Author: lenz

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Ryder Cup is the real climax to this PGA Tour season

Let the greatest show in golf begin.

With all due respect, it’s not any major championship. It’s not the FedEx Cup Playoffs. It wasn’t the return of the sport to the Olympics for the first time in 112 years.

No, the greatest show in golf isn’t even a tournament. It’s the Ryder Cup, and the 41st playing of the matches between the U.S. and Europe is coming up Sept. 27 through Oct. 2 at Hazeltine National Golf Club in the Minneapolis suburb of Chaska, Minn.

The Ryder Cup wasn’t always the greatest show in golf. It only became that after the Europeans started winning regularly. Now it’s one of the great team competitions in all of sports. Patriotism abounds, creating a memorable spectacle no matter which team wins.

I’m happy to say I’ve been involved with Ryder Cups beyond just being a reporter of what goes on in the matches every couple years. In both the Ryder Cup at Medinah in 2012 and this year’s version at Hazeltine my involvement has included participating in a book — along with Nick Novelli, the great Chicago photographer — for the host club’s membership.

For Hazeltine’s members, they learned the Ryder Cup would be coming via a PGA of America announcement in 2002 but their preparations really heated up at Medinah. They came and learned there, then refined their plans after watching the 2014 version of the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles, in Scotland. Now it’s Hazeltine’s turn to show what it can do as the host club.

Hazeltine is even better qualified historically to host this Ryder Cup than Medinah was four years ago. Given Medinah’s rich tournament history, that may be hard to believe. Consider this, however. 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. Pinehurst became the first course to host both the men’s and women’s U.S. Opens in back-to-back weeks in 2014. It also hosted the U.S. Senior Open (1994), the PGA Championship (1936), the U.S. Opens of 1999 and 2005 and the Ryder Cup (1951).

Enough about history, though that’s always important for any serious golfer’s perspective. Now it’s about choosing up sides, and that’ll take the entire month of September.

Because of the schedule changes made to accommodate the Olympics, the team selections were pushed back roughly two weeks. The first eight players on the U.S. team were finalized on Aug. 28 after The Barclays – first of the four tournaments of the FedEx Cup Playoffs – concluded in New York.

U.S. captain Davis Love III will announce three of his four captain’s picks on Sept. 11, after the BMW Championship concludes at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis. The final pick will be announced on Sept. 25, at The Tour Championship in Atlanta. This is a change from previous Ryder Cups, and there’ll be more suspense with the captain’s picks announced so close to the matches themselves.

Darren Clarke, the European captain, got the top four players off the European Tour point list and the next five off the World point list after the Race to Dubai’s Made in Denmark tournament that concluded on Aug. 28. That leaves him just three captain’s picks, to be made in early September.

Though Europe has won the last three stagings of the competition, Clarke’s team figures to be a younger one this time and will be without Ian Poulter, always an emotional leader of his team’s Ryder Cup effort.

Poulter is in a four-month long rehab from a foot ailment which caused his to drop out of tournament play in June. Poulter, though, will be one of Clarke’s vice captains, the others being Thomas Bjorn, Padraig Harrington, Paul Lawrie and Sam Torrance.

The U.S. has a 25-13-2 edge in the series but hasn’t won the Ryder Cup since 2008 and has triumphed only three times since 1999. The last loss on home soil, at Medinah, was especially deflating. The U.S. had a huge meltdown in the concluding singles matches and went down to a 14 ½-13 ½ defeat.

Love has four vice captains – Minnesota native Tom Lehman, Jim Furyk, Steve Stricker and Tiger Woods. The staffs from both teams will make appearances at Hazeltine to arrange practice sessions for the players in early September.

As for the club, 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.

Tom Bendelow was the original designer of Medinah’s No. 3 course, which was the site of the 2012 Ryder Cup and most of the tournaments played at the club, but other designers made updates over the years to ready the course for big events. 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.

FedEx Cup hopes are on the line for Streelman, Donald at BMW Championship

Only three events remain in the PGA Tour’s 2015-16 season, and all will have very select fields.

This week’s BMW Championship, at Crooked Stick in Carmel, Ind., will feature the 70 survivors in the FedEx Cup Playoffs. The top 30 after it’s over advance to The Tour Championship Sept. 22-25 at East Lake in Atlanta and then the season concludes with the Ryder Cup – the high-profile competition between 12-player teams from the U.S. and Europe – Sept. 29 through Oct. 2 at Hazeltine National in Minnesota.

The BMW could well be the season-ender for both Wheaton’s Kevin Streelman and Luke Donald, the former Northwestern star. They remained in the top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings after the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston concluded on Monday but need great weeks at Crooked Stick to be among the 30 who will tee it up at East Lake, where a $10 million bonus awaits the playoff champion.

Donald was bypassed in the selections for Europe’s Ryder Cup team and Streelman is a highly unlikely candidate for the four wild card spots available on the U.S. squad. Captain Davis Love III will announce three after the BMW Championship and his final one after The Tour Championship.

Both Streelman and Donald survived the final 36-hole of the season at the Deutsche Bank Championship, but that was about all. Streelman tied for 57th place and Donald tied for 65th. Both dropped in the FedEx standings because of those finishes, Donald from 53rd at the start of the week to No. 60 and Streelman from 57th to No. 63.

Still, both are assured big paydays this week, as there’s no 36-hole cut in the BMW Championship. The 70 qualifiers will share the hefty $8 million prize fund — the purse at all four of the playoff events.

The BMW Championship, conducted by the Chicago-based Western Golf Association, rotates in and out of Chicago every other year. Last year it was played at Conway Farms, in Lake Forest, with Jason Day winning the title. It’ll be back at Conway in 2017 and the only other future sites that have been determined are Aronimink in Pennsylvania in 2018 and Medinah in 2019.

Crooked Stick, a Pete Dye design in the Indianapolis suburbs, hosted the BMW Championship in 2012 with Rory McIlroy winning. A suddenly revived McIlroy also won the Deutsche Bank title on Monday after putting a new putter in his bag and hiring a new putting coach. Going 19-under-par in his final 69 holes he overcame a six-stroke deficit in the final round to climb to No. 4 in the FedEx standings.

Any player ranked in the top five who wins at East Lake will also pocket the $10 million bonus. The top three going in are Patrick Reed, Day and Dustin Johnson while Adam Scott is No. 5. If none of the top five win The Tour Championship the top prize will be up for grabs.

As for Streelman and Donald, both will have to play their best at Crooked Stick and hope that’ll be good enough to get into the top 30. Dramatic climbs in the standings are possible in the volatile scoring system, however. Billy Hurley, for instance, improved from 77th to 51st with a strong showing at Boston and Hudson Swafford climbed from 82nd to 61st.

Here and there

The start of the Web.com Tour Playoffs will coincide with the BMW Championship. First of the four events, which bring together the top 75 from the Web.com circuit and those ranked between 125 and 200 on the PGA Tour, is the DAP Championship at Canterbury in Cleveland. The field includes Elmhurst’s PGA veteran, Mark Wilson, and former University of Illinois golfers Luke Guthrie and D.A. Points.

Bloomington’s Todd Mitchell won the 24th Illinois State Mid-Amateur for the fifth time last week at Flossmoor Country Club. The fifth title pulled Mitchell into a tie with Jim Frisina for most wins in a single state amateur championship. Frisina won the Illinois State Amateur five times between 1942 and 1958.

Next big event on the state calendar is the 30th Illinois State Senior Amateur, which runs Monday through Wednesday (SEPT 12-14) at Bloomington Country Club. Mistwood’s McWethy Cup is also on tap for Monday in Romeoville.

Roads to the Ryder Cup offer some interesting playing options

So, you’ve been lucky enough to wangle tickets to the 41st Ryder Cup at Hazeltine? Lucky you – and you might benefit still further by enjoying some of the courses on your way to and from Chaska, MN.

Chicago golfers have a couple options on how to drive to Hazeltine. You could drive along Lake Michigan, going through Kenosha and Milwaukee before heading west through the heart of Wisconsin. Or, you could journey through Illinois along Routes 90 and 94, going through Rockford and Madison. The golf options are better going through Rockford but, either way, there are good public-accessible courses along the way that comfortably affordable.

Here’s a guide to playing possibilities. Their proximity to the highways leading to Hazeltine were a high priority in their selection.

VIA KENOSHA AND MILWAUKEE

A good first stop could be Ives Grove, a 27-hole facility in Sturtevant, just over the Illinois line. It’s got an abundance of bunkers (110, to be exact), but walking is allowed and the course is affordable. Even at weekend prime time for riders the fee is under $50. And, if for some reason Ives Grove doesn’t work out, there’s nearby Browns Lake in Burlington, which has been around since 1921. Both are managed by H&H Fairways.
INFO: hhfairway.com, brownslakegc.com or ivesgrovegl.com.

The second stop was chosen for location more than anything else. Brookfield Hills, in Brookfield, is 15 miles west of Milwaukee and it couldn’t be any closer to I-94. The course touches the east-bound lanes of the interstate. This family-owned course has been open since 1971 but it’s not a full-length layout. A par 62, it measures only 4,926 yards but there’s still some challenging holes.
INFO: brookfieldhillsgolf.com.

A suggested third stop is much different than the first two. Lake Mills has been challenging golfers for 85 years. Located on Main Street in the town of the same name, Lake Mills is a 6,745-yard par-72 layout with a busy dining spot, Mulligan’s on the Green. It’s 28 miles from the golfing hotbed of Madison.
INFO: lakemillsgolfclub.com.

You can’t get through the Madison area without finding a good course close to your route. Lake Windsor, in Windsor, is a 6,390-yard, par-72 layout that opened in 1961 and has been famly-owned since 2005. It’s supplemented by an impressive clubhouse that provides full service dining.
INFO: lakewindsor.com.

As is the case while cruising through Madison, you won’t have any trouble finding a good course in the Wisconsin Dells area. Probably the best known is Trappers Turn, which is blessed with 27 holes (the Arbor, Canyon and Lake nines) all jointly designed by two-time U.S. Open champion Andy North and Roger Packard. It’s one of the top golf facilities in the Badger State.
INFO: TrappersTurn.com.

Stillwater, MN., just over the Wisconsin line, is a three-hour drive from the Dells and it features StoneRidge, one of the best public courses in Minnesota. It’s a links-style Bobby Weed design that opened to the public in 2000.
INFO: stoneridgegc.com.

VIA ROCKFORD AND MADISON.

You don’t even leave Illinois before hitting Aldeen, in Rockford. It’s one of the best public courses in the state and hosted the Illinois State Amateur in 2013. The course, designed by Dick Nugent, is celebrating its 25th anniversary. Measuring 7,131 yards from the tips, it’s a real test for even the best players.
INFO: aldeengolfclub.com.

Barely an hour’s drive from Rockford along Rt. 90 is Madison, home to a wide range of quality layouts. None are better than University Ridge, which is on the edge of both Madison and the town of Verona. A Robert Trent Jones Jr. design that opened in 1991, it’s the home course for both the men’s and women’s teams of the University of Wisconsin and this year it became a Champions Tour site when host Steve Stricker brought the American Family Insurance Championship there in June.
INFO: universityridge.com.

On to the Wisconsin Dells and another great layout – Wild Rock. It’s connected to the Wilderness Resort, which means there’s some stay and play options available. Wild Rock was designed by Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, the same architectural team that designed another Wisconsin course, Erin Hills. That layout will host the U.S. Open in 2017.
INFO: wildrockgolf.com.

Golf options dwindle after leaving the Dells, but Routes 90 and 94 split at the town of Tomah, and that’s a good stop-off point because the Hiawatha Golf Club is locate there. It’s a good gathering place for the local golf enthusiasts with its 6,550-yard course, the front nine of which was built in 1959 and the back in 1994.
INFO: golfhiawatha.com.

Hudson is the last town in Wisconsin before you enter Minnesota and it has a course well worth checking out. Troy Burne is a Tom Lehman Signature Design. Lehman will be one of the assistants for U.S. captain Davis Love III at the Ryder Cup. Troy Burne features 120 bunkers and is known for its consistently fine conditioning.
INFO: troyburne.com.

Cross into Minnesota and more good courses are available. One of the best is Prestwick, in Woodbury. At 6,876 yards from the back tees with large undulating greens and many elevated tees, this layout is made for the serious player.
INFO: Prestwick.com.

These courses were chosen in large part because of their proximity to the route to Hazeltine. If you have time to stray a bit from that route there’s many great courses available to you – especially in Wisconsin. Among them are Brown Deer, in Milwaukee; Hawks Landing, Madison; Glen Erin, Janesville; Lawsonia, Green Lake; Morningstar, Waukesha; Sentry World, Stevens Point; Caste Course at Northern Bay, Arkdale; and Oaks, Cottage Grove.
INFO: Check out the Wisconsin Golf Trail, golfwisconsin.com.

First-ever renovation worked wonders at Arlington Lakes

Arlington Lakes has been an 18-hole facility operated by the Arlington Heights Park District since 1979, so it was due for its first renovation. The result, though, was far beyond most expectations when the course re-opened on July 1.

The course had been closed for 13 months to allow architect Mike Benkusky to completely renovate a layout that was designed by the late St. Charles architect David Gill on what had been a Nike Missile Base. The course is built on just 90 acres so expanding beyond the 5,432 yard, par 68 specifications wasn’t possible.

What Benkusky could do, though, was modernize the layout and make it much more versatile for its players. That was done in two major steps: Benkusky flipped the nines, allowing for the creation of three- and six-hole loops for shorter rounds at certain times, and the extraordinary number of bunkers was reduced by two-thirds.

Tim Govern, operations manager for Arlington Lakes, is intrigued by the possibilities that the loops will create. He envisions more players – those with some time constraints — being enticed by the option of playing just three or six holes. Nos. 3, 6, 9 and 18 all come back to the clubhouse. Such playing options will be priced accordingly, and attractively. For example, a quick three holes would cost just $5 for juniors and seniors on weekdays.

“We’ll probably never be the most prestigious course to play, but we’ll always hope to be a course for fun golf at fantastic rates,’’ said Govern. “The course is finally going to be what it should be – a great, community municipal course.’’

Govern was understandably excited about that aspect of the new look but players teeing off during and immediately after the July 1 grand opening also were delighted by the well-conditioned putting surfaces, nine of which are brand new, and the increased number of tee placements. The course also has wall to wall cart paths now, allowing for play in more inclement weather conditions.

The new loops and the terrific greens are big improvements, but the bunker reduction will be the most appreciated aspect of the renovation for players who visited the course frequently in the past. It certainly is a boost for superintendent Al Bevers.

“We went from 106 traps to 37, or from 97,000 square feet (of bunker space) to 37,000 square feet,’’ said Bevers. That makes for much less maintenance work and much less frustration for more casual players.

Gill’s original design likely called for more bunkers to offset the inevitable lack of length. They did serve the purpose of making a short course more challenging, but that had drawbacks as well.

“The crazy bunkers that we had before were just too darn difficult for the clientele,’’ said Govern. Many of the surviving bunkers are now adorned with fescue edges.

Bevers and a five-man crew handled the bulk of the work, which also included the adding of a half-acre of lake space to provide better drainage. Seventy trees were also removed and some new ones were planted in strategic places.

As far as the rotation goes, Benkusky did much more than switch the nines. He also created three new holes (Nos. 7, 8 and 9) to improve the flow of play and congestion around the clubhouse, but water still comes into play on nine of the holes. The clubhouse also was upgraded in the $2.4 million project with a new patio area the most eye-catching improvement.

“This offers a lot for everybody,’’ said Benkusky. “We hope it brings the families out.’’

Based in Lake in the Hills, Benkusky has worked on a wide variety of Chicago area courses since opening his design firm in 2005. Among them are public facilities Ft. Sheridan, Brae Loch, Countryside and Red Tail and privates Hawthorn Woods, Itasca and St. Charles Country Club – the site of this year’s Illinois State Amateur.