Women's Western Am even more elite now

Writing from Lake Forest, Illinois

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

The Women’s Western Amateur casts a long and flattering shadow in the history of American golf. It’s the oldest continuously-played golf championship in the country, contested each year, notwithstanding the machinations of the Kaiser or Hitler or a pair of pandemics a century apart, since 1901. It’s second in prestige within the circle of those who play it only to the U.S. Women’s Amateur, which is a scant six years older. And this year, the quality of the field has been boosted by the creation of the Women’s Elite Amateur golf series, mirroring the one started a few years ago on the men’s amateur side.

The 120 players in this year’s 124th championship comprise most of the elite in women’s amateur golf, and Wednesday’s leader board was a vivid pronouncement of that. At mid-afternoon, with half the field still on the course at the Onwentsia Club, the top three players were Texas’ Farah O’Keefe, at 8-under-par 136, Western Kentucky’s Catie Craig, whose 5-under 67 was the best round of the day and placed her second at 7-under 137, and 2022 runner-up Annabelle Pancake, the recent Clemson grad standing at 6-under 138.

All three of that trio likely would have teed it up regardless of the new series, which has added such baubles as an exemption into the U.S. Women’s Amateur for the winner. But the middle of the field has markedly improved, which augurs well for a most competitive match play portion of the championship beginning Thursday among the 32 survivors and continues through Saturday’s finale.

“Our No. 115 player can beat our No. 1 player now if she qualifies,” said WWGA president Susan Buchanan. “It has definitely helped the field. We have the strongest field we’ve ever had and haven’t really done anything differently on our end.

“Having the Eilte Amateur series brings in the top players because they want the exemptions we offer.”

The other tournaments in the Elite series are the Sea Island, the Southwestern, the North & South, all of which preceded the Women’s Western, and the LNGA Amateur, which follows it. Of that quartet, only the North & South, held annually at Pinehurst and dating to 1903. Craig, who fancies a career as a golf course architect, won that three weeks ago as the No. 3 seed.

A Women’s Western newbie, Craig noted “the incentives and the point system, I think that’s a really cool thing they’re doing for women’s golf, giving women opportunities to play at such high levels outside of college. I would have come here regardless, because in past years friends have played and said how incredible it is. Okay, I’ve got to try it.”

So far, so great. Likewise for the Austin, Texas, native.

“I’m a fan of courses up here in Chicago,” said O’Keefe, whose women’s course-record 64 at the Glen View Club representing Texas in a college tournament raised eyebrows. “I had a blast there and made up my mind I like Chicago-style golf courses.

“I didn’t know the Elite Amateur series was a thing until you said it,” O’Keefe told a reporter. “Now it’s exciting to think of.”

Pancake, of course, wants to avenge her 2022 loss to Taglao Jerravivitaporn, a 2 and 1 loss at Sunset Ridge in a championship match after building a 3-up lead in the first six holes.

“Obviously, I love this tournament and have had success in it,” Pancake said. “I go in trying to beat the golf course, but this is the best field they’ve ever had. It’s definitely the most competitive, which is exciting. It’s stacked, which is what you want. You want to play against the best.”

This year’s Women’s Western Am has also brought back memories for those who indulge in the history of the game. It began at Onwentsia under the auspices of the fledgling Western Golf Association in 1901, and was played in conjunction with Onwentsia’s Governors Cup. That was also the case in 1902, but in both years, the WGA bollixed up the match play bracket and only last-minute corrections prevented a fiasco.

That encouraged the ladies to step out on their own, the WWGA was formed, and the Western Women’s Amateur became the Women’s Western Amateur in the blink of an eye. The commonality among the first three championships: Bessie Anthony won them all, Nobody has three-peated since.

The WGA, after more than a century in the penalty box, returned as a presenting partner to help with logistics the past four years. But the ladies in the blue jackets still run the golf, with distinction.

– Tim Cronin

Chicago Adaptive Open – Champions in every way

Writing from Lemont, Illinois

Sunday, June 30, 2024

Over this weekend a remarkable thing happened at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club, where many remarkable things have happened over nearly a century.

A golf tournament was held and everyone won.

This was not your normal tournament, one along the lines of the Western Open, which had a 20-year residence at Cog Hill, or even a country club’s member-guest, where the winners grin and the losers order an extra gin and tonic.

This was the inaugural Chicago Adaptive Open, where the less-than-able bodied took to Cog’s No. 3 course to chase after an overall title, victories in 16 classes, and a total purse of $15,000 split among leaders in those classes.

Conducted by the Chicago District Golf Association and featuring close to 50 participants, the CAO proves nothing is impossible in golf. Some players had one hand, others one arm, some one leg. Some were mentally impaired. Some were in motorized carts adapted so they could roll up to the ball, even on the green, to play a shot.

All took your breath away.

What the able-bodied among us struggle with – hitting a fairway, hitting a green, sometimes just hitting the ball – these ladies and gentlemen do with ease. Perfect, they are not, but their consistency in the face of what they deal with puts the rest of us to shame.

This considerable talent arrived from the four winds on Friday, when practice rounds were held. The participants were feted at a get-together at Midwest Golf House, the CDGA’s home, in conjunction with the unveiling of must-see exhibits on the history of Chicago-area golf, focusing on the club manufacturing business that once dominated the industry and still thrives.

Meeting some of the players was a treat. They consider golf a game, as we do, and never mind they may be swinging a club with one hand. The basic challenge remains, and the only handicap in their mind is a 2.3 or whatever their index is at the moment.

The CDGA arranged for an online telecast of the final holes, Dan Roan among those calling the action, which allowed those who couldn’t make it to Cog to take in the action. The overall winner was 23-year-old Jarrett Fultz, an Arizona resident with cerebral palsy. The hand tremors he lives with makes the game even more of a crapshoot, but he piled up four birdies on the front nine and scored 1-under 71 on Sunday, the only under-par round of the weekend, to win with a 36-hole total of 4-over 148, edging Ryanne Jackson of Florida by a stroke.

The key for Fultz was a four-footer for par on the par-5 17th.

“I made a clutch short putt,” Fultz told the CDGA. “I knew I wanted to make par on a short par-5 that would feel bad to bogey.”

Jackson, the overnight leader with an opening 72, closed with a 77, so was both runner-up and the winner of the women’s division.

“You can’t be upset when someone outplays you, and I didn’t have my best today,” Jackson told the CDGA. “There’s always the next tournament and next year for this one.”

The next tournament for Jackson is the U.S. Adaptive Open, conducted by the USGA, played July 8-10 at Sand Creek Station in Newton, Kan. She happens to be the defending champion.

– Tim Cronin

Pros, honoring Steve Dunning, bounce back in Radix

Writing from River Grove, Illinois

Thursday, June 13, 2024

Losing two years in a row to their amateur buddies didn’t sit well with the pros of the PGA’s Illinois Section. That was clear from the start in the 62nd renewal of the Radix Cup, the annual competition between the best of each side at Oak Park County Club.

Each of the six two-man pro teams won the front nine, picking up a point in the three-point Nassau format, and went on to a 16-2 victory, the largest in Radix Cup history.

“We ham ’n egged it pretty well,” said Brian Carroll, professional at The Hawk in Crystal Lake. He was speaking of his association with Kevin Flack of Rockford’s Mauh-Nah-Tee-See club – they applied a 3-0 thumping of Chadd Slutzky of Royal Fox and John Ramsey of Glenview Park – but might as well have been speaking of the dozen pros as a whole.

Four of the six twosomes swept their match. The others applying the 3-0 vise: Andy Mickelson (Mistwood GC) and Jeff Kellen (North Shore CC), Chris Green (Glen View C) and Tim Streng (Wildcat Golf Academy), and Kyle Donovan (Oak Park CC) and Chris French (Aldeen GC).

On a steamy day when pesky cicadas caused many a player to flinch before taking a swing, Carroll downplayed his contributions, which included a 7-foot birdie putt at the last to seal the outcome of the first match, but the numbers were overwhelming. Not only did the pros sweep the front side, at one point it was 11-0. Only a late rally prevented a shutout.

The outcome was hardly inevitable. The many of the amateurs were returnees from the squads that won the last two years. In the four years since the cancellation of the 2020 playing because of COVID-19, each side has won twice.

The Radix, though, has never been just about the competition, competitive though it is. Honoring Radix, one of golf’s biggest boosters, since North Shore pro Bill Ogden and Oak Park pro Errie Ball conceived it in 1962, the camaraderie between the two sides is also a feature, from the lunch before play to the partaking of a libation after the final putt drops.

This year, there was another element. The flag at Oak Park was at half staff, honoring Steve Dunning, professional at the club from 1982 through 2009, who died on Saturday. A gentleman of the first order and a consummate pro, Dunning was 77.

“Steve was great to me when I was first getting started here,” said Carson Solien, the current head pro at Oak Park, told CDGA.org. “We’ll miss him. He was an integral part of Oak Park and a great guy.”

Dunning played in the Radix Cup eight times, with a record of 3-4-1. In his final appearance, in 2006, he and Jason Lee dropped a match to Mike Henry and Tom Miler. Henry played in Thursday’s match alongside Derek Meinhart of Mattoon G&CC, and managed a draw against veteran pros Roy Biancalana (The Hawk CC) and Travis Johns (Medinah CC). And there too was a Dunning connection. Henry’s family grew up at Oak Park.

“Steve was the head pro for as long as I can remember,” Henry told the CDGA. “What a gentleman. It was awesome to play with him and I know our entire family spoke very highly of him.”

In that, there was unanimity.

– Tim Cronin

Scully makes plea-bargain deal in Streamsong thefts

Writing from Chicago

Monday, May 6, 2024

Mike Scully, the football player-turned-golf professional from Illinois, made a plea-bargain deal with the state of Florida to defer prosecution in his triple-felony case revolving around the theft of over $100,000 in merchandise from the Streamsong Golf Resort in Florida. If he follows the strict terms of the agreement, he’ll not have to serve jail time.

An attorney for Scully and Florida assistant state attorney Brian Carnish made the deal on April 25 in a “notice of nolle prosequi / no bill,” noting that Scully has “complied with the terms and agreements of the Deferred Prosecution Program.”

Carnish moved for and the judge granted termination and dismissal of the three felony charges: grand theft of more than $20,000 in merchandise, scheme to defraud for more than $50,000, and dealing in stolen property.

Specifics in Scully’s case were not immediately available, but typically in a plea-bargain agreement for a first offender in Florida, the charged party must pay restitution for the full amount – in this case from nearly $100,000 to $143,536, depending on which court document is used, pay a fine, not commit further crimes for at least a year, and participate in community service.

The deal means Scully, whose resume includes a stint at Medinah Country Club that ended just after the 2012 Ryder Cup, avoids a guilty plea or verdict, which would render him ineligible for continuing membership in the PGA of America.

Scully, 58, had been arrested on Nov. 22, about four months after he left Streamsong for Kinsale Golf Club, a private club under construction in North Naples, Fla. Kinsale fired him days later. Between Medinah and Streamsong, the Prospect High and Illinois graduate, a member of the Fighting Illini’s 1983 Rose Bowl team, held leading positions at Desert Mountain in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Reynold Lake Oconee in Greensboro, Ga.

– Tim Cronin

For Bolingbrook, now comes the hard part

Writing from Bolingbrook, Illinois

Tuesday, April 30, 2024

Mary Alexander-Basta is the mayor of Bolingbrook. She is not a golfer.

“I do a good job waving from the golf cart,” Alexander-Basta said Tuesday after confirming the village made a deal with LIV Golf to host the upstart circuit’s individual championship from Sept. 13-15 at Bolingbrook Golf Club.

She did not attend either playing of LIV’s Chicago stop at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove the past two Septembers. She hasn’t watched a LIV tournament on television. She said neither she nor other village officials reached out to Rich Harvest’s management for advice or counsel on how to go about staging the tournament.

“We have what it takes; we’ll figure it out,” Alexander-Basta said. “We lead. We don’t follow. We’re Bolingbrook.”

Such hubris may work when dealing with the routine business of a municipality, but staging a big-time golf tournament – which, protestations from PGA Tour loyalists aside, LIV Golf weekends are – is another level of complication above anything the course has staged since it opened in 2002.

But Bolingbrook has an ace in the hole in KemperSports, which has run the golf course for the village for the beginning. Other Kemper properties have hosted tournament up to the U.S. Open, so LIV’s logistical people will have someone experienced to work with.

“They’re perfectionists at it,” Alexander-Basta said of the LIV logistics department. “We have all the pieces (for village planning), we just have to put them together.”

Specifics were not as numerous as hors d’oeuvres were at the announcement, though it was mentioned that it’s expected 50,000 people would attend over three days and that 7,700 room-nights would be booked for the week of the tournament. The average LIV week is said to have a $32 million economic benefit in the community.

LIV Golf approached Bolingbrook around the start of the year, the mayor explained. A party of LIV brass visited the course in mid-winter and decided the 7,104-yard par-72 course would be a good place for the circuit’s penultimate tournament of the season, the individual championship.

Alexander-Basta would not reveal the fee Bolingbrook will receive for hosting LIV, though she characterized it covering “A to Z.” Basta said the fee is tiered, and that she wasn’t sure of the total.

“We have different fee structures in terms of club usage, food and beverage usage,” Alexander-Basta said. “I can’t put a dollar amount on it. I wouldn’t want to speculate about it.

“The one thing I’m very excited about is the give-back to our non-profits that LIV will be giving back. That’s something I’m very excited about, and probably the highlight of all this, other than having top-name golfers on our course.”

Alexander-Basta said that portion of the deal was not yet finalized.

“We’re still talking about it,” Alexander-Basta said. “I don’t want to recite numbers in our contracts I don’t have memorized.”

The deal was hammered out over several weeks, with attorney Burt Odelson, a veteran of decades working for southwest and south suburban municipalities, handling the village’s side.

LIV was said to pay Rich Harvest Farms $3 million to host in 2022, and again in 2023, when Bryson DeChambeau won. Cameron Smith took the 2022 title.

Tickets go on sale May 8.

Bolingbrook is public, as opposed to ultra-private Rich Harvest. It’s the third public course to host LIV in the United States. Orange County National, a 45-hole facility in Winter Garden, Fla., near Orlando, and Pumpkin Ridge, a 36-hole facility near Portland, Ore., are the others.

As for the Saudi Arabia connection – the country’s Public Investment Fund is the backer of LIV Golf – and the attendant human rights issues with that country, Alexander-Basta said she’s not worried.

“Absolutely not,” she said.

Illinois Golfer reported LIV and Bolingbrook had reached an agreement on April 11, confirming an X/Twitter report on April 4.

– Tim Cronin