Writing from Chicago
Wednesday, March 4, 2018
As expected, Aronimink Golf Club, located in the posh Philadelphia suburb of Newtown Square, will host the 2018 BMW Championship. The deal, approved by the club’s membership today, locks in the next two out-of-town sites for the tournament. The 2016 BMW is a return visit to Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., near Indianapolis.
The deal is part of the Western Golf Association’s push to expand and improve the Evans Scholars program, the caddies-to-college scholarship fund that has seen 10,000 students graduate since the first scholars entered school in 1930.
The WGA began partnering with the Golf Association of Philadelphia, which runs the J. Wood Platt Caddie Scholarship Trust, in 2003, with one Platt-Evans designee, Christian Smith of Llanerch Country Club, enrolled at Miami in Oxford, Ohio. The long-term plan is to build an Evans Scholars dorm at Penn State. The WGA already works with the Western Pennsylvania Golf Association, so adding the GAP for up to two Platt-Evans scholarships a year, at the start, was a natural.
Founded in 1896 and at its present site since 1926, Aronimink is one of the oldest clubs in the east. The Donald Ross-designed course has been in and out of the hosting business, most recently with Tiger Woods’ AT&T National in 2010 and 2011, won by Justin Rose and Nick Watney, respectively.
It first gained the public spotlight in 1962, when it hosted the PGA Championship, won by Gary Player. A U.S. Amateur (1977) and Senior PGA (2003) has also played through, and the club is angling to score another PGA Championship.
The Western Open has been been played east of the Midwest before, though barely. The 1948 Western was played at Brookfield Country Club in Buffalo, N.Y., while the 1959 edition was at the Pittsburgh Field Club. Crossing Pennsylvania is a first.
The 2017 tournament will be in the Chicago area at a site unknown.
The decision to offer Aronimink the 2018 BMW was first reported by www.csnphilly.com.
– Tim Cronin