Chicago Area Golf

The first BMW Championship played at Conway Farms in Lake Forest was voted Tournament of the Year on the PGA Tour. That was in 2013. When the FedEx Cup Playoff event returns this month it will be even better. Work done by both the Western Golf Assn. and the Conway membership ensures that. Conway was…

The Illinois State Amateur was played for the 85th time in July, and this time it was more than a golf tournament. It was a showcase. If nothing else, we should take away one thing from this State Am: the state of amateur golf in Illinois is at its highest level in many, many years….

Strange? Memorable? Different? Those are all apt descriptions for the 66th playing of the Illinois Open. My first year covering the Illinois Open was in 1975 – the last year in which the Illinois PGA and Chicago District Golf Assn. were joint managers of the event — and I’ve been to virtually every championship since…

What have you done golf-wise since dropping your last putt in the Chicago area in 2014? Not as much as me, I’ll bet. This has been an extraordinary “offseason.’’ It began in November when we made a series of golf/travel-writing stops – a few days here, a few days there — at some very choice…

Call it a changing of the guard, or just a transition. I’ve always thought that change was generally a good thing, and there’s certainly been plenty of that going on within the Chicago golf community in the last few months. It started with the departure of Michael Miller, long-time executive director of the Illinois PGA…

The Illinois PGA is in limbo heading into the first big month of the Chicago golf season. There’s no doubt about that. Two key staffers, Jared Nowak and Lauren Moy, left the section during the winter and executive director Michael Miller replaced them both. Robert Duke took Nowak’s place as tournament director and Catherine Wagner…

Over the course of the last year or so I’ve been asked my views from a variety of people – inside and outside the Chicagoland Golf community – about the state of the golf industry. They were, of course, triggered by the general state of the economy. Because golf is an activity requiring the spending…

This golf season, of course, is far from over. We diehards know that fall golf is the best. Still, the conclusion of the PGA Championship does mean the end of the major championships and a good time to reflect on developments from the 2014 season. SO, IF YOU had asked me I would have told…

Last month’s 65th Illinois Open revealed one change – the addition of First Tee of Chicago as a charity partner. More changes are coming, and they’re likely to be just as good. The Illinois Open officially dates back to 1950, when Felice Torza won at Onwentsia, but tournaments of the same name were played as…

July will be a huge tournament month for Chicago’s best golfers, but especially for the women. The biggest spectator event for the women comes first – the new International Crown at Caves Valley in Owings Mills, Md., from July 21-27. This is big for Chicago in particular, because the international team event’s second staging –…