Illinois Golfer Previews:Previews: USUS SeniorSenior Women’sWomen’s •• SeniorSenior PlayersPlayers •• JohnJohn DeereDeere IllinoisIllinois GolferGolfer DigitalDigital SpecialSpecial EditionEdition JulyJuly 11,11, 20182018 Chicago Golf Club hosts ... TheThe USGA’sUSGA’s lastlast firstfirst Page 2 • July 11, 2018 • Illinois Golfer www.illinoisgolfer.net ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Buzz In This Issue –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Inaugural U.S. Senior Women’s Open –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The USGA’s last first 5 If it’s Thursday ... The magic of Chicago Golf Club 7 The qualifier at Conway Farms 10 It was generations ago when Chicago Tri- cago area of the Senior Players Championship, and to Chicago Golf Club course map 12 bune golf writer Charles Bartlett, looking at a no less than Exmoor Country Club, the Highland Park Groupings and starting times 13 schedule that required him to duplicate him- outpost with its own rich history, much of it authored by 36th Senior Players Championship self several days in succession, opined in his H. Chandler Egan. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Locker Room column that the various golf associations Apparently someone in the Tour’s Ponte Vedra Exmoor breaks with tradition 14 should huddle and quash potential schedule conflicts Beach headquarters doesn’t realize Chicago is in Illi- 48th John Deere Classic –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– for future years. nois, or that many metro golf fans motor down Inter- The PGA Tour’s annual cotillion 16 Bartlett was highly regarded in the worlds of jour- state 88 to Silvis, especially in years like this, when the Opinion nalism and golf, so much so in the latter that Bobby BMW Championship is out of town, or just didn’t mind. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Jones and his cohorts deemed it fitting to name the In one way, golf fans could not be more fortunate Grill Room: Charlie would approve 3 dining room in Augusta National’s media center in at the bounty on deck. Or frustrated. Take Thursday. Plus more news and departments 18 his honor after he died. Two buildings later, Bartlett’s Where to go? plaque is still on the wall. To Chicago Golf for the historic first tee shot, un- But Bartlett’s words, written more than once, were leashed by JoAnne Carner, Big Mama herself? read by blind eyes, then and now. His conflicts usually To Exmoor to see how Illinois coach Mike Small, Illinois Golfer dealt with the Chicago Amateur colliding with a CWD- who still pounds the ball, does in a senior major against –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– GA tournament or similar local baubles. the likes of Bernhard Langer? July 11, 2018 Digital Special Edition • Vol. 4, No. 5 Then there’s this week, where from coast to coast Or to TPC Deere Run, where senior Steve Strick- –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– in Illinois, three standout championships of national im- er, eschewing a major for his age group, instead will Published monthly April through December, port are being played. The Chicago Golf Club scene on take on the kids, including Doug Ghim, Nick Hardy and with occasional special issues the cover and our first few pages herald the coming of Dylan Meyer, in a quest to win a fourth John Deere –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Publisher & Editor Tim Cronin the inaugural U.S. Senior Women’s Open to the pio- Classic? Travel Expert Len Ziehm neer club in these parts. Worthy choices all, but there’s only one of ye. Hap- –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The combination of a first at the first club in these pily, if you can play hooky from work, you can hit one a Join us online at www.illinoisgolfer.net Write us at P.O. Box 541, Worth, Illinois 60482 parts along with the USGA flag waving above would day starting Thursday – say, a rotation of Chicago Golf, E-mail us at [email protected] be enough for any summer week, but the PGA Tour Exmoor, then Deere Run – and lounge on the couch on Call us at (708) 638-1164 has gifted us with not only the regular summer picnic in Sunday and wear out your remote. Follow us on Twitter: @illinoisgolfer –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Silvis – the John Deere Classic – along the shores of It will cost a few dollars, probably more for gas Display / classified advertising: than for tickets, but it will be worth it. Enjoy! Call (708) 638-1164 for particulars. the Rock River, but also the first venturing to the Chi- Illinois Golfer assumes no responsibility for unsolicited ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– materials or claims of advertisers. Caveat emptor. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Cover The flagpole in front of the clubhouse at Chicago Golf Club in Wheaton flies the club standard © 2018 Illinois Golfer LLC, a unit of Cronin Multimedia proudly. The logo hasn’t changed since the club opened. / Tim Cronin / Illinois Golfer Page 3 • July 11, 2018 • Illinois Golfer www.illinoisgolfer.net ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Grill Room by Tim Cronin Charlie would approve ome 79 years after his death, Charles Blair links courses of the British Isles, and a few that Macdonald is remembered two ways. sit inland. To do so, he moved more dirt and sand First, as the effective father of than all the others combined, sometimes pulling American golf, given his prominence in it out of the shoreline and replacing it on Long Sthe 1890s, when he all but bullied fellow golfers Island, as in the case of the long-gone but well- and fellow men of means to starting the American remembered Lido Golf Club. Macdonald conjured Golf Association – quickly renamed the United up golf holes out of sand and grass seed where States Golf Association – so he could play in and there had been nothing before. Every architect win a properly-conducted national championship. since has done the same. Thank the lord, he won it, or Macdonald’s That creative mind, we think, would have caterwauling might have gone into the 1900s. Macdonald nodding favorably at the creation of Second, Macdonald is considered imperi- the USGA’s new championship, the U.S. Senior ous and inflexible when it came to the royal and Women’s Amateur, which debuts Thursday at ancient game. With this, we take issue. Macdon- Chicago Golf Club. ald was a stickler for playing by the rules and For one thing, one of the first really fine play- could expound on the same for hours on end – it ers in Chicago was a girl, Johnnie Anna Carpen- can only be imagined what he would have said or ter, and she first swung a club at the original site written about Phil Mickelson’s antics at Shin- of Chicago Golf Club in Belmont. (You can still necock Hills – but he was anything but inflex- play golf on the grounds – part of it, at least – by ible. On the contrary, he was one of golf’s great visiting Downers Grove Golf Course.) innovators. Carpenter was 14 in 1895 when she won the It was Macdonald who invented out of women’s division of Chicago Golf’s tournament, bounds. Before he came along, an errant shot was Charles Blair Macdonald playing over the objection of her elders, perhaps tracked down and played, no matter whose corn- from an 1895 illustration because she had shown well in practice. Or maybe field or cow pasture it had sailed into. Macdonald It was Macdonald who invented building a because she rolled up her sleeves! Her score of 69 saw that as impractical, plus he was a slicer, and golf course. Until he came along, the early golf for nine holes would be laughed at today, but she when he laid out the 18 holes of Chicago Golf architects took the natural contours of the land won the eight-woman competition by five strokes. Club in Wheaton in the early days of 1895, he just and reworked it only as much as a team of mules With that background in Chicago Golf’s his- happened to lay them out on the edge of the prop- moving a primitive grader could manage. Blind tory, how could Charlie say anything but yes to erty, clockwise, so anyone hooking the ball might shots and awkward lies in fairways predominated. this week’s grand event at his first real club? send it over the fence, while his miscues could be There was no other way until Charlie, a man So play away, please, ladies, and know that played from the light fescue rough. of vision, recreated the characteristics of the great this week, you’re Charlie’s angels. Public Course. Private Experience. PGA Instruction • Top 100 Club Fitter • Top 50 Practice Facilities Book your appointment now at www.MPCGOLF.com 1700 W. Renwick Road | Romeoville, IL 60446 | 815.254.3333 | www.MistwoodGC.com Illinois Golfer Cover Story Inaugural United States Senior Women’s Open The end of the beginnings The USGA fills the last spot in its batting order By Tim Cronin Reporting from Wheaton ––––– ypically, moods of the players at a championship run by the United States Golf Association run from foul to dys- peptic. Everyone wants to win, grabbing Tthe glory and, at the Opens, a big check, but not everyone wants to be there. Complaints typically run from the width of the fairways to the height of the rough to the im- periousness of the officials. By the time the bell rings on Thursday some people are ready to throw punches. Not this week at Chicago Golf Club. The occasion of the inaugural United States Senior Women’s Open has brought forth bouquets, rather than brickbats, from players delighted the tourna- ment has arrived on the scene. Tim Cronin / Illinois Golfer Seventh heaven Chicago Golf Club’s par-3 seventh, the famed Redan, will play 153 yards for the ladies. Typical of those with smiling faces is Pat Bradley, the Hall of Famer whose career included time where I thought I might miss my tee time.