Par is not a good score at Crooked Stick

    Thursday, September 6, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    Pete Dye, the developer and architect at Crooked Stick Golf Club since 1964, may fire up a bulldozer before Friday’s second round of the BMW Championship begins.
    After all, everyone else is tearing up his course. Why not Pete, too?
    The field of 70 elite players is averaging 69.158 strokes on the par-72 course as of 2:48 p.m. ET, when the first groups out had played 13 holes. The average was as low as 68.963 some 20 minutes earlier.
    Even with “lift, clean and place” in effect, this is phenomenal scoring. The soft greens have also contributed.
    In the 108 previous years of the Western Open, the lowest single-round average was 68.971, at par 70 Bellerive Country Club in 2008. The lowest average in relation to par was 1.862 strokes under the par 71 of Cog Hill’s Dubsdread course in 2007. That mark is going to be blown away.
    The tipoff to all this might have been Jimmy Walker’s 57-foot birdie putt to open the show on the 10th hole, his first. That gave the big crowd a thrill – it may have reached 30,000 by now – and guaranteed a bloody red leader board.
    The leader? It’s Indiana native Bo Van Pelt, 7-under through 12 holes, with Tiger Woods and Graham DeLeat a stroke behind, and most of the rest of the field in hot pursuit.
    The trailer? Bryce Molder is 5-over through 14 holes. He must be playing a different course.
    While the course tips out at about 7,500 yards, it’s been set up at 7,408 yards for the first round. That includes the three-hole stretch of the 500-yard par 4 14th, the 507-yard par-5 15th (which both Rory McIlroy and Zach Johnson eagled) and the 478-yard par-4 16th.
    Meanwhile, the threat of more foul weather in the Indianapolis area on Friday afternoon prompted Tour officials to move second round tee times more than three hours earlier than originally planned. Tee times will run from 8 a.m. to 10:01 a.m., using the first and 10th tees. Golf Channel coverage will be on delay beginning 3 p.m. ET, 2 p.m. CT.
    Saturday’s tee times may be pushed back, depending on how much more rain the course takes. Some 2.25 inches have fallen since last weekend, and Crooked Stick doesn’t drain exceptionally well. It was partially flooded during the 1993 U.S. Women’s Open.
    – Tim Cronin

Lift, clean and place in place at Crooked Stick

    Thursday, September 6, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Indiana

    Proper golf at Crooked Stick Golf Club will have to wait for Friday. Today’s first round of the BMW Championship – or 109th Western Open for old-timers – is being played as “preferred lies,” to use the PGA Tour’s term.
    Others call it lift, clean and place.
    Still others call it lift, clean and cheat. Vijay Singh, maybe.
    The decision by Tour staff came about because of Wednesday’s downpour, which softened a course already made soft by weekend rains. Apparently, the embedded ball rule commonly employed in golf wasn’t enough to create a festival of birdies, so the Tour went the extra step to allowing the players to put the ball in their hand.
    The rule was last invoked in the Western / BMW for the first round at Bellerive in 2008, after more severe downpours pushed the opening round back to Friday. It was also used in the first two rounds at Cog Hill in 2007.
    In the early going, the low numbers aren’t too low. As of 12:58 p.m. ET, six players are tied at 3-under-par: Jimmy Walker, Kyle Stanley, Bo Van Pelt, Jim Furyk, Graham DeLeat and five-time champion Tiger Woods.
    The grouping of Woods, Nick Watney and Rory McIlroy has attracted many in the large gallery, which may have numbered 20,000 by their 11:48 a.m. tee time. It didn’t hurt that Phil Mickelson, Zach Johnson and Jason Dufner were the threesome immediately in front of them.
    Updates as warranted, with a complete report at the end of the day.
    – Tim Cronin

The cash parade reaches Indianapolis

    Wednesday, September 5, 2012
    Writing from Carmel, Ind.

    Sometime late on Sunday afternoon, the winner of the BMW Championship – the 109th Western Open computed the old-fashioned way – will collect a check worth $1.44 million dollars.
    It took 69 playings, from the days of Willie Smith’s hickory shafts to the era of Nicklaus, Palmer and Casper – big Billy took four Westerns in a nine-year span – before this venerable championship had awarded that much money to the entire field. Now, score lowest, and you’ve do so in one fell swoop, and essentially never have to work again, not that these guys at the top of golf’s iceberg actually work.
    Take Tiger Woods, for instance. He’s off his all-universe form, and has been since his knee surgery following the 2008 U.S. Open, the subsequent personal travail, and the in-progress swing changes of Sean Foley. But his third-place finish in the Deutsche Bank Championship on Monday brought him $544,000, and pushed his career winnings over $100 million. That’s a one with eight zeroes to the left of the decimal point.
    It’s also about a tenth of what he’s earned when endorsements, European Tour appearance fees, and wise investing have brought him. While much of that money went into ex-wife Elin’s pocket, and Uncle Sam has claimed his share, the tag day for Woods has been canceled.
    Even he knows he’s the beneficiary of excellent timing to go with excellent play.
    “It just means I’ve come along at the right time,” Woods said Wednesday at Crooked Stick Golf Club, after an impending thunderstorm stopped pro-am play at the course in the northern suburbs of Indianapolis. “Yes, I’ve won a lot, but Sam Snead won more tournaments than I did.”
    And, Woods might have added, earned less than $700,000 during his career.
    Put it this way. Phil Mickelson, who has outplayed Woods the last few years, is on the cusp of hitting $67 million in career earnings. That’s astounding, and that he is miles behind Woods is equally astounding.
    The money will only go up as television’s largess continues to pour into PGA Tour headquarters in Ponte Vedra Beach., Fla., where commissioner Tim Finchem and his minions somehow figure out a way to entice sponsors to shell out more and more, year after year. If Rory McIlroy holds to form for the next 20 years, he could haul in $150 million on the U.S. tour alone.
    BMW, for instance, is the title sponsor of the week’s fandango. They pay into the purse, they donate a large sum to the Evans Scholars Foundation, which the week helps support, they buy a large chunk of commercial time on NBC and Golf Channel that goes beyond this week’s play, and they supply courtesy cars to the field for the week.
    That comes to around $9 million. No other sport, not even auto racing or tennis, the other two major vagabond competitions that travel the world, asks as much of its sponsors. Somehow, the PGA Tour has convinced CEOs and marketing directors that hanging out at a golf course where the stars may or may not appear – as independent contractors, they are beholden to no one – is the best way to market their products.
    It must move cars off the showroom floor, for BMW renewed its original contract, and just last week, Deutsche Bank did the same.
    All the math leads to this. The four-tournament series known as the FedEx Cup has a combined purse of $32 million on offer, plus another $35 million in money for the Cup itself.
    That’s $67 million for a month of play. The tag day for everyone in the playoffs has been canceled.
    At this stratospheric level, only winning matters, for the money is already in the bank. That makes those who are aggressive on a course they’ve barely seen and never played in competition the favorites for the week. The names already at the top of the money and points lists should continue to percolate to the top. That’s especially true given the dousing the Pete Dye-designed course took Wednesday, one more downpour on top of big rains Sunday and Monday.
    (There had been a drought in the Indianapolis area – the mayor only on Wednesday morning lifted a ban on watering lawns that had been in effect since June – but it was destined to end. If you need rain, just schedule a Western Golf Association championship.)
    “The big key this week is hitting the ball in the fairway and hitting it a good distance out there,” McIlroy said after coming off a course already soggy from the previous deluges.
    “It does help to be on the long side with it being this soft,” Woods agreed. “But you’ve got to hit it in the fairway. You can attack a lot of these flags.”
    Justin Rose, who lofted the J.K. Wadley Trophy above his head at Cog Hill last year, is the defending champion on a course he saw only from the clubhouse window a couple of months ago.
    “The real competitor is the golf course,” Rose said. “We have to learn this Crooked Stick golf course. It’s about keeping the ball in play. The rough is pretty thick.”
    – Tim Cronin

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

Weeks: Open berth "great reward for Armstrong"

    Writing from Chicago
    Wednesday, July 4, 2012

    In his years as a teaching professional, Kevin Weeks has tutored many fine players, including several notables on the PGA and LPGA tours.
    Of Ashley Armstrong’s berth in the 67th United States Women’s Open, Weeks says, “Nobody has worked harder nor deserves it more. This is a great reward for her.”
    Weeks was at Blackwolf Run, where the Women’s Open begins Thursday morning, earlier in the week to help tune the Flossmoor standout’s game. The veteran teacher at Cog Hill said one thing she hasn’t been thinking about is making the cut.
    “You don’t think about cuts,” Weeks said. “You just play as good as you can play. She will play as good as she can play. You play and you see where you stack up.”
    After the Open, Weeks and Armstrong will meet at Cog Hill, where Weeks will pose this question to her: “Where do you want to get better?”
    Armstrong, an eager learner and tenacious competitor, will no doubt have a long list, no matter how she fares at Blackwolf Run. She tees off on the 10th hole Thursday at 2:31 p.m.
    – Tim Cronin