The Grill Room: Nae wind, nae rain, nae gowf

Writing from Chicago

Tuesday, January 28, 2025 

For those of us not in the sunbelt – and lately, for many of those in it – golf these long winter weeks of short days means watching it on television or slugging balls into a simulator screen.

Or, on recent weekday nights, watching players slugging balls into a simulator screen on television. In other words, TGL. Tomorrow’s Golf League. (Really, it should be Tiger’s Golf League, but he’s being modest.)

Golf indoors with balls hit into a screen the size of one better suited for a drive-in movie and chips and putts played out on a rotating green that changes its shape more than Jackie Gleason on a diet is interesting, to a point. Seeing notables of the PGA Tour cavort on this playground in prime time is fine, but to what purpose?

Monday night’s contest between Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links and Rory McIlroy’s Boston Commons was the best of the quartet played so far, decided 4-3 in overtime by a chip-off, like a weekend event at a country club.

However, while there’s money at the end of the line, one more $21 million pot of gold in an endless series of rainbows, the stakes otherwise seem as trivial as some club credit in the pro shop after beating the guy in the next row of lockers. Right now, all we have are guys on teams with names as phony as those in Roller Derby – really, Boston Commons? – playing simulated golf in ideal conditions under roof.

Therein lies the problem. Ideal conditions.

The arena is too comfortable for the players. It should be named Sofa, not SoFi. It’s as antiseptic as an operating room. They don’t need a referee, they need a doctor. Sterile conditions are fine for “Chicago Med” in prime time, but this is golf. As the Scots say, “Nae wind, nae gowf.”

Let’s remodel this new barn and add the reality the rest of us play in. Let’s add wind. Turn the joint into a wind tunnel worthy of testing a jet fighter. Add some giant fans that can put a 20- or 30-mph wind into the players’ faces or at their backs. Or over their left shoulder just to make it really hard.

Vary those conditions from hole to hole and from shot to shot, the same as it is in the real world.

Then let’s add in some spray, a heavy mist at times to further simulate real golf. Let the players feel it, program it into the simulator, and now let’s see how many pixelated fairways are hit. Let’s give that tee-fairway square the ability to tilt as well. No more flat lies in the fairway or rough, please.

Let’s see Tiger needing to hood a 3-iron into the wind from a sidehill lie to reach a green with a back pin guarded by a bunker 220 yards away with some rain in his face. Then let’s see Rickie Fowler try to hit the same shot. Then try to make a curling 25-footer with his pant legs flapping. We’ll hear that shot clock expiration buzzer plenty. (And get that to the PGA Tour pronto, please.)

Then, in lieu of the occasional hammer press, throw in an automatic press the way Sam Snead did to his pigeons at the Homestead for decades and maybe knees will start a’knockin.

Better than some hip-hop music and an artificial heartbeat in the background, no?

It would almost be real golf.

The most interesting games of this season’s NFL playoffs came when it snowed in Philadelphia and there was icy turf in Buffalo. To the pursuit of perfection was added the vagaries of chance. Long ago, thinking of such glorious inclemency, Steve Sabol wrote these words and John Facenda voiced them: “Do you fear the force of the wind? The slash of the rain? Go face them and fight them. Be savage again!” You can almost hear the music.

Golf needs a version of that, something that will make people talk about what they saw on a random Monday night over the water cooler on Tuesday and want to tune in again the next week. 

Or, we can wait for Patrick Cantlay to be funny. How much time do you have?

– Tim Cronin

2025 Illinois Open to Kemper Lakes

Monday, November 18, 2024

Kemper Lakes Golf Club, an old haunt of the Illinois PGA, will host the 76th Illinois Open.

It’ll be the first time the state’s golf championship will be played at the Killian and Nugent-designed course, but hardly the first time the Illinois PGA has camped out there. For 24 years from 1979 through 2002, the Illinois PGA Championship was played on the course in Hawthorn Woods. And the Illinois PGA’s match play championship has been played there in recent years.

Charlie Nikitas, should he defend the title he won this year at Flossmoor Golf Club, will find a championship test, updated and toughened over the years. From the back tees, it’s probably a bit more difficult than the layout Payne Stewart captured the 1989 PGA Championship on.

Dates haven’t been announced, but the Illinois Open has usually occupied the first week of August in recent years, and offered a total purse of more than $100,000.

Another of Illinois PGA’s majors will also be played on distinguished grounds. The 104th Illinois PGA Championship will be played at Beverly Country Club on Chicago’s southwest side, and in a planned 36-hole format, down from the traditional 54, for the first time since 1972. A handful of more recent playing have been rain-shortened.

Hawthorn Woods Country Club will host the Illinois Senior Open, while Pine Meadow Golf Club will host the Illinois Super Senior for the 60-and-up set.

Mistwood Golf Club remains host and co-sponsor of the Illinois Women’s Open.

– Tim Cronin

Rahm takes the tourney, the season, the works

Writing from Bolingbrook, Illinois

Sunday, September 15, 2024

If there were moments over the first six months of the year when Jon Rahm regretted jumping from the PGA Tour to LIV Golf, those moments are long gone.

He’s battled back from a mid-season foot injury that kept him out of the U.S. Open to place seventh in the British Open, fifth at the Paris Olympics after being in medal contention late, and pile up top three finishes in the four of the last five LIV tournaments, capped by this finish: first in the United Kingdom, second at The Greenbrier, and, on a furnace-like Sunday, first at Bolingbrook Golf Club in the final individual LIV weekend of the season.

Those sterling results earned him the individual LIV season championship, and an additional $18 million on top of the $4 million for three days of labor here. In the age of silly money in golf, Rahm’s $34,754,821 this calendar year trails only Scottie Scheffler’s $53.2 million in PGA Tour earnings and bonuses. Nice work if you can get it.

But Rahm, who signed with LIV for a reported $300 million last December, didn’t talk about the money after scoring his three-stroke victory over Joaquin Niemann and Sergio Garcia. He spoke of the season’s struggle to find his form – even though he hasn’t been out of the top 10 in any LIV start this season – the ring that didn’t quite fit on any of his fingers, and the pressure of the day.

“It was definitely a stressful day, but that pressure (for the season title) was a privilege only two of us had,” he said, speaking of himself and Niemann, who would have taken the season title had he beaten Rahm this week. “That’s why I focused on winning the tournament. If I did that, everything would take care of itself.”

It did, as it turned out. His closing 4-under-par 66 for a 54-hole total of 11-under 199 outdistanced all comers, including Niemann and Garcia, who tied for second at 8-under 202 after final rounds of 66 and 68, respectively. They also finished second and third in the season standings. Niemann picked up $10 million for that, Garcia $4 million, his prize won by parring the last two holes to stay ahead of fast-closing Tyrrell Hatton, who closed with a 5-under 65 for 7-under 203.

Rahm’s form was there all week. On a course that featured hard greens and fairways where you needed ice skates in places, Rahm made only one bogey, on the 16th hole on Friday.

“Towards the back nine the wind picked up, it got difficult,” Rahm said. “I thought it played to my advantage because that made birdies more difficult, and I was hitting it so well that I felt like I could make pars and even give myself birdie chances. Little did I know that 11 through 13 was going to get a little iffy; a couple wind gusts, shots that I didn't feel like they were that bad and ended up in difficult situations. I made three great par saves, and off I went towards the end of the round.”

The clinching blow came at the par-4 17th. Leading Garcia and Niemann by two, Rahm rolled on a 15-foot left-to-right birdie putt to move to 11-under to the delight of many in the gallery of about 12,000.

“I knew I had to do something great, and I felt like I did,” Niemann said. “I played amazing golf. But yeah, I feel like to beat someone like Jon Rahm, you've got to do things better, and yeah, it's a good way to push myself. I want to be in that position. I want to keep improving. Yeah, it's a good way to show myself that I can be there, and just a few shots behind, which is pretty close.

“I'm pretty happy. I was telling my caddie that I don't feel any disappointment. I feel like I gave it everything that I had. It didn't feel like I gave a shot away the whole season. Yeah, that for me is a win.”

Garcia was of a like mind.

“Look, I fought hard, and I didn't feel as smooth as I've been feeling the last few weeks,” Garcia said. “I didn't feel bad, but I wasn't quite there most of the first day. Then I got better as the week went on. It was a good fight. Obviously I would have loved to get the W this week, and it would have been extra special. Still, Jon played great, and he also missed a couple of putts here and there that he usually doesn't miss. At the end of the day, I probably needed to shoot 6- or 7-under, and it's not that easy on this golf course the way it was playing.”

The ring, a typically-oversized deal with diamonds, gold plating and even a scannable QR code to watch highlights of his round online, reminded Rahm of another ring from his days at Arizona State.

“I have had a ring before for winning the Pac-12 championship, and that was special,” Rahm recalled. “For some reason, to think of the ring rather than a trophy, in a weird way it makes it a little bit more, maybe because I associate it to football and basketball and U.S. events. I feel like I'm that Americanized at this point.

“I feel like in a weird sense, you're part of a select group that get to have a championship ring, which is not a possibility in other sports. In itself, I think it's just being able to wear what it represents. I think seeing it firsthand right away as soon as we finished what this means is very special.”

Rahm earned the bauble by setting a target score the other contenders couldn’t match. Niemann opened with birdies on two of the first three holes, then stalled. Garcia rolled in an 18-foot birdie putt on the par-3 sixth to move to 7-under, a stroke back, but Rahm answered immediately with a 16-footer as Gacia watched a minute later to move to 9-under and all but close the door on his rivals.

Rahm completed the mythical Chicago Slam by adding the LIV title to the BMW Championship he won at Olympia Fields in 2020. He, like several notables before him – guys like Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Bryon Nelson – knows where the winner’s circle is around here.

“I have a pretty good track record in Chicago, so I'm always going to be happy to come back,” Rahm said. “I've played Olympia Fields twice, won once; played at Medinah, I think I finished top 5; played at Conway Farms, definitely top 10, I don't know if it was top 5 or not; and came here and won. Yeah, I would encourage to come back to Chicago because I definitely like coming here and playing golf in this city.”

Rahm has a great memory. He tied for fifth in the BMW at Conway Farms in 2017 and tied for fifth in the BMW at Medinah in 2019, along with the dramatic playoff win at Olympia in 2020, when he rolled in a 66-foot, 5-inch putt to beat Dustin Johnson on the first hole of sudden death.

In his mind, Rahm, who missed the U.S. Open with an injured foot, turned his season around with changing the shaft of his driver.

“There was a lot of weeks where I would make a good swing and the ball would start left and not cut,” Rahm said. “That was the issue. I thought it was my swing. Finally I talked to somebody at Callaway, and Adam and my swing coach Dave, and they all thought maybe we should reconsider a new driver shaft.”

Rahm traveled to Callaway in Carlsbad, Calif., and found the magic wand.

"The second I hit this one, it was instantly, okay, this is different, this is better,” Rahm said. “That's kind of where I got back to not manipulating the shot to make it fade and see the ball start on a certain line and trajectory. While I was compensating my swing to try to hit fairways, it was bleeding into the rest of my game.

“It was getting to a point where I was making other good swings and still feeling like they were good swings and they were going straight left, which is very unusual for me, and that slowly started to come back with that shaft, and that was -- Nashville I saw a big difference. Not perfect but a big difference, and that's when I thought towards the rest of the season, okay, this is more familiar territory, more to how I usually hit it. Almost not really thought it, but almost thought that it was basically a matter of time until I was going to give myself a good chance to win.”

Adding in the British Open and Paris Olympics, his finishes beginning at Nashville are 3-10-T7-T5-1-2-1. That’ll work.

“The driver is the best club in my bag,” Rahm beamed.

Just what the rest of the LIV field doesn’t want to hear.

The unkindest cut of all

The tournament within a tournament involved trying to lock in a spot for next year and avoiding getting bounced from the LIV roster in 2025. Among the six players losing their LIV card next year are Bubba Watson, a team captain who can appeal to retain his place, and Kalle Samooja, whose last four holes are a trail of tears: bogey, par, bogey, double-bogey.

The last dropped him out of the top 48, meaning he’ll probably be chasing status on the Asian Tour next year with an eye toward getting back on the LIV gravy train in 2026. Pat Perez appeared headed for a similar fate, but Samooja’s pratfall moved Perez back inside the favored circle.

Around Bolingbrook

The Crushers, captained by two-time U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, took the team title and lead that championship going into next week’s match-play championship in Dallas, where they will defend their season crown. But DeChambeau spoke highly of Bolingbrook, calling it “close to a major-championship test. There were some shots just like a jumper in the U.S. Open would play. The greens that firm with the rough all around it, it was pretty difficult. I’d love to see s come back here and have more of this type of golf because I truly do love it.” … Bolingbrook reopens to the public on Wednesday, though the only tee times left are at 5:30 and 5:40 p.m., so players would only get a few holes in before sunset just before 7 p.m.

– Tim Cronin

Rahm surges to lead at LIV in Bolingbrook

Writing from Bolingbrook, Illinois

Saturday, September 14, 2024

Jon Rahm probably doesn’t know it, but he has a chance for a rare Chicago Slam tomorrow.

If he wins LIV Golf’s season-ending individual tournament at Bolingbrook Golf Club, he’ll not only win the season title, the tournament itself, and $22 million ($18 million for the season crown and $4 million for the weekend), but he’ll capture a Chicago Slam.

Rahm won the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields Country Club in 2020, when, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the closest spectators got was watching from outside the fence along the third hole by Vollmer Road. Snagging the LIV Golf Chicago crown at Bolingbrook would complete the unusual feat, and curiously, he’d be the second LIV Chicago winner in succession to also have won at Olympia Fields. Last year, Bryson DeChambeau won at Rich Harvest Farms eight years after winning the U.S. Amateur at Olympia.

The mercurial Spaniard moved to the top of the leader board with the day’s best round, a bogey-free 6-under 64 to place him at 7-under 133 after 36 holes. Unlike the empty fairways at Olympia Fields, some 15,000 fans were on hand Saturday, many following him. Rahm leads fellow Spaniard Sergio Garcia (65 for 134) by a stroke and overnight leader Brooks Kopeka (73 for 135) by two.

Rahm, calling his play “really organized golf,” ran down a curling 45-footer for a birdie on the par-3 17th to get to 5-under for his round and gain a tie with Sergio Garcia, and then scored another birdie on the par-5 third, his final hold of the day, to take the lead.

“I felt like I did everything I needed to do right, committed to the shots that I needed to, and then executed really, really well,” Rahm said. “Didn't miss a lot of fairways. That's a great key around here. Yeah, I think it wasn't until 1, which was my 16th, the only fairway I had missed was 14, and it was barely in the first cut.”

Rahm heads the field in driving distance (362.3 yards), greens in regulation (27 of 36, just ahead of Garcia’s 26), and scrambling. He’s also tied for third in fairways hit, though he has bemoned his driving this week.

Bolingbrook, with fast fairways, slick, quick greens and a steady diet of 12-to-15 mph wind, continued to confound players, especially on approach shots. You don’t often see top-tier players hit a full club long going into a green, but it’s been a common sight this week.

“If you miss the fairway, hitting the green is a very tough task, so you're already on the defensive,” Rahm said. “Again, it's a lot harder than it probably would look on paper.”

Garcia, 44, first gained notice in the 1999 PGA Championship at Medinah Country Club, where he gave Tiger Woods a Sunday scare and eventually lost by a stroke. Saturday, he was ebullient at being a stroke off the lead some 15 miles to the south.

“I still feel like I've got a lot of game in me,” Garcia said. “I'm very fortunate with my body. My body has been very good to me. I've pretty much -- haven't had any injuries throughout my career, so that obviously helps a lot.

“I'm sure there will be nerves (on Sunday). It's normal. You're playing to win another tournament, and there's always going to be some nerves, and it's a good thing.

“You've just got to do the things that you know what to do to kind of keep yourself – keep the RPMs on the heart a little bit lower. It's as simple as that.”

Koepka went south early, squandering the four-stroke lead he built on Friday. He went out in 3-over 38, but played the back nine in even par 35, including a 15-foot birdie at the last to climb within two of the lead and gain a spot in the final threesome with Garcia and Rahm.

Rahm extended his lead in the season points race over Joiquin Niemann, who scored 2-under 68 and is three back of Rahm at 4-under 136, to about 17 points. But if Niemann finishes ahead of Rahm at the finish, he grabs the $18 million bonus, no matter where the finish in relation to anyone else.

Hatton is aces

Tyrrell Hatton aced the 156-yard sixth hole, managing the feat with a 9-iron.

“I think that's the first one (of his career 12) that they actually got on camera, so that's cool,” Hatton said. “I'll enjoy watching that one back. Yeah, just a gripped down 9-iron around 160 yards and landed just short and trickled in and left side.

Hatton needed that to score 5-under 65 and climb back into red figures 2-under 138) for the tournament. He came into the week third in the season standings, which pays $4 million. But Garcia snuck ahead of him Saturday. That race for third is closer than the Rahm-Niemann fight for first after Rahm’s 64.

Around Bolingbrook

The field averaged 70.481 strokes on Saturday, with the course set at 7,024 yards, still over par but an improvement on Friday’s 71.111. The two-day average is 70.796. … The par-3 third hole has been the toughest, at 3.352. … Only 30.6 percent of the field had hit the first green (the 10th normally) in regulation. … It was obvious from the start Saturday’s crowd would be big. Three blocks away on Rodeo Drive, the Crossroads of Faith United Methodist Church is parking cars for a $20 donation. About 45 minutes before play began Friday, there were about 25 cars parked. About an hour before play began Saturday, some 150 cars were already parked, with a line to get in. … According to LIV, which is suddenly announcing approximate attendance figures, the previous high in the U.S. was 14,000 for both weekend rounds in Nashville this year. … High man for the tournament is Hudson Swafford, whose pair of 8-over 78s would be taken by just about any of the regulars who play Bolingbrook during the week.

– Tim Cronin

Koepka all alone after first LIV round

IG – LIV R1 Gamer

Writing from Bolingbrook, Illinois

Friday, September 13, 2024

Anyone who thought Bolingbrook Golf Club would be a pushover for the stars of the LIV Golf brigade were surprised as the first round played out.

The maintenance staff of the course and the LIV Golf setup crew had Bolingbrook playing as hard as it ever has, with greens approximately as hard as car hoods and fairways running like rabbits from a hunter. Add in a 12 mile-per-hour wind that jumped at times, and the greats and near-greats had their hands full with the Arthur Hills design.

Only Brooks Kopeka solved it completely, scoring 8-under-par 62, a course record, to lead Paul Casey by four and the duo of Abraham Ancer and Anirban Lahrio by five. A sevensome of notables, including Bryson DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson and Patrick Reed, are tied for fourth at 2-under 68.

Koepka won the previous LIV tournament at the Greenbrier and is chasing his third title of the season.

The end result: Only 18 of the 54 players finished under par, with another two at the par of 70, with the field averaging 71.111 strokes. The likely prospect for tomorrow: The players will have figured it out and go low, perhaps even Caleb Surratt, who finished double-bogey-triple-bogey and whose 10-over 80 was the day’s high.

“I can’t speak to the fairways because I didn’t hit many,” Koepka said. “But the greens, Ricky (Elliott, his caddie) said they firmed up a lot since Tuesday. It seemed like from the par-3 13th on, they were very firm. But I like it when a golf course is firm and fiery.”

Koepka surpassed the previous Bolingbrook course record of 63, set by Mac Meissner in the third round of a Forme Tour tournament in 2021.

“I putted really good,” said Koepka, who scattered eight birdies on his bogey-free card. “If a good player gets hot, he can shoot 62 pretty easy."

Koepka, more than good, has won five majors, including last year’s PGA Championship, so it’s hardly a surprise he’s leading the pack, but he birdied only one of his first seven holes before catching fire. Then he ran down birds in seven of his final 11 holes, including five of the last six and the last three. His 6-footer for a birdie on the par-4 second hole finished his round with a flourish. Amazingly, he said he hadn’t played the back nine, where he scored 5-under 30, until Friday.

“I tip my cap to him,” Casey said. “He did it in true Brooksy style. This is a different golf course than it’s been. The wind shifted, and the rules and grounds staff must have been under instruction to turn the water off. It turned shiny and glassy. I found it really difficult, suite honestly.

“I’m trying to stay alive. It’s like Monty Python getting hacked to pieces, leaving an arm and a leg here and there.”

The season championship race saw Jon Rahm and Joaquin Niemann flip their 1-2 placings by virtue of Niemann’s 2-under 68 to Rahm’s 1-under 69. Niemann is at 202.32, Rahm 198.33, but don’t memorize that, as it’ll likely go down to the final hole on Sunday, trying to solve the course and each other.

“It’s playing fast,” Niemann said of Bolingbrook.

“It was one of those days when my score was better than how I played,” Rahm said. “I know Brooks is 8-under but the other scores aren’t as low. I don’t recall ever playing fairways like that, so bouncy. It’s not the easiest to shoot low.”

No crowd size was announced, but it appeared to be no less than 8,000, with many fans lingering about the suites and hangouts like the Birdie Shack, for which there was an additional charge.

Around Bolingbrook

Lee Westwood had the shot of the day, a holeout from the fairway of the par-5 third for an eagle. He finished at 1-over 71. … The Crushers, captained by DeChambeau, lead the team standings. The overall team championship is next week. … Tyrrell Hatton let fly with the world’s most explicit Anglo-Saxon oath twice after poor shots, both of his own making. … There are a dozen major champions in the field, compared to seven in this week’s PGA Tour stop, the Procore Championship in Napa, California. … For kids on hand, a big draw will be the petting zoo near the fan entrance. … As has become a LIV tradition, a quartet of skydivers landed on the first fairway in advance of the shotgun start. … LIV has a management staff of 45, in addition to social media people and the television crew, on hand.

– Tim Cronin