Monday
Apr112011
2014 Western / BMW to Denver's Cherry Hills
Monday, April 11, 2011 at 8:24PM
Writing from Chicago
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The rotation system that saw the 2008 Western Open / BMW Championship played at Bellerive Country Club in Town & Country, Mo., and will see next year's affair visit Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., now has a third course outside the Chicago area: Cherry Hills Country Club in Englewood, Colo., just outside Denver. The Western / BMW will be played there in 2014.
That the Western will move out of Chicago for a second time in this decade is no surprise, for a number of reasons. Foremost among them is the revenue the sponsoring Western Golf Association can generate when visiting a major city that doesn't regularly host big-time golf – and, for all the faults of the format, a PGA Tour playoff tournament is very much big-time golf.
In 2008, even with one day a complete rainout, the WGA brought over $3 million to its coffers, and thus to the Evans Scholars program, from its visit to Bellerive. A similar figure is possible next year.
In comparison, the WGA has been fortunate to make about $1.5 million, on average, in recent years when the tournament has been played at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club. The problem has not been the site – leave last year's greens trouble out of the equation for this argument – but the time of year. Golf in Chicago after Labor Day, with the Bears and Notre Dame playing, is a hard sell, given that the Western had been played in from mid-June to late-August, and usually around the Fourth of July, since it returned to Chicago in 1962.
With Tiger Woods in the field and up to (and sometimes over) 50,000 fans crowding Cog, the WGA earned more than $2 million on some occasions.
With September dates, those days are gone, unless the WGA travels. Since BMW wants a big crowd to see its cars – and wanted to alternate the championship in and out of Chicago originally anyway – the Western will be on the move in 2014. Oddly, it will go to football-mad Denver, and in Cherry Hills to a club where John Elway, the most beloved Bronco of them all, is the club president. Perhaps he can give Roger Goodell a call at the proper time and arrange for his old club to play on the road, or at least on Monday night, when the pros are at his club.
The surprise isn't so much the shift from Chicago for another year, but the venue. Cherry Hills isn't terribly long given its mile-high altitude – 7,500 yards plays more like 7,000 – but it does have a championship history, most notably Arnold Palmer's dramatic victory over Ben Hogan and amateur Jack Nicklaus in the 1960 United States Open, which started with Palmer driving the first green in the final round and making up a seven-stroke deficit over Mike Souchak, the Rory McIlroy of the day.
It had been thought, and expected by some, that in either 2014 or 2015, the Western would be played at Harding Park in San Francisco, given the PGA Tour's contractual obligation to play something there by the latter year. And perhaps the Western might still go there, though two straight years out of Chicago would make even less sense than playing even one year out of every two out of Chicago.
The story broke at mid-morning Monday, when the Chicago Tribune reported the news, citing unnamed PGA Tour employees. WGA brass were mum, but Cherry Hills members were not. The club e-mailed members late Monday night to let them know the championship will be played there from Sept. 1-7, 2014.
It will be the first top-tier PGA Tour tournament in the greater Denver area since the last playing of the International, the modified-Stableford tournament, at Castle Pines, some 30 miles south of Denver, in the summer of 2006.
Cherry Hills will also host next year's U.S. Amateur.
This year's Western / BMW is at Cog Hill. The 2013 edition is slated for Chicago, but no course has been selected. Cog Hill's future as a Tour site may well depend on how well Dubsdread looks this year, under new superintendent Scott Pavalko, when the pros visit. They howled last year when several greens were scarred and portions were grassless. Cog Hill is on the clock, and Pavalko has to come up big, or other courses with at least some interest in hosting – including the Glen Club and Kemper Lakes – will be high on the list of the WGA's go-to sites for 2013.
- Tim Cronin
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
The rotation system that saw the 2008 Western Open / BMW Championship played at Bellerive Country Club in Town & Country, Mo., and will see next year's affair visit Crooked Stick Golf Club in Carmel, Ind., now has a third course outside the Chicago area: Cherry Hills Country Club in Englewood, Colo., just outside Denver. The Western / BMW will be played there in 2014.
That the Western will move out of Chicago for a second time in this decade is no surprise, for a number of reasons. Foremost among them is the revenue the sponsoring Western Golf Association can generate when visiting a major city that doesn't regularly host big-time golf – and, for all the faults of the format, a PGA Tour playoff tournament is very much big-time golf.
In 2008, even with one day a complete rainout, the WGA brought over $3 million to its coffers, and thus to the Evans Scholars program, from its visit to Bellerive. A similar figure is possible next year.
In comparison, the WGA has been fortunate to make about $1.5 million, on average, in recent years when the tournament has been played at Cog Hill Golf & Country Club. The problem has not been the site – leave last year's greens trouble out of the equation for this argument – but the time of year. Golf in Chicago after Labor Day, with the Bears and Notre Dame playing, is a hard sell, given that the Western had been played in from mid-June to late-August, and usually around the Fourth of July, since it returned to Chicago in 1962.
With Tiger Woods in the field and up to (and sometimes over) 50,000 fans crowding Cog, the WGA earned more than $2 million on some occasions.
With September dates, those days are gone, unless the WGA travels. Since BMW wants a big crowd to see its cars – and wanted to alternate the championship in and out of Chicago originally anyway – the Western will be on the move in 2014. Oddly, it will go to football-mad Denver, and in Cherry Hills to a club where John Elway, the most beloved Bronco of them all, is the club president. Perhaps he can give Roger Goodell a call at the proper time and arrange for his old club to play on the road, or at least on Monday night, when the pros are at his club.
The surprise isn't so much the shift from Chicago for another year, but the venue. Cherry Hills isn't terribly long given its mile-high altitude – 7,500 yards plays more like 7,000 – but it does have a championship history, most notably Arnold Palmer's dramatic victory over Ben Hogan and amateur Jack Nicklaus in the 1960 United States Open, which started with Palmer driving the first green in the final round and making up a seven-stroke deficit over Mike Souchak, the Rory McIlroy of the day.
It had been thought, and expected by some, that in either 2014 or 2015, the Western would be played at Harding Park in San Francisco, given the PGA Tour's contractual obligation to play something there by the latter year. And perhaps the Western might still go there, though two straight years out of Chicago would make even less sense than playing even one year out of every two out of Chicago.
The story broke at mid-morning Monday, when the Chicago Tribune reported the news, citing unnamed PGA Tour employees. WGA brass were mum, but Cherry Hills members were not. The club e-mailed members late Monday night to let them know the championship will be played there from Sept. 1-7, 2014.
It will be the first top-tier PGA Tour tournament in the greater Denver area since the last playing of the International, the modified-Stableford tournament, at Castle Pines, some 30 miles south of Denver, in the summer of 2006.
Cherry Hills will also host next year's U.S. Amateur.
This year's Western / BMW is at Cog Hill. The 2013 edition is slated for Chicago, but no course has been selected. Cog Hill's future as a Tour site may well depend on how well Dubsdread looks this year, under new superintendent Scott Pavalko, when the pros visit. They howled last year when several greens were scarred and portions were grassless. Cog Hill is on the clock, and Pavalko has to come up big, or other courses with at least some interest in hosting – including the Glen Club and Kemper Lakes – will be high on the list of the WGA's go-to sites for 2013.
- Tim Cronin
Reader Comments