The golf version of the NCAA Championships tees off Friday at Rich Harvest Farms. The women go first in the competition that will keep the private layout in Sugar Grove a busy place until the last putt drops in the men’s tournament on May 31.

Northwestern is the “home team’’ in the women’s competition. Coach Emily Fletcher’s team starts play at 1:06 p.m. with Wildcats having tee times through 1:50 p.m. They’ll be paired with players from Miami and Kent State. The same teams will begin play at 8:36 a.m. in Saturday’s second round.

The field will be cut from 24 teams to 15 after Saturday’s play. Two more 18-hole rounds are on tap for Sunday and Monday before the field is reduced to eight teams for the two-day match play portion of the tournament, which will determine the champion. Last year Northwestern finished ninth in the stroke play portion – the school’s best NCAA showing – but came up one spot short of advancing to match play.

Illinois will be the “home team’’ in the men’s finals, which start on May 26. Coach Mike Small’s Illini had to rally in Wednesday’s final round of regional play at West Lafayette, Ind., to earn their 10th straight berth in the NCAA finals.

On the men’s side five teams advanced to the finals from each of six regionals. Illinois was in sixth place after two days of play on Purdue University’s Kampen Course but climbed into third with a strong final round on Wednesday.

“We’ve qualified for the national championship every way you can imagine for the last 10 years,’’ said Small. “This was unique because we were treading water for a day and a half and struggling.’’

This Illini team is without a senior and Nick Hardy, the Illinois State Amateur champion, sparked the final round surge at West Lafayette. The junior from Northbrook shared medalist honors in the regional with a 3-under-par 213 for the 54 holes.

While regional drama was good for Illinois it was just the opposite for Northwestern. The Wildcats narrowly missed a finals berth in a regional at Baton Rouge, La. NU tied with Jacksonville for fifth place during the regulation 54 holes but Jacksonville earned the berth in the finals on the second hole of a sudden death playoff.

Interestingly, Illinois and Northwestern had NCAA qualifiers in both the men’s and women’s competition. The NU women survived regional play while the Illini missed out. On the men’s side Illinois and Northwestern finished one-two in the Big Ten tournament but only Illini got through the regional.

The NCAA women’s finals started in 1982 and have never been played in the Chicago area. The men’s national championship was first held in 1898 and Chicago courses hosted four previous times – at Olympia Fields in 1931 and 1943, North Shore in Glenview in 1936 and Conway Farms in Lake Forest in 1997.

There was a sharp contrast between the players in Thursday’s final of the 66th Illinois PGA Match Play Championship at Kemper Lakes in Kildeer.

Both Danny Mulhearn, the head professional at Glen Oak in Glen Ellyn, and Jim Billiter, in his first year as Kemper’s head man, were past champions of the event – but that’s where the similarity ends.

Mulhearn, 50, won his title in 1998 but entered this week’s event as the No. 20 seed. Billiter, 30, was the 2015 titlist and the No. 3 seed. Mulhearn walked in all six of his matches in the four-day tournament. Billiter, who was at least 30 yards longer than Mulhearn off every tee shot, rode in all of his six matches.

Youth ended up being served, as Billiter took the $4,800 first-place check with a 1-up victory but Mulhearn left with a good feeling, too, and downplayed the walking aspect.

“It’s easier to walk, with the cart path only (policy, used when courses are softened from heavy rains),’’ said Mulhearn. “I felt good all day. Playing six rounds of golf and taking Jimmy to the 18th hole makes me feel good.’’

“Walking keeps you in rhythm,’’ said Billiter, “and I love walking.’’

But not with the physical demands that playing two matches for three straight days entails.

“Danny always walks. His club is a big supporter of the Evans Scholars (the Western Golf Association’s foundation that sends caddies to college),’’ said Billiter. “I give him credit for that. He played very steady, and that put a lot of pressure on me.’’

Mulhearn eventually cracked when his 5-iron tee shot at the par-3 seventeenth hole wound up in a bad lie in a green-side bunker. His escape shot went over the green and he chipped long on his third shot. That enabled Billiter to win the hole with a conceded par and he took a 1-up lead to the No. 18 tee.

Again showing his superior power , Billiter blasted his drive well past Mulhearn’s but his ball ended up in a bunker – one that Billiter had never reached before. He was left with a 160-yard approach against the wind after Mulhearn had put his second shot on the back of the green.

Billiter responded with the shot clinched him the tournament, his ball ending up on the front fringe of the green. After Mulhearn missed his long birdie putt Billiter lipped out a birdie try before Mulhearn conceded him a par and the match.

Billiter was an assistant pro at Merit Club, in Libertyville, when he won the tournament for the first time. He felt it was harder to win with the pressures of being the host pro but got the job done without playing his best.

He had to eliminate three-time winner Curtis Malm, of White Eagle in Naperville, 2 and 1 in Thursday morning’s semifinals to reach the championship match. Mulhearn got there with a 4 and 2 victory over Skokie’s Garrett Chaussard. The Match Play is the first of the Illinois PGA’s four major tournaments of the season. The next two are both in August — the Illinois Open and Illinois PGA Championship.

The first tee shot of 117th U.S. Open at Wisconsin’s Erin Hills course, is still five weeks away but the battle to get there got into full swing this week with one notable surprise. Northwestern freshman Everton Hawkins not only survived one of the local qualifying rounds, he was also the medalist.

The U.S. Golf Association accepted 9,485 entries – the fifth highest in history – and Hawkins was one of 8,979 who began the road to Erin Hills at the local level. There will be 114 local eliminations held across the U.S. and Canada through May 18 and 525 survivors will go to sectional play May 22 through June 5. That’s when the 156 starters at Erin Hills will be decided.

Hawkins, from Irvine, Calif., wasn’t one of Northwestern’s stars during the Wildcats’ drive to next week’s NCAA regional play but he was red hot at Midlane, in Wadsworth, on Monday. He shot a 4-under-par 66, one better than McHenry pro Peter Kindstrom, in leading four players into sectional play. Hawkins’ more-heralded NU teammates, Dylan Wu and Ryan Lumsden wound up the first and second alternates.

Others to advance to sectional play from the 72 entrants at Midlane were Park Ridge’s Anthony Albano and Andrew Hansen of Mequon, Wis. Both shot 69s.

Wu and Lumsden were first-team all-Big Ten selections and Wu had the lowest stroke average in the conference during the league season. They, along with Hawkins, will be trying to get the Wildcats into the NCAA finals next week in NCAA regional play. The men’s finals are May 26-31 at Rich Harvest Farms, in Sugar Grove.

The Midlane competition was one of three Open locals scheduled in Illinois. Illini Country Club, in Springfield, also hosted one on Monday with its 62 players largely from downstate. Shane Smith, of Godfrey, was the only one to break par. He shot a 2-under 70 and Ian Nelson, of Macomb; Gideon Smith, of Quincy; and Michael Suhre, of Edwardsville, survived a six-players-for-three-spots playoffs to become the other sectional qualifiers there. All the Illini qualifiers were professionals

Cantigny, in Wheaton, will host the other Illinois local qualifier next Monday (MAY15) with 90 players battling for five sectional berths. Illinois hopefuls don’t necessarily have to go there, however.

Vince India, the Web.com Tour player from Deerfield, for instance, will put his Open hopes on the line on Thursday at The Bull at Pinehurst Farms – a Jack Nicklaus-designed course in Sheboygan Falls, Wis., because that better fits his tournament schedule.

Here and there

The qualifiers for the women’s portion of the NCAA finals at Rich Harvest will be determined Wednesday (TODAY) with the conclusion of four 54-hole regional eliminations. Northwestern is making its bid in Albuquerque, N.M., and Illinois in Athens, Ga. The qualifiers compete at Rich Harvest from May 19-24.

Canadian Taylor Pendrith has received the third of four sponsor’s invites into next month’s Rust-Oleum Championship, a Web.com Tour stop at Ivanhoe Club. Pendrith, who played collegiately at Kent State, won the 2014 Porter Cup and was third on the Canadian Tour money list in 2015.

The Illinois PGA Match Play Championship, first of four major events on the section schedule, is near a climax at Kemper Lakes in Kildeer. The semifinals are Thursday morning with the final in the afternoon.

The Western Golf Association has announced that Sean Maruyama will attempt to become the first Western Junior champion in 76 years to successfully defend his title. Maruyama, who has made a verbal commitment to attend UCLA, plans to compete in the 100th playing of the Western Junior – the oldest national junior tournament, at Park Ridge Country Club next month.

Cantigny, the only Illinois course among the 30 selected for the U.S. Golf Association’s Play9 initiative, begins its participation on Sunday (MAY 14). Play9 events are also scheduled there on June 11, July 9, August 13, September 10 and October 8.

Chicago’s Wilson Sporting Goods will have a second season of its Driver vs. Driver competition on The Golf Channel. Deadline for inventors to enter the competition is June 4.

Kemper Lakes, for 28 years, has been a focal point for tournament golf in the Chicago area and it’ll again host the first big local tournament of the season this month. The 66th staging of the Illinois PGA Match Play Championship, however, will have some new looks.

Within the last year Kemper Lakes has completed a major bunker project and hired a head professional who is among the best players in the local ranks. Both could factor into the tournament, which starts its four-day run on May 8.

Kemper isn’t the oldest private club in the Chicago area by a long shot but its tournament history betters most of the others and the Illinois PGA has benefitted greatly from its connection, whether the club was in its public phase or after it became a private venue.

Back in its early years Kemper was a big player on the national – and even the world – stage. Its biggest event was the 1989 PGA Championship, won by Payne Stewart, but the course also hosted the 1992 U.S. Women’s Amateur, the 2001 U.S. Women’s Public Links Championship, annual Senior PGA Tour stops from 1996-2001, four Grand Slams of Golf and a Buy.com Tour event in 2002.

Now, though, its biggest event is on the local front – just as it was in the past when all the national events were also stopping by.

From 1979 until 2002 Kemper Lakes was the site of the Illinois PGA Championship. Then the club went private. Fortunately for both the club and IPGA that decision didn’t preclude their relationship for long.

Kemper was suddenly a much quieter place tournament-wise after it went private. A glimmer of the thrill-packed early years returned when the IPGA brought its best players to the facility, which is – depesnding on the whims of local politicians – located in Long Grove, Hawthorn Woods or Kildeer.

In 2006 Kemper returned to the local tournament scene as the site of the IPGA Match Play Championship. That didn’t have the impact of the IPGA Championship but the early spring dates fit the club’s schedule and helped the club retain its local profile. From the IPGA side the tournament received a huge boost in prestige by moving to Kemper Lakes. It was clearly and win-win for both parties.

The Match Play brings out most all the IPGA members who still have a competitive side. The opening day field numbers is capped at 128 players. They are seeded according to last year’s Bernardi Points standings. If the field doesn’t fill up the top seeded players receive first-round byes.

Once the shooting begins its dawn-to-dusk golf for four days with the highlight coming on Thursday, when the tourney concludes with semifinals in the morning and the championship match in the afternoon. Last year’s final saw Kyle Bauer, the 11-year head pro at Glen View Club, defeating 2010 champion Travis Johnson of Medinah 4 and 3.

Though match play golf is known for its unpredictable nature, the tournament has been won by established players most of the time since it was played at Kemper Lakes. Last year’s final was one of the more unusual, though Johns, a long ball-hitting left-handed golfer, usually had a 50-yard advantage over Bauer after their tee shots but that didn’t prevent Bauer from winning handily.

A year earlier the tourney had a surprise winner, too. That’s when Jim Billiter, a long-time assistant pro at Merit Club in Libertyville, got his game together for a march to his first big win. He beat Johns along the way, too.

“That was the only match in which I was under par,’’ recalled Billiter. “You have to play like that to hang in there with a player like Travis Johns. Otherwise it was more of a survival walk.’’

This year Billiter is no longer a Merit Club assistant. He’s the first-year head pro at Kemper Lakes. How that plays into his bid to win the title again remains to be seen but his increased knowledge of the course certainly can’t hurt.

Kemper, despite its rich history as a tournament host, hasn’t stressed playing talent in choosing its head professionals in the past. Only Emil Esposito, Kemper’s first head pro, had a notable playing resume. He was a for Illinois PGA and Illinois Open champion.

Billiter had a brilliant 2015. He followed his Match Play win with a victory in the IPGA Championship on Medinah’s No. 1 course but – despite winning two of the section’s four major titles – couldn’t claim the Player-of-the-Year award. That was because a club commitment prevented him from competing in the Illinois Open, the IPGA’s biggest tournament.

Matt Swann’s departure for a club job in Michigan during the winter created an opening in the Kemper pro shop and Billiter, who spent 11 seasons as Don Pieper’s assistant at Merit Club, was hired as Kemper’s head man. Billiter got married on March 3 and took the Kemper job a week later. He’s slowly adjusting to his new position.

“So far, so good, but we haven’t had a big event yet,’’ he said. The Match Play will kick activity into high gear at Kemper, and the players will notice some upgrades. Libertyville architect Rick Jacobson completed a bunker renovation – the bunkers are now white – and some holes were lengthened. Billiter pronounced the bunkers as “beautiful’’ and the course “in great shape and perfect for match play.’’

The upgrades weren’t made for the benefit of the IPGA tourney. They were made at least in part to land a bigger tournament and it worked. The club landed the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, and that means the return of big-time tournament golf to the club in 2018. This year’s KPMG Women’s PGA Championship will come to Olympia Fields from June 27 to July 2.

Last year while at Merit Club Billiter worked with the best in women’s golf, too, as that club hosted the LPGA’s International Crown team event. That marked a rare return of tournament play to the Libertyville club, but more big events will likely be coming to Kemper Lakes.

Billiter, though, still won’t be able to play in the Illinois Open. While general manager John Hosteland has encouraged Billiter to compete, the Illinois Open dates won’t work for Billiter at Kemper any more than they did at Merit Club. “We have massive events on Monday and Tuesday (of tournament week),’’ he said. “That tournament is getting hard to win anyway, because more and more great college players are in it now.’’

Northwestern and Illinois were both selected to play in the NCAA women’s golf championship, the finals of which will be played at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove next month. To get to Rich Harvest, however, both teams must survive regional tournaments.

Coach Emily Fletcher’s Northwestern team was awarded the No. 3 seed in a regional to be played at The Champions Course in Albuquerque, N.M. The University of New Mexico will host that event. Illinois drew the No. 8 seed in a regional on the University of Georgia’s course in Athens. All teams learned their fate via The Golf Channel’s selection show on Thursday morning.

Notre Dame’s Emma Albrecht was selected as an individual and will compete in the regional on Ohio State’s Scarlet course in Columbus, Ohio. The regional tournaments will run May 8-10.

Each of four regionals were assigned 18 teams and six individual qualifiers. Those 834 golfers will be whittled to 132 for the finals at Rich Harvest, which run from May 19-24.

Northwestern, an NCAA qualifier for the fifth straight year, had its best NCAA finish last year – a tie for ninth, one stroke shy of qualifying for the match play climax to the tournament. NU was second in last week’s Big Ten Championships behind Michigan State, but the Wildcats drew a far better NCAA seed than the Spartans, who were tabbed No. 14 in the same regional.

Four other Big Ten teams – Purdue, Ohio State, Michigan and Wisconsin – were assigned to the Columbus regional.

Fletcher learned of her team’s assignment at Rich Harvest, where owner Jerry Rich was gearing his club up to host another big tournament.

The NCAA men’s finals will also be played at Rich Harvest as soon as the women’s tournament is over. That climax to the collegiate season will run from May 26-31 and the men’s teams will learn their regional assignments next Thursday.

One of the men’s selection announcement gatherings will be at Wrigley Field. Mike Small, coach of Illinois’ perennial powerhouse, and Luke Donald, an NCAA individual champion while a student at Northwestern, will be throwing out the first ball at the Cubs-Phillies game that day and Donald is also scheduled to sing at the Seventh Inning Stretch.

ORLANDO, Florida – Tuesday is usually the quiet day at PGA Tour stops. It’s the time in between pro-am days when players have the course and practice facilities to themselves to get ready for the start of competition on Thursday.

That wasn’t the case at Bay Hill Club Tuesday, as players, officials and spectators braced for the first Arnold Palmer Invitational without Arnold Palmer. The golfing legend passed away at age 87 in September.

“It’s a very different week with Arnold not being here with us,’’ said Henrik Stenson, the Swedish star who now lives in Orlando and finished in the top 10 of the last four API events without getting a victory. “He’s meant so much to the game of golf, and this being his own tournament on his own golf course. He’ll be dearly missed, and we will do our best to make it a very successful week without him.’’

Bay Hill opened in 1961. Palmer played it during the height of his career, loved it and worked hard to eventually buy it in 1970. Now a statue of Palmer, measuring 13 feet in height and weighing 1,400 pounds, stands in front of the pro shop. With no golf to watch on the course spectators made it a gathering point for photographs and conversation on Tuesday.

Everyone had an Arnold memory. I certainly have mine, starting with my first interview with him in 1968. He was battling for a Western Open title at Olympia Fields that week but was eventually beaten by his long-time rival, Jack Nicklaus. Through the years Palmer has been the focal point for many more interviews, and we were guests at Bay Hill for a few days in recent years.

It was at Bay Hill that you could get one of the best glimpses of the man who inspired an army. Indeed every golf fan on hand Tuesday was a member of Arnie’s Army at one tournament or another. At Bay Hill, though, he wasn’t just the athletic legend. He was a guy who dined with his wife and friends right along with the club’s guests. He played cards with them, indulged in friendly conversation and posed for what must have seemed like unending picture-taking. That’s what made Bay Hill a very special place.

Bay Hill is nice 27-hole facility in a comfortable neighborhood. In no way is it ostentatious, like the residential areas that so many athletes seem to prefer once they accumulate enough money to buy in.

No player has done as much to popularize golf as Palmer did, and the PGA Tour made sure that this week’s tournament will be a celebration of his extraordinary life rather than the start of a sad farewell for a tournament that could be in decline.

The PGA’s Florida Swing isn’t what it used to be. This year the four events that usually filled the March portion of the PGA Tour schedule were down to three. The stop at Donald Trump’s Doral in Miami was dropped in favor of a stop in Mexico. Not only that, but the PGA Tour botched the scheduling. Mexico was inserted in the week between the Honda Classic in Palm Beach Gardens on the East coast and the Valspar Championship in Palm Harbor on the West. The fields at both the Honda and Valspar suffered, as players struggled with awkward travel options.

That wasn’t the case this week. The Palmer stop was made more enticing with a hike in prize money and the availability of more FedEx Cup points. Still, three top ones missed it – leading money-winner Dustin Johnson and two of his most popular pursuers, Phil Mickelson and Jordan Spieth. That trio skipped the entire Florida Swing, feeling that might be the best way for them to prepare for next month’s Masters.

In an effort to offset Palmer’s absence the tour named five ambassadors for this year’s API – players Curtis Strange, Graeme McDowell, Peter Jacobsen and Annika Sorenstam and Tom Ridge, the former U.S. secretary of homeland security.

Wednesday’s speakers prior to the Opening Ceremony will include new PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan, defending API champion Jason Day, current stars Rory McIlroy and Rickie Fowler and Sam Saunders, a PGA Tour member who was also Palmer’s grandson.

This is one of those rare sports events in which the 72-hole competition itself, which begins on Thursday, may well be overshadowed by the preliminary buildup. The players will have decals of Palmer’s umbrella logo on their golf bags.

Still, there is concern that Palmer’s passing will negatively impact both his small hometown of Latrobe Pa., as well as the annual tournament at Bay Hill. The passing of Ben Hogan, Byron Nelson and Dinah Shore led to the decline of their golf tournaments and keeping the Palmer atmosphere around Bay Hill won’t be easy.

It’s well worth a try, though, and for now we should just enjoy his tournament and be thankful for the memories he created.

PALM HARBOR, Florida – The Masters, the year’s first major golf championship, is just a month away and the Chicago’s top two PGA Tour players haven’t qualified as yet. This week’s stop — the Valspar Championship on Innisbrook Resort’s Copperhead course –figures to give both Luke Donald and Kevin Streelman a boost, however.

Neither are off to a notable start this season. Donald, the former Northwestern star, has made four of six cuts with $221,185 in earnings. That puts him 125th on the season money list. Streelman has made six of 10 cuts and has earned $505,886, good for 68th place.

To get into the Masters, though, they’ll likely have to either win one of the tournaments leading into it or boost their world rankings into the top 50 the week before the Masters tees off. Donald is No. 88 in the world rankings now and Streelman is down in the 134th spot. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that both have played well in Masters of the past, both are coming into Thursday’s start of the Valspar Championship well-rested and both have wins here. Those ingredients should count for something.

So could Innisbrook’s extraordinary connection to the Chicago golf scene. The resort’s owner, Sheila Johnson, is a University of Illinois graduate who grew up in Chicago, and all of the resort’s four courses were designed by the late Larry Packard, a Chicago golf architectural legend. All that should add to the comfort zone for Donald and Streelman.

In the case of both players, their victories on the well-regarded Copperhead layout had major implications career-wise. Donald’s victory came in 2011 when the tourney was called the Transitions Championship. He was involved in a head-to-head duel with Rory McIlroy for the No. 1 spot in the world rankings at the time and the win pushed Donald into the No. 1 spot, a position he held for 56 weeks.

Streelman’s win came the following year, the first in which Valspar was the tourney sponsor. It was the first of the Wheaton golfer’s two PGA Tour titles, though the second drew more attention. No. 2 came at Hartford in 2013, with Streelman making birdies on the last seven holes to claim a more spectacular victory.

Neither player qualified for last week’s lucrative World Golf Championship event in Mexico, but that may not be a bad thing. The PGA Tour substituted the Mexico event for the longstanding stop at Doral, in Miami, and it wreaked havoc with all the players’ scheduling.

Those who played in the no-cut tourney in Mexico endured some difficult travels. In the last four weeks the PGA Tour had tournaments in Los Angeles, then the Honda Classic in Florida, then Mexico and now it’s back to Florida. The dropping of Doral “destroyed’’ the traditional Florida Swing, according to no less an expert than Jack Nicklaus who said the schedule change “hurts all the Florida events.’’

The circuit goes to the Arnold Palmer Invitational in Orlando after the Valspar. The quality of the Honda field was down slightly, and Valspar has just four players in the top 15 of the World Rankings – Henrik Stenson (6), Justin Thomas (8), Patrick Reed (12) and Bubba Watson (15).

Stenson, the reigning British Open champion, withdrew from the Mexico stop after 11 holes due to illness and admitted here that “I’m not 100 percent.’’ He was fourth at the Valspar in 2015 and tied for 11th last year when South African Charl Schwartzel won the title.

Stenson insisted the addition of the Mexico tourney didn’t affect the Florida events, but he was in the minority.

“It’s just a busy time of the year,’’ said Stenson. “It’s six, seven, eight good tournaments in a row. You’re not going to get all the guys playing the same weeks. It’s more down to scheduling and preferences, how many do you want to play in that time span. You can’t really be disappointed that certain players take certain weeks off, because that’s the way it’s always going to be.’’

HERE AND THERE: The Valspar field also includes two Illinois alums. Steve Stricker, now eligible for the Champions Tour, will compete after announcing his choices for assistant President Cup captains earlier this week here. Charlie Danielson made the field through the qualifying round on Monday.

Defending champion Schwartzl has already had a tough week. One of his playing partners hit a shot off a tree in Wednesday’s pro-am and the ball hit Schwartzel on the wrist. His hand went numb and he quit play after 10 holes. He was still hopeful of teeing off in Thursday’s first round.

Matt Kuchar, who will make his 10th appearance in the Valspar, generally likes the U.S. Golf Association’s recently proposed rule changes designed to simplify the game. “I have tons of friends that fudge here and there,’’ said Kuchar. “You want the game to be enjoyable, and simplifying the rules only helps make the game more understandable. It’s a good idea they are working on.’’

BOCA RATON, Florida – This week’s first full-field event on the PGA Champions circuit couldn’t come at a better place. The Old Course at Broken Sound, home to the Allianz Championship, is one of the best courses on the 50-and-over circuit.

In its 11th season, the Allianz has been the Champions’ season-opening event every year since 2011 and no player wants to miss it. The 80 entries this year include the top 36 in last year’s Schwab Cup standings, eight members of the World Golf Hall of Fame and winners of a combined 317 Champions events, 346 PGA Tour titles and 17 major championships.

And this year’s field is even better than usual. Fred Couples is playing here for the first time. So is John Daly. European stars Paul McGinley and Jose Maria Olazabal will make their Champions debuts and David Toms will play on the senior circuit for just the second time.

“The best field we’ve ever had,’’ said tournament director Ryan Dillon. “There’s nothing like this on tour. We’re the envy of the PGA Champions.’’

Leading into this year’s tourney, Dillon announced earlier this month that Broken Sound had won the ELGA Award – the largest environmental stewardship honor available. The club is very into environmental issues. It has 13 acres of butterfly gardens, 22 beehives and 22 bat houses on its property.

The golf tournament is extraordinary as well. Though Esteban Toledo is the defending championship, the focal point in the 54-hole shootout that begins on Friday will be Couples, who is making his first appearance in south Florida since playing in the PGA Tour’s Honda Classic in 2006.

Couples missed most of the 2016 season with back problems, but he finished second to Bernhard Langer two weeks ago in a Champions limited field event in Hawaii.

Toledo endured 27 hours in airplanes to show up for the Allianz kickoff event last month. He won last year in a three-hole playoff with Billy Andrade. An interesting sidelight: Toledo has four Champions wins with three coming in playoffs, and all of them went three holes.

“I don’t know how I did it, but it was a wonderful experience,’’ said Toledo, who has an interesting background. The youngest of a family with 11 children he grew up in a very poor neighborhood in Mexico. The family’s house had dirt floors and no plumbing. Toledo fished golf balls out of a pond at a nearby golf course and sold them back to the club’s members to help the family survive.

He also took up boxing and was good at that, compiling a 16-1 record until an appendicitis brought an end to his time in the ring.

“I’m a better boxer than I am a golfer. There’s no doubt in my mind,’’ he said.

Golf didn’t come as easily as boxing did.

“I used to shoot 100 because I had to always borrow clubs to play,’’ he said. “Then I met an American guy from San Francisco who wanted to sponsor me.’’

That arrangement helped Toledo play on tour for 12 years and he emerged as a mainstay on both the PGA and Champions circuits. His win in last year’s Allianz Championship, which paid him $262,500, came on the same day as the 50th Super Bowl. That, along with less-than-ideal weather limited attendance for the tourney’s climax but the event still drew over 60,000 for the week and 20,000 were on hand for Saturday’s second round.

Broken Sound’s Old Course – one of two 18-holers on the property — was designed by Joe Lee for its 1978 opening and was re-designed by Gene Bates with help from Johnny Miller in 2004. In addition to a beautiful setting it has what Toledo says are one of the top three putting surfaces on the Champions circuit.

The tourney festivities include a members’ pro-am, Lexi Thompson exhibition and women’s pro-am on Monday; practice rounds on Tuesday; and pro-ams featuring Champions players on Wednesday and Thursday before three rounds of tournament play tee off on Friday.

Here is what’s wrong with the BMW Championship, which is coming up Sept. 8-11 at Crooked Stick in Indianapolis.

For one, it’s not Chicago based. When the Western Golf Association replaced the history-rich Western Open in favor of the BMW Championship in 2007 that ended a 45-year run for Chicago being an annual PGA Tour stop. Now it’s every other year, and this time Crooked Stick gets to host for the second time.

For another, being a FedEx Cup Playoff event, you’re never sure exactly who will be playing until a few days beforehand and some of golf’s most popular players are certain to be missing.

All that may sound on the negative side, but there are good reasons for things being the way they are.

The rotation of sites has been financially rewarding to the WGA’s Evans Scholars program – and that is the reason for holding the event in the first place. Rather than make an annual stop at the same course, the WGA freshened the event by playing it outside Chicago in alternate years. Markets that don’t get big-time golf events very often are more than receptive when the PGA Tour does come to town. Indianapolis is just one of those.

Bigger crowd, bigger profits, more opportunities for deserving caddies to go to college. It’s hard to argue with that reasoning, and the WGA is carrying that logic further. Next year’s staging will be the third and last at Conway Farms, in Lake Forest, and the road show goes to Aronimink, a well-regarded club in the Philadelphia area, in 2018. After that the BMW Championship may be rotating among Chicago clubs on the alternate years as well.

That policy hasn’t been announced, but Medinah will be the site in 2019. Then, who knows? BMW’s contract with the PGA Tour is up after that event, opening all kinds of possibilities for subsequent years.

Time will take care of all those details, but firming up the field early for any of the four FedEx Cup Playoff event – much less No. 3 in the rotation – is impossible.

That’s not all bad, though. While some stars might not be there, one thing is certain: the 70-player field will be very, very good. The competitive format for the playoffs assures that.

Here’s how it works:

The top 125 players on the season-long FedEx Cup point race got into the first playoff event – The Barclays in New York the last week of August. They played 72 holes without a 36-hole cut for an $8.5 million prize fund and the top 100 on the point race afterwards got a chance to do it again.

Second event in the FedEx Cup is the Deutsche Bank Championship Sept. 2-5 at TPC Boston. It has the same format as The Barclays – 72 holes with no 36-hole cut, another $8.5 million available in prize money and the top 70 on the point list get to do it again.

That’s where the BMW Championship comes into the picture. The top 70 play for another $8.5 million in another 72-hole, no cut event at Crooked Stick.

Finally, the top 30 on the point list after the BMW Championship advance to The Tour Championship at East Lake in Atlanta for the final $8.5 million, 72-hole no-cut tournament. A lot of prize money is obviously on the line in September but there’s more to it than tournament checks. The winner of the FedEx Cup point race – and that’s not necessarily the winner of The Tour Championship – gets an additional $10 million bonus.

During the course of the FedEx Cup season there were 43 regular season tournaments to decide who would qualify for the playoffs. There were 247 players earning points towards inclusion in the playoffs and a good showing in the “post-season’’ would make up for disappointing showings in the four major championships by some of the game’s elite players.

In this year’s jumbled schedule the four majors – due to the inclusion of golf in the Olympic Games for the first time in 112 years – lost some of their luster. At least three of the top young players did, too. Neither Jason Day, Rory McIlroy nor Jordan Spieth won a major in 2016. Winning the FedEx Cup would at least help make up for that unexpected shortcoming.

The majors, in case you’ve forgotten, went to Danny Willett (Masters), Dustin Johnson (U.S. Open), Henrik Stenson (British Open) and Jimmy Walker (PGA Championship). McIlroy didn’t even challenge in any of those and missed the cut at both the U.S. Open and PGA Championship.

Day, the current world No. 1, made a great run at the PGA but came up a shot short. Spieth had a successful defense of his Masters title in hand until he took a quadruple bogey seven on the 12th hole of the final round. Of the Day-McIlroy-Spieth trio and the four major championship winners, only Stenson and Willett opted to play in the Olympics and only Stenson and Spieth are past FedEx Cup champions.

So, September is FedEx Cup time and this year reputations are on the line as well as financial considerations. With eight different winners in nine years, the Playoff has had a wide variety of champions and this year’s competition figures to be even more wide-open than previous years.

Only Tiger Woods (2007 and 2009) has won the FedEx Cup twice and he isn’t playing this time. The other champions were Vijay Singh (2008), Jim Furyk (2010), Bill Haas (2011), Brandt Snedeker (2012), Stenson (2013), Billy Horschel (2014) and Spieth (2015).

There is some strategy to winning the ultimate, $10 million prize. Some players have skipped events in which they qualified because they felt they needed the rest before the biggest purse in golf was on the line. Such decisions can impact the 70 coming to Crooked Stick, but rest assured the field will have the players who are playing the best at the end of the season.

That was the idea of creating the Playoffs in the first place.

“We needed to define our season,’’ PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem said when the series was announced. The format underwent some tweaking but has been consistent since 2011. It did create – at least sort of – a climax to one season before the next one starts.

Are the Playoffs really a climax, though? After all, the Ryder Cup battle between the U.S. and Europe from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2 at Hazeltine National in Minnesota comes on the heels of the last FedEx Cup Playoff event – and the Ryder Cup is the biggest event in golf.

So, what is the climax to the 2016 golf season? You tell me, and the fact that the subject merits some debate is a good thing.

Mike Small, the very successful men’s golf coach at the University of Illinois, won another Illinois PGA Championship on Wednesday. So what else is new?

Actually Small’s record 12th victory in the 94th playing of the tournament wasn’t like any of the others except for the fact that it came on the South Course at Olympia Fields Country Club. Small, an honorary member at the south suburban private facility, has won the premier event for the state’s club professionals there three times. His 12 overall victories have come in just a 14-year span.

No. 12, though, had some unusual twists. It was the first time since the 1950s that the IPGA Championship was an all-walking tournament. Power carts weren’t prevalent back then, and most players have used them in the competition since at least the 1970s.

Carts weren’t allowed for any of the three rounds this week because heavy rains – 10 inches fell in the two weeks before the IPGA arrived – left the fairways too soft and necessitated the use of the lift, clean and place rule all three days.

The decision to ban power carts was made on Sunday night, and that created a last-minute demand for caddies for Monday’s first round. Almost half of the 137 entrants used bag-toters recruited by Olympia caddie master Jim Salvatore. Only two players withdrew after the walking-only rule was invoked.

Adding to the unusual nature of a walking-only tournament was the fact that the IPGA Championship’s main sponsor over the last 14 years, Nadler Golf Cars, is a provider of power carts.

And that wasn’t the only strange twist to the event. This Small victory was due as much to the collapse of playing partner Curtis Malm as it was to Small’s play.

“I was never in this one until the last few holes,’’ admitted Small, who opened with a 71 on Monday before finishing 67-68. His 10-under-par 206 score for the 54 holes resulted a two-stroke victory.

Malm, the head professional at White Eagle in Naperville, led most of the way. He took a one-stroke lead over playing partner Travis Johns, the Medinah teaching pro, into the final round with Small another stroke back.

Small didn’t make his presence felt until the 361-yard sixth hole, when he put a 3-iron shot from 203 yards to within a foot of the cup, setting up his first birdie. Then it became a two-man battle with Small not getting sole possession of the lead until Malm three-putted for bogey at No. 16. Prior to that Small needed birdies at Nos. 14 and 15 just to hang with Malm.

And then came the par-4 seventeenth. Malm, reeling from the missed three-footer that knocked him out of the lead, sent his drive far right into thick brush. He lined up to play the shot from there, but his hand got caught in a vine on a practice backswing.

“I wanted to see if there would be any resistance,’’ said Malm, who wound up with scratches on the back of his hand. “After that it was an easy call to take an unplayable.’’

That wouldn’t be the only penalty shot he’d take on that hole. Hitting three, his next shot hit a tree and went back in the brush. That necessitated another penalty stroke and Malm wound up with a triple bogey seven. Instead of contending, he was now in third place behind – Johns moved into second — three shots behind Small with just one hole to go.

“Curtis played great. I feel bad for him,’’ said Small. “But that’s momentum. There’s momentum in golf. We talk to our team about that all the time.’’

Malm battled back to make birdie on the finishing hole, and that put him in a three-way tie for second with Johns and Brian Brodell, the teaching pro at Mistwood in Romeoville. It was Malm’s third runner-up finish in the IPGA Championship in the last five years.

Small took $11,200 from the tournament’s $71,019 purse – both significant increases from a year ago.