Could Illinois suddenly be emerging as a hotbed for PGA Tour players? That seems unlikely, but look what happened in the first few weeks of the PGA Tour and Senior PGA Tour seasons.

Mark Wilson, an Elmhurst resident, won the Sony Open in Hawaii in the PGA Tour’s first full-field tournament of 2011, then captured the Waste Management Phoenix Open in his third start.

Wilson, who wanted to keep playing, ran out of gas in his next tournament — the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Still, no problem.

D.A. Points, raised in Pekin and a collegiate star at the University of Illinois, won his first PGA Tour event at Pebble Beach. Not only did he win the pro event, he teamed with comedian Bill Murray, who grew up in Wilmette, to capture the pro-am division.

And then there was Jeff Sluman. The long-time Burr Ridge resident was at the top of the leaderboard in the Champions Tour’s Allianz Championship in Boca Raton, Fla., until Tom Lehman rolled in a birdie putt on the final green. Sluman wound up as the runner-up on the same day that Points and Murray celebrated their victories.

When the dust had cleared Wilson, off his two victories, and Points stood one-two in the FedEx Cup standings, making them — at the moment — the front-runners for the $10 million bonus that’ll be paid out after the PGA Tour’s playoff series concludes in October.

Wilson shot three 72s and missed the cut at Pebble Beach, but he’ll likely be heard from again. He committed to the eight tournaments that immediately followed his win at Phoenix. And both he and Points qualified for their first Masters appearance in April.

So, chances of both being heard from again soon appear good.

“I see the snowstorm in Chicago and it’s like, why go back there?” Wilson said after beating Jason Dufner in a two-hole Monday playoff at TPC Scottsdale. “There’s no reason. I’m just enjoying the ride, and I’ll ride this train as long as I can.”

Wilson, 36, earned his first berth in April’s Masters with his victory in Hawaii and his second win got him into the World Match Play Championship as well as a World Golf Championship stop at Doral in Miami. Getting into those big money events drastically changed Wilson’s schedule..

“I’ll play through Bay Hill, then take the week off before the Masters,” he said.

Two of the other stops before the Masters are the Honda Classic, which Wilson won in 2007, and the Mayakoba Classic, which he won in 2009. Those were Wilson’s only PGA Tour wins prior to his explosion in the last three weeks.

Wilson grew up in Menominee Falls, Wis., and is an avid Packers’ fan. But he and his wife Amy settled in the Chicago area several years ago. The couple and their two young children, Lane and Cole, are enjoying life on the road now but when he’s not on tour he practices regularly at Cog Hill in Lemont.

Both of Wilson’s recent wins came in tournaments with schedule difficulties. He needed to play 36 holes on the final day in Hawaii and frost delays created a rare Monday finish in Phoenix. Because of the frost he played four holes on Thursday, 28 on Friday, four on Saturday, 30 on Sunday and six (two in the playoff) on Monday.

A nine-foot birdie putt enabled Wilson to finish off Dufner, a champion in Chicago in 2006 when he won the Nationwide Tour’s LaSalle Bank Open at The Glen Club. The win hoisted Wilson’s world ranking from 91 to 51. He ended last season as No. 230.

The Packers’ run to the Super Bowl was a distraction during his win at Phoenix.

“The saddest thing was that I couldn’t watch the first half,” said Wilson, who played until dark on Sunday. Still, he had a green and gold visor made up especially for Super Bowl week and also wore a “Cheese-head” hat during breaks between tournament rounds.

Points, meanwhile, has deeper Illinois roots.

“I grew up on the 17th hole of the local country club in (Pekin) Illinois and both my parents played and taught me the game,” he told the media in California. “To win on the PGA Tour, especially at Pebble Beach with Bill Murray — I don’t think I could even dream it up.”

The key to Points’ win came at the 14th hole of the final round, when he holed a 107-yard gap wedge for eagle. Playing with the always-clowning Murray was no problem.

“Everybody all week kept saying `you got the short end of the stick playing with Murray, He’s so crazy,”’ said Points. “I never felt that way. I kept think, why does everyone get so worked up thinking he’s this big distraction? I tried to embrace it.”

Now it’s North Shore’s turn.

The Western Golf Assn. is now in the third year of its new policy of playing its Western Amateur championship at Chicago courses. After a 28-year run at Michigan’s Point O’ Woods the WGA took the Western Am to Conway Farms, in Lake Forest , in 2009 and Skokie, in Glencoe, in 2010.

History-wise, North Shore — which will host the tourney from Aug. 1-6 — is very much similar to Skokie. Both hosted long-ago U.S. Opens, Skokie in 1922 when Gene Sarazen was the champion and North Shore in 1933 when Johnny Goodman became the last amateur to win that coveted title. North Shore also hosted the 1928 Western Open (a brothers’ duel in which Abe Espinosa beat Al) and the U.S. Amateurs of 1939 (won by Marvin “Bud” Ward) and 1983 (won by Jay Sigel).

Like Skokie, North Shore underwent a renovation long after the respected British firm of Colt, MacKenzie and Allison did the original design work for the course’s opening in 1924. Rick Jacobson, the Libertyville architect who caddied at North Shore in the 1970s, played the pivotal role in the club’s Strategic Presentation Plan that began in 1994.

The change in venue doesn’t mean much to defending champion David Chung, a Stanford University senior from Fayetteville, N.C.

“I don’t mind coming back to a different course at all,” said Chung. “It levels the playing field, having limited knowledge of the course. I don’t know much about North Shore, but I have heard it’s a demanding course similar to Skokie. The way I see it, if you’re playing the best golf in the field you win — no matter which course the tournament is on.”

Well said, but Chung is a different player this time around. He’s more seasoned, for one thing. After his win at Skokie Chung went all the way to the final of the U.S. Amateur before losing to Peter Uihlien. The runner-up showing got Chung into the Masters, but he didn’t survive the 36-hole cut. He did, however, post a scorching round on his school’s home course later on, tying the Stanford course record with a 61.

But, though, he’s more battle-tested, Chung isn’t swinging the same — on purpose. Despite his success over the last two seasons he decided to undergo a swing change in an effort to better prepare him for the PGA Tour.

“The professional game is different than the college game in that it rewards a different sort of player,” explained Chung. “The college player can definitely compete with the pros when he’s playing well, and can even win on tour. However, where the pro is different is that his game is more mature. He’s more consistent day in and day out and always has control of the golf ball….I’m working to maximize my control and distance by increasing my torque on my backswing and having more unity between my body and arms on my downswing. Basically I”m swinging in more of a `together’ motion.”

Regardless of how he’s swinging, Chung will have to be at his best to win the title again. As usual, the Western field is loaded — and this one may be even more so than most years. The early entries include No. 1-ranked amateur Uihlein, Kent State’s John Hahn who won the Western Am at Conway Farms and Patrick Rodgers, Chung’s freshman teammate. Rodgers won the Western Junior last year and could defend that title since he would still be 19 by tournament time. Rodgers, though, opted to skip his title defense to play at North Shore.

Geography-wise that’s not a big difference for Rodgers. For the first time since 1928 the WGA is playing all three of its championships in the Chicago area, so he’d be coming to Chicago anyway. The Junior will be played at Beverly and the PGA Tour’s BMW Championship returns to Cog Hill.

Also teeing it up at North Shore will be Russell Henley, a University of Georgia golfer who won the Stadion Classic on the Nationwide Tour this year, and Scott Langley, the 2010 NCAA champion for Illinois. For some local flavor there’s Vince India, the Illinois Amateur champion from Deerfield and Big Ten player-of-the-year for Iowa.

Frequently dubbed “the Masters of amateur golf,” the Western Am is a grueling test. It begins with the entire field playing two rounds of stroke play competition, then the low 44 and ties go 36 more on Day 3 to decide the 16 qualifiers for the match play portion of the tournament.

The Western’s “Sweet 16” have included some great talents over the years. Twenty-nine of the last 35 PGA Tour players-of-the-year were “Sweet 16” qualifiers. So were 12 of the top 20 on the PGA’s career money list. Twenty-eight went on to win major championships.

The very select batch that went on to win Western Am titles include Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, Ben Crenshaw, Justin Leonard, Phil Mickelson, Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton, Lanny Watkins and Tom Weiskopf.