Life will change dramatically for Chicago’s only member of PGA Tour Champions after this week’s season-ending Charles Schwab Cup Championship in Phoenix. Jeff Sluman will enter the retirement phase of what has been a great 40-year career on both the PGA Tour and the 50-and-over circuit. “I’m not going to go full-time anymore after this…
Daily Herald Columns
Hopfinger has begun his run for a PGA Tour card
This is a local golf success story that is still in the making. Lake Forest’s Brad Hopfinger put himself in position to earn his PGA Tour card in the last eight weeks of his tour’s season. He has another full year before he can join golf’s premier circuit, but his chances of making it to…
Unexpected problems didn’t faze Biancalana at Senior PGA tourney
In this chaotic year for scheduling golf tournaments the Illinois PGA did the best of the three major local organizations. The pandemic forced the cancelation of the Western Golf Association’s two national junior championships and the Chicago District Golf Association had to call off its two biggest events – the Illinois State Amateur and Chicago…
Healy wins, but Paeglow is IPGA Senior Player of the Year
It’ll be the senior members of the Illinois PGA in the spotlight this week as the Chicago golf tournament season wraps up. The IPGA Senior Players Championship concluded on Tuesday at Twin Orchard, in Long Grove, and the key players in it headed for Port St. Lucie, FL., for the Senior PGA Professional Championship,…
PGA’s fall tournaments have been good to rookie Doug Ghim
The PGA Tour’s top stars generally sit out the fall tournaments after the FedEx Cup Playoffs are over. That’s been the case again this season, even though the Masters – rescheduled from April until Nov. 12-15 because of pandemic issues – is still to be played. Doug Ghim, the PGA Tour rookie from Arlington…
Revised Players tourney will determine IPGA Player of the Year
In moves that are sure to bring more drama, the Illinois PGA will unveil a new format for its Players Championship next week at Conway Farms, in Lake Forest. Only the top 35 players on the season-long Bernardi Player of the Year standings, plus the host professional, received invitations to the 36-hole event that…
Tournament golf — locally and nationally — is far from over this fall
At least there’s one nice thing that came out of this dreaded pandemic. Thanks to all the postponements from March through June, it necessitated an extension of the tournament season for golfers. Now the schedule of big events will carry all the way in December. In previous years the Chicago area campaign concluded with the…
Chaussard goes after third straight IPGA Match Play title
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The Illinois PGA Match Play Championship had long been played in May as the section’s first major championship of the season, and the site was traditionally Kemper Lakes in Long Grove. This week, though, it’ll be the IPGA’s third major of the year and it won’t be…
Chicago’s Korn Ferry stop is latest tour event to include a pro-am
Slowly but surely the pro golf tours are getting back to normal. PGA Tour Champions, the 50-and-over circuit, will be the first major one to welcome spectators at this week’s Sanford International in South Dakota. The PGA Tour itself, which has gone 14 straight weeks without fans since ending a three-month break over pandemic…
Small back on top in time for another Illinois PGA title run
These have been quiet times for Mike Small, but that’s changing. The University of Illinois men’s coach is back in the spotlight going into the Illinois PGA Championship, which tees off on Monday on Medinah Country Club’s No. 1 course. Small, 54, has won the tournament 12 times and there’s no reason to think he…