lenz – Page 81 – Len Ziehm On Golf

It’s not too early to start planning for the 2017 U.S. Open at Erin Hills

The 117th playing of the U.S. Open is still eight months away, I realize that. Still, it’s not too early to so some planning around it. After all, U.S. Opens don’t come our way very often.

Next year’s will be June 15-18 at Erin Hills, a public-access venue located in a little town northwest of Milwaukee. I’m considering this a “Chicago’’ U.S. Open, though I admit that’s somewhat of a stretch. Erin Hills can be handled as a driving trip – without the need for overnight lodging – from most areas north and west of Chicago. For me it’s less than a two-hour drive from the northern suburbs.

This is a U.S. Open that should be embraced by Chicago golfers because – most unfortunately — there won’t be another one anywhere near our area for a long, long, long time. The next possibility is in 2027, and that’s remote one at best.

The last U.S. Open in the Chicago area was in 2003, when Jim Furyk emerged the champion at Olympia Fields. Prior to that the last Chicago U.S. Open was in 1990 at Medinah – one made historically special by Hale Irwin’s playoff victory over Mike Donald. That was the first U.S. Open title decided in sudden death. A U.S. Open playoff is traditionally over 18 holes on Monday, but the Irwin-Donald battle needed an extra hole before a champion could be crowned.

As for the future, no U.S. Opens are scheduled even remotely close to Chicago except for next year’s at Erin Hills – the first ever to be played in Wisconsin. The announced future sites after that are Shinnecock Hills in New York (2018), Pebble Beach in California (2019), Winged Foot in New York (2020), Torrey Pines in California (2021), The Country Club in Massachusetts (2022), Los Angeles Country Club (2023) and Pinehurst in North Carolina (2024).

The U.S. Golf Association hasn’t confirmed the next two years, but it’s a reasonably safe assumption that Oakmont, in Pennsylvania, will host in 2025 and the tourney will return to Shinnecock in 2026. Well-informed speculators have projected sites through 2030, and none of their possibilities are even remotely near the Midwest.

So, let’s savor what’s coming to Erin Hills. The course hasn’t hosted much in the way of big tournaments, only the 2008 U.S. Women’s Amateur Public Links and the 2011 U.S. Amateur. The course hasn’t changed much since that last one, but the USGA still held a media preview last month to show off what the next U.S. Open will be like.

The first thing you notice is the scorecard. The official yardage for Erin Hills at the 2017 U.S. Open is a whopping 7,693 yards. That may make it the longest course in tournament history, though USGA staffers on site weren’t ready to confirm that.

“But don’t be alarmed by that,’’ said USGA managing director Jeff Hall. “This will be the first time we’ve played a par-72 course in the U.S. Open since 1992. Tour players aren’t accustomed to having four par-5s at a U.S. Open but they’ll get that opportunity at Erin Hills.’’

The par-5s are No. 1, which is listed at 560 yards but could play as long as 608; No.7, listed at 607 but could play as short as 576 or as long as 619; No. 14, listed at 594 but could play as long as 650; and No. 18, listed at 637 but could play as long as 675.

Both course superintendent Zach Reineking and the architectural team of Michael Hurdzan, Dana Fry and Ron Whitten were on hand for the preview day. They joined Hall and the media contingent on the tour of the course, which opened in 2006.

Erin Hills was built by Bob Lang, the original owner from 1999 to 2009. Andy Ziegler has been the owner since then. Erin Hills is already a special place but it will be more special after becoming the 52nd course to host a U.S. Open and the sixth public access course to do it, following Pebble Beach, Pinehurst, Torrey Pines, New York’s Bethpage Black and Oregon’s Chambers Bay.

A walking-only venue, Erin Hills will be open for public play through Oct. 6, then the public won’t be able to play until after next year’s big event.

Hall said the greens would be in the 13 to 13 ½ range for the Open, slower than the surfaces this year at Oakmont. Hall lauded the “wonderful bentgrass putting surfaces’’ and said they are “much more accustomed to what the players have seen.’’

Some other tidbits on the Erin Hills Open:

Few changes have been made since Erin Hills hosted the U.S. Amateur five years ago. The only notable one is at No. 3, and that wasn’t a major thing.

Reineking said 385 trees have been taken down in recent years and only six are left. None come into play except perhaps the only one at No. 15 – and the future of that tree is in doubt.

The USGA estimates the economic impact of the 2017 U.S. Open on the Milwaukee area at between $120 and $135 million.

Community support has been outstanding. The USGA needed about 5,000 volunteers and received applications from 7,956. More than half of the volunteers were from Wisconsin and 52 were from foreign countries.

Though the planning remains a work in progress, tentative plans call for two spectator parking lots, both free to those using them. Though Erin Hills was built on 652 acres, galleries will be limited to 35,000 each day to assure a more pleasant spectator experience.

The USGA opened its merchandise online shop on Sept. 8 and ticket sales were launched in June. They’re continuing on the USGA website (usga.org). Though tickets are still available for the seven days of tournament week (gates open for practice on Monday, June 12), tickets to the four tournament rounds figure to be gone soon. Those four rounds have been sellouts for the last 29 years.

Lodging, for those who need it, should also be addressed well in advance. Erin Hills has only 37 beds on its property and they’ll be taken by tournament staffers. Hotels in an around Milwaukee may be hard-pressed to fill the needs of U.S. Open visitors.

October provided a variety of meaningful ends to Chicago golf season

I never quite understood this.

October, with its generally milder temperatures and beautiful color changes, is in many ways the best month of the year to play golf. Plus, with school back in session, the courses aren’t as busy as they are from June through August. Still, interest seems to be on the downside with the tournament schedules for both the Illinois PGA and Chicago District Golf Association rapidly winding down and the Western Golf Association’s events completely over.

Even the PGA Tour targets a September climax to its wrap-around season and the LPGA plays out of the United States from mid-September all the way through the end of October.

This year, though, that trend might be changing. Globally, the Ryder Cup carries two days into October and there’s an even more obvious reason for renewed interest in late fall golf. Tiger Woods has scheduled his latest return to tournament golf for the first event of the 2016-17 PGA Tour season – the Safeway Open (formerly Frys.com Open ) at Silverado in Napa, Calif., from Oct. 13-16. Phil Mickelson has entered, too, so that event will perk up golf’s “off-season.’’

Locally things are changing as well.

That’s mainly due to the Illinois PGA, which will conclude Carrie Williams’ first season as executive director with three significant October events. The IPGA has always played the last of its four major championships in October, and this year’s IPGA Players Championship at Eagle Ridge, in Galena, will be played Oct. 3-4.

More often than not the IPGA player of the year is decided at Eagle Ridge, and it certainly will be this time. The IPGA Players doesn’t fit into the schedule of the section’s best player, University of Illinois coach Mike Small. He’s second in the section’s Bernardi Points standings thanks to steady play in his one-tournament-a-month routine.

Small tied for first in the first stroke play event at Crestwicke, in Bloomington, in April. He won a stroke play at Onwentsia, in Lake Forest, in June; was sixth in the Illinois Open in St. Charles in July; and won the IPGA Championship for the 12th time at Olympia Fields in August.

Now he’s all about coaching again, though he did give a glimmer of things to come when he played in the Illinois Senior Open at McHenry Country Club in September. Small just turned 50 and that made him eligble for senior and Champions Tour events.

“I’ll play there a bit more in the future when time and my schedule allows me to,’’ said Small after the announcement of his new six-year contract to continue as the Illini coach was announced. “I still like to compete, and playing is a nice way to clear my head once in a while when I need it. But I’m a coach first and a player second. That’s what it’s been for 15 years and that’s what it’ll be going forward.’’

That leaves the IPGA Players Championship as the tournament where the rest of the club pros will fight it out for player of the year. Medinah teaching pro Travis Johns leads the Bernardi Points race going in – he’s even ahead of Small after finishing in a tie for second at the IPGA Championship. Right on his heels is Curtis Malm, the head professional at White Eagle, in Naperville.

Johns was player of the year in 2010 and 2014 and Malm won in 2012 and 2013. They played with Small in the final threesome at the IPGA Championship and Malm also finished as a joint runner-up at Olympia Fields.

Kyle Bauer, the head pro at Glen View Club, won the first of the year’s majors – the IPGA Match Play Championship at Kemper Lakes in May. He’s fourth in the Bernardi Points race while last year’s player of the year, Mistwood teaching pro Brian Brodell, is seventh. They’ll at least have a better chance at player of the year than the Illinois Open winner. Carlos Sainz Jr. won that title, but he’s a touring pro and thereby ineligible for the section’s top playing accolade.

All the others will be in the mix for the coveted player of the year award at the IPGA Players Championship, but even that one won’t wrap up the section’s big events for the season. The Royal Cup matches, pitting the top 10 Illinois assistant pros against their counterparts from Wisconsin, is on tap for Oct. 7 at Big Foot, in Fontana, Wis. It’s not the Ryder Cup, but still meaningful for those involved in one way or another.

Another deserving climax to Chicago area tournament play will also be provided by the Illinois PGA. Its Senior Players Championship will be played Oct. 17-18 at Old Elm in Highland Park with just the top 30 in the IPGA senior season’s point race eligible. That event will likely determine the section’s senior player of the year, though Ivanhoe’s Jim Sobb has a comfortable lead with only Mistwood’s John Platt a threat to catch him.

Sobb has been senior player of the year six times in the last nine years, winning back-to-back in 2007-08, again in 2010-11 and still again in 2014-15. He’ll be going after an unprecedented three-peat this October.

And then there’s the World SpeedGolf Championship, which will be played for the second time at The Glen, in Glenview, on Oct. 18-19. It’ll be interesting as well.

All those scenarios aside, the most impressive local tournament showing of the year won’t be matched in the October events. At least not in my book.

In fact the best tournament showing by a local player, professional or amateur, in my nearly 50 years covering golf in these parts was by Northbrook’s Nick Hardy in the Illinois State Amateur at St. Charles Country Club. Getting ready for his junior year at the University of Illinois, Hardy covered the 72 holes in 28 under par and won by 10 strokes. I don’t expect to ever see such a dominant performance at the local level ever again – but then, who knows?

TRAVEL NOTEBOOK: Hurricane Matthew delays Atlantic Dunes opening

Atlantic Dunes at Sea Pines — This is what Atlantic Dunes’ 15th hole looked like before Hurricane Matthew hit the Sea Pines Resort.

Davis Love III had barely finished savoring his team’s victory in the Ryder Cup when the U.S. captain had another event to celebrate. His Atlantic Dunes course was to open a day later at South Carolina’s Hilton Head Island. That opening, though, never happened.

Hurricane Matthew caused damage from Florida to South Carolina, but none were more adversely affected than the Sea Pines Resort on Hilton Head. Many residents couldn’t return to their homes and some of those who could were still without power nearly a week after Matthew battered the Island with 88 mile-per-hour winds and a storm surge upwards of 12 feet.

The status of all the Hilton Head golf courses remained very much in limbo, with no dates set for their re-openings. The much-anticipated opening of Atlantic Dunes is also in doubt. Love’s design firm had completed a complete renovation of the Ocean Course — the first 18-holer built on Hilton Head.

When it’s available the re-design will provide a more seaside ambience to Sea Pines. Atlantic Dunes will also be a nice complement to Sea Pines’ other courses – the Harbour Town Golf Links, jointly designed by Pete Dye and Jack Nicklaus, and Dye’s Heron Point.

unnamed-3 — Collins Group Realty provided this aerial view of Sea Pines after Hurricane Matthew struck the area.

NU coach Fletcher claims top Women’s Western award

20161006_165357 — WWGA president Kim Schriver (left) presents Woman of Distinction Award to Emily Fletcher.

Emily Fletcher may not have been the best known of the 22 winners of the Women’s Western Golf Association’s Woman of Distinction Award, but she certainly was a popular choice at the group’s annual meeting and luncheon on Thursday at Indian Hill Club in Winnetka.

Fletcher received two standing ovations while accepting an award that was first presented to Patty Berg in 1994. Some of the other winners included legendary players Louise Suggs, Nancy Lopez, Kathy Whitworth, Betty Jameson and Mickey Wright.

WWGA president Kim Schriver presented the award to Fletcher, marking a new era for the winner’s list. Her career in golf isn’t like any of the others. Fletcher was a 30-year assistant professional at the Glen View Club who then built the Northwestern women’s program into a powerhouse after taking on a new professional challenge in 2008.

Fletcher was a college player who was one of the first to go through the pioneer golf management program at Ferris State University in Michigan. She thanked Ed Oldfield Sr., the long-time head professional at Glen View, for her entry into the club professional ranks and Pat Goss, director of golf at Northwestern, for convincing her to give college coaching a try.

Along the way Fletcher served for nine years as the swing coach and sometimes caddie for Jenny Lidback, a touring pro who notched 20 top-10 finishes on the Ladies PGA Tour and won a major title – the 1995 duMaurier Classic. Fletcher also beat breast cancer, a disease which had taken the life of her mother, while coaching at Northwestern.

Oldfield, who now lives in Arizona; Goss and Lidback all were on hand at Indian Hill for Fletcher’s awards presentation that concluded with her choking up after her second standing ovation.

On the coaching end her Lady Wildcats have won three of the last four Big Ten Conference titles and she was the league’s coach-of-the-year four times in the last six years.

Given the rich history of the WWGA, receiving the organization’s top award is a lifetime achievement that’s hard to match. The WWGA was founded in 1901 and will conduct its 117th Women’s Western Amateur at River Forest Country Club in 2017. That’s another big reason why the Chicago area can look ahead to its most exciting season of tournament play next year. The Women’s Western Amateur has been played at Chicago courses 44 times, but not since 2001 when Exmoor, in Highland Park, hosted.

Dubuque Golf & Country Club, in Iowa, will host the 90th Western Junior tournament next year. The WWGA also conducted one of the LPGA’s majors – the Women’s Western Open, from 1930 through 1967 – and the Women’s Western Senior from 1979 through 2007.

Will the U.S. meltdown at Medinah carry over to Hazeltine?

CHASKA, Minnesota – The last Ryder Cup played on American soil came four years ago at Medinah. The next one is here this week at Hazeltine National. Though Medinah and Hazeltine aren’t rivals, there’s bound to be comparisons on and off the course as the 41st Ryder Cup unfolds.

In a meltdown of epic proportions the U.S. blew a 10-6 lead on the last day of singles matches at Medinah and lost to the Europeans – something that’s happened eight times in the last 10 meetings.

The Medinah Ryder Cup also represented a breakthrough in terms of magnitude. Never had the event been such a bonanza in terms of corporate involvement.

Whether the U.S. team – with the same captain, Davis Love III, returning – learned from the meltdown at Medinah won’t be determined until the matches begin on Friday. On the preparation side, however, the lessons from Medinah have been utilized already. Hazeltine has sold even more corporate chalets than Medinah did and has the biggest merchandise tent..

“On the big picture side, the best thing Medinah did for us was setting a high bar,’’ said Patrick Hunt, Hazeltine’s Ryder Cup chairman. “We’re competitive. We always want to beat previous records, and they set all the records at Medinah.’’

Hazeltine set its own goals and that turned the Medinah success into healthy motivation. Hunt and his Hazeltine crew had one challenge that Medinah didn’t have. Golf was added to the Summer Olympics program for the first time since 1904, and that meant a 72-hole tournament for top players in Brazil a month before the Ryder Cup came to Hazeltine. One of Europe’s stars, Justin Rose, won the gold medal and another, Henrik Stenson, took the silver in Brazil.

That might not bode well for the U.S. chances in this week’s matches but the Olympics but weren’t a problem in Hazeltine’s preparatory effort.

“I never thought the Olympics would be a distraction or a negative,’’ said Hunt. “It created a more compacted schedule, but at the end of the day the competition was a good thing.’’

Crowds will be about the same as Medinah, with 250,000 expected for the week.
“We learned from (previous host clubs) Valhalla, Medinah and Oakland Hills, but Hazeltine is an ideal venue to host a Ryder Cup because of the resources available,’’ said Jeff Hinz, in his first stint as a Ryder Cup tournament director at Hazeltine. “The club had experience hosting events and, with the land that they have and the vision of the club to host championships, that was critical.’’

The Hazeltine Ryder Cup will be the first to have on-site signage for its main corporate partners. It also conducted a national trophy tour and will have the largest merchandise tent in golf history. New twists in marketing were also evident, most notably the use of the 1980 U.S. Olympic gold medal-winning hockey team as ambassadors

Hazeltine is even better qualified historically to host this Ryder Cup than Medinah was four years ago. Hazeltine didn’t even open until 1962, roughly 40 years after Medinah, but it has already hosted two U.S. Opens (1970, 1991), two U.S. Women’s Opens (1966, 1977), two PGA Championships (2002, 2009), the U.S. Senior Open (1983) and the U.S. Amateur (2006).

The Ryder Cup is all that’s missing from the club’s resume, and that will soon be corrected. Only one club has hosted all those big events plus the Ryder Cup. That would be North Carolina’s Pinehurst No. 2, which opened in 1907 – 55 years before Hazeltine.

Hazeltine looks much different than Hazeltine. Medinah has the bigger clubhouse but Hazeltine has the newer one. It was built in 2010.

Medinah has three courses on its premises. It also offers a variety of other activities for its members – like tennis, swimming and skeet and trap shooting. Hazeltine is all about golf. Though it has only one, very respected, course there is plenty of open space around the club and that makes it a most desirable tournament venue.

Robert Trent Jones designed the Hazeltine course, but it won’t play as he envisioned it for the Ryder Cup. The hole rotation has been altered since the 2009 PGA was played there to accommodate the construction of chalets for corporate hospitality. The last four holes of each nine were switched to make for a better spectator experience.

At Medinah overall course conditioning was a major problem leading right up to the start of play, but all went well in the end. At Hazeltine there wasn’t as much tension. What there was came in the installation of a new bunker system. Work on that was completed in the dead of winter, two months before the course even opened for play.

Bunkers are a key part of the Hazeltine playing experience, and the course has 108 of them. They account for the same square footage as the putting surfaces – about three acres each. That’s an eye-catching statistic, because bunkers typically are about one-third the size of the putting surfaces.

Arnold Palmer’s passion for golf was infectious — and I’m proof of that

Ziehm-Palmer-1969 — Arnold Palmer and I, after Palmer gave an exhibition at Rolling Green in Arlington Heights in 1969.

Arnold Palmer is gone. Where do I begin to tell you how impactful this is to golf – and to me personally?

I’m not sure I would have taken up this sport – one that I love with a passion but don’t play very well – had it not been for Arnold Palmer.

It was back in the mid-1950s when my family lived on Chicago’s Northwest side. I was about 11 years old and my mother wanted me to see an exhibition event at Medinah. (Actually, I think she wanted to mainly see Arnold, the most charismatic athlete of our time).

We went, he didn’t win but the day was enjoyable. My mother took me out to play on a course shortly thereafter, and a life-long love affair with the game began.

Over the years I covered some of his tournaments, the first being the 1968 Western Open at Olympia Fields – my first PGA Tour event as a golf writer working for a major metropolitan newspaper. Palmer didn’t win that one, either, but he was accessible to the dozen or so media that attended. The media crowd and the galleries would, of course, grow considerably from those days.

On the professional level, my best up close and personal experience with Palmer came in Boston. I was sent there to cover something else, but wanted to do a feature on Palmer in advance of the budding Senior PGA Tour (now called the Champions Tour) planning a Chicago visit. A few other writers from around the country had the same idea, and we gathered at a restaurant where Palmer was planning a private dinner with friends.

He knew we’d be there, and we expected a brief, friendly chat. We’d get a story and he’d be back with his friends in a few minutes. Not so. He stayed and talked with about half dozen scribes he barely knew for a good hour as his friends waited (I hope) patiently.

Much more recently we visited Palmer’s Bay Hill Club in Orlando, FL, as part of golf/travel-writing adventures in 2015. Palmer was there, dining with his guests, getting his picture taken, just being Arnie. I have a treasured piece of golf art from that visit signed by the king himself.

Palmer’s competitive career was winding down when I came on the golf-writing scene. He won his last PGA Tour event in 1973, but he kept playing – and that’s a big reason the golf kept growing and the Champions Tour became a viable part of the pro sports scene.

In 49 years playing the PGA Tour Palmer earned $1,784,497 and won 62 tournaments including seven major titles. He earned much more than that in endorsements and other ventures, of course. His income from 2014, for instance, was reported at $42 million by one respected business publication.

Palmer is certainly not about money, though. He walked with kings and played golf with presidents, but he never lost touch with more common folks.

Rather than dwell on his playing record and businesses success, I thought you might enjoy some tidbits – provided in no particular order — about Palmer’s life that I feel tell more about this extraordinary man:

After winning the 1954 U.S. Amateur he served three years in the U.S.Coast Guard, a stint that interrupted but hardly stymied his plans to be a touring pro.

He beat prostate cancer himself and created the Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children in Orlando, which is ranked among the best such hospitals in the world. His grandchildren called him “Dumpy.’’

One U.S. president, John F. Kennedy, sent Palmer a picture of his swing in hopes he would critique it. Another president, Dwight D. Eisenhower, flew to Palmer’s home in Latrobe, Pa., to make a surprise appearance at his birthday party. The day after Gerald Ford left the presidency he had a golf game with Palmer.

Perhaps Palmer’s biggest victory came when he rallied from a seven-stroke deficit in the final round to win the 1960 U.S. Open, but he also blew a big lead on the back nine of another U.S. Open before losing to Billy Casper in a playoff in 1966.

Palmer built the first golf course in China and designed more than 300 courses around the world. Among them are three in Illinois including Hawthorn Woods Country Club in the Chicago area.

The son of a greens superintendent, Palmer broke 100 for 18 holes when he was just 7 years old. He met his first wife Winnie on a Tuesday and asked her to marry him four days later. They were married 45 years until her death in 1999.

He signed what must be a zillion autographs and – unlike most every other athlete – his name was always provided in a legible manner. He was confident enough to wear pink before that color was fashionable.

He has a drink in his name – an Arnold Palmer, iced tea and lemonade – that is known world-wide. He also had his own winery.

He played in 50 Masters tournaments and was a major factor in the creation of The Golf Channel.

He became a pilot to overcome his fear of flying.

He has both the Congressional Golf Medal and the Presidential Medal of Freedom – the only sports figure to have both.

He attended Wake Forest, where a statue stands in his honor. In 2013 he rode into one of that school’s football games on a motorcycle.

In 2010 Esquire magazine named him one of the 75 best dressed men of all time.

Palmer had his very own Army, and it was always vocal and supportive, but Arnie’s Army isn’t the only segment of society that will sorely miss him now that he’s gone.

There’s no course, but sprawling Biltmore Estate has a connection to golf

20160916_114115 — The Biltmore House is so big you can’t get it all into a a picture taken from ground level.

ASHEVILLE, North Carolina – This city in the Blue Ridge Mountains, just over the Kentucky line, isn’t the

first place that left me wanting to stay longer – just the latest one.

An interesting place, Asheville. It’s been called the “Hippie Hideaway of the South.’’ Its downtown hangouts reminded us of a miniature New Orleans – art galleries, street entertainers, restaurants with unusual but tasty cuisine and trendy but southern-style cooking.

The big tourist attraction, though, is the Biltmore Estate. It’s billed as the “World’s Largest House,’’ and I don’t know what else would come close. This creation of George W. Vanderbilt during a six-year period leading into its opening in 1895 has four acres of floor space, 250 rooms, 35 bedrooms, 43 bathrooms, 65 fireplaces and three kitchens. By comparison, the Biltmore house is more than two times the size of William Randolph Heart’s San Simeon castle in California.

Supposedly designed as Vanderbilt’s bachelor pad, Vanderbilt created a place built for house guests – and there were a lot of them because the place had most everything on its 8,000 acres.

It required nearly two hours to complete a walking tour of the house, which was filled with artistic works and separate rooms for all types of entertainment pursuits. Frankly, though, I found it depressingly dark inside.

20160916_120341 — You can get an up close a personal view of some beautiful flowers at the Biltmore gardens.

The outside was another story. The floral gardens were the highlight of the visit, but the estate also included a separate village a short drive away that featured a winery and array of shops. There was one thing it didn’t have, though – a golf course.

You’d think that, given all the land and financial support available, there would have been one on the grounds. There even were a few golf-related offerings in the shops, but no course. Naturally I had to ask about that.

There was once a nine-hole course but it kept getting flooded and was eventually abandoned, I was told by one of the tour guides. Still, there’s a golf story to tell regarding the Biltmore Estate.

Vanderbilt married in 1898, after the estate was up and running, and he died at the young age of 51 in 1914 after suffering complications from an appendectomy. His wife, Edith, took charge then. She sold off small parcels of the estate, and some of it went to people interested in building a country club.

20160916_132544 — The Biltmore Estate includes beautiful gardens both indoors and outdoors.

Cornelia Vanderbilt, the only child of George and Edith, was born in 1900 and became the owner of Biltmore Forest Country Club. She hit the first ball on its Donald Ross-designed golf course in July of 1922. The course was eventually played by such luminaries as Bobby Jones, Bill Tilden, John D. Rockefeller, William Jennings Bryan, and U.S. presidents William Howard Taft and Calvin Coolidge.

The Biltmore Estate, meanwhile, was opened in 1930 to stimulate tourist activity in Asheville and to help maintain the vast facility. The Biltmore Forest course, now located on the outskirts of the Ashville city limits, was taken over by club members beginning in 1940 thanks to a lease agreement negotiated with the Biltmore Estate. An option to buy was exercised in 1948.

Over the years the course has undergone many changes, the most recent being a $6.4 million restoration of the golf course and a $1.8 million restoration of the clubhouse. Both were designed to take the club back to its 1922 splendor. Biltmore Forest remains a by-invitation member owned private club.

Streelman, Urlacher hook up on Wilson’s Driver vs. Driver TV series

Another PGA Tour season ended for Wheaton’s Kevin Streelman and Luke Donald, the former Northwestern star, at Sunday’s BMW Championship in Indiana. Both failed to qualify The Tour Championship – last event of the FedEx Cup Playoffs – in Atlanta next week and won’t be competing in the Ryder Cup matches the week after that in Chaska, Minn.

Streelman and Donald tied for 39th place in the BMW at Crooked Stick, a finish that enabled Streelman to climb from 63rd to 59th in the Playoff standings and Donald to drop from 56th to 57th. They needed to be in the top 30 to play for another $8 million purse at East Lake in Atlanta.

Chicago’s top two players also finished very close on the PGA Tour season money list, Donald earning $1,634,515 and Streelman $1,601,177 in the 2015-16 wrap-around season.

Neither, though, is going into hibernation even though their tournament seasons won’t kick into high gear again until 2017.

Donald was honorary chairman for his Taste of the First Tee wine-tasting fundraiser on Monday, and he brought a special guest – BMW winner Rory McIlroy – to Medinah Country Club for the annual even benefiting the First Tee of Greater Chicago.

Streelman was happy to head home to Arizona.

“That was the end of a long run,’’ he said. “My body is pretty tired and my wife and kids were ready to be home. We’d been away for a month straight.’’

Streelman, though, is anxiously awaiting a new series televised on The Golf Channel. Created by Chicago-based Wilson Sporting Good, it’s called Driver vs. Driver and follows the trials and tribulations of aspiring golf equipment designers as they compete for $500,000 and the opportunity to have their driver concept brought to life and sold under Wilson’s name.

About 300 ideas were submitted. Tim Clarke, head of Wilson’s golf division, along with former U.S. Golf Association director Frank Thomas and ex-Bear great Brian Urlacher formed the panel of judges.

“It’s a great concept and the filming came out great,’’ said Streelman, who is one of the guest judges on the show that debuts Oct. 4. The winner will be announced on Nov. 22, and Streelman plans to have the winning driver in his bag when he returns to the PGA Tour in February HOPE check.

“Wilson is making a huge move to become one of the big hitters in golf, and this was a pretty cool idea,’’ said Streelman. “The ideas for the drivers were incredible. I was very, very impressed.’’

Illini roll on

The University of Illinois men’s team rallied to win its season-opening event, the Wolf Run Invitational played just a few miles from the BMW Championship in Zionsville, Ind. Northbrook junior Nick Hardy also won the individual title just days after Illini coach Mike Small signed a new six-year contract extension.

“It’s nice the university committed to us, and that they appreciate what we have accomplished,’’ said Small. “We have great facilities, and I’m where I want to be the rest of my career.’’

Small’s squad will host at its own tournament starting Friday at Olympia Fields Country Club – the OFCC/Fighting Illini Invitational. It’s considered one of the top collegiate competitions in the fall season.

Here and there

Next big local event is the Illinois Senior Open, which begins its two-day run on Monday at McHenry Country Club.

Steve Sawtell and Michael Natale combined to win the Merit Amateur, a 54-hole event conducted in a modified Stableford format at Merit Club in Libertyville. Mark Esposito and Ted Zurkowski won the senior division.

Rich Harvest Farms, in Sugar Grove, will host the men’s and women’s NCAA finals next spring and that won’t be the only national collegiate championship event played in Illinois. TPC Deere Run, the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic site in Silvis, has landed next May’s National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics tournament.

Indiana’s French Lick Resort has signed on to sponsor next February’s Chicago Golf Show in Rosemont.

The Chicago District Golf Association will combine with Odyssey Golf Club to host the Fore Our Veterans outing on Sept. 28 in Tinley Park.

Ted Bishop’s book addresses much more than his PGA impeachment

It took considerable time to find the book “Unfriended: The Power Brokers, Political Correctness and Hypocrisy in Golf.’’ That’s Ted Bishop’s account of the events surrounding his controversial impeachment as president of the PGA of America. Apparently it’s most readily found as a Nook offering. At least that’s how I found it.

After getting Bishop’s account of his well-publicized 2014 impeachment — which came less than a month before his term as president was to expire — it seems the PGA of America’s move was a great overreaction to what Bishop readily admits was his own mistake. He shouldn’t have tweeted that European golfer Ian Poulter whined like a “lil girl’’ in making comments about Tom Watson and Nick Faldo.

Watson, especially, is Bishop’s friend and Bishop was defending him, but his choice of words was taken as sexist and well outside the PGA’s policy of staying politically correct. That’s all well and good, but “Unfriended’’ makes for better reading than just that.

Bishop, a long-time Indiana club professional, spends only the first two chapters and part of another on his impeachment defense. The rest of the book provides interesting insights into a variety of golf subjects – the politics of the Ryder Cup, Phil Mickelson, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Dottie Pepper, women in golf and the PGA’s current leadership.

There’s a lot of interesting golf insider stuff, even if the book did emanate from an episode that many in the sport would just as soon forget.

BMW Championship is one of PGA Tour’s most important events

Here is what’s wrong with the BMW Championship, which is coming up Sept. 8-11 at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis.

For one, it’s not Chicago based. When the Western Golf Association replaced the history-rich Western Open in favor of the BMW Championship in 2007 that ended a 45-year run for Chicago being an annual PGA Tour stop. Now it’s every other year, and this time Crooked Stick gets to host for the second time.

For another, being a FedEx Cup Playoff event, you’re never sure exactly who will be playing until a few days beforehand and some of golf’s most popular players are certain to be missing.

All that may sound on the negative side, but there are good reasons for things being the way they are.

The rotation of sites has been financially rewarding to the WGA’s Evans Scholars program – and that is the reason for holding the event in the first place. Rather than make an annual stop at the same course, the WGA freshened the event by playing it outside Chicago in alternate years. Markets that don’t get big-time golf events very often are more than receptive when the PGA Tour does come to town. Indianapolis is just one of those.

Bigger crowd, bigger profits, more opportunities for deserving caddies to go to college. It’s hard to argue with that reasoning, and the WGA is carrying that logic further. Next year’s staging will be the third and last at Conway Farms, in Lake Forest, and the road show goes to Aronimink, a well-regarded club in the Philadelphia area, in 2018. After that the BMW Championship may be rotating among Chicago clubs on the alternate years as well.

That policy hasn’t been announced, but Medinah will be the site in 2019. Then, who knows? BMW’s contract with the PGA Tour is up after that event, opening all kinds of possibilities for subsequent years.

Time will take care of all those details, but firming up the field early for any of the four FedEx Cup Playoff event – much less No. 3 in the rotation – is impossible.

That’s not all bad, though. While some stars might not be there, one thing is certain: the 70-player field will be very, very good. The competitive format for the playoffs assures that.

Here’s how it works:

The top 125 players on the season-long FedEx Cup point race got into the first playoff event – The Barclays in New York the last week of August. They played 72 holes without a 36-hole cut for an $8.5 million prize fund and the top 100 on the point race afterwards got a chance to do it again.

Second event in the FedEx Cup is the Deutsche Bank Championship Sept. 2-5 at TPC Boston. It has the same format as The Barclays – 72 holes with no 36-hole cut, another $8.5 million available in prize money and the top 70 on the point list get to do it again.

That’s where the BMW Championship comes into the picture. The top 70 play for another $8.5 million in another 72-hole, no cut event at Crooked Stick.

Finally, the top 30 on the point list after the BMW Championship advance to The Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta for the final $8.5 million, 72-hole no-cut tournament. A lot of prize money is obviously on the line in September but there’s more to it than tournament checks. The winner of the FedEx Cup point race – and that’s not necessarily the winner of The Tour Championship – gets an additional $10 million bonus.

During the course of the FedEx Cup season there were 43 regular season tournaments to decide who would qualify for the playoffs. There were 247 players earning points towards inclusion in the playoffs and a good showing in the “post-season’’ would make up for disappointing showings in the four major championships by some of the game’s elite players.

In this year’s jumbled schedule the four majors – due to the inclusion of golf in the Olympic Games for the first time in 112 years – lost some of their luster. At least three of the top young players did, too. Neither Jason Day, Rory McIlroy nor Jordan Spieth won a major in 2016. Winning the FedEx Cup would at least help make up for that unexpected shortcoming.

The majors, in case you’ve forgotten, went to Danny Willett (Masters), Dustin Johnson (U.S. Open), Henrik Stenson (British Open) and Jimmy Walker (PGA Championship). McIlroy didn’t even challenge in any of those and missed the cut at both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.

Day, the current world No. 1, made a great run at the PGA but came up a shot short. Spieth had a successful defense of his Masters title in hand until he took a quadruple bogey seven on the 12th hole of the final round. Of the Day-McIlroy-Spieth trio and the four major championship winners, only Stenson and Willett opted to play in the Olympics and only Stenson and Spieth are past FedEx Cup champions.

So, September is FedEx Cup time and this year reputations are on the line as well as financial considerations. With eight different winners in nine years, the Playoff has had a wide variety of champions and this year’s competition figures to be even more wide-open than previous years.

Only Tiger Woods (2007 and 2009) has won the FedEx Cup twice and he isn’t playing this time. The other champions were Vijay Singh (2008), Jim Furyk (2010), Bill Haas (2011), Brandt Snedeker (2012), Stenson (2013), Billy Horschel (2014) and Spieth (2015).

There is some strategy to winning the ultimate, $10 million prize. Some players have skipped events in which they qualified because they felt they needed the rest before the biggest purse in golf was on the line. Such decisions can impact the 70 coming to Crooked Stick, but rest assured the field will have the players who are playing the best at the end of the season.

That was the idea of creating the Playoffs in the first place.

“We needed to define our season,’’ PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said when the series was announced. The format underwent some tweaking but has been consistent since 2011. It did create – at least sort of – a climax to one season before the next one starts.

Are the Playoffs really a climax, though? After all, the Ryder Cup battle between the U.S. and Europe from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 at Hazeltine National in Minnesota comes on the heels of the last FedEx Cup Playoff event – and the Ryder Cup is the biggest event in golf.

So, what is the climax to the 2016 golf season? You tell me, and the fact that the subject merits some debate is a good thing.

Author: lenz