The Illinois PGA informally opened its tournament season this week, but it won’t be long until the section’s newest feature in the schedule kicks in. Team play will make its debut on May 13 at the first stroke play event at Schaumburg Golf Club.

This is real team play, not best ball or foursome competitions.  With nine six-player teams and a seven-tournament schedule, it more closely resembles what the LIV Golf League started doing three years ago at its tournaments.

The 10-man IPGA tournament committee invited interest from section members, then named captains based largely on last year’s Bernardi Point Standings. Those who signed up were placed in pods based on past performance and the captains drew  from each one to create nine teams of six players each.

Each player who signed up contributed to the season’s prize fund, and a few details will be finalized when they gather at Schaumburg.

“It should be pretty cool,’’ said tournament committee chairman Andy Mickelson, of Mistwood in Romeoville, “and it should be pretty lucrative for the top three teams.’’

The competitive format will be two gross best ball and the season-long competition will be held at the six stroke play events – at Schaumburg, Merit Club in Libertyville, Glen Flora in Waukegan, Oak Park in River Grove, Crystal Lake Country Club and Mt. Hawley in Peoria –and conclude at the IPGA Players Championship Sept. 30-Oct. 1 at Glen View Club.

Team captains are Roy Biancalana and Brian Carroll, both from The Hawk in St. Charles: Jim Billiter, Ivanhoe; Kyle Donovan, Oak Park; Kevin Flack, Mauh-Nah-Tee-See in Rockford; Chris French, Aldeen in Rockford; Jeff Kellen, North Shore in Glenview; Matthew Rion from Briarwood in Deerfield; and Mickelson.

The IPGA’s schedule also has two new events – the Pro-Junior at Mount Prospect on June 19 and the Pro-Veterans at Cantigny, in Wheaton, on Oct. 10. The Illinois Open, the section’s premier championship, will return to Flossmoor Country Club on Aug. 5-7.

HERE AND THERE: The University of Illinois men’s goes after its ninth straight Big Ten championship when the conference teams gather for a three-day competition at Scioto, in Columbus, Ohio, on Friday. The Illini won their last regular season tournament, the Fighting Illini Spring Collegiate at Atkins Golf Club in Urbana last week.  Sophomore Ryan Voris was the individual winner.

The Chicago area’s two local qualifiers for the U.S. Open are today (APRIL 24) at Stonewall Orchard, in Grayslake, and Monday (APRIL 29) at Cantigny. There’ll be 73 players competing for four spots in the final qualifying stage at Stonewall and 84 battling for five spots at Cantigny.

The U.S. Golf Assn. has announced 10,052 players have entered this year’s U.S. Open that concludes June 13-16 at Pinehurst, N.C. It’s the third largest turnout in the tourney’s 124-year history.

Recently announced professional changes have Jeff Kellen moving from Butler National to North Shore and Andrew Svoboda taking over at Butler.

Gene Hiser, who played for both the Cubs and White Sox, has announced the dates for two golf charity events that he’s running.  The Bill “Soup’’ Campbell Memorial Open is June 21 at Bridges at Poplar Creek, in Hoffman Estates, and the 53^rd Chicago Baseball Cancer Charities All-Star Invitational is July 18 at Twin Orchard, in Long Grove.

Tickets are on sale for the John Deere Classic, Illinois’ only annual PGA Tour event.  Two post-round concerts are also scheduled – Counting Crows on Saturday, July 6, and Lainey Wilson on Sunday, July 7.

Mistwood will host the College Learning Experience’s Dill Midwest Exposure Camp on June 18-19.  It’ll bring together 28 girls and boys who want to connect with 10 college coaches, five heading girls teams and five guiding boys teams.

 

 

 

The year’s major golf championship ended on Sunday, when Scottie Scheffler’s  last putt dropped, giving hims his second title in three years at  the Masters. Though the second of the four majors, the PGA Championship, will be played in May the third major actually begins next Monday (APRIL 22) and the Chicago area gets a taste of it just two days later.

Sound confusing? It is, until you comprehend just how big the U.S. Open is. The deadline for online registration passed last week, the day before the Masters started.

The finals of the Open will be June 13-16 on Pinehurst’s No. 2 Course in North Carolina, but a long lead-in period is needed to determine the 156 players who will compete there. Getting to the 72-hole climax is a huge accomplishment based on sheer numbers, and the final site is significant.

Pinehurst long held the record for most entries – 10,127 in 2014.  That record was broken last year when 10,187 registered for the event that concluded at Los Angeles Country Club. Numbers like that make the U.S. Open the biggest golf tournament and one of the world’s biggest sporting events in terms of participants.

No entry figure has been announced for this year yet, but it’ll be filled with very qualified competitors.  Amateurs who want to play must have a handicap index that doesn’t exceed 0.4.  Otherwise a player must be designated as a professional to get in.

Pinehurst is the new home of the U.S. Golf Association, which conducts the championship.   Pinehurst also hosted the championship in 1999 and 2005 and has more recently been declared an anchor site.  That means the Open will be back to Pinehurst in 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047.

Staging a U.S. Open is a massive project for the USGA. This year’s tourney requires 109 local qualifying sessions, all over 18 holes. The survivors and players exempt from locals will go through 36-hole final eliminations that begin May 20 in England, Japan and one U.S. site.  Nine other U.S. sites will host the final stage of qualifying on June 3 and another will be held in Canada that day. None will be played in Illinois, but three first-stage qualifiers will.

One of the early local qualifiers is next Wednesday (APRIL 24) at Stonewall Orchard, in Grayslake.  A former Illinois PGA Championship site, Stonewall will have 73 players battling for four spots in the second stage qualifiers.

A bigger local will be held April 29, when 84 players compete over the Woodside and Lakeside nines at Cantigny in Wheaton with five berths in the second stage on the line.

Still a third Illinois local will be played on the busiest day of the first stage.  On May 13 there’ll be 24 locals nation-wide, with one at Illini Country Club in Springfield. Illini CC, which will also have 84 players competing for five second stage spots, is hosting a local for the 45^th consecutive year. That encompasses every year since qualifying has been conducted, and no other club in the country can make that claim.

With about 10,000 registered entries  the chances of any hopefuls going on to win the Open proper are remote, but it has been done – by Ken Venturi in 1964 and Orville Moody in 1969.

Only six players won the Open after surviving the finals stage – Gene Littler (1961), Julius Boros (1963), Jerry Pate (1976), Steve Jones (1996), Michael Campbell (2005) and Lucas Glover (2009).

A few other U.S. Open winners have survived both local and final qualifiers at some point in their careers.  They include Lou Graham and Hale Irwin, both champions when the Open was played at Medinah; Curtis Strange, Lee Trevino, Gary Woodland and Fuzzy Zoeller.

 

 

The  88^th playing of the Masters tees off on  Thursday, and like every other staging, it’ll trigger golf enthusiasm throughout the world.  The year’s first major championship is traditionally a sign of spring. The tour players are ready for a serious test after three months of tournaments of much lesser importance. That’s just the way it is —  every year.

This Masters, though, is an unusual one from an Illinois perspective.  The local highlight of tournament week at Georgia’s Augusta National Golf Club has already taken place – and it was provided by a pair of 9-year olds.

Emory Munoz, of Lockport, and Lucy Wiertel, of Oswego, were among the very select group of youngsters nation-wide who participated in Sunday’s Drive, Chip & Putt finals. Emory was one of seven participants to earn a return trip after making the finals in 2023.

There were 10 finalists in each age group at Sunday’s nationally-televised competition, and neither Emory or Lucy could match the feat of Northbrook’s Martha Kuwahara a year ago.  She was one of the champions.  This time Emory improved from ninth in 2023 to seventh this time, and Lucy was ninth in her age group. The chance to compete at Augusta National, though, gave both the thrill of a lifetime.

This was a special year for Drive, Chip & Putt, too.  The Masters field will include the first ever Drive, Chip and Putt participant.  Akshay Bhatia, who won the PGA Tour’s Valero Texas Open in a playoff last Sunday, was in the youth event in 2014.

Local tour players couldn’t wangle a Masters invite. Northbrook’s Nick Hardy was a winner on the PGA tour last season, and that usually merits an invite.  Hardy’s win came in a two-man team competition in New Orleans, however, and that didn’t merit his first spot in the Masters. Hardy, though, had his best finish of the season – a tie for 25^th at the Valero Texas Open.

Wheaton’s Kevin  Streelman, a 45-year old tour veteran, didn’t make it, either.  He’s been slowed by a back injury suffered in February’s Pebble Beach Pro-Am and that’s hampered his play. His game may be be on the way back up, however, as he’s made three of five cuts since the injury, including the last two tour stops.

Streelman was in the news, too.  His first-round 64 at the Valspar Championship in Florida got him media attention, and the national media were intrigued by a new revolving ball marker that he introduced there.

The Masters has produced some Masters memories already for Streelman.  He won the colorful Par-3 Championship there in 2015 and played in five Masters. He made the cut in the last three appearances, from 2014-16,  with his best finish a tie for 12^th in 2015.

Arlington Heights’ Doug Ghim and Northwestern alum Dylan Wu are also PGA Tour regulars still hoping for the opportunity to make a Masters debut.

HERE AND THERE:  Tickets are already on sale for the John Deere Classic, Illinois’ only annual PGA Tour stop.  It’ll be held July 3-7 at TPC Deere Run in downstate Silvis.  The tourney’s Birdies for Charities program started this week.  Since its debut in 1971 it has raised $174 million for local charities.

The Illinois PGA will hold its first Chicago area competition on Monday (APRIL 15).  It’s the Pro-Pro-Pro Scramble, a three-man team event at Mistwood, in Romeoville.

The Chicago District Golf Assn. season opens with qualifiers for the CDGA Mid-Amateur at Maple Meadows, in Wood Dale, on April 22 and Sunset Valley, in Highland Park, on April 23.

 

 

MIAMI, Florida – The Chicago area will have a major professional golf tournament this year after all.  The LIV Golf League is returning, but not at Rich Harvest.

Jerry Rich, owner of the Sugar Grove private club that hosted LIV events in 2022 and 2023, invited the fledgling Saudi-based circuit to return this year but has since decided it’d be best to give his club members a year’s break from the distraction that hosting a pro tournament usually requires from a host club.

Rich deemed the two LIV tournaments conducted at Rich Harvest successful, and they had high profile champions.  Australian Cameron Smith won the first event and Bryson DeChambeau was the champion last year. That added to DeChambeau’s Illinois success story that is starting to rival that of Hale Irwin.

Irwin, basically retired from professional golf now, won the 1990 U.S. Open at Medinah, the 1975 Western Open at Butler National and three Champions Tour events at Kemper Lakes.

DeChambeau won 2015 U.S. Amateur at Olympia Fields, the 2017 John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run in downstate Silvis and last year’s LIV event at Rich Harvest. DeChambeau can’t defend there.

Three LIV staffers at the circuit’s stop at Trump Doral privately confirmed that the circuit is returning to Chicago this year for one of the two season-ending tournaments on the circuit’s 14-event season.

“An announcement will be coming soon,’’ said one.

Both tournaments are considered majors for LIV players and will be played in September. Last event with a site on the 2024 schedule is at West Virginia’s Greenbrier Aug. 16-18.

Dates and sites for the final two events haven’ t been announced. One is the individual championship, the other the team climax to the campaign. One source at Trump Doral said the individual final would be in the Chicago area.

Both the PGA and LIV tours had Chicago tournaments in 2023.  The PGA isn’t scheduled to return until the President’s Cup is held at Medinah in 2026.

Meanwhile, both the PGA Tour and LIV conclude their competitive tuneups for next week’s Masters on Sunday. Leader of the LIV event after Saturday’s 36-hole stop  at Doral is Spain’s Sergio Garcia, a former Masters winner who has yet to win on the LIV circuit. He’s at 9-under-par 135.  Tied for second, two strokes back, are Talor Gooch, Tyrrell Hatton, Dean Burmeister and Matthew Wolff.

“This course (Doral’s Blue Monster) and Valderrama (in Spain) are the toughest courses we’ll play this year,’’ said Garcia.  “I’m happy to be out there and try to win tomorrow.’’

 It’s a golf tradition like no other.  The Masters – first of the year’s four major championships — is coming up next week.

That means for me – and many of you – it’s time to predict the champion.  That fun competition is much more difficult in golf than any other sport. I covered my first Masters in 1986 and am sure I entered winner’s pools for years before that.  My success record isn’t impressive – only two winners, Fred Couples in 1992 and Scottie Scheffler in 2022.

This year the prognosticating is more difficult. Blame the controversial LIV Golf League for that.  The three-year old Saudi-based circuit has its detractors, at least based on the mild hate mail that I usually receive when there’s a LIV mention in one of my pieces. Some even comes from friends who should know better.

Scheffler is the comfortable choice this year, what with his March wins at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship and a runner-up last Sunday in Houston. An excellent lead-in to the year’s first major by an excellent player.

I’m going in a different direction this year, though.  I’m predicting a LIV player will win – though you’ll have to read a few more paragraphs to find out who.

LIV has the numbers.  Last year, when the PGA Tour and LIV players gathered for the first time in a big tournament, the fledgling circuit had three of the top six finishers.  Brooks  Koepka and Phil Mickelson tied for second behind Jon Rahm and Patrick Reed tied for fourth. And now Rahm is a LIV member, too, but still without an individual victory on his new tour.

LIV has 13 players in this year’s Masters.  Twelve were exempt based on the club’s rules for determining  invitees.  Augusta National selectors also gave a special invitation to Joaquin Niemann. LIV players don’t get respect in the Official World Golf Rankings, a policy that greatly diminishes their significance.

Niemann, from Chile, beat the system with strong showings in two big non-LIV events, winning the Australian Open and tying for fourth in Dubai. He won two of the first four LIV events this year as well.

The LIV roster includes seven former Masters champions and has six players who are exempt from all four of the major championships.

I also like the fact that LIV, with only 14 tournaments in 2024, has one of its biggest ones the week before the Masters.  It runs Friday through Sunday on the Blue Monster course at Trump Doral in Miami.  Finding it on TV won’t be easy, but Doral is a former PGA Tour site.

“It’s the first big boy golf course that we’ve played this year,’’ said Koepka, who followed up his Masters runner-up by winning the PGA Championship last year.  “You’ve got to be able to ball-strike it (at Doral) and ball-strike at Augusta.  That’s why it’s such good prepare.’’

Seven LIV golfers have been the champion at 10 Masters. Mickelson won in 2004, 2006 and 2010 and Bubba Watson was the titlist in 2012 and 2014. Based on their play this year they don’t have a chance this time. Charl Schwartzel (2011), Sergio Garcia (2017) and Reed (2018) don’t have much of a chance, either, but defending champion Rahm and Dustin Johnson do.

Johnson won the Masters in 2020 with a record 20-under-par score.  The only drawback was that it was during the pandemic, the event was played in the fall instead of the spring and spectators weren’t allowed on the course.

In 2017 Johnson was playing his best golf, with three wins leading into the Masters, but he took a fall while in Augusta and withdrew from the tournament a day before it started.  That freak accident still haunts him.

“Without that I’d have two green jackets instead of one,’’ he said before a small media group last week. “I had a fantastic prep going into that week. I’ve never felt unbeatable but, when I’m on the course and playing my best, I don’t feel anyone can beat me.’’

At 39 he can still play.  He dominated the LIV season in 2022, tailed off last year but has a LIV victory this season and competing against his former PGA Tour rivals again is inspiring.

“The majors are the pinnacle of the sport,’’  said Johnson, “and there’s only four times we’re all together playing now. Maybe that makes them more special.’’

That’s good enough for me. I’ve got great respect for Johnson’s talent. I’ve picked him informally to win other tournaments over the years when he didn’t do it.  Now it’s the Masters, though, and DJ’s going to win this one.