What have you done golf-wise since dropping your last putt in the Chicago area in 2014? Not as much as me, I’ll bet.

This has been an extraordinary “offseason.’’ It began in November when we made a series of golf/travel-writing stops – a few days here, a few days there — at some very choice locations. How about French Lick, Greenbrier, Homestead, Hilton Head, Bay Hill and Pinehurst?

It’d be hard to beat those, but we also tossed in a couple of Pete Dye-related stops that aren’t as well known – Mystic Hills in Culver, Ind., and Keswick Hall, the legendary architect’s newest creation in Virginia.

And, after that 27-day golfing marathon was over, we settled in Florida where we made two stops in the Orlando area as spectators — to watch Bernhard Langer and his 14-year old son win the Father-Son Challenge and Jordan Spieth post a run-away victory in Tiger Woods’ Hero World Challenge at Isleworth. Then, after the calendar changed to 2015 we visited the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando and the LPGA’s new season-opening tournament, the Coates Championship in Ocala.

That was a ton of golf – but don’t think it was too much. We’re anxious for the Chicago season to start just as much as all of you who weren’t as lucky as we were in getting away for the winter.

It’d be hard to beat our November odyssey for sheer enjoyment, though. While there might be a call to rank the famous courses, we won’t do that. It’d be like comparing apples and oranges. Each has their own special charms. We just enjoyed them all.

Most interesting, though, was Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill Club. The 18-hole championship course there is a PGA Tour site in March, when it welcomes the Arnold Palmer Invitational. I’ve played perhaps 20 courses that have hosted PGA Tour events, and Bay Hill – while very much a challenge — is the most playable for the recreational duffer (like me).

What makes Bay Hill special, though, is Palmer himself. Bay Hill is his winter home. He was frequently around when we were there, playing cards and dining with friends. He wasn’t hounded by well-wishers. He was just enjoying himself. Where else could he be caught in such a relaxed setting?

We were told that Palmer, now 85, rarely plays the 27 holes available at Bay Hill these days but that he does frequently hit balls on the range. Simply put, he helps Bay Hill guests feel welcome in what to him is home.

Being big on golf history, we were fascinated by Homestead’s Old Course in Virginia, where we teed off on the longest No. 1 tee in continuous use in America. It was first played in 1892 and the resort, dating to 1766, is even older than the United States. The late, great Sam Snead grew up in the area and was the first head professional at Homestead’s Cascades course and his son Sam Jr. owns the Sam Snead Restaurant there. Not only was Sam Jr. on hand when we dined there, he even sent over a signed memento from our visit.

We witnessed lots of progress at both Hilton Head, the long-time golfers’ mecca, in South Carolina, and Pinehurst, where we played that famous resort’s newly-acquired Jack Nicklaus design in North Carolina. It had been called National Golf Club; now it’s Pinehurst No. 9.

The work recently completed or underway at Hilton Head was most impressive. Over $200 million has been spent on upgrades in recent years at all the resorts there with Sea Pines the trend-setter. Pete Dye’s Heron Point course was renovated there last year and Davis Love III will re-design the Ocean course beginning this October.

More noticeable is the work at Harbour Town Links, which has hosted the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage Classic since 1969. A new $25 million clubhouse will be unveiled when the tournament returns a week after the Masters in April. In May the Harbour Town course will close for a summer-long renovation.

In all Riverstone Group, of Richmond, Va., will spend $55 million on improvements at Sea Pines in addition to its projects that are either underway or completed at Kiawah, another South Carolina hotbed, and Keswick Hall, site of Dye’s recently-opened Full Cry layout.

The aggressive spending going on, particularly at Hilton Head, was another clear indication that the golf industry is weathering the economic downturn that thwarted progress the last few years.

Finally, the Dye designs continue to be well-received. Mystic Hills, one of his early ones, resulted in our completion of the seven-stop Pete Dye Golf Trail. Riverstone Group has made Full Cry the centerpiece of its spiffy Keswick Hall facility in the history-rich area near Charlottesville, Va.

French Lick’s Pete Dye Course will get its biggest dose of exposure come May when the Indiana resort hosts the Senior PGA Championship – an event that Chicago golfers should consider visiting.

NOW THAT it’s about time for golf at home again, there’s plenty on the horizon. Two Chicago area players, Kevin Streelman and Carlos Sainz Jr., got off to good starts when the PGA Tour began its first split season schedule last fall. Sainz claimed a $100,000 payday with a tie for ninth place at the Sanderson Farms Championship – only his second PGA Tour event. Streelman has wins in the last two years. He could make an even bigger impact in 2015.

Luke Donald, working again with swing instructor Pat Goss, showed signs of recapturing his former magic late in 2014 and will benefit when the BMW Championship returns to Conway Farms, his home course in Lake Forest, in September.

The local scene will also include the Champions Tour’s Encompass Championship at North Shore and the PGA’s John Deere Classic, unfortunately held over the same July dates, and Rich Harvest Farms will have a one-two punch of big amateur events when it welcomes the Palmer Cup and Western Amateur.

It’ll be another year for lots of good playing and lots of good viewing just as soon as the snow melts. I say, bring it on!

Call it a changing of the guard, or just a transition. I’ve always thought that change was generally a good thing, and there’s certainly been plenty of that going on within the Chicago golf community in the last few months.

It started with the departure of Michael Miller, long-time executive director of the Illinois PGA who moved to Arizona to re-organize the Southwest Section of the PGA. He left town in May, and new IPGA president Jim Opp heads a group that will study 22 candidates before determining Miller’s replacement.

Even before Miller left the biggest tournament for state residents, the men’s Illinois Open, underwent a major format change with the announcement that its finals would now be played on two courses with more qualifiers. And, before the summer is out Chicago will be without its annual stop on the Champions Tour. The third and last playing of the Encompass Championship is closing in.

No where, though, was change more obvious than at the first major tournament of the season. May’s 64th playing of the Illinois PGA Match Play Championship figured to showcase the usual suspects – Curtis Malm, Travis Johns, Doug Bauman, Matt Slowinski, Rich Dukelow, Garrett Chaussard.

Well, none of them were even among the semifinalists who squared off on the last day of the four-day, weather-plagued event at Kemper Lakes in Long Grove. It was indeed an extraordinarily strange finish, since seeding was determined off last year’s player of the year point standings and none of the top seven seeds make it to the final four.

Instead the semifinalists were Jim Billiter, the eventual champion; Brian Brodell, who has worked in the area for less than a year; Kyle Bauer and Simon Allan. Billiter called them collectively “the bottom of the barrel guys’’ because none of the quartet has been much of a factor in previous IPGA majors.

Billiter, at No. 8 thanks in part to his win in last year’s IPGA Assistants Match Play tournament, was the highest seed among the semifinalists. Allan, head pro at Prestwick in Frankfort, was No. 21; Bauer, head pro at Glen View was No. 26 and Brodell, new to the section, was No. 54.

Still, all were up to the task at Kemper Lakes – especially Billiter and Brodell who battled over 21 holes in the championship match. Both were reluctant to declare a changing of the guard in the IPGA competitive ranks after it was over, however.

“It was just nice to see a lot of young guys playing along with the older pros,’’ said Billiter, whose victims en route to the title included 66-year old veteran Mike Harrigan. “I loved the mix of generations.’’

“It’s just that in the Chicago area there’s so many good players,’’ Brodell said.

The results, though, speak for themselves. Malm, the White Eagle pro who was going after his fourth straight title in the tournament, was knocked out in the fourth round by Scott Baines, a long-time assistant pro at Chicago’s Bryn Mawr club. Johns, the Medinah teaching pro who won 2010 Match Play and is the reigning IPGA Player of the Year, was eliminated by Billiter in the quarterfinals.

Biltmore’s Bauman, another past champion who reached the title match six times, had the craziest match of the week against Conway Farms’ Slowinski. Bauman was 3-up at the turn but lost six straight holes from Nos. 11-16.

The final had its crazy side, too. Billiter won the first two holes but his lead was gone six holes later. He finally got back to all square at No. 16 but promptly splashed his tee shot at No. 17 and went to the final hole 1-down. He forced extra holes with an eight-foot birdie putt before winning the title with a bogey – yes, a bogey! – on the third extra hole.

Billiter put his 8-iron tee shot in the water on that par-3 (No. 3 in Kemper’s rotation) as well and Brodell, who survived a 19-hole match with Bauer in the morning, kept his ball dry when his 7-iron tee shot bounded over the green. That put Brodell in a good spot to close out the match, but he couldn’t do it. .

“When I shanked it in the water I thought it was over,’’ admitted Billiter, “but then when I saw him hit it long I knew I still had a chance because he had a real delicate shot.’’

Billiter put a 90-yard shot from the drop area to six feet of the cup, then watched Brodell chunk his first chip shot and run his second four feet past the cup. Billiter holed his put for bogey, and that was good enough to win the match after Brodell missed.

“A sad way to end it,’’ said Brodell, who came to Mistwood last September to work with the club’s junior programs after serving as assistant coach for both the men’s and women’s teams at Purdue University. “I hit the same club on that hole as I did in the morning match, the wind was the same and I expected a two-putt uphill and the match was mine. Then all of a sudden my shot flew long and I had one bad chip.’’

That showed, once again, what a crazy game golf can be.

Billiter reached the final with a first-round bye, then eliminated host pro Matt Swann, 7 and 6, Harrigan 3 and 2, Biltmore assistant Katie Pius 2 and 1, Johns 1-up and Allan 4 and 3. All those matches came after he played 36 holes on Monday, when he wasn’t scheduled to compete at Kemper.

He was tired afterwards, but still $4,000 richer. That was the champion’s share from a purse of $20,000. In still another sign of these changing times, the field was down to 90 players, meaning that 38 drew first-round byes. The field has dwindled each year since Johns, then teaching at Twin Lakes in Palatine, beat a full field of 128 players in his first year in the section in 2010.

Next of the IPGA’s four major events is the 66th Illinois Open, to be played July 20-22 at Royal Melbourne and Hawthorn Woods. Then comes the 93rd Illinois PGA Championship Aug. 31-Sept. 2 on Medinah’s No. 1 course and the IPGA Players Championship, which returns to Eagle Ridge in Galena on Oct. 5-6.

The Illinois PGA is in limbo heading into the first big month of the Chicago golf season. There’s no doubt about that.

Two key staffers, Jared Nowak and Lauren Moy, left the section during the winter and executive director Michael Miller replaced them both. Robert Duke took Nowak’s place as tournament director and Catherine Wagner will inherit most of Moy’s duties in a general office re-structuring.

Wagner will manage day to day operations of the IPGA Drive, Chip & Putt competition and be responsible for execution of current player development programming including the PGA Junior League. She will also help grow the IPGA Foundation programs. Both 24 year-olds are new to the Chicago area; Duke comes from Nashville, Tenn., and Wagner from Austin, Minn.

Those changes, though, were minor compared to the one necessitated by the next departure – that of Miller himself.

Jim Opp, the new IPGA president, announced Miller’s departure in a March 20 letter to the membership. After 27 years with the section, 20 of them as executive director, Miller accepted a position as executive director of the Southwest Section of the PGA.

Miller planned to oversee the transition for the IPGA until May 1 and his tentative starting date on his new job was May 4. Opp said he was in no hurry to name Miller’s successor. A lengthy search was expected after Miller’s departure.

“It’s definitely a little strange for both parties (himself and the IPGA), but this opportunity was too good to pass up,’’ said Miller.

The Illinois and Southwest are among 41 geographical sections of the PGA of America, which has about 28,000 members nation-wide. The Southwest encompasses all of Arizona and part of Nevada, including Las Vegas. It’s larger than the Illinois Section in terms of both geography and membership. The Illinois section has 850 members, the Southwest 1,350.

Illinois has a rich history. It’s considered a charter member of the PGA, with roots to the organization’s founding in 1916. Back then, though, the section encompassing the Illinois club professionals was called the Middle States Section. Illinois got its designation in 1922 and that section has had only three executive directors.

First to hold the job was Ken Boyce, who was in charge fro 1976 to 1988. He hired Miller as his tournament director in 1986. Miller left that post in 1989 to work for Pinnacle, a Libertyville-based marketing firm, but returned shortly after Vance Redfern replaced Boyce as executive director.

Redfern named Miller as his assistant, and Miller moved up to the head job when Redfern left to become associate athletic director at San Diego State University in 1995. The IPGA had a three-person staff when Miller was first hired in 1986. It now has six full-timers and two-three seasonal interns.

“Leaving was a difficult decision because this has pretty much been my whole career,’’ said Miller. “But this will be the next stage of my career – a bigger section with a little different culture. And the climate change doesn’t hurt, either.’’

The Illinois Section members are basically at individual clubs or public courses. Resorts form a much more significant segment of the Southwest Section membership. The Southwest Section post became available when Curt Hudek resigned last fall after seven years on the job. Miller began the interview process for that job in early January.

Under Miller’s direction the IPGA established the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame and a consumer golf show and played major roles in the organization of two PGA Championships (1999 and 2006) and the 2012 Ryder Cup, all played at Medinah Country Club. The youth skills competitions that were part of the ’99 PGA and Ryder Cup were so popular that the PGA took that concept to the national level.

The IPGA Foundation also flourished under Miller’s tenure, and developing a similar one for the Southwest Section will be a priority in his new job.

With his new base in Scottsdale, Ariz., Miller will face new projects that weren’t part of his Illinois duties. The Southwest Section runs a very active junior tour, conducting over 60 events. The Illinois PGA deferred those duties to the Illinois Junior Golf Assn. The Southwest Section also oversees a Golf Pass program, which offers discounted greens fees to residents in what’s considered the offseason there.

The IPGA did have a Golf Pass program that Miller considered “fairly successful’’ for four or five years, but it was discontinued when a consumer golf show was deemed a higher priority.

Miller was also instrumental in making changes in the Illinois Open, the section’s premier event. In January he announced that the event would have a new format and the 54-hole finals would be contested at two courses in an effort to spur more entries.

Under the new format there will be 258 finalists instead of 156 and Royal Melbourne, in Long Grove, and Hawthorn Woods Country Club will share hosting duties for the finals. All 54 holes were played at The Glen Club in Glenview last year. Miller said the changes came after two years of planning.

“I’m saddened that I won’t be here to see that through,’’ he said, “but a lot of good things are in place, the Foundation is strong and the tournament program is one of the best in the country. The timing (for his departure) is good because the busiest time for planning was from October until (the early spring). By April 1 everything was in place. Now it’s just a case of execution.’’