Tour Championship

 
Tour Championship Observations - caught most of the TV coverage today (on DVR...), just a few thoughts.

- Par four fifth hole is a monster. Not often you see PGA Tour players with 200+ yard approach shots into par fours. Played at 520 yards today, Tiger had 204 for his approach shot.

- Billy Andrade is a great guy...but needs to work on his announcing skills. If he says perfect one more time, I think I’ll scream. He said it five times in the first six shots he called.

- It was something to watch Stewart Cink hit two straight out of bounds on the 10th. First one bounced over a fence boarding a road. A bit unlucky that it took such a huge hop, but he left no doubt with his second ball, flying it over the fence by a good couple yards (thanks to great blimp camera work). Even better was to see Cink looking over the fence to see if they were really there.

- Why in the world would you build your 18th hole to be a par three?

- I love the “worm cam”...the camera view where it is as though the camera is resting on the ground behind the player. Very interesting to watch the break from that angle. With the field noticeably smaller this week, I would think this would be easier to facilitate, but didn’t see too many worm cam shots today.

- I would think one could say this fairly regularly...but if Tiger made even half the putts he should have today, he would have gone low. He missed at least half a dozen fairly easy putts inside 15 feet. He is hitting the ball pretty well, just not capitalizing when he should -- like the five wood to five feet, missing his eagle putt.

Lots of golf left, but doesn't seem like anyone else in the running wants to make a move at the top. Course is not playing overly difficult (easy for me to say...) but the way the TV folks are praising its condition tee-to-green, no reason there couldn't be some low numbers mixed in.

Mini Tour Profile -- NGA Hooters Tour

While the PGA, Champions, and LPGA Tours get all the glory, it is important to keep in mind there are many other avenues where professionals are teeing it up week in and week out. The most famous of the tours subservient to the PGA Tour is the Nationwide Tour, which receives some (though not enough in my opinion) national attention, particularly when it  comes time for Nationwide players to earn their PGA Tour cards. The tour following immediately under the Nationwide Tour is the National Golf Association’s (NGA) Hooters Tour.

While the name may be a bit comical, the level of competition is intense. Although the purses are nowhere near that of the PGA or Nationwide Tours, there is prize money at stake, and more often than not, lack of winning is enough to send a player packing for lack of available funds. To join the tour a player shells out $2,000, and then must pay $1,100 for each tournament entered. There is a pool of players exempt for events based upon performance in 2008, those performing well in 2009, and special status for those who are previous champions on the Hooters Tour. In addition, there are weekly Monday qualifying tournaments for the final 10 spots in the field. Those who do are forced to attempt to qualify on Mondays must also pay the $150 ($250 for non-members) fee each time.

The tournament fields are comparable to that of the PGA Tour at 168 members, with a cut after 36 holes narrowing the field to top 60 and ties. Also similar to the PGA Tour, the Hooters Tour has a Pro-Am event each week, with the participating players earning a bit of extra cash for their efforts. Other perks lie in free practice rounds during the week of the event, as well as free range balls and snacks/refreshments throughout the week. There are also several major golf club manufacturers who offer discount purchasing plans for members of the tour.

The tour’s schedule is at 18 events for 2009, primarily in the southeastern part of the country. In skimming over the schedule, none of the courses sound familiar, though that obviously does not imply that they are playing beat-up muni tracks. The purse for each tournament is guaranteed at $200,000, with the tournament champion earning just over $33,000. With one event left in the 2009 schedule, Ted Potter, a native of Silver Springs, Fla., is the money leader with $171,567, a nearly $70,000 lead over the second place finisher. Thus far in 2009, 302 players have cashed a paycheck, with three individuals having made $750 on the year. Potter, who has three wins in 2009, has a scoring average of 68.81 this season and has only missed one cut in the 16 events he has played.

Most of the players on the Hooters Tour see their time on the tour as a short stepping stone to bigger and better places. One of the more experienced guys on the circuit is Marion Dantzler, who was recently profiled in The Golf Channel’s “Golf In America” program. Dantzler has teed it up 88 times on the Hooters Tour since 2005 (as far back as website stats go...), cashing a check in 56 of those events. Throughout these five years, Dantzler has earned $86,722.15. When you calculate his membership fees for five years ($10,000) plus the entry fee for each of those events ($96,800), he has most certainly spent more than he has earned. As featured in the TGC special, he earns extra cash on the side with a yardage book company, selling books on the practice tee of Hooters Tour events for $10/book.

The Hooters Tour also has a 12-event Winter Tour, traveling throughout Florida from late October through late January. For those not wishing to travel to Florida, there are 12 events in North Carolina as well, running from the first week of November through mid-February.

In case you’re curious, as I was, the tour has not made a stop in Maryland since 2005, and from 2005-2008 they stopped in Chesterfield, Va., teeing it up at the Lake Chesdin Golf Club.

There are several more tours I hope to profile, and may even try to contact a couple players for a possible profile interview. Stay tuned.

Driving Ranges

During my daily blog reading, stumbled upon a good piece by John over at Golf Dash. His article presents a very valid point -- that there are few good public practice facilities in many of America's cities. It seems as though the only courses in the country featuring prominent practice facilities are private clubs. I don't get to practice nearly as much as I'd like...primarily due to time and financial constraints, but the lack of a quality practice facility within 30 minutes of my house is also a significant inconvenience. I haven't researched the issue very thoroughly, but to my knowledge, the nearest public driving range with a grass hitting surface is Waverly Woods Golf Club, a 30-minute drive from my home.

Earlier this summer Golf Digest published their ranking of the top 75 practice facilities, which was a pleasant read, except many (if not most) of these facilities are at private clubs. I wish they would expand their rankings to include a listing of purely public clubs, akin to their "Top 100 You Can Play" rankings. It is almost a tease to see a course in my town listed in the top-ten, yet I will probably never be able to hit one practice shot there, as the course is one of the most exclusive in the country, and sure does not allow the general public to use their fine facilities...

CAVES VALLEY G.C. | Owings Mills, Md.
Pick a target: "You could play a closest-to-the-pin contest with every club in your bag, including driver," says a panelist.

All in all, I'd love to hear if anyone in the Baltimore/Washington area knows of an affordable place to practice. I would be very interested in such a fine facility which charges monthly dues to use the facilities, of course assuming that the quality of facility is reflective of the price. I think I'll try and do some research to compile some of the better facilities, after all, I for one need plenty of range sessions to get my handicap where I would like it to be.

Course Review: Cog Hill Golf Club, No. 4 Course (a.k.a. Dubsdread)

Course: Cog Hill Golf Club, Course No. 4
Location: 12294 Archer Avenue Lemont, IL
Yardages: 5441 (red)/6033 (green)/6382 (white) /6750 (blue) / 7144 (gold) / 7554 (black)
Website: http://www.coghillgolf.com

During a recent roadtrip with college buddies, I had the privilege to play the No. 4 course at Cog Hill Golf Club, also known as Dubsdread. The course will be hosting the BMW Championship later this month, the third of four stops in the FedEx Playoff series. Let me start by saying this is by far the nicest course I have played in my life, and thus my review may be most positive than others, however, I would contest there is not much to dislike when it comes to Cog Hill No. 4.

The course has a tradition of hosting golf tournaments at the highest level, to include the Western Open Championship from 1991-2007, the 1997 U.S. Amateur, and as previously mentioned, will be hosting the BMW Championship through at least 2011. Although it has the storied history, the course was renovated between Sept. 2007 and Sept. 2008, and is truly a different test than the old Dubsdread.

The course is ranked No. 45 in Golf Digest’s “America’s 100 Greatest Public Golf Courses,” and No. 1 in Golfweek’s “Best Courses You Can Play.” I am not sure, but I think these ratings may have been prior to the renovation, and I would be interested to see the overall reviews of the course post-renovation. The renovation was conducted by Rees Jones, know as the Open Doctor for his work on courses such as Bethpage Black and Torrey Pines among others. (I am no expert, but I can certainly foresee the Open heading to Cog Hill No. 4 in the next decade or so.)

The greens fee of $150 includes cart and a small bucket of balls to warm up with. Perhaps my only two complaints lie here, both the fact that carts were quite old and slow, and for a fee of $150, I feel one should be allowed to hit 1,000 warm up balls if he or she so desires. (On our given day it was warm, so 10 balls into the warmup session I was drenched in sweat and ready to give up on the range.)

The practice facilities include a grass driving range, a small short game area which includes a regulation-sized green and several angles to chip from, and a monstrous putting green featuring plenty of room to hit putts from all angles and elevations. I’m not sure I could have hit a sand wedge from one end of the green to the other, it seemed to travel on forever.

As for the course itself, it was literally perfect. When the course was renovated, almost every blade of grass was torn up, to include every tee box and every green. This resulted in perfect teeing ground, flat as a pancake and perfect angles. Except for divots from the those playing that day, there were no imperfections on any of the tees. Each box had a yardage plate, and given that they are only a year old, you can assume they are pretty accurate.

The fairways are lush, perfectly manicured, and each and every sprinkler-head was marked. Since the carts are not GPS equipped, these markings were much appreciated, providing distance to the front, middle, and back of the greens.

The most memorable, and costly in terms of strokes, are the bunkers on the course, all 98 of them. I’ll do the math for you, that’s over 5 bunkers per hole. They have all been rebuilt, and can be very punishing if when you find them. The quality of sand is very good, and even after a major rainstorm, they were still very playable and seemed to soak up the water very well.

The course is quite lengthy, playing almost 7,600 yards from the back tees. During our round the back tees were closed in preparation for the coming event, and we played the blue tees which measured 6,750, still lengthy from that tee level. One of the many changes they made during the reconstruction was to create additional teeing grounds, and each hole now has numerous teeing options. This is likely a feature aimed at demonstrating the course’s versatility to host a major such as the U.S. Open, giving the USGA flexibility in how they setup the course.

Overall, very high praise for the redesign of Cog Hill No. 4. I did not have the opportunity to play the course prior to the redesign, however, after seeing numerous photographs in the clubhouse and watching video of the tournament held there in 2007, it is quite evident that the course has changed significantly. The $150 price tag may scare those not native to the area, but when you consider the other premier options in the Chicago area, the price is not unreasonable. Highly recommended, and I’ll give it five stars on the Palm scale.

Weekend Thoughts...

Things settling down a bit, hopefully going to equate to more time to write. Lots of thoughts on the golf world in general...

-------------------------------------

Surprise at the Barclays

I was lucky enough to catch the back nine coverage on Sunday at the Barclays, and it was quite a show. Had the makings of being a drama-filled marathon with a large group at eight under par, but the unsung hero came through. I am not sure which was more surprising, that Tiger missed his seven footer, or that Slocum made his bomb on 18. Neither looked to be a terribly difficult putt, but just about everyone was ready to concede the putt to Tiger, while Heath looked like a sure-fire bogey to send the tournament to a playoff. Quite a swing of events in that last hour of coverage, and proved to be another quite entertaining playoff event. I think I’m going to write another piece on my opinions about the playoffs, so nothing else on that broad topic for now.

Marino’s Meltdown

I was saddened to see Steve Marino’s meltdown on the back nine Sunday, as he put together three pretty good rounds and just shooting par would have been good enough to tie at nine under. Marino has a few top-tens on tour this season, and his game seems to be just above average in every category. I’d guess he bounces back and finishes in the top ten at least once more this year. Someone in one of the big golf forums posted an interesting story about Marino from back in 2007 when he played a muni course with Washington Post writer Eli Saslow...fascinating read.

Liberty National

Although I didn’t get to watch near as much of the coverage as I would have liked, it seemed as though Liberty National Golf Course held up to the test of the PGA Tour event, just one year after its opening. Many of the players were less than impressed with the course, citing tiny greens and the course’s compact and overcrowded layout as primary concerns. That said, it seemed to pass the overall test, and one cannot argue that the view rival that of a place like Pebble Beach. The media made a big deal of Tiger’s comments about the greens being difficult to read, but I would think much of that has to do with his (and the rest of the tour’s) unfamiliarity with the greens.

U.S. Amateur Recap

I guess I have been more preoccupied than I had thought, as I was completely oblivious to the fact the U.S. Amateur was being held this week. The Amateur is one of my favorite events to watch, as there is not a more diverse field anywhere in golf. I did flip back and forth a bit on Saturday and Sunday between the Barclays and the Amateur, and was surprised (saddened really...) to see one of the semi-finalists in each group playing with a “popped collar.” Call me a traditionalist, but I cannot help but think that these young players should have a greater respect for the game and thus dress more professionally. The winner, 17-year old Byeong-Hun An, has a sound golf swing and although he didn’t play his best on Sunday, earned his with solid play. I am setting my reminder now to tape all of the 2010 Amateur, scheduled for August 23-29 at Chambers Bay in University Place, Washington. I also checked the future sites for all USGA events for the next four years, and doesn’t look like any of them will be even remotely close to my location, save for the U.S. Open at Congressional in 2011.