Illinois Open: Kinney aims to repeat

    Writing from Glenview, Illinois
    Sunday, July 20, 2014

    The business axiom that failing to move forward guarantees a step backward also applies to sport, which, beyond the competition itself, has a business supporting it.
    This is as true in golf as any other athletic endeavor. As even the casual golf fan knows, aside from the ever-growing purses on the professional tours, the business behind the game has been foundering in recent years.
    Even the Illinois PGA notices this. Entries for the Illinois Open – for which the 65th edition commences a three-day run at The Glen Club at 7:30 a.m. on Monday – are down this year.
    Why? Take your pick, and the reason will likely be true. Pros needing to stay in their shop and cater to their members is one reason. Amateurs unable to get away from their work for three days is another (though 81 amateurs, believed to be a record, are in the field).
    A decrease in entries means a lower purse, for much of the prize fund comes from the tournament entry fees. Wilson, the River Grove-based sporting good firm celebrating its 100th anniversary, is putting up a chunk of it, along with Athletico and KemperSports, but a good bit of the lucre on offer comes from the players who tried to qualify or were exempt and filed entries.
    Last year, playoff winner Joe Kinney collected $17,500, which, while not a record, was a goodly sum. This year’s champion is expected to deposit less in his account. (The precise number will be known Wednesday, when the oversize check is filled out.)
    To that end, the Illinois PGA, which has run the tournament since 1975 – the CDGA supervised it before then – wants to supersize the Illinois Open. The idea, executive director Michael Miller said last week, is to use two courses for the first 36 holes, which would allow up to double the size of the current 156-player field.
    The cut would still come after 36 holes and encompass the low 50 or so, but a bigger field would mean, he thinks, more entries into qualifying, because more players would qualify for the big show proper.
    “This could possibly be as soon as next year,” Miller said.
     Rare are the tournaments that need two courses – the U.S. Amateur, for stroke-play qualifying, immediately comes to mind. Next year, for instance, both courses at Olympia Fields Country Club will be used for qualifying when the U.S. Amateur decamps there, with all the match play on the stout North Course.
    So the IPGA would have to find a facility with 36 holes available or two courses in close proximity to each other willing to be taken over by a tournament. The latter task would be nearly impossible, the former merely difficult.
    But there is a solution. Since 2002, the Illinois Open has been played at courses operated by KemperSports. The Glen Club hosted from 2002 through 2007, and again beginning in 2012. The middle four years, Hawthorn Woods Country Club had the honor.
    Kemper just happens to have a 36-hole facility within the city limits. Harborside International, planted on landfill in what was a much larger Lake Calumet, is a Kemper-run operation. It also hasn’t been in the limelight since the 2002 SBC Senior Open, where Bob Gilder beat Hale Irwin in a playoff.
    What’s more, the Illinois Open’s new designated charity, the First Tee of Greater Chicago, is hoping to move its offices from the basement of The Glen Club to Harborside, where it can take advantage of a learning center that would be perfect for its youth improvement-through-golf curriculum.
    Connect dot A (two courses needed) to dot B (Kemper-controlled) to dot C (the First Tee) and you get an arrow pointing to Harborside’s driveway at 111th and Doty. Short of Frank Jemsek calling Miller and offering Dubsdread and Cog Hill No. 2 for three days next July, there’s no other logical alternative.
    It would be the perfect thing to announce after the winner collects his trophy and boodle late on Wednesday afternoon.
    Kinney would like to be that person again.
    Since last year’s success, Kinney has tried and come up short in getting his PGA Tour card, and more recently has been trying to cash in on the Adams Tour, among the leading independent circuits. So towns in Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas and other picture postcard locales have been his address of late.
    Kinney was so buoyed by last year’s triumph, he did what those stuck in offices say couldn’t happen to them. He played too much golf.
    “I’ve learned to pace myself,” Kinney said last week. “After I won here, I wanted to play every week. I burned myself out. There’s a little tightrope you like to walk.”
    He fell off.
    “The ball was going sideways,” Kinney said of his post-triumph blues.
    Wiser 12 months later, he won’t have his ace caddie from last year by his side this week. Greg Kunkle, the caddie master at Sunset Ridge Country Club and a close friend of Kinney, is fighting cancer and not able to carrie Kinney’s bag. So Kinney will have him along in spirit.
    Entries might be down, but the top of the field is stout. Kinney will have to fend off a gaggle of contenders, including four-time winner Mike Small – whose Illinois PGA Championship victory last year was the 15th Illinois major for the Hall of Famer – and eight other former champions, including amateur Joe Emerich, who won in 2008 to snap Small’s string of three straight titles. Max Scodro, the winner in 2012, is also back, along with Eric Meierdierks (2010) and four champs of less recent vintage, including Chicago State men’s coach Marty Schiene, who won thrice in the 1990s.
    – Tim Cronin