Remembering Bill Heald

    Writing from Chicago
    Saturday, December 7, 2013

    Illinois golf, and golfers everywhere, lost a legend on Friday when Bill Heald died after a short illness. He was 86.
    It will be disconcerting to attend an Illinois Golf Hall of Fame meeting without Heald running it. For all he did in the game – from teaching to mentoring to officiating – across 61 years, shepherding the Hall of Fame nomination process beginning in 1999 was his favorite activity. Selected for induction himself in 1997, he subsequently helped select those who sat on the committee, helped develop the two-stage voting process, and presided over the selection meetings with an eagle-eyed view toward getting the best class of inductees every time.
    His guidance was superb, his humor limitless. You knew Bill Heald respected you when he fired a one-liner in your direction, and on target.
    Those meetings were behind closed doors. More publicly, one could always find Bill Heald at an Illinois PGA tournament, whether it was big, such as the Illinois Open, or a routine Monday 18-hole affair. Heald’s knowledge of the Rules of Golf was all-encompassing, but like any good rules official, he stayed in the background until needed.
    It was a surprise when Heald was absent from the Illinois PGA Championship at Olympia Fields. Only then did word begin to spread that he was ill. But, while needing dialysis three times a week, he made a pair of appearances in October, including at the Hall of Fame induction ceremony, wheeled in by his wife Margo. He had not missed a ceremony since his induction in 1997, and had presided over several of them.
    Heald arrived on the Chicago-area scene from Wisconsin in 1952, when he became the head professional at Riverside Golf Club. There he would stay, the professional for 45 years. In that time, he served countless years on the Illinois PGA board, and was the section’s president in 1976-77, when he spearheaded the move to create a full-time office and helped hire the first executive director.
    He became a PGA master professional in 1990. While he retired from Riverside in 1996, he never left golf. He only became more busy. In 1981 and 1999, Heald won the national PGA’s Horton Smith Award, bestowed for creating educational opportunities to fellow professionals, as well as the section’s similar award as well as the Bill Strausbaugh Award for club relations, and then was further honored by the creation of the Bill Heald Career Achievement Award.
    Heald’s interest in education was long ingrained. For several years in the 1950s, he coached golf and was an assistant basketball coach at Proviso High School – and the work on the basketball court came first. Somehow, he also found time to teach history at Proviso and the subsequent Proviso East and Proviso West.
    Heald began his golf career as an assistant in Bailey’s Harbor, Wis., for three years before becoming the head pro at Baraboo Golf Club in 1947. He was a graduate of Wisconsin State Teachers College.
    He is survived by Margo, his bride of 63 years, daughters Michele and Erin, five grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren. A combined visitation and funeral service will be held Tuesday at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 2317 S. Wolf Road, Hillside. Visitation is at 9 a.m., with the service at 10:30 a.m., with burial on in the adjacent cemetery.

    – Tim Cronin

Sainz alive! Carlos comes through

    Writing from Chicago
    Wednesday, October 9, 2013

    Carlos Sainz Jr. came so close at the Illinois Open to hoisting the trophy, he could taste it.
    The taste was bitter. He lost a three-way three-hole playoff in July at the Glen Club when Joe Kinney scored 12 over the first, 17th and 18th holes to amateur Dustin Korte’s 14 and his 17.
    In contrast, Wednesday at Cantigny Golf in Wheaton tasted so good. Sainz won the reborn Chicago Open, and no playoff was needed.
    With birdies on five of the first seven holes, Sainz took command and hung on to score a two-stroke victory over 36-hole leader Matt Thompson to grab a firm hold on the Ken Venturi Trophy and the $7,000 first prize from the purse of about $50,000.
    The 27-year-old Elgin resident, less than a decade removed from working in the Cantigny pro shop during his summers back from college, had won on the Canadian PGA circuit this season, but there’s something special about winning close to home. And winning there helped his effort here.
    “I won on a bigger level this year, which was big for me, because I’d never done that,” Sainz said. “I’ve been improving little by little every year, and this year with the help of sponsors and being able to play full time it has really catapulted me into being a better player.”
    He proved that from the start on Wednesday, opening with birdies on the first two holes, adding another bird on the fourth, then two more on the sixth and seventh to go out in 5-under 31. He was 5-under for the round and 7-under for the championship until his only bogey of the day, at the par-4 15th.
    Sainz finished with a 4-under-par 68 for 6-under-par 210, with Thompson’s even-par 72 landing him at 4-under 212. Jordan Mitchell of Atlanta scored 71 for 2-under 214.
    Thompson, with six birdies in his Tuesday 67, played Wednesday’s first three holes in 1-over, and was 4-under for the tournament. He stayed there through the front nine, never getting untracked. While Jake Scott, a charger from Mooresville, N.C., opened by going 4-under through the first four holes – highlighted by holing out from the fairway on the par -4 fourth – he parred the next 10 holes and scored 5-under 67, the day’s best round. It earned him a tie for fourth with Brandon Holtz and Michael Schachner at 1-under 215.
    Illinois men’s golf coach Mike Small, who finished at 1-over 217, might have had the day’s most curious round. He parred the first eight holes, bogeyed the ninth, double-bogeyed the 10th, then reeled off six birdies in the next seven holes – two stretches of three interspersed with a par – and finished with a bogey at the last. It added up to a wacky 70.
    Fittingly, Sainz played much of his junior golf under the flag of the Illinois Junior Golf Association, which brought the Chicago Open back to life.
    “To be able to crown a former IJGA competitor helps us highlight the mission of the IJGA and helps underscore the purpose of our reviving this great championship,” IJGA executive director Carrie Williams said. “We are looking forward to having an even better event next year.”
    Under discussion is a plan to move the tournament into September next year, to take advantage of changes in the PGA Tour’s qualifying schedule for its developmental web.com Tour. This year’s tournament was expected to lead into that, but the PGA Tour rescheduled some of its qualifiers when it realigned its season and created the web.com qualifying series.

    – Tim Cronin

Thompson's 67 moves him to the front

    Writing from Wheaton, Illinois
    Tuesday, October 8, 2013

    Matt Thompson has been on the verge for a while. The 24-year-old native of Battle Creek, Mich., was the runner-up in the 2009 Michigan Amateur, and fell a stroke short in the 2011 Michigan Open despite birdies on two of the last three holes.
    He’s on the verge again. After a 5-under-par 67 on Cantigny Golf’s lush Woodside-Lakeside layout, Thompson has a one-stroke lead entering the final round of the Chicago Open. Thompson’s 36-hole aggregate of 4-under 140 is one swipe better than the 140 of Minneapolis’ Thomas Campbell, who stitched a 70 to his Monday 71.
    Thompson, who turned pro after graduating from Michigan, has won in Illinois before. He captured Northwestern’s Windon Memorial in the fall of 2011.
    This field, full of seasoned pros chasing the $7,000 first prize, is as deep or deeper than the one Thompson faced in that Michigan Open. Campbell, to note Thompson’s closest pursuer, already has a pro victory this year, and while it’s on the Dakotas Tour, in some ways as far as you can get from PGA Tour headquarters in the U.S. and still play for money, he has the oversized check and the bragging rights that go with it.
    And that duo has company. Michael Schachner and Carlos Sainz Jr., from Libertyville and Elgin respectively, are two behind at 2-under 142. Atlanta’s Jordan Mitchell is at 1-under 143. A gaggle of seven at even par 144 includes Milo French and Tim Streng, two of the three overnight leaders, while Eric Sipple, who joined French and Streng in front after his opening 70, is at 1-over 145.
    In all, there are 14 players within five strokes of Thompson as the third round commences, and lurking at 147, seven strokes in arrears, is Mike Small, the soon-to-be Illinois Golf Hall of Famer. He’d have been two strokes closer but for a penalty for stepping on his ball while searching for it in the rough during the first round. That woe was felt by three other players as well.
    Thompson was not alone in carding a tournament-best 67. Daniel Zimmerman of Middleton, Wis., matched that score, and did so after an opening 80, the best recovery of any player. He did so by making nine birdies, offset by four bogeys, at Cantigny.
    The cut fell at 8-over 152 and encompassed 55 players, including three amateurs. Among those missing the cut: Medinah teaching pro Connie DeMattia, erstwhile Aurora fixture Bob Ackerman, and amateur Toni Kukoc, who prizes his 2010 Croatian Amateur title as much as his three NBA titles earned with the Bulls.

    – Tim Cronin

Three-way tie in Chicago Open

    Writing from Chicago
    Monday, October 7, 2013

    Eric Sipple is from Waverly, Iowa. A recent graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, he is one of the many players in the world of golf looking for a place to play.
    Monday, he found it, at least for a day. He scored 2-under-par 70 on Cantigny Golf’s Woodside-Lakeside combination nines to join Tim Streng of Arlington Heights and Milo French of Sugar Grove at the top of the field after the first round of the Chicago Open.
    Streng’s like Sipple, a would-be touring rabbit. Way back, he generated local headlines by winning the Mike Sipula Invitational at Pine Hills in Ottawa. He was 21 then, going into his senior year at Western Illinois. These days, he’s an assistant at Kemper Lakes Golf Club in Hawthorn Woods.
    French, a Sugar Grove resident, took nearly two years off from competitive golf before coming back to it this summer. He tied for ninth in the Illinois Open, and look where he is going into the second of three rounds at Cantigny. He’s connected with the PGA Tour – as a supervisor at the PGA Tour Superstore in Schaumburg, but isn’t seriously dreaming beyond that.
    “If it comes, it comes,” he told the Aurora Beacon-News of mere mini-tour status at the Illinois Open.
    This week, the chase is for the Ken Venturi Trophy. And this trio is ahead, but not alone.
    A quartet including Elgin’s Carlos Sainz Jr. and Godfrey’s Shane Smith is at 1-under-par 71 on the Wheaton layout. Big-hitting Travis Johns is among a sixsome at even-par 72. And Cantigny assistant Rich Dukelow is lurking at 2-over 74.
    Other notables were back in the field. Illinois coach Mike Small, winner of 15 state majors, scored 4-over 76, as did recent Illinois grad Thomas Pieters. Steve Orrick was at 77, and amateur Brenten Blakeman returned an untidy 83.
    Tuesday’s cut is to the low 50 and ties.
    – Tim Cronin

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