Bo knows Crooked Stick, sort of

    Wednesday, September 5, 2012

    Writing from Carmel, Ind.

    Bo Van Pelt is the local boy who is making good.
    A native of nearby Richmond, Ind., who now lives in Tulsa, Okla., Van Pelt is likely the only man in the field of 70 BMW Championship players who was at Crooked Stick Golf Club during the 1991 PGA Championship.
    Watching. As a spectator, complete with ticket hanging around his neck.
    “I played here one time growing up, and I was here in ’91 and watched as a spectator,” Van Pelt said Wednesday. “I wouldn’t say I have any local advantage. I’ll get some home cooking at my sister’s house, so that’s about it.”
    Not only did nobody in the field play in the 1991 PGA, nobody in the field was on the PGA Tour yet.
    Vijay Singh had played in a handful of British Opens by then, but he was still on the Asian and European circuits. Phil Mickelson was still an amateur, so had played in the Masters and U.S. Open – and won the Phoenix Open in 1991 – but wasn’t yet a pro, so wasn’t at Crooked Stick when John Daly, the most famous ninth alternate in the history of golf, came up from Arkansas the night before and ended up holding the Rodman Wanamaker Trophy after Bruce Lietzke and the other contenders failed to charge on Sunday.
    To show how fast time passes, Rory McIlroy, the world’s top-ranked player, was still in diapers. He was born in May of 1989, though let the record show he smacked a drive 40 yards, only about 280 yards behind big-hitting Daly, at age 2.

    It’s Rory’s world

    It’s good to be the king.
    It’s even better to be the king and 23, as the aforementioned Rory McIlroy is.
    A year after winning the U.S. Open by eight strokes in his first major after throwing away the Masters Tournament, in the middle of a blossoming romance with tennis star Caroline Wozniacki, McIlroy silenced his critics and collected even more fans by winning the PGA Championship by eight strokes.
    The only other player since World War I to win more than one major by eight or more: Tiger Woods, who has done so in the Masters, U.S. Open and PGA. (The only guys before were Yound Tom Morris and J.H. Taylor, twice each in the British Open.)
    How good is that?
    And how does he get into such an amazing zone?
    “When that does happen, you have to realize it’s happening and just get out of your own way and just completely play one shot at a time,” McIlroy said. “Obviously you’re hitting the ball well, you’re just trying to hit it in the fairway, hit it on the green, hole the putt, go to the next hole, do it all over again. That’s what you’re trying to do.”
    Tiger Woods calls it plodding along. It’s a little more than that.
    “When you’re on like that, it’s obviously a great feeling,” McIlroy said. “It’s very difficult to play like that all the time, and that’s why the great players, they learn to win when they’re not playing their best.
    “That’s something that I still feel I’m learning to do. I think I sort of did that a little bit last week. I struggled to close out the tournament (the Deutsche Bank Championship near Boston), but had a couple of crucial up-and-downs on the way in. That’s what the great players do. They find a way.”
    Unless they’re injured. McIlroy’s great good friend Wozniacki, who has been nursing a wonky right knee, was knocked out of the U.S. Open in the first round by Irini-Camelia Begu.

    Around Crooked Stick

    The par 72 course tops out at 7,497 yards, but is expected to play closer to 7,350 in each of the four rounds, once tees and pin positions are juggled around. It would have listed even longer had Pete Dye, the founding architect who has a home off the 18th fairway, gotten his way and added even more back tees to his 40-plus-year pet project. ... Play in Wednesday’s pro-am was held up for nearly two hours starting at 11:31 a.m. because of a thunderstorm that drenched the course, with the morning rounds ended where they were stopped – Tiger Woods’ group, first off, played 15 1/2 holes – and the afternoon groups limited to nine holes beginning at 1:15 p.m.. This year’s tab for playing in the pro-am, which helps fund the Evans Scholars Foundation: $8,000. It had a full field of 156 amateurs, bringing in $1.248 million for the caddies-to-college program.
    – Tim Cronin