Youth will be served

Writing from Golf, Illinois

Monday, March 31, 2025

The beauty of youth is not only the innocence of the age. It’s also the scope of the overwhelming possibilities for those who have not yet seen the reality of life. Things like a missed tap-in, a broken promise by a pal, or a Cubs losing streak.

Four such youngsters, dressed in matching shirts and sporting fancy new golf bags, assembled at the Illinois PGA headquarters in this little throwback town on Monday afternoon to celebrate and preview their coming appearance in Sunday morning’s Drive, Chip and Putt National Finals at Augusta National Golf Club.

Brielle Downer, Hudson Hodge, Chloe Lee and Jack Kemper, Chicago's Fab Four, pose on Monday at Illinois PGA headquarters in Golf. (Illinois Golfer/Tim Cronin)

All four annexed their invitation to the championship round by winning their regional final bracket at TPC Deere Run last fall. All four have the chance to become a winner at Augusta – if they score more points than the other nine in their age group by hitting two drives longer, two chips closer, and two putts better.

Easy, it is not. Possible, it most certainly is. The parents, of course, are perhaps more giddy than the kids, as they’re along for the ride. But the four contenders from the Chicago area are thrilled with the opportunity. Here they are:

• Brielle Downer, girls 7-9 bracket, Lockport, most looks forward to seeing her friends and having fun. One of those friends, Eloise Fetzer, previously qualified out of the Chicago area, and this year qualified elsewhere, her family having moved to South Carolina.

“I having talked to her in a while but I’m excited to see her,” Downer said.

A student of Mistwood teacher Nicole Jeray, Downer says the key to her game is simple: “Practicing a lot and practicing every day.”

Thanks to watching previous DCP competitions, Downer and the others know just what to prepare for. She said she’s getting to within a couple of feet on the two putts routinely used at Augusta, the first an approximate 30-footer on the back of the 18th green, and the second about 20-feet downhill to the traditional Sunday pin placement, much like the winning putt Mark O’Meara sank in 1998, his big year.

• Hudson Hodge, boys 10-11 bracket, Clarendon Hills, says “the experience is going to be very cool. Just soak everything in, and do pretty well in the competition. I’m very excited for (going down) Magnolia Lane, and to see Amen Corner. It should be really fun with everyone there.”

Hodge chipped brilliantly at Deere Run to advance to the finals, and hopes to do so again.

“My best skills in past years has been the short game,” said Hodge, whom the wizened would consider too young to have a past. “But I’ll still have to work on that before then.

“When I won at Deere Run, I almost couldn’t believe it.”

• Chloe Lee, girls 12-13 bracket, Plainfield, has Jeray as her teacher as well, and goes into the Sunday finals with 10 healthy fingers. She advanced from Deere Run despite a broken middle finger on her left hand. Swinging a club in the Illinois PGA simulator, it was easy to see the power she can unleash from coiling at the top of the swing. She knows there’s more to golf than a big swat.

“I’ve been working on my putting a lot more,” Lee said. “When I was (at Deere Run), I was hitting it too soft because I got too nervous.

“I’ve seen (putts at Augusta) curve a lot more, because it’s really fast down there.”

The older DCP competitors are, the more pressure affects them. Lee calls herself “pretty good” when it comes to pressure. “I can definitely hit a ball,” she said. “I don’t get too nervous. I think I’ll be able to play.”

• Jack Kemper, boys 12-13 bracket, Winnetka, is the great-great nephew of James Kemper, who founded Kemper Lakes Golf Club and co-founded KemperSports, one of the leading course operators in the world. But Augusta is another world entirely.

“I’m just happy I made it there,” Kemper said. “That was kind of the win for me. I’m hoping to have as much fun as I can when I get there. I did not expect to get a bag. It’s cool.”

The success at Deere Run was the talk of his school when it happened, and classmates will be tuning in Golf Channel on Sunday morning to see how he does.

“I have one friend that kind of plays golf and he’s really excited for me to go,” Kemper said.

Kemper, an old hand at watching Drive, Chip and Putt, has been working on his chipping, where many come up short.

“I’ve been trying to recreate the chip,” he said. “I went to spring break in Orlando, so I’ve watched the chip and tried to recreate it. Same for the putts. I’ve tried to recreate them.”

Kemper, a student of Kevin Weeks of Cog Hill, is old enough to not only have watched the Masters for several years, but to get what makes Augusta National different.

“It’ll be really cool driving down Magnolia Lane, but I don’t really know what to expect until I get there,” he said.

Just that it will be, for him and the other 79 contestants, the experience of a young lifetime.

– Tim Cronin

The Grill Room: The season begins

Friday, February 28, 2025

Writing from Chicago

Calendars are meant for parking up, and for some of us – and perhaps you as well – today is a red letter day on it.

Today is the opening day at the Chicago Golf Show in Rosemont.

There was a much smaller show in Tinley Park three weeks ago, but this is the big one. This is the one where you can get a mini-lesson from a PGA pro to fix – or start to fix – a swing flaw. It’s where you can smack a few balls with a new driver or 5-iron from a manufacturer. A literal test drive, as it were. Where you can wander the aisles and pick up brochures for golf resorts, or even buy year or two-year old club to fill that spot in your bag and your game.

This is the 40th show under than name since it was started by local pro Steve Sidari in a meeting room in Schaumburg in the early 1980s. From there, it moved to the gym at Harper College, thence to Rosemont, where it’s ensconced on the second floor of the Stephens Convention Center for a three-day run through Sunday. Only the COVID-19 pandemic stopped it for a couple of years.

Amng others, the show’s lesson stage will feature Kevin Weeks of Cog Hill on Friday at 4 p.m.; nationally-known teacher Hank Haney on Saturday and Sunday at 1:30 p.m.; Mistwood’s Andy Mickelson and Nicole Jeray on Saturday at 10 a.m.; Chris Oehlerking on Saturday at noon; and Mistwood’s John Platt on Sunday at noon.

Friday ($8 admission for adults), the show is open from noon-6 p.m.; Saturday ($13), from 9 a.m.-6 p.m.; Sunday ($13), from 9 a.m.-4 p.m.

Test your game against the pros

The Illinois PGA runs a season-long series of tournaments every year, but until now, only the Illinois Open and Illinois Senior Open has been open to non-members. This year, the IPGA is inaugurating an Open Series, six one-day tournaments open to section pros, non-affiliated pros and amateurs with a handicap index of 10.0 or less. In other words, open. And with prize money taken from the entry fees for the leading pros.

The idea is, there are so many players chasing the rainbow and pot of gold that is the PGA Tour, there’s a pent-up demand for places to play aside from the Dakota Tour and sundry operations in Florida and other points south.

Players can enter one or all. The first one, at White Eagle Golf Club on April 28, already has 19 players registered. Other sites are Flossmoor Golf Club (May 21), Hinsdale Golf Club (June 9), Elgin Country Club (July 14), Aurora Country Club (July 28) and Bull Valley Golf Club (Oct. 8).

Everything you need to know is at https://ilpga.bluegolf.com/bluegolf/ilpga25/schedule/illinoisopenseries/index.htm?display=champ

Dome sweet dome

It escaped our attention in the fall, but a Quebec-based company has a plan to build a connected group of four massive domes adjacent to U.S. 30 in Oswego, under which will be a large practice range and a nine-hole golf course.

The Megalodome concept has already been approved by the Oswego Village Board, but final approval and all the details await another appearance by the company, which is said to be arranging financing. There’s no word on the total cost, which would include a clubhouse adjacent to the domes.

Each of the four domes would be 100 yards wide, 300 yards long and 110 feet high, dwarfing any individual dome in the Chicago area. The three domes covering the course would each have room for a short par-4 of up to 280 yards and a pair of par-3 holes, with bunkers, ponds and artificial trees.

The (www.megalodomegolf.com) website shows concepts of the design. We’ll believe it when we see it.

– Tim Cronin

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