Illinois Golfer ZiehmZiehm atat thethe AugustaAugusta Women’sWomen’s AmAm •• 600-course600-course guideguide IllinoisIllinois GolferGolfer DigitalDigital EditionEdition AprilApril 20192019 Augusta’sAugusta’s seductiveseductive 16th16th ButBut thethe fifthfifth holehole isis wherewhere thethe actionaction isis Page 2 • April 2019 • Illinois Golfer www.illinoisgolfer.net ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Buzz In This Issue –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– News –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– A grand opening at Augusta 4 WGA building new HQ Augusta a washout for Illinois players 6 Illinois blanked in Drive, Chip and Putt 7 The Western Golf Association is moving – but not Masters preview 8 far. Ensconced in their stately digs in Golf since 1955, the WGA long ago ourgrew the building, even after an Opinion –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– addition was tacked on. Two satellite offices, one in Grill Room: Jenkins his Ownself 3 Oak Brook for tournament operations and the other in downtown Chicago for fundraising, attest to that. Departments By the fall, everyone in the WGA and Evans Schol- –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– ars Foundation will be under one roof, at 2501 Patriot Around Illinois: Staples in at Olympia 12 Drive in Glenview, about two miles from their old home The Calendar 14 The Directory 16 and around the corner from The Glen Club. Tour Guide 25 Ground was broken on the 25,000-square foot building last fall, and while movement during the harsh winter was slow, the pace has picked up post-Polar Vortex. Illinois Golfer WGA officials haven’t said a word about the new –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– building or the fundraising for it, in order not to take April 2019 • Digital Edition away from donations to the educational fund that is ap- Rory Spears / GolfersOnGolf.com Vol. 5, No. 2 • Issue 39 proaching its 2020 goal of 1,000 scholars in college, Dig we must A shot of the early construction of the –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– WGA’s new headquarters building in Glenview. Published monthly in season, which will be a first for the program. with occasional special issues Noted archive display designer Andy Mutch is Club most of the years since it opened in 1922 is now –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– creating the displays for the lobby and other areas of Valley Ridge Golf Club. Same course, same location, Publisher & Editor Tim Cronin the building. but new owners. Travel Expert Len Ziehm –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The story of the new construction was broken by ON THE AIR: Chicago’s two golf-oriented radio Join us online at www.illinoisgolfer.net Rory Spears of GolfersOnGolf.com. shows are back for another season of Saturdays. On Write us at P.O. Box 541, Worth, Illinois 60482 A new tenant is being sought for the current build- 50,000-watt WSCR-AM (670), Steve Olken and Ed E-mail us at [email protected] ing in Golf, which also houses the U.S. Post Office and Sherman hold forth from 6-8 a.m. Later, Rory Spears, Call us at (708) 638-1164 Follow us on Twitter: @illinoisgolfer the village hall for the town of under 500 residents. Ed Stevenson and Bill Berger take the 10-11 a.m. –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Display / classified advertising: NAME CHANGE: What had been Antioch Golf slot on 15,000-watt WNDZ-AM (750). Call (708) 638-1164 for particulars. Illinois Golfer assumes no responsibility for unsolicited ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– materials or claims of advertisers. Caveat emptor. The Cover One of the most recognizable holes in the game, the 16th green at Augusta National Golf Club, on a –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– © 2018 Illinois Golfer LLC, a unit of Cronin Multimedia sylvan spring day during Masters week. / Tim Cronin / Illinois Golfer Page 3 • April 2019 • Illinois Golfer www.illinoisgolfer.net ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– The Grill Room by Tim Cronin Jenkins his Ownself f, from roughly 1962 to 1984, you wanted play it. And that is how millions of cranky college Murray wrote one-liners one after the other, your golf writing presented to you on fine football fans will remember it.” a stand-up comic in print. On his best days, he china and were prodded to use the proper Jenkins, on the tumultuous 1971 Nebraska- rivaled Johnny Carson. fork to turn the page, you read Herbert War- Oklahoma game on a cold Thanksgiving Day in Jenkins connected his thoughts like a steel Iren Wind in The New Yorker. Wind, the brilliant Norman: “The spectacle itself was for everybody, cable, winding the tension throughout a piece wordsmith from Yale, he of the tweed jacket on a of course, for all of those who had been waiting until the finish. The last three-plus decades, he did 95-degree day at Southern Hills, used the Queen’s weeks for Nebraska to meet Oklahoma, or for all so for Golf Digest, eventually becoming a master English so effectively, even her majesty would be the guys with their big stomachs and bigger Stet- of Twitter. impressed. sons, and for all the luscious coeds who danced Jenkins died on Thursday, March 6, the If, during that same time, you wanted your through the afternoons drinking daiquiris out of evening of the first round of the Arnold Palmer golf writing to tumble off the page like peppers paper cups.” Invitational. He was 89, and back in Fort Worth, atop an overstuffed barbecue sandwich, you His golf coverage was as salient, if not more having fallen a few days before. His death read Dan Jenkins in Sports Illustrated. Jenkins, so. He got inside the heads of Arnold Palmer and prompted an outpouring of huzzahs and memories the brilliant wordsmith from Texas Christian, he Jack Nicklaus, lauded their genius and poked from fellow scribes, who properly placed him on of the smoldering Winston in one hand and the them when they failed – especially if someone the Mount Olympus of sportswriters. In golf, his scotch in the other, used the Queen’s English so sans pedigree was winning a major championship. peers were Wind and a pair of Brits, Bernard Dar- effectively, even Ben Hogan was impressed. The last thing Jenkins wanted was to memo- win and Henry Longhurst. Pick up anything from Wind wrote sonnets. Jenkins composed free- rialize the exploits of a George Archer. As Jenkins any of the four and it is as crisp today as when it verse country music minus the howling dog. wrote of Archer’s triumph in the 1969 Masters, came off the press. Both specialized in golf eventually but could “It was his first major championship, just as it Jenkins’ humor was of its time, and the more write about anything. Wind wrote of Larry Bird had been for (Gay) Brewer and (Bob) Goalby, sensitive may not like his novels, which were and Pete Rozelle and many other notables for The and he won by battling down the stretch with a laced with perfectly-played profanities, or a hand- New Yorker. Jenkins, who worked his way from ragtag group of escapees from some distant Citrus ful of other comments. But he refused to write for his hometown Fort Worth Press to the Dallas Open on the regular professional tour. What ever the white-glove crowd, even as he revered golf’s Times-Herald to SI, was a superb football writer, happened to the Masters we all knew and loved? cathedrals, from Pine Valley to Cypress Point to especially on the college game, which he grew up Only the gurus can tell.” Augusta National. adoring and never lost his ardor for. Perhaps the only sportswriter with as many or Jenkins once wrote, “I don’t suppose any- Jenkins, on the 10-10 tie between Notre more original lines that would inflame or prompt body’s ever enjoyed being who they are more Dame and Michigan State in 1966: “Old Notre a guffaw was Jim Murray, whose greatest throw- than Arnold Palmer’s enjoyed being Arnold Dame will tie after all. Sing it out, guys. That is away line, “Gentlemen, start your coffins,” in the Palmer.” Anyone who shared a press tent with not exactly what the march says, of course, but middle of a column previewing an Indianapolis Dan Jenkins knew he could say the same thing that is how the big game ends every time you re- 500, resonates even now. about his Ownself. Page 4 • April 2019 • Illinois Golfer www.illinoisgolfer.net ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Inaugural Augusta National Women’s Amateur Grand opening Kupcho beats Fassi in historic duel among the flowers From IG News Services Reporting from Augusta, Georgia ––––– upcho vs. Fassi sounds like a duel of middleweights going 12 rounds at Madison Square Garden in the 1950s, when boxing was still relevant. KInstead, it was a duel of two women among the flora and fauna of the Augusta National Golf Club, on a day when women’s amateur golf be- came relevant. Jennifer and Maria are their first names, and their accomplishment on Saturday, April 6, will not be forgotten. In the end, it was Jennifer Kup- cho, a 21-year-old from Westminster, Colo., and senior at Wake Forest, scoring a splendid 5-un- NBC / Golf Channel via Twitter der-par 67 to triumph in the inaugural Augusta Sealed with a National Women’s Amateur. Kupcho’s 54-hole kiss Jennifer Kup- aggregate of 10-under 206 earned her a four- cho with the Augusta