Finchem: It's Chicago in 2013 and 2014

Writing from Chicago
Thursday, December 17, 2009

Worries that the 2014 edition of the Western Golf Association's professional championship would be held out of the Chicago area are worries no longer. PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem, in confirming Golf In Chicago's earlier report that BMW's deal to sponsor the BMW Championship, a.k.a. Western Open, would be extended through 2014, assured all that it would remain in the area.

There was considerable criticism received by the Tour from fans, reporters, and even Cog Hill fan Tiger Woods for taking the 2008 championship from Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont to Bellerive Country Club, near St. Louis. Finchem remembered that during his teleconference on Thursday:

"Well, we've been pushing hard to move it out of Chicago because we enjoyed so much the beating we took the last time we took it out of Chicago," Finchem said. "No, I think that we'll follow our plan. We currently – with the Ryder Cup coming to Chicago in '12, we currently plan that year to play at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis, which we're actually excited about. But the fans in Chicago have the Ryder Cup that year.

"And other than that, we have no plans to play it away from Chicago.

A questioner persisted: "So in Chicago in '13 and '14?"

"That's our plan, yes, sir," Finchem responded.

The move to Crooked Stick, like Bellerive traditionally a strong backer of the WGA's Evans Scholars Foundation, plus a proven major championship site – beginning with John Daly's surprise win in the 1991 PGA Championship – makes complete sense. With the Western now scheduled for early September, and the Ryder Cup later the same month, it would be impossible for the WGA to sell corporate hospitality at anywhere near the usual level of support. But Indianapolis, as golf-starved as St. Louis was, has enough corporate capital to join the party for one year.

So here's the schedule for the championship for the next few years:

2010: Cog Hill
2011: Cog Hill
2012: Crooked Stick Golf Club, Carmel, Ind.
2013: Cog Hill
2014: Cog Hill

Beyond that, the PGA Tour still has commitments to Harding Park in San Francisco, a deal that includes playing at least one FedEx Cup playoff tournament there. The other two run-up tournaments are in the New York area (the old Westchester Classic, now the Barclays, and played everywhere but Westchester Country Club) and near Boston.

It's hard to imagine the Tour not playing one tournament a year in metropolitan New York, so that leaves Boston and Chicago. Since the Western Open has been played in the West, including at the Presidio in San Francisco in 1956, Boston would be more likely to stay put, unless the Tour finds a way to convince Coca-Cola, the presenting sponsor of the climactic Tour Championship, that it should leave East Lake in Atlanta and be played in San Francisco, just as it was at the Olympic Club in 1993 and 1994.

That argument, however, is years away. For now, excepting 2012, the third oldest championship in big-time golf stays at home, with BMW the corporate title sponsor.

– Tim Cronin

BMW renews with WGA through 2014

Writing from Chicago
Wednesday, December 16, 2009

While much of professional golf reels from the continuing freefall of Tiger Woods, at least one week on the calendar will remain the same through at least 2014. BMW and the Western Golf Association are expected to announce a two-year extension of their original six-year deal on Thursday morning.

The extension, for 2013 and 2014, is also expected to contain a commitment to play at least the 2013 Western Open / BMW Championship at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club in Lemont. There's a possibility that the 2014 championship will be played at Harding Park in San Francisco, where the PGA Tour is committed to play a number of tournaments, including at least one tournament during the FedEx Cup Playoffs, by 2015.

The deal lays to rest speculation that BMW would invoke an out clause in its contract with the PGA Tour and WGA, which the German automaker could do if sales in the U.S. dropped 10 percent in a calendar year. That bit of contract bolierplace became an issue when the economy tanked, taking sales of luxury cars – and BMW makes no other kind – with it.

In 2008, worldwide sales for its three brands – BMW, Rolls Royce and Mini – dropped 4.3 percent compared to 2007, but the drop for the BMW brand worldwide was 5.8 percent. In the U.S. sales fell 15.2 percent, to 249,113 autos. Sales fell hard in the second half of 2008, and have remained slow this year. Through November, BMW had sold about 55,000 fewer cars in the U.S. than in 2008.

Because of the decline, BMW could have pulled out after the 2010 championship, but instead began to negotiate a new deal, which one insider said was at a lower cost than before. Whether or not that will mean a reduction in the purse, which totaled $7.5 million in 2009, remains to be seen.

The extension, coming in tough economic times, with other Tour stops sans sponsors, and with the Woods saga about to enter its fourth week, is an excellent coda to the 22-year tenure of Don Johnson as the WGA's boss.

The 74-year-old retiring president of the operation was feted at a gala dinner on Tuesday night, where it was noted that approximately 4,000 Evans scholars had graduated under his watch, and that an endowment that was next to nothing when he succeeded Marshall Dann as executive director in 1988 had grown to about $45 million.

John Kaczkowski, the tournament VP, succeeds Johnson, with Vince Pellegrino taking Kaczkowski's place in the WGA lineup.

As for Woods …

Tiger Woods' fall from grace is the stuff of Greek drama, with the chorus to go with it. There is no way to predict how bad it will get, but there was also no way mere golf writers, isolated from Woods for all but his on-course activity in a given week, could have anticipated that he led two lives away from the links.

He did, and now he is paying the price in every conceivable way. He deserved all the accolades before, and now deserves all the brickbats.

Write no evil

The spin doctors at PGATour.com haven't done anything to cover themselves in glory in their non-reporting of the Woods tale. Getting ahead of the story wasn't expected, but trying to ignore it is inexcusable. Witness the first and third paragraphs of the Associated Press story on Woods' winning the AP Athlete of the Decade award, announced Wednesday. Here's how the Tour's Internet site posted them:

"(AP) -- Tiger Woods won 64 times around the world, including 12 majors, and hoisted a trophy on every continent golf is played. He lost only one time with the lead going into the final round. His 56 PGA TOUR victories in one incomparable decade were more than anyone except four of golf's greatest players won in their careers. …

"Woods received 56 of the 142 votes cast by AP member editors since last month. More than half of the ballots were returned after the Nov. 27 car accident outside his Florida home."

And here's how Lehighvalleylive.com, an outlet in Pennsylvania, posted the original story:

"In a vote that was more about 10 years of performance than nearly three weeks of salacious headlines, Tiger Woods was selected today as the Athlete of the Decade by members of The Associated Press. …

"Woods received 56 of the 142 votes cast by AP member editors. More than half of the ballots were returned after the Nov. 27 car crash outside his Florida home that set off sensational tales of infidelity."

Many other outlets used the AP's story. Of those we saw, only PGATour.com erased the mention of salacious headlines and infidelity. Not that we're surprised, but it's worth noting that the Tour's site has scrubbed negative news from stories, or ignored them completely. This was only the latest and most blatant example.

Thursday morning, PGA Tour commissioner, first on CNBC and then on a teleconference, speaks of his operation's coping without Tiger Woods, at least for a while. It will be fascinating to see how the Tour's site plays that.

– Tim Cronin

Remembering Ken Killian

Writing from Chicago
Saturday, October 3, 2009

Ken Killian, one of Chicagoland's most prolific and imaginative course designers, died on September 20, felled by a long bout with cancer. He was 78 years old.

The sad news arrives, albeit well after Killian's death, through the courtesy of Jeff Brauer, who apprenticed with Killian and partner Dick Nugent in the 1970s before opening his own architectural shop. Brauer, upon finding out, immediately posted the news on the golf architecture Web site, www.golfclubatlas.com.

Killian and Nugent were a tandem for close to two decades before they dissolved their partnership. Nugent brought son Tim into the business and Ken Killian went solo, with Brauer his assistant for a year, continuing to create golf courses that people wanted to play more than once.

Brauer recalled fondly his working for Killian:

"Professionally, he was as influential to me as my own father was personally," Brauer wrote. "It’s a tribute to him that 32 years after starting to work with him, I still find myself quoting or paraphrasing things he said to me to clients, employees and others. I also draw plans, think design, and run the office in ways very similar to the old Killian and Nugent days. Even as I try to change my style to keep fresh, I find that after much thought, the design lessons they taught me still apply.

"Ken often said that doing one green at club for a modest price probably did more for golf than building a high end tournament course and I keep that with me until this day. To him, there were no 'bad,' 'too small,' or 'underfunded' golf design projects. There were only opportunities to make golfers happier. When I was assigned the Lake Arrowhead project in Nekoosa, Wis., while Bob Lohmann got the 'better' George Dunne project, with its higher budget, I was grousing about it a bit. Ken asked me, 'What’s stopping you from making it a great project?' It's true – a good design is not necessarily money dependent, it's designer dependent.

"I spent six years at Killian and Nugent, and one year with Ken before going on my own, with his blessing (provided I move far, far away, partially explaining why I am a Texan). I have many fond memories of the work environment and 'moments' that occurred. I paired up with Ken more often for projects than with Dick and I was working with Ken on projects at the time of the split, which is why I ended up with him for a year. I think Ken did a little bit better job of putting up with my constant flow of 'design ideas' than Dick did! In that partnership, I viewed Ken as slightly more artistic, and Dick as slightly more practical."

As you may have gotten from Brauer's words, Ken Killian was a fun guy to be around. He laughed easily and often, and, on the few occasions our paths crossed, was always ready to talk golf. He was one of the good ones.

Here's more from Jeff Brauer on Killian's off-the-course adventures:

"His cars, always Cadillacs … had tendencies to catch on fire. It happened three times that I know of. I was with him once when smoke started pouring out of the engine compartment. He pulled into a gas station (they actually had service bays back in those days) which was a natural reaction for him, but as he turned in, they were waving us off like a we were making a bad approach on a carrier landing, wanting nothing to do with his burning car near their gas pumps!

"Ken was always fun. He still skied, golfed, horseback rode, etc., when many would be slowing down. He had a bad back (from skiing, I think) and we once played golf at Innisbrook, with him wearing a brace. He hit one in the water, and then repeatedly dropped and tried the shot again. The hook on his back brace caught in his shirt, and by the time he finally hit the green, his shirt was in shreds!

"At times, that flexibility would border on indecisiveness. When we were working for Jim Colbert in Las Vegas, mild mannered Ken came home with a tooth out. He brought an article in the Las Vegas paper about a fight started when an 'amateurish' blackjack player slowly made the decision to draw a card, even though he sat at 18. That angered another player (more that he drew with an 18, going over 21 and costing him a good card), starting a fight. Pointing at the article, Ken said, 'Yeah that was me!'

Well known from Ken Killian's portfolio are some of the courses from his partnership with Dick Nugent, including Kemper Lakes in Hawthorn Woods, which hosted the 1989 PGA Championship, and George Dunne (nee Forest Preserve) National in Oak Forest, which came soon after and is the flagship of the Cook County Forest Preserve District chain.

Here are but a few of the Chicagoland courses Ken Killian designed after going solo: Chalet Hills (Cary), Chicago Heights Park District East, Steeple Chase (Mundelein), Southmoor at Palos (Orland Park), and Whittaker Woods (New Buffalo, Mich.)

Next time you play one of those, says a little thank you to Ken Killian, or lift a glass to him at the 19th hole. He'll know, and he'll appreciate it.

– Tim Cronin

It's W-W-W-W-Woods once again

Writing from Lemont, Ill.
Sunday, September 13, 2009

Few in the gallery of 42,500 spectators would have been surprised if Tiger Woods had won the 106th Western Open on Sunday afternoon by shooting 73 or 74, something slightly over par that still would have allowed him to raise the J.K. Wadley Trophy for a fifth time.

When you lead by seven strokes entering the final round, focus can be difficult to come by.

Woods finds it. He always finds it. On Championship Sunday on Cog Hill Golf & Country Club's devilish Dubsdread course, Woods found the way this way:

"Coming in today, my whole goal was to shoot under par," Woods explained. "If I do that, they would have to shoot way under par to force a playoff. So I bogey the fifth hole, but birdie No. 7, and then I birdie No. 9. I'm 1-under on the front, and I figured that if I shoot under par on the back, it's over."

He did, and it was. Woods' matching 34s added up to 3-under-par 68, and a four-round aggregate of 19-under-par 265. That brought him an eight-stroke victory over Jim Furyk and Marc Leishman for his fifth Western – or BMW Championship, as the German carmaker might prefer – his 71st career triumph on the PGA Tour, his sixth of the season, and $1.35 million in spare change.

Walter Hagen won five Westerns back in the first third of the last century, when the championship was a bona-fide major, second in stature only to the U.S. Open here and third behind the British Open when the rest of the world was considered. Now Woods has equaled The Haig, and, given his youth – he's a lad of 33 – and his regained health, there's no limit to how many he'll have pocketed by the time he retires.

Woods is into history, and makes it nearly every time he tees up. The outcome puts him within two victories of Jack Nicklaus in Tour annals. Nicklaus' 73 triumphs trail only Sam Snead's 82. And both the Golden Bear and Slammin' Sam were 42 when they registered win No. 71. Woods not only has them by nine years, but, with a rebuilt knee, is more fit than either of them were at 33.

Given his recent penchant of winning half the tournaments he plays in, and his current pace of playing about 15 times annually, he figures to pass Nicklaus early in 2010 – with his first win next year if he annexes the Tour Championship in a fortnight – and sprint past Snead's total somewhere in 2012. Or, if he gets on a streak, by this time in 2011.

For Woods, this was his first win since capturing the World Series of Golf at Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio, in early August. Since then, he'd finished second at the PGA Championship ¬– surrendering a two-stroke lead to Y.E. Yang in the final round – tied for second at wacky Liberty National Golf Club, and tied for 11th last week at TPC Boston.

That's a long drought for Woods, who has won 52 percent of his PGA Tour starts, an amazing 23 titles in 44 tournaments, since the 2006 British Open.

"It always feels good," Woods said. "It's the ultimate goal. To play as well as I have of late and not get the Ws has been a little bit frustrating, because I've been so close. It's just been a matter of making a couple putts here and there and I would have won the tournaments.

"That's all the difference it was. Lo and behold, I hit the ball just as well, just as consistent this week, and I made a few putts. That's how it happens. I haven't gotten a lot out of my rounds. This week I did, and especially yesterday (with a 62). It does feel good, there's no doubt about that."

Furyk, who started the day 10 strokes behind Woods, felt good about tying for second, scoring 5-under 66, which matched Sean O'Hair and defending champion Camilo Villegas as the best round of the day, to total 11-under 273.

"I kind of had my eye on second place," Furyk said. "We went out way, way, way behind the lead. When we got to the 10th hole, I asked my caddie where (Woods) stood. He said, 'Seventeen (under),' and I just started laughing."

Leishman, the fourth-year pro and Tour rookie, was almost over the moon about managing a 2-under 69 while in the same threesome with Woods. He was added to the Woods-Snedeker pairing when early morning fog caused a delay and prompted the Tour to move from twosomes to threesomes.

"I didn't have to sleep on that," Leishman said. "Walking down the first, I said to Matty, my caddie, 'This is what we play golf for, in the last group on Sunday playing with Tiger; this is just unbelieveable.' It was great. I didn't hole too many birdie putts but was holing the par putts.

"It was an awesome day for me."

The rookie hadn't been in a pressure situation on the highest level before, and acquitted himself well. Now, with the Tour Championship two weeks off, he can rest.

"I'll do a lot of nothing next week," Leishman said.

So will Woods.

"I'll be on the range dawn to dusk," Woods grinned. "No, I'll get away from the game for a little bit."

Until East Lake, when he'll be the man to beat, and perhaps a man unbeatable, once again.

– Tim Cronin

Snedeker's triple-bogey costly beyond words

Writing from Lemont, Ill.
Sunday, September 13, 2009

Brandt Snedeker, perhaps the nicest guy in golf, a sport with a lot of nice guys, was headed to the Tour Championship and a chance at the $10 million bounty that comes to the winner of the FedEx Cup.

After an afternoon playing with Tiger Woods, and dropping a pair of strokes to par in the first 17 holes, all he needed to do was bogey the par-4 18th hole on Cog Hill's Dubsdread course. After an errant drive, he needed to two-putt from about 13 feet for that bogey 5.

His par putt rolled to within about 3 1/2 feet of the cup. His bogey putt was a reasonably straight putt.

He lipped it out. He was out of the Tour Championship.

Now he had a double-bogey putt, and failed to negotiate the 14 inches on that one. It was another lip-out. Finally, from eight inches, his fourth putt found the cup for a triple-bogey 7, one of the costliest final holes in Western Open history.

Snedeker, understandably, didn't comment after the round, but the beneficiary of his miscue, John Senden, did.

Playing in the threesome immediately ahead, Senden had double-bogeyed the par-4 17th and thought his chances at advancing to East Lake Golf Club had vanished. Then Snedeker four-putted, and Senden was giddy.

"Let's scrap that first interview and do a new one," he told reporters grilling him about the sorry 6 on the 17th.

Two groups ahead of Senden, Ian Poulter had a top-30 spot locked up until he sent his approach on the par-4 18th into the water. That knocked him back and put Snedeker into the magic 30th spot, until his miscue moved Senden ahead.

Senden, who had chunked an approach shot about 50 yards on the 16th hole, ended up getting the 30th spot by 46 hundredths of a point, with 1,532.41 points to Poulter's 1,531.95. Snedeker finished 33rd, at 1,435 points.

Elmhurst's Mark Wilson was 32nd, with 1,438 points, but Evanston resident Luke Donald, Chicago's resident European-born star, managed par on the 18th and squeezed into the 28th spot.

Woods moved back to the top of the FedEx Cup standings by winning, passing Steve Stricker, who dropped to No. 2. Jim Furyk, Zach Johnson and Heath Slocum round out the top five. If any of those five win the Tour Championship, they also win the FedEx Cup. The other 25 need help to capture the bonus bauble.

Dubsdread's revenge

Tougher cup locations and a slightly longer set-up compared to the first two days made Sunday's scoring average the highest of the week. The 68 players averaged 72.559 strokes, bringing the week-long average to 71.436 strokes. Fittingly, the 18th hole was the toughest, playing .456 strokes over its par of 4. As is traditional, the par-5 15th was the pushover, at 4.397 strokes. If it was played as a par-4, it would have been the second-toughest.

The course never played within 160 yards of its advertised 7,616-yard length. Sunday, it was set up at 7,449 yards. It was 7,450 on Saturday, 7,401 on Friday and 7,400 on Thursday. On the par 3s, the PGA Tour never used the back tee on the second or sixth holes, and only once on both the 12th and 14th holes. Sunday, the Tour used the middle of five tees on the second hole, a good 40 yards in front of the back tee.

Woods and Hagen in perspective

Tiger Woods has five wins in the Western Open in 13 appearances, 11 as a professional. Walter Hagen won five times in 14 appearances.

Hagen, golf's first full-time touring pro, and the game's first millionaire – and he spent as much or more as he earned – collected $2,150 for his toil in those five wins, which took place from 1916 through 1932.

Woods made $5,094.34 per stroke this week, not that he needs the money. With the $1.35 million purse, Woods' season earnings jumped to $9,698,163. He'll go over $10 million for the year if he finishes in the top five at East Lake, not including FedEx Cup bonus money. He also went over $101.5 million in career earnings counting all tours worldwide, but not including appearance fees overseas or endorsements.

Around Dubsdread

Defending champion Camilo Villegas scored 5-under 66 on Sunday, finishing tied for eighth at 5-under 279. Co-runner-up Jim Furyk and Sean O'Hair also had 66s, the best rounds of the day. … Padraig Harrington has scored a double-bogey in each of his last 13 Tour events. Sunday, he made double on the par-4 13th. Harrington tied for sixth with Sergio Garcia at 6-under 278. … Thanks to Woods' big lead of seven strokes, a leader or co-leader at the turn on Sunday has now won the last five Westerns. The last leader after 63 holes to lose was Steve Lowery, to Stephen Ames in 2004.

– Tim Cronin