The return of an old friend

    Writing from Chicago
    Sunday, October 6, 2013    

    Ninety-nine years ago, a gaggle of professionals and amateurs, 19 players in all, gathered at Chicago Golf Club to play for $175 and a new title: The Chicago Open.
    The full title was the Chicago District Golf Association Open Championship. But the shorter name stuck, and through the decades, off and on, the Chicago Open has provided more than a few thrills, and won itself more then a few notable champions.
    Will Ben Hogan, Ken Venturi and Luke Donald do for starters?
    If not, how about Byron Nelson, Sam Snead and Bobby Locke?
    Each won the Chicago Open in a different incarnation. To detail the first three: Hogan when it was CDGA-operated on the tour, Venturi when Gleneagles had control, replacing George S. May’s Tam O’Shanter carnival on the tour, and Donald – as an amateur starring for Northwestern – when the CDGA operated it as an independent tournament.
    Monday, the Chicago Open rises again from a 12-year slumber, this time under the auspices of the Illinois Junior Golf Association. Independent again of any tour, the Chicago Open offers a $50,000 purse and has 114 players, 97 pros and 17 amateurs, ready to tee it up at Cantigny Golf in Wheaton, using the Woodside-Lakeside combination, through Wednesday.
    While Don Berry, the champion at Beverly Country Club in 2001 and thus the defender, isn’t on hand, a slew of solid players are, including Thomas Pieters, a pro of rather recent vintage who scored an individual NCAA title while playing for Illinois. His old coach, Mike Small, to be inducted into the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame later in the month, will also be on hand. So will fellow downstater Steve Orrick, the Decatur stalwart who has excelled in the last couple of years.
    The hottest player coming in is Eric Ilic, who won the Illinois PGA Players Championship at Meatmora Fields last week. He beat Rich Dukelow, a Cantigny assistant, by a stroke.
    As you might expect, Dukelow’s in the field, as is former Cantigny head pro Danny Mulhearn, now stationed at Glen Oak.
    The amateur contingent is led by Burr Ridge’s Brenten Blakeman, a University of Dayton grad who plays out of Olympia Fields these days.
    There’s another name familiar to sports fans making his golf debut. Toni Kukoc, erstwhile center for the Bulls, took up golf with great enthusiasm, and some success, upon his retirement from basketball. He’s no Michael Jordan on the links, and that might be a good thing.
    The October date was selected originally on the theory that players far and wide would use the tournament as a tune-up for Tour school. Then the PGA Tour realigned its qualifying into the web.com Tour playoffs, making this a run-through for the web.com school in December. Still, 114 entries for the inaugural under the IJGA imprint is a good start. The play should be even better.
    - Tim Cronin