beauty. Enjoy Dave Loggins’ little tune. Hope the next advancement in television is to send the scents of the azaleas and the dogwoods our way.

Aromatic or not, within reach of a peach ice cream sandwich or not, whether sneaking up or with a tsunami of advance word, the Masters is upon us. The toonimint in the garden off Washington Road is the best four days in golf.

– Tim Cronin