Solheim a smash hit; Americans take lead

Friday, August 21, 2009
Writing from Sugar Grove, Ill.

They came, they saw, they chanted, they yelled, they sang, they roared.

The story of the first day of the 11th Solheim Cup Match was as much the gallery – the 30,000-strong gallery that came to Rich Harvest Farms, the ultra-private course an area code west of downtown Chicago – as it was the competition itself.

Friday's eight matches decided little. The U.S. LPGA squad has a 4 1/2-3 1/2 over the representatives of the Ladies European Tour advantage entering Saturday's eight matches, which, like Friday's, will be split evenly between best-ball and alternate shot affairs.

"One point is nothing," said American veteran Juli Inkster, whose alternate-shot victory with Paula Creamer in the afternoon made her the leading U.S. point-winner in Solheim Cup history.

After all the birdies and brilliant approaches and creative recovery shots, it was the crowd that impressed. Fans from two continents and all 50 states arrived early and stayed late. They created the largest traffic jam in the history of Sugar Grove, one that delayed arrivals for as much as two hours. Then they whooped it up.

How loud was it? Michelle Wie's goosebump meter went on tilt.

"It was like walking down the 18th in contention in a major, times 100," quoth Wie, golf's teen queen.

Fellow American Brittany Lang agreed.

"It was nothing like a major, like the U.S. Open," Lang said. "I enjoyed every second of it, took it all in. I think the crowds make the event."

They galleries certainly made it loud. The first tee was like an Alabama-Auburn game, with the U.S. and European fans alternately singing and chanting. And that was an hour before the first tee time.

"It was 7 in the morning, I was putting on my shoes (in the lodge adjacent to the practice range), and I heard chants from the first tee," said American Morgan Pressel.

This feast of golf was expected to be interesting, with the U.S. team dominating, and at least moderately popular. Until about a month ago, half the tickets had been sold to people far from Chicago. Since then, the local crowd came around, and the split was 70-30 in favor of area residents. And that didn't count Friday's walkup, which was considerable.

Plus, the hosts didn't romp, even though Europeans Suzann Pettersen and Sophie Gustafson, billed as the can't miss visitors, missed twice. Paula Creamer and Cristie Kerr scored a 1 up victory over them in the morning best-ball match, while Natalie Gulbis and Christina Kim beat them 4 and 2 in the afternoon alternate shot competition.

Creamer, one of four U.S. players to play twice, was the only one to win twice. She teamed with veteran Juli Inkster to beat Catorina Matthew and Janice Moodie 2 and 1 in alternate shot. Creamer sank a 20-foot putt on the 17th hole to win the match after dropping a 30-footer on the seventh hole in the morning to halve a hole against Gustafsson and Pettersen, and rouse the natives.

"It's pretty easy to ride a stallion," Inkster said of her 3-0 record with Creamer.

The Americans had a one-point lead after the morning matches largely because Creamer sank a birdie putt on the 16th hole for a 1-up lead on Gustafsson and Pettersen, which proved to be the difference in the match, and because Morgan Pressel and Michelle Wie came back from a 2-down situation to post a halve against Catriona Mathew and Maria Hjorth.

Meanwhile, the two Brittanys, Lang and Lincicome, dominated their morning match against Laura Davies and Becky Brewerton. Lincicome's 60-footer to win a hole was part of the 5 and 4 rout.

"It was a tough morning, but the girls hung in there," European captain Alison Nicholas said. "It was looking good early on, and suddenly, it just swung around."

Which allows U.S. captain Beth Daniel to stick to her plan of sitting all 12 players out of one of the four team matches, to make certain everyone is fresh for Sunday's singles. That includes Creamer, who has played all five matches in each of her two previous appearances.

"Paula's a team player," Daniel said. "I don't want anybody to play five matches. There are long distances between greens and tees here. Paula said she wanted to play five, and I sat her down and said, 'Paula, I want you to have some legs left on Sunday."

Creamer sits out on Saturday morning. But, if Friday is any indication, some 30,000 people will be on hand to hoot and holler anyway.

– Tim Cronin

Europeans keep their heads up

Writing from Sugar Grove, Ill.
Friday, August 21, 2009

When you've been skunked twice in as many matches, it's difficult to keep your head up, but Europe's Suzann Pettersen tried to on Friday.

"I still think we played a lot of great golf," Pettersen said of herself and Sophie Gustafson, beaten twice on the first day of the 11th Solheim Cup Match. "The first match came down to the last hole. In the second, we needed to make putts and didn't make any."

Pettersen will play with Anna Nordquist on Saturday morning, when competiton resumes with best-ball matches. But Davies will sit out.

"She said she wasn't on her game," European captain Alison Nicholas said.

That was evident in the morning on the eighth tee, where Davies, once the biggest hitter in women's golf, hit the ball with the hosel of the driver. It squirted right, going no more than 125 yards.

A Wie argument

As if play wasn't slow enough, it took 15 minutes to determine whether or not Michelle Wie was entitled to relief before taking her third shot on the par 5 18th hole in her morning match. Her second shot landed in an area that officials said would be considered ground under repair, but it wasn't marked as such. The European team objected, and the resulting discussion seemed to involve everybody but the concession workers before Wie was allowed to drop.

"The rules official has said was ground under repair, but wouldn't be marked," Wie said. Her shot, from 155 yards out, didn't reach the green, and she had to settle for an up-and-down par 5 at the last.

On Sky Sports, which carries the Solheim Cup in the United Kingdom, commentators said Wie violated the "integrity of the game," saying she didn't know the rules.

Around Rich Harvest

The lone player left on the bench Friday was Europe's Diana Luna. All 12 Americans played. … It takes 14 points for the U.S. team to retain the cup. The Europeans would have to win 14 1/2 points to take it home. … Sugar Grove police came up with an alternate traffic plan by mid-afternoon, hoping to lessen the long waits fans had to get into the main parking lot. The problem is, all the roads leading to the final two-lane road are also two-lane roads. … At least three people were stung by bees between the 10th and 11th holes when a swarm, perhaps used to a handful of people on the golf course, was disturbed by the cast of thousands. … Saturday's matches begin at 8 a.m.

– Tim Cronin

Remembering Phil Kosin

Writing from Chicago
Thursday, August 20, 2009

It is 10 days ago that Phil Kosin died after an intense, and intensely private, four-year battle with cancer.

It has been awfully quiet around here ever since.

Kosin loved golf, loved life, loved to talk, loved to be in the middle of it all. Publishing and writing Chicagoland Golf, and taking the air on his Chicagoland Golf radio show, allowed him to do so, and make his love his life's work.

But he did more than that. He conceived and supported a golf tournament – the Illinois Women's Open – which has grown to become an indicator of young golf talent in the Midwest. He backed a charity – the Chicago Friends of Golf – that donated clubs, balls and other equipment to younger golfers in the area. He supported young pros occasionally by slipping them some money.

He was a fireman in his youth, and never got over the lure – reporters can do this – of chasing a story, whether it was a fire engine going down the street or a golf rumor found over the next hill.

He was the master of the well-developed argument. As Bill Shean, the emiment Chicago amateur, said, "Some people didn't like Phil voicing his opinion, but he always backed it up with the facts. When Phil made a point, it wasn't just an opinion. He had done his research."

And to your counter-argument, he would often say, correctly, "But I'm right."

Never boring, Kosin could carry a radio show with 50,000 watts of enthusiasm and storytelling. He filled pages of his newspaper with more of the same, and had the gift of being an excellent photographer.

Yes, it's awfully quiet around here. He missed last year's Western Open – a.k.a. the BMW Championship – in St. Louis because it had gotten harder for him to travel. He said he had a bad leg that wasn't healing, and that was true, but we didn't know what Paul Harvey called the rest of the story. A few days before he died, Kosin let a few people know it. The night he died, he was still greeting visitors to his hospital room with a one-liner and the classic Kosin eye-roll.

The Solheim Cup starts in hours at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove. Phil Kosin was one of the first reporters to detail owner Jerry Rich's quest to build a golf course on his property. As a great supporter of women's golf, he would have been all over Rich Harvest this week, getting the scoop the rest of us missed.

It will be awfully quiet in that press tent this weekend. The rest of us, who will tell Phil Kosin stories from now until we meet him again, have big shoes to fill.

– Tim Cronin

Raise the flag for Hudson's Hahn

Writing from Lake Forest, Ill.
Saturday, August 8, 2009

John Hahn is a gritty golfer who probably prefers meat and potatoes over fancy finger food.

The gritty ones are the ones who usually win the Western Amateur. Hahn did so on Saturday afternoon, knocking off another hard-nosed player, Zach Barlow, 3 and 2 in the final match.

Hahn is from Hudson, Ohio, heretofore unknown as a cradle of great golfers. But Hahn's hometown – the family now lives in Las Vegas – isn't far from where Ben Curtis, a former British Open champion and Western Am runner-up, grew up. It turns out Hahn and Curtis are acquainted.

Curtis is a grinder. Hahn, likewise.

See a trend developing here?

To win the Western Amateur, one must play eight rounds of golf, give or take a hole or two, in five days. Throw in a practice round or three, and the grind – there's that word again – can take a toll.

That's probably why neither Hahn nor Barlow, from downstate Percy, which is a 7-iron from the Ohio River, played their best golf in the final match. They were close to tuckered out, having battled their way through the 36-hole cut, then into the Sweet Sixteen, then through three rounds of match play, some of it conducted in the rain.

Besides, the conditions for the final on Saturday afternoon were the fiercest of the week. The players went to lunch after winning semifinals in cool weather, a drizzle having let up after a few holes. They walked out of the clubhouse into a 92-degree furnace capped by a 22-mph south wind.

Barlow led early, then Hahn turned the tables, winning the third, fourth, fifth and sixth holes. He was 2-up on the ninth tee. The ninth green proved to be the turning point of the match. Barlow, who won the 2008 Illinois Amateur and will be a senior at Illinois this fall, dropped his approach within four feet of the cup. Hahn's approach was even better, coming to a rest 2 1/2 feet distant.

Barlow saw a nearly straight putt. He didn't even take a practice stroke. He rapped it. It skidded right and ran a good nine feet by. The gallery of about 175 – 200 when marshals and officials are added in – gasped.

Barlow might have to had his head now not been spinning. He missed the comebacker and three putted. Hahn made his birdie 3 and was 3-up at the turn.

There were more holes to play, but it was academic. The junior-to-be at Kent State would win the 107th Western Am, joining fellow Ohioans Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf, to name a pair of prominent Buckeyes, on the George Thorne Trophy.

Back to Barlow for a moment. When it was over, he looked back on the drama on the ninth green.

"He had me on the ropes," Barlow said. "He won 3, 4, 5, 6, rolled off so many in a row, it knocked me back on my heels."

Hahn saw it as a rush to recover.

"He tried to jam it in," Hahn said. "That's how match play works, with the momentum swings. I was on the receiving end of it. That turned the tide."

So the 20-year-old won the title and the glory. But before he accepted either, there was one order of business. Changing shirts.

He was wearing a Kent State shirt with a Nike logo. The Western Am was sponsored by Callaway, but that wasn't the reason for the change.

"My dad's a Titleist rep," Hahn said.

Smart kid.

– Tim Cronin

Vindication in victory for Villegas

Sunday, September 7, 2008
Writing from Town and Country, Mo.

Camilo Villegas shed his runner-up tag with gusto on Sunday.

Cast as a player who dressed better than he finished, the 26-year-old Columbian silenced his critics at Bellerive Country Club, winning the 105th Western Open by outplaying the leaders down the stretch before a gallery that might have reached 40,000.

Villegas' round of 2-under-par 68 wasn't the lowest of the day, and wasn't even the lowest in his threesome. However, it was low enough to annex what's been dubbed the BMW Championship by two strokes over Dudley Hart, who started the day tied for sixth, five strokes back of Villegas.

"I think it was about time to win," Villegas said after finishing at 15-under 265, one stroke off the Western Open record set by Tiger Woods last year at Cog Hill. "It was a long, crazy week with the weather, but you know what? I'll do everything it takes to win a golf tournament."

Villegas led after all four rounds, the first wire-to-wire Western winner since Woods in 2003, and only the third in the last 74 years. He assumed the third round lead with a birdie on his 17th hole, the fourth of five played Sunday morning because of Saturday's fog delay, and then fought back final-round challenges by Jim Furyk and Anthony Kim, who were in his threesome.

While Hart barged into second with a closing 5-under 65, totaling 13-under 267, he wasn't really close enough to scare Villegas. The stylist was playing too well.

"It's golf," Villegas said. "You've got to worry about everybody, but at the same time, worry about nobody but yourself. I did look at the leaderboard all day. I knew exactly where I was and exactly what I had to do."

With vivid memories of last Monday's finish, where Villegas stood second through three rounds and saw Vijay Singh pass everyone with a final round 63, fresh in his mind, Villegas analyzed the situation and formed a strategy with seven holes to play.

"On the 11th tee box, I looked at my caddie and I said, 'Let's make three birdies coming in. We're two ahead. That's going to make the other guys make five birdies, and if they do, well, that's good playing.'

"I managed to make two of those, and fortunately, it was good enough."

Furyk, winner of the Western in 2005 and author of Saturday's record-shattering 62, was already reeling. He had assumed the lead when Villegas bogeyed the fifth and sixth holes, but bogeyed the ninth himself, moving Villegas back into the lead.

Anthony Kim had started the round four strokes back, flirted with contention on the front nine, and rallied with birdies on the 14th and 15th holes. That was fine, but Villegas had already closed the door to the J.K. Wadley Cup's case, thanks to sinking back to back birdie putts: He dropped a 10-footer on the par-3 13th and a roller-coaster 36-footer on the par-4 14th. That one went up a hill, came back down, turned right, and tumbled into the cup. Presto! Villegas was 15-under, and would stay that way.

"That's one you don't expect," Villegas said.

"He deserved it, made some key putts when it counted," said Kim, who tied for third with Furyk, three strokes back. "I just wish I could have finished a little bit stronger."

The putting performance by Villegas – 51 putts in the last 36 holes, and 108 for the week – also wasn't bad for a guy who four-putted his ninth hole in the second round.

"It wasn't the turning points," Villegas said. "It was the birdie-birdie I came back with. It rattled me in a good way. All of a sudden that four-putt was completely out of my head."

For Villegas, victory was vindication of the criticism he had to hear.

"Not a closer," it was said, his three runner-up finishes, at Phoenix, Doral and the Honda Classic, plus thirds in Atlanta and last week in Boston, considered proof of failure rather than success. "All show," critics said, mocking his "Spiderman"-style of reading putting lines. Sportswriters who dress like rummage sales even criticized his stylish duds.

He couldn't buy a break – witness last week – but Sunday ended all that.

"I learned what it takes to win (last week)," Villegas said. "And I learned that I'm good enough to win, even though it didn't happen. I was very patient, very positive. We had one guy (Singh) who came and just killed us that day."

This time, with Singh coasting to a 44th-place finish and an essentially insurmountable lead in the PGA Tour's playoff point standings – he has to show up in Atlanta in three weeks to win, but that's about all he has to do – Villegas was in command, and came through with his first victory in 86 PGA Tour starts.

The first South American to win the Western, Villegas spoke of pride of country, of the party he knows was going on in his hometown of Medellin, Columbia, and how he couldn't wait to be going back there on Monday.

"There's a big team behind me," Villegas gushed. "My family, my friends, all my sponsors here in the States, back in Columbia. They work hard just like I do. They motivate me to keep working, just give it all, because it's a tough game."

For four rounds, he made it look easy.

– Tim Cronin