The Ladies PGA Tour added a major championship to its 2017 schedule on Tuesday, and it’s one with a very untraditional format.

Commissioner Mike Whan announced that the first LPGA Senior Championship will be played July 10-12 – Monday through Wednesday – at French Lick Resort in southern Indiana. Most pro golf events conclude four days of competition on Sunday, but it was difficult to find weekend dates for the LPGA’s senior members, former stars now in the 45-plus age group.

To compensate the LPGA – at the suggestion of French Lick chairman Steve Ferguson and director of golf Dave Harner – put two of its smaller tour events together. The LPGA’s developmental circuit, the Symetra Tour, will hold a 54-hole event on French Lick’s Donald Ross Course from July 7-9 immediately before 81 senior members battle for a $600,000 purse the next three days on the acclaimed Pete Dye Course. There will be no cut in the senior event. The Symetra tournament, also played at 54 holes, will have a $200,000 purse with $30,000 going to the champion.

The Ross was the site of Walter Hagen’s win in the 1924 PGA Championship and victories by Mickey Wright and Betsy Rawls in the LPGA Championships of 1959 and 1960. The biggest event on the much younger Dye layout — it opened in 2009 — was Colin Montgomerie’s victory in the 2015 Senior PGA Championship.

Scheduling gets even more complex for senior women than just the assignment of weekday dates. The first LPGA Senior Championship follows one of the circuit’s regular major championships – the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship Sept. 30 to July 2 at Olympia Fields Country Club — and the U.S. Women’s Open will be played the following week at Trump National in New Jersey.

“This creates a great opportunity for us to showcase our stars of yesterday, the players who really built this game, and our stars of tomorrow,’’ said Whan, who said the creation of the new event was over six months in the planning stage.

It also could mean the end of The Legends Championship, a previous brainchild of the French Lick staff who had been working with Legends Tour executive director Jane Blalock. Blalock created that circuit – acknowledged as the “official’’ senior tour of the LPGA – in 2000. The LPGA and Legends, though, operated independently.

“We’ve had a close relationship with the Legends Tour for four years,’’ said Harner. “We felt this was the right thing to do, to give the senior ladies a major event.’’

Last year’s Legends Championship, in which Scotland’s Trish Johnson whipped defending champion Juli Inkster in a dramatic six-hole playoff, had a purse of $325,000. In its four-year run The Legends Championship couldn’t get any television coverage. The first LPGA Senior Championship will have six hours of coverage on The Golf Channel. Both French Lick and The Golf Channel have multi-year agreements with the LPGA on the new senior tournament.

The Legends Hall of Fame is located at the West Baden Springs Hotel in French Lick, and the Legends Championship has been the biggest event on Blalock’s circuit. For now, the tourney announced on Tuesday mainly amounts to a name change but the future of The Legends Championship is in doubt. Harner said it won’t be held at French Lick if it is held at all.

In addition to Inkster and Johnson, the Legends roster has included such prominent names as Nancy Lopez, Beth Daniel, Patty Sheehan, Joanne Carner, Jan Stephenson and Pat Bradley.

Harner is hopeful that Annika Sorenstam will end her long break from competition and join those stars at French Lick. Sorenstam wasn’t mentioned at Tuesday’s televised announcement, however. Michelle McGann, a seven-time LPGA winner, represented the senior players.

“This is amazing,’’ said McGann. “I went on tour when I was 18 and never thought I’d be playing in an LPGA Senior Championship. I’m so excited. French Lick has a fabulous golf course, and the people there have been so supportive of our Legends Tour.’’

Senior women had been the lone segment of the golf population largely ignored by the sport’s organizing groups until recently. The U.S. Golf Association announced in 2015 that it would conduct at U.S. Women’s Senior Open, but that event won’t debut until 2018 at Chicago Golf Club.

BIT AND PIECES: Tiger Woods announced that he would play in the PGA Tour’s Genesis Open Feb. 13-19 at Los Angeles’ Riviera Country Club. It was the site of his first PGA Tour event in 1992, when Woods was a 16-year old amateur.

Berwyn’s Nicole Jeray, long the only Chicago player on the LPGA Tour, could wind up playing in both the Symetra and senior events at French Lick. She’s one of only two players to earn money on all three women’s circuits in 2016. Jeray has full status on the Symetra in 2017 and expects to get into most of the Legends tournaments as well, but she fears conflicts with the accompanying pro-ams may limit her to playing one or the other tournament at French Lick. The first LPGA Senior Championship also includes pro-ams on the Friday and Saturday of the Symetra tournament.

Deerfield’s Vince India has regained his place on the PGA’s Web.com Tour. He finished third in last week’s qualifying school in Winter Garden, FL.

Chicago-based Wilson Sporting Good has been at least temporarily thwarted in its well-publicized bid to launch its new Triton driver. The club’s development was the focal point of a nationally-televised golf reality series, but the U.S. Golf Association says the club doesn’t conform to its rules. Wilson is working to correct the issue.

The John Deere Classic, despite having new dates and a weakened field due to the return of golf to last summer’s Olympics, was named the PGA Tour’s Tournament of the Year.

Illinois men’s coach Mike Small will be inducted into the Golf Coaches Hall of Fame on Wednesday night in Norman, OK.

Tournament organizers have announced that tickets are now on sale for the NCAA Championships at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove; the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship; the John Deere Classic at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, IL; and the U.S. Open at Erin Hills in Wisconsin.

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 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.

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.

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.

Mike Small considers himself a coach first and a still-competitive player second. Next week, however, those roles may be blurred a bit.

The University of Illinois men’s coach goes after his 12th title in the 94th Illinois PGA Championship. The event begins its three-day run on Monday on the South Course at Olympia Fields Country Club.

Next month Small returns to Olympic Fields as a coach, as his Illini host the 11th playing of the OFCC/Fighting Illini Invitational. It’ll be a highlight of the fall season for the Illini, who will also make another Chicago appearance on Oct. 9-10 in the Northern Intercollegiate event at Beverly Country Club.

First things first, though. Small has won his 11 IPGA titles since 2001 and he captured the crown both times during that stretch when it was played at Olympia Fields, of which he is a member. He is in the rare position of not being the defending champion this time, however. Small tied for seventh in last year’s IPGA Championship at Medinah’s No. 1 Course. Jim Billiter, assistant pro at Merit Club in Libertyville, won the title there.

Small, who won his last two IPGA Championships back-to-back in 2013 and 2014, goes into this one standing second to Glen View’s Kyle Bauer in the section’s player-of-the-year race. Small has been player-of-the-year three times, but a limited tournament schedule related to his coaching duties has hampered his chances in recent years.

Bauer leads the standings, largely off his win in the first of the section’s four major events – May’s IPGA Match Play Championship — while Small’s tournament season has featured a tie for ninth in the Illinois Open and a tie for 43rd on the national level at the U.S. Senior Open.

Two former players of the year, Medinah’s Travis Johns and White Eagle’s Curtis Malm, are third and fourth in the standings behind Bauer and Small. Maximum points are on the line in the IPGA Championship, so next week’s results will go a long way to determining this year’s player of the year.

Donald got hot at the right time

Luke Donald, the former Northwestern star and world’s No. 1-ranked golfer, couldn’t have picked a better time to play his best tournament of this PGA Tour season. He finished solo second, behind 21-year old South Korean Si Woo Kim, in the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., on Sunday.

The Wyndham was the last tournament offering FedEx Cup points. The lucrative four-tournament FedEx Cup Playoffs begin on Thursday with The Barclays at Bethpage Black in New York.

In finishing second Donald improved his place in the FedEx Cup standings from No. 99 to No. 48. No player made a bigger climb in the Wyndham, which had a field full of players hoping to position themselves for a playoff run.

By getting to No. 48 Donald seems assured of spots in the first three FedEx events – the Barclays, the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston and the BMW Championship — played this year at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis. All three are $8 million tournaments. Only the top 125 on the FedEx list qualified for The Barclays. The top 100 after Sunday’s finish advance to the Deutsche Bank and the top 70 after that compete in the BMW Championship.

Not only did Donald climb in the standings last week, he also made a hole-in-one during the event. That earned him a lifetime of Wyndham vacations as well as a one-week vacation for his caddie.

Here and there

Eagle Brook, in Geneva, has announced the completion of a $2.5 million improvement project that started in January. The clubhouse underwent an extensive renovation, changes were made to the golf course and a new fitness center and wellness studio were created.

Baltimore Country Club has been named the site for the 2017 and 2018 Big Ten men’s championships. A site for 2017 has not been determined.

The Arlington Amateur has been scheduled for Sept. 10-11 on Arlington Lakes’ recently-renovated course.

Deerpath, in Lake Forest, celebrated its 90th anniversary on Sunday with the event also marking the start of a master plan renovation.

John Blumenshine, playing out of Cantigny in Wheaton, was the only player under par in the 4th Chicago District Super Senior Amateur. He posted a 2-under 69 at Biltmore, in Barrington.

Next event on the CDGA schedule is the 24th Illinois State Mid-Amateur, which begins a two-day run at Flossmoor Country Club next Tuesday.

University of Illinois product Thomas Pieters is in, and former Northwestern star and world No. 1 Luke Donald is out.

That summed up Tuesday’s announcement of the European team’s three captain’s picks for the 41st Ryder Cup, coming up Sept. 27 through Oct. 2 at Hazeltine National in Minnesota. Darren Clarke, captain of Team Europe, revealed his picks in England and two of the selections – Lee Westwood and Martin Kaymer – were obvious. On a team loaded with six Ryder Cup rookies, those two provide much-needed experience.

Then it came down to Pieters, Scotland’s Russell Knox (ranked No. 20 in the world), Donald and Graham McDowell – another veteran Ryder Cupper.

Clarke ruled out Donald and McDowell, saying on The Golf Channel that “Neither is firing on all cylinders.’’ Then it came down to Pieters, from Belgium, and Knox.

“I had to go with my gut feeling,’’ Clarke said. “When I told (Pieters) he was over the moon. He’ll be a world No. 1 at some stage.’’

Pieters, 24, is one of the many budding professional stars to come through coach Mike Small’s powerhouse program at Illinois. After starring for the Illini Pieters opted to play predominantly on the European PGA Tour where he has won three times, the most recent win coming on Sunday in Denmark.

Donald, who last played the Ryder Cup at Medinah in 2012, jumped into contention with a solo second place finish two weeks ago in the Wyndham Classic. He had a dismal final round on Sunday, shooting 75 to drop 26 places into a tie for 53rd place at The Barclays – first of the four FedEx Cup Playoff events in New York.

The last day at The Barclays was also difficult for Wheaton’s Kevin Streelman. He also shot 75 after being in contention for three rounds and wound up tied for 22nd place. Both, though, remained well into the top 100 in the FedEx overall standings and are in the field for the Deutsche Bank Championship, which tees off on Friday in Boston.

Donald is No. 53 and Streelman No. 57 entering the second $8 million playoff event and they must remain in the top 70 to play in the third – the BMW Championship, which will be played Sept. 8-11 at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis.

Pieters’ Ryder Cup selection culminates a big week for ex-Illini golfers. Brian Campbell clinched his PGA Tour card for the 2016-17 season by finishing 15th on this season’s Web.com Tour money list. Thomas Detry, another Belgian, won the European Challenge Tour’s Bridgestone event in England on Sunday by a whopping 12 strokes. He opened that event with a 60 en route to claiming his first professional victory.

Ryder Cup visits Cog Hill, Wrigley

The first-ever Ryder Cup Trophy Tour, a month-long 5,000-mile journey to promote the team matches between the U.S. and European stars, will include stops at both Cog Hill, in Lemont, and Wrigley Field.

Cog Hill’s PGA Junior League will welcome the trophy on Sept. 7 and it will be at Wrigley Field Sept. 16 during the Cubs-Brewers game. A day later the trophy will be in South Bend, Ind., during the Notre Dame-Michigan State football game. Those represent three of the 20 appearances the Cup will make in 13 American cities.

IPGA, Mid-Am wrap up

The final rounds of both the 94th Illinois PGA Championship and the 24th Illinois State Mid-Amateur Championship are on tap for today (WEDNESDAY).

The IPGA Championship ends its 54-hole run on Olympia Fields’ South Course while the final 18 of the 36-hole Mid-Am concludes at Flossmoor Country Club, the tourney site for the sixth straight year.

Here and there

Emily Fletcher, the very successful coach of the Northwestern women’s team, will receive the coveted Woman of Distinction Award from the Women’s Western Golf Association at the organization’s annual meeting Oct. 6 at Indian Hill in Winnetka

Brian Payne and his wife Elizabeth, both former Northwestern golfers from Flossmoor, qualified for their respective U.S. Mid-Amateur national championships. The men’s and women’s finals will be played Sept. 10-15 at courses in Pennsylvania.

Batavia club manufacturer Tour Edge has named Australian John Craig as its executive vice president effective Jan. 1.

The American Junior Golf Association named Megan Furtney, of South Elgin, as one of 20 players in the 12-15 age group to its 15th Junior All-Star team. The team consists of players from nine states and three countries.

Nicole Jeray has long been the only Chicago area woman playing on the pro golf tours, and it hasn’t been easy for her.

Jeray, from Berywn, turned pro after a great collegiate career at Northern Illinois in 1993 and has been in the qualifying tournament for the Ladies PGA Tour on an almost annual basis. Sometimes she’s made it, sometimes not, but this week could be her biggest week of the season.

At 45 she’s already cashed checks on all three women’s tours this year and her biggest could be coming at the fourth annual Legends Championship on the Pete Dye Course in French Lick, Ind., — that circuit’s lone major championship until the U.S. Women’s Senior Open finally makes its debut at Chicago Golf Club in 2018.

Jeray has made one cut on the LPGA circuit in seven starts, cashing in for a tie for 70th place at the Marathon Classic in her last start, and she’s made two cuts in six tournaments on the Symetra Tour after making 18 in 21 starts in 2015. The Symetra — the LPGA’s version of the men’s Web.com Tour — is filled with up and coming young players, most just out of the college ranks.

In her lone Legends start of the year Jeray had a tie for 11th at the Walgreen’s Charity Classic in Phoenix in March. Cashing on all three tours is an accomplishment in itself. Rosie Jones is the only other player to do it.

The Legends circuit was kind to Jeray from the moment she turned eligible at her 45th birthday last November. She entered the Monday qualifier for a tournament in Delray Beach, FL., and got into the starting field by making a birdie on the first playoff hole, eliminating three other rivals for that spot.

In the 36-hole tournament she shot 73-66, posting five birdies in the first eight holes of her second round, to finish runner-up to Liselotte Neumann. Neumann’s 68-68 performance was 8 under par and good for a three-shot win over Jeray, who was happy to pocket $18,000 as the runner-up.

This week the stakes are much bigger. The Legends Championship offers a $325,000 purse with $37,700 going to the champion. Juli Inkster will defend her title and the field also includes such prominent players as JoAnne Carner, Jane Blalock, Patty Sheehan, Donna Caponi, Michelle McGann, Nancy Scranton, Pat Bradley and Val Skinner. In addition to Inkster past champions in the field include Lori Kane (2013) and Laurie Rinker (2014).

The schedule calls for practice rounds and a qualifying tournament on Thursday, a pro-am and the Legends Hall of Fame inductions on Friday and tournament rounds Saturday and Sunday starting at 8 a.m. Sandra Haynie and Elaine Crosby will be the inductees into the Hall, based at the West Baden Springs Hotel near the Pete Dye Course.

Banner week for the Illini

University of Illinois golfers had their moments all over the globe the last few days. Thomas Pieters was the most notable. Playing for Belgium, he finished fourth in the Olympics in Brazil on Sunday, the same day recently-turned-pro Charlie Danielson tied for 22nd in the PGA Tour’s John Deere Classic, an event that had five Illini products in the starting field.

Illini success continued on Monday. Coach Mike Small, who made the cut in the U.S. Senior Open at Scioto, in Columbus, Ohio, finished with a 70 in the rain-delayed event to finish in a tie for 43rd place and junior-to-be Nick Hardy moved into an excellent position on the first day of the U.S. Amateur at Oakland Hills in Michigan, shooting a 68 to stand tied for 14th after the first day of stroke play qualifying.

Here and there

Vince Antoniou used his home course advantage to win the 15th Chicago District Senior Amateur over Pekin’s Tim Sheppard at Wynstone, in North Barrington. They have more battles coming up, in the 24th Illinois State Mid-Amateur at Flossmoor Aug. 30-31 and the 30th Illinois State Senior Amateur at Bloomington Country Club Sept. 12-14.

Ivanhoe’s Jim Sobb captured the Illinois PGA Senior Championship, posting a 4-under-par 140 total for 54 holes at Whisper Creek, in Huntley.

A few spots are still available in the KemperClub Championship, a two-man team event that will be played Sept. 26-28 at Hawthorn Woods, The Glen Club in Glenview and Royal Melbourne in Long Grove.

The Fore the Bees outing has been scheduled for Sept. 21 at Cantigny, in Wheaton. It’ll benefit the Bayer Bee Care program and the Children’s Discovery Museum.

The fourth Chicago District Super Senior Amateur is Thursday (AUG 18) at Biltmore, in North Barrington.

Golf will be contested at the Olympic Games for the first time since 1904 beginning on Thursday. That’s also the same day the John Deere Classic – the PGA Tour’s only annual event in Illinois – tees off at TPC Deere Run in Silvis, on the outskirts of the Quad Cities.

The Olympics didn’t get the respect anticipated from the game’s top players. Six of the top 10 in the world rankings decided against going to Brazil, many citing concerns over the Zika virus. They included Jordan Spieth, who would be defending this JDC title if he hadn’t decided to take the week off altogether.

Of the four American players competing in Rio three just arrived on Monday. Bubba Watson, Matt Kuchar and Patrick Reed all played in the PGA Tour’s Travelers Championship in Hartford, Ct., which ended on Sunday. Only Rickie Fowler was in Rio for the Opening Ceremonies.

So where does that leave the JDC, which was moved from July to accommodate the Olympics?

“The Olympics has put a wedge in our schedule. It’s affected every tournament post-U.S. Open,’’ said Zach Johnson, a PGA Tour mainstay and JDC board member. “I don’t know if there’s a positive for anybody. There may not be many negatives either. It’s just different.’’

Johnson, leading off the pre-tourney media sessions on Tuesday, called the scheduling opposite the Olympics “unfortunate.’’ Normally the JDC is in July, the week before the British Open.

“You can look at it a number of ways,’’ said Johnson. “There are only two weeks left before the (FedEx Cup) Playoffs. There are only so many weeks left of Ryder Cup points. There are a lot of things at stake, so guys want to play and get some points here and there. But the Olympics touched the majors, too. It made you think about when to play and when to rest, which is more important this time of year.’’

Johnson is making his 15th straight JDC appearance and he’s been a major contender the last seven stagings that included a victory (in 2012), a playoff loss, two runner-up finishes and two ties for third.

Last week Johnson was paired the first two rounds with Jim Furyk at the Travelers Championship in Hartford, Ct. Furyk barely survived the 36-hole cut before shocking the golf world with a record 58 on Sunday. TPC Deere Run was the site of Paul Goydos’ 59 in 2010, on the same day that three-time champion Steve Stricker shot 60.

“(Low scores) are much more attainable here,’’ said Johnson. “You have three par-5s and a drivable par-4. TPC River Highlands (in Hartford) is harder top to bottom.’’

So, that could mean another low-scoring JDC. Johnson and Stricker head the field, which was supplemented by more college stars who have just entered the professional ranks than usual. They include Aaron Wise, of Oregon; Charlie Danielson, Illinois; Jordan Niebrugge, Oklahoma State; Jon Rahm, Arizona State; and Lee McCoy, Georgia. Also getting in via a sponsor’s exemption was Frankfort’s Brian Bullington, who will make his PGA Tour debut.

The 156 starters will be playing for an $4.8 million purse with Sunday’s champion receiving $864,000. The starters also include former major championship winners Angel Cabrera, Trevor Immelman, Lucas Glover, Stewart Cink and David Toms plus former JDC champions John Senden and Jonathan Byrd.

Here and there

Marty Schiene, the former Illinois Open champion and PGA Tour player, has taken on another coaching challenge. Former head coach at Chicago State and associate coach at Loyola, Schiene is now the assistant to veteran DePaul men’s coach Betty Kaufmann.

Luke Donald, who threw out the first pitch at the Cubs’ game on Tuesday, will have a celebrity partner at his annual Taste of the First Tee event. Rory McIlroy will join him for the Sept. 12 benefit for the First Tee of Greater Chicago at Medinah Country Club.

Bing Singhsumalee, a University of Illinois sophomore from Naperville, made it to the round of 32 at last week’s U.S. Women’s Amateur. Her Illini team has scheduled its second annual pro-am event Oct. 6-7 at Lincolnshire Fields, in Champaign.

Michael Natale and Steve Sawtell combined to win the inaugural Chicago District Golf Association Amateur Four-Ball Championship last week at Eagle Brook, in Geneva. The CDGA’s 15th annual Senior Amateur Championship will conclude its four-day run on Thursday at Wynstone, in North Barrington.

The Dave Pelz Scoring Schools will start at Cog Hill, in Lemont, on Aug. 24. Single day and three-day sessions are available.

Ten straight days of major tournament action in the Chicago area comes to an end on Wednesday with the conclusion of the Illinois Open at Royal Fox in St. Charles, but the break won’t be a long one.

The 114th Western Amateur tees off next week, starting with practice rounds on Monday at Knollwood Club in Lake Forest. No tournament is as physically demanding as the Western Am. There will be 18-hole rounds Tuesday and Wednesday, Aug. 2-3, before the 156-man starting field is whittled to the low 44 and ties.

Those players will go 36 holes on Thursday Aug. 4, and the top 16 will advance to match play to decide the champion. There will be two rounds of matches on Friday, Aug. 5, with the semifinals and final on Saturday, Aug. 6.

Few non-professional tournaments carry the prestige of the Western Am, and only two are older – the British Amateur, which dates to 1885, and the U.S. Amateur, which was first played in 1895. Past Western champions include Jack Nicklaus, Ben Crenshaw, Curtis Strange, Phil Mickelson, Justin Leonard and Tiger Woods.

This year’s elite invitational field has representatives from 20 countries. The defending champion is Dawson Armstrong of Brentwood, Tenn., a sophomore at Lipscomb University. Armstrong emerged the surprise champion at Rich Harvest Farms, in Sugar Grove, when he overcame Aaron Wise in a playoff that went 20 holes.

Wise went on to become the NCAA medalist and lead Oregon to the team title. He recently turned professional and will play in next month’s John Deere Classic on a sponsor’s exemption.

Six members of this year’s Western Amateur field played in the U.S. Open at Oakmont in June and nine qualified for at least one of golf’s major championships played over the last two years.

“The depth of our field is what has made the Western Amateur one of the most prestigious amateur golf championships in the world for more than a century,’’ said Vince Pellegrino, senior vice president of tournaments for the Western Golf Association.

The WGA also conducts the Western Junior and BMW Championship, a PGA Tour event coming up at Crooked Stick in Indiana in September. The Western Am, though, provides more golf than either of those. The finalists will play the equivalent of two 72-hole tournaments plus a practice round in a five-day period.

That’s what makes it special, according to Adam Wood, a junior-to-be at Duke from Zionsville, Ind. He won the Western Junior in 2012 and was a Sweet 16 qualifier in last year’s Western Am.

“We love to have longer tournaments,’’ said Wood. “The players love a format like this one. The more golf you can play, the better.’’

Local entries are headed by Northbrook’s Nick Hardy, who played in the last two U.S. Opens, was a Western semifinalist last year and won the Illinois State Amateur with a stunning 28-under-par performance last week. Also likely to contend are Arlington Heights’ Doug Ghim, a junior at Texas; Wheaton’s Tee-K Kelly, the State Am runner-up and a two-time winner of that title; and Bolingbrook’s David Cooke, the 2015 Illinois Open winner..

Here and there

Wheaton’s Kevin Streelman has the last tee time (2:15 p.m, EDT) off the first tee in the PGA Championship’s first round Thursday at Baltusrol, in New Jersey. Luke Donald, the only other player with local ties in the field, has a more attractive pairing. He’ll go off with Matt Kuchar and Danny Lee at 1:05 p.m.

Dennis Johnsen, general manager and head professional at Pine Meadow in Mundelein, has been named the recipient of the PGA of America’s National Youth Player Development Award.

Medinah will host the second playing of the Bush Cup, a Walker Cup-style match between Army West Point and Northwestern, on Oct. 14. In last year’s first Bush Cup West Point and Yale played to a tie at Winged Foot, in New York. David Feherty will receive the Bush Foundation’s Humanitarian Award at the event’s dinner.

The Illinois PGA seniors and assistants will hold stroke play events on Monday (AUG 1) at Flossmoor Country Club.

The Chicago District Golf Association will conduct qualifiers for the U.S. Mid-Amateur at Willow Crest in Oak Brook on Thursday and Cantigny, in Wheaton, on Monday. The CDGA Amateur Four-Ball Championship will also begin a four-day run at Eagle Brook in Geneva on Monday.