The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

The PGA playoffs have arrived.
And again, they come in the aftermath of a World Series and what amount to four Super Bowls.
OK. So what used to be the World Series of Golf is now the Bridgestone Invitational, but the point remains.
Year 4 of the FedEx Cup playoffs tees off this week and, while the race to the finish could be a bit more interesting than the typical Tiger coronations, the whole concept remains as underwhelming and anti-climactic as it did from the start.
The average golf fan likely can name two of the three previous FedEx Cup winners only because he is the ex-husband of Elin Woods.
Can you name the winner in-between?
Players play because, well, that $10 million first-place bonus can cover a boatload of alimony payments.
But even they haven’t quite figured out how they get where they’d like to be going.
“I still don’t know all the point scenarios, but if you play well this time of year, it’s a good thing,” Hunter Mahan said on arrival at this week’s Barclays Championship in Paramus, N.J.
Mahan checks in at the 125-player Barclays as the No. 7 players in the FedEx Cup standings the Tour has spent the whole year cramming down our throats. He is a pretty sure bet to still be around when the four-tourney field is whittled to 30 players for the Sept. 20-26 Tour Championship in Atlanta.
As busts go, this Tim Finchem baby hasn’t been a massive one. The tournaments — next week, 100 players will vie at the Deutsche Bank Championship in Boston, followed by a 70-player trek to suburban Chicago for the BMW in two weeks — generally have been compelling, as you would expect from an affair featuring most of the game’s best players.
But they have been interesting on a stand-alone basis, with the whole playoff business more of a complicated distraction than a matter of genuine interest.
Besides, the Cup never really has been on the line come Sunday at the Tour Championship. Woods won the first one without even playing the Barclays and all Vijay Singh — bonus to you if you knew he was the ‘08 winner — only needed to tee up in Atlanta to win the overall race that year.
Last year, Woods finished three shots behind Phil Mickelson in Atlanta and still won the Cup.
Then there’s this: The Tour invented this year-end four-event race as a means of clearing the network TV stage for pro football. But both the penultimate event in Chicago and the finale in Atlanta always are overwhelmed by competing NFL contests.
That’s among the reasons much of Chicago golfdom gladly would trade their “coveted’’ playoff role for a return to the halcyon days of the Western Open around the Fourth of July.
Also working to debunk the Cup’s value is the ancillary damage the playoff series has done to regular Tour events. Players have been forced to backload their schedules, causing A-listers to forego events they might otherwise have played.
Interestingly, the bulk of the damage has been done to events at the season’s outset, primarily on the West Coast.
Our own John Deere Classic doesn’t seem to have paid a price. But, as far as early claims that being one of 37 pre-playoff events with FedEx points on the line actually would enhance the Q-C field, there’s little evidence that has happened, either.
The most significant damage may have been done to the currently sponsor-free and very endangered St. Jude Classic. It formerly was known as the FedEx St. Jude Classic, by the way
For all of that, the future of this playoff series likely is secure, at least so long as FedEx is willing to continue to pay the freight and, assuming the NFL-less NBC remains interested in televising the final three events.
Play ball, fellows.
Yawn.

He was the forgotten Johnson on a beyond bizarre Sunday at the PGA Championship, but Iowa’s favorite PGA Tour golfer isn’t likely to be forgotten when U.S. Ryder Cup captain Corey Pavin completes his side three weeks from now.
A slightly better bounce on his 71st hole could have helped Zach Johnson slice one more vital stroke off of his 2-under Sunday 70 and his 10-under tourney total at scenic Whistling Straits in coastal Wisconsin.
In the end, Johnson finished an agonzing shot shy of playing off for his second career major championship.
In the not-quite-the-end, though, the seventh-year Tour vet vaulted from 21st to 11th in the final Ryder Cup standings. Although, technically, Sunday only was the finish line for the first eight U.S. finishers — each who won an automatic berth — it’s hard to imagine Pavin now not including Johnson among the four captain’s picks he will announce on Sept. 7.
Four of the eight automatic qualifiers — Bubba Watson, star-crossed Dustin Johnson, Jeff Overton and Matt Kuchar — are newcomers to U.S. national teams, and Pavin undoubtedly will be seeking some balancing experience in his at-large selections.
Johnson, a seven-time Tour winner now and member of the ‘06 Ryder Cup team as well as the past two Presidents Cup sides, brings that.
He also brings the accuracy off the tee that will provide counterweight to bomb-and-gougers like Watson, the star-crossed Dustin Johnson and, yes, even Phil Mickelson.
Too, Johnson’s reliable putting stroke and stealthy short game would be major assets in team portions of the Ryder Cup matches in late September and early October in Wales.
Johnson actually vaulted past a certain T. Woods in those final standings, and, whereas the smart money says Woods still has to play his way onto the squad in the next three weeks, it’s a fair bet that Johnson would have to play his way off of his close friend Pavin’s crew.
Like two-time defending JDC champ Steve Stricker, who finished fifth among automatic qualifiers, Johnson is roundly respected by his PGA Tour peers and can be a valuable player in the U.S. team room.
He’s got to make Pavin’s team.

Now, then, some quick observations about what should have been a spectacular finish to a year pocked by mostly mediocre majors:

n The star-crossed Dustin Johnson really isn’t star-crossed at all. Nor is he a victim of golf’s over-burgeoning rule book.
All the kid had to do was read a local rules sheet posted at every Whistling Straits tee, plus all over the player’s lockerroom.
Playing partner Nick Watney was credited with forthright honesty in noting most players don’t read rules sheets on arrival at tournament sites.
Sorry. That’s not honest. It’s honestly stupid.
I’d just call it further evidence of the golfing set’s growing sense of otherworldly entitlement.
Catered to in every imaginable fashion from the time they arrive at an event until they board a plane to leave — yep, sometimes even on a tourney-supplied charter — young golfers, it seems, simply can’t be bothered with niggling details like reading a rules sheet.
Maybe somebody should have read it to them.

n Likewise, Watson was not a victim of the fates when his “flag-covering’’ 6-iron fell — what? — 40 yards short of the 18th green and into Seven Mile Creek on Sunday’s third playoff hole.
What he might have cited instead was the U.S.G.A.’s banishment of square grooves, which now requires players to read lies beyond the fairway to determine whether the ball will or will not jump.
Youngsters like Watson never had to do that before.
Sunday, Watson thought he had a flier lie when he pulled 6-iron to try and cover 206 yards of trouble. And even though the shot didn’t fly, “Tin Cup” Watson said he’d pull the same stick again. Huh?
Look, because he was guessing at the lie, the prudent play with so much on the line was to lay up and play for the up-and-down.
Kind of like winner Martin Kaymer did.

n U.S. kids weren’t raised to lay up, however. And stinkin’ thinkin’ like that makes you worry about the U.S.A’s chances in Wales against a stacked pack of Euros.

n Finally, were my eyes deceiving me or were young bombers Watson, Watney, D. Johnson, Rory McIlroy and friends driving every other green on Sunday afternoon?
In the final round of a major championship?
Shut up.
Listen, that and all the recent eye-popping PGA Tour scoring that started at our very own Deere Run is proof something is going horribly wrong with the game.
And, here’s the dirty little secret: it’s the ball.
Yes, the technologically enhanced longer, softer, straighter golf ball is changing the pro game for the worse.
Back it down. Now.

He’s No. 1 in the FedEx Cup and No. 2 in the world.
Only once has a John Deere Classic champion ranked as high among the world’s finest golfers. That was in 2003, when Vijay Singh won four times, including a September JDC.
Although he ultimately agreed to return the following summer, Singh, though, was a champion JDC director Clair Peterson couldn’t immediately market for the following year’s tourney.
Singh struggled with the idea of playing here the week before the British Open.
Even if Steve Stricker were to win the FedEx Cup, and next year’s first two majors, Peterson can go ahead print the 2010 posters now.
Stricker clearly is a big-time talent, but there’s no chance he’s going to big time the JDC.
The smalltown Wisconsin kid is standing toe-to-toe with Tiger Woods these days, but he’s not likely to lose sight of the values that make him one of golf’s most soft-spoken favorites.
“He’s the easiest guy to root for ever,’’ Peterson said this week. “He’s our champion and he’s playing great. We are very excited about 2010 because we know he will be back here for sure.’’
Stricker is having the year of a lifetime and, as the continually revamped FedEx Cup hits Year 3, he is firmly established as a playoff-caliber player.
Stricker finished second in the FedEx Cup standings two years ago, and was 14th last year.
Thanks to Deustche Bank title-clinching back-to-back finishing birdies on Monday near Boston and a runner-up finish a week earlier in New York, he returns to the Illini State this weeek on top of the standings, with even Tiger Woods looking up at him.
As part of the continually changing FedEx process, Stricker could win this week’s BMW Championship in suburban Lemont and still not be guaranteed the year-end title.
The standings will be reshuffled ahead of the Tour Championship two weeks hence and anybody in the top five can claim the trophy and $10 million FedEx booty with a win at that Atlanta event.
None of that will change what Stricker has accomplished this year and the credibility his success offers the John Deere Classic.
“He is a world-class guy and playing as well as he has ever played,’’ said Peterson, who travelled to Cog Hill this week to get a head start on 2010 recruiting. “He carries our banner. We will probably be mentioned a number of times as Steve continues to play well not only through the playoffs but into next year.’’
In the meantime, we have a rooting interest in the PGA stretch run.

The PGA Tour pretty clearly is thinking outside the box in hopes of keeping current tournament sponsors in the fold.
Circled on that list of targeted sponsors, rest assured, is our very own Deere and Co.
John Deere Classic tournament director Clair Peterson, though, isn’t sure a fresh idea Tour commissioner Tim Finchem reportedly pitched last week at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, N.C., would carry much sway with the folks at the Glass Palace in Moline.
According to a Tuesday story in the News-Record out of Greensboro, Finchem told Wyndham leaders the Tour is considering a flexible schedule that would rotate tournaments with dates that are less attractive to the game’s top players.
While a temporary stop in June certainly would appeal to the folks at Deere, Peterson said the unattractive trade off of landing, even for just a year, in last week’s late August Wyndham spot likely would be a non-starter here.
Although in early July the JDC currently fights against the following week’s British Open, Peterson said late August would bring bigger problems.

Immediately ahead of the Wyndham were the World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational and then the PGA Championship, a major just like the British.
Behind it come four FedEx Cup playoff events, starting with this week’s The Barclays in New York.
“It would not be an advantage for us to rotate through that date,’’ he said. “The other thing for John Deere is that it is farther away from their selling season. So those ads they are required to buy would be less impactful.’’
The bottom line is that one June week that wouldn’t necessarily be bolstered by an appearance by Phil Mickelson or, gasp!, Tiger Woods could mean three years of fields not as good as the JDC has drawn the last two years.
The common demominator those two years, of course, was a JDC-sponsored charter jet to England.
“We have quite honestly made this date into an advantage,’’ Peterson said, noting that 20 of the 44 American players who competed in last month’s British Open Championship teed it up the previous week at TPC Deere Run. “We have found a way to improve our own situation. It is quantifiable and it has made a big difference.’’
Indeed. Word of mouth concerning last year’s charter enhanced the ‘09 field considerably and feedback on this year’s flight offers additional cause for confidence.
U.S. Open champ Lucas Glover has talked about booking his father-in-law a seat on next year’s JDC flight to historic St. Andrews., Peterson said. Tuesday, this year’s JDC champ Steve Stricker told Peterson he never felt fresher teeing it up in England.
All of those encouraging signs, of course, won’t mean much if Deere and Co., in the coming months opts not to extend its sponsorship beyond next year’s tourney.
And Deere isn’t the only deep-pocket with an expiring contract on Tour. Hence, the out-of-the-box thinking by Team Finchem.
Even though the flex schedule couldn’t start before 2013, Peterson said the creative thinking is a positive sign.
“The good news to me is that, whether or not any of these ideas come to pass, they are trying to find ways to improve the quality of the fields at events that struggle because of their dates,’’ Peterson said.
So far, Peterson said Deere and Co., the Tour and the tournament only have spoken informally about a sponsorship extension to 2014.
At the moment, the Deere folks are a bit busy. On Tuesday, they announced the start of negotiations to renew a contract with the United Auto Workers that is set to expire at the end of next month.
“This is a little farther on the backburner,’’ Peterson said of a JDC renewal. “But at some point we will need to talk seriously and they will need to talk seriously about anything past 2010.’’

There are holes-in-one, and then there are aces on the signature hole at Whistling Straits Golf Course in Kohler, Wis.

East Moline’s Bob Larsen scored the latter Aug. 21, sailing an 8-iron 163 yards and into the cup at the seventh hole of a golf course that recently was ranked as the third best in the world among courses constructed in the last 50 years.

The Wisconsin course was so ranked in the most recent edition of Golf Magazine. It was host to the PGA Championship in 2004 and is due to reprise that role next year.

Larsen is looking forward to watching next August.

“I can sit there and say “I had a hole-in-one. Why can’t you?” he said.

Larsen played the course with fellow Quad-Citians Todd Raufeisen, Jeff Tomachek and Bruce Wessling.

He shot an 89.

“I was excited about that, too,” he said. “It’s a pretty tough golf course.”

– Golf Magazine, by the way, turned 50 this year and the September edition identified many of what its staff deemed “The Absolute Greatest” items in golf over the last half-century.

Included among five honored living caddies was Moline’s Tony Navarro.

– A panel the magazine put together selected Jack Nicklaus over Tiger Woods as the greatest player in the history of the game, a beyond-the-last-50 years list that includes Old Tom Morris, Bobby Jones and Harry Vardon.

The top five, in order: Nicklaus, Woods, Jones, Ben Hogan and Sam Snead.

— Maybe it is because it is being played in Illinois. Maybe it’s because Michelle Wie is there. Maybe it is because I got to look into Natalie Gulbis’ dreamy eyes earlier this month. But I’m into the Solheim Cup, an event that highlights the best American players in the women’s game by pitting them in Ryder-style battle with a group of Europeans.

It’s too bad there is no LPGA equivilent of the Presidents Cup. What chance would you give the U.S. squad against an assemblage of top Korean-born players?

Today, we Quad-Citians mourn along with Ed Fiori.

What had been his — and the Quad-Cities’ — own personal slice of Tiger Woods history now has a co-owner.

Until Y.E. Yang outgunned the incompable Woods in Sunday’s final round of the PGA Championship in Chaska, Minn., Fiori’s 1996 Quad-City Classic victory at Oakwood Country Club held the distinction of being the only time Woods had taken a solo lead into a Sunday final round and not come out on top.

Yang’s rally from a shot behind to a three-shot win ended Woods’ run of 36 straight front-running successes, dating back to 1996

That is the seldom-mentioned aspect of Tiger’s incredible credentials as the best closer sports has known. We knew he was 47-for-50 when leading or tied entering a final round. We knew he had won 14 straight majors when tied or leading on Sunday morning.

But 36 straight with a lead of a stroke or more often went unremarked.

But it is remarkable. Consider: Since 1980, 54-hole leaders or co-leaders have won less than 50 percent of the tournaments staged on the PGA Tour.

When a 20-year-old Woods, then playing in his third event as a pro, stepped to the first tee at Oakwood Country Club on Sept. 15, 1996, Quad-Citians hoped their hometown would score an enduring place in history as the home to Woods’ first pro win.

Fiori burst that bubble by holding steady while Woods, the tourney’s leader since Friday afternoon, endured a quadruple bogey at the fourth hole and then four-putted the easy seventh.

(“It was quad city in Quad-City,” wrote then A.P. golf writer Ron Sirak, one of a dozen national golf writers who left the Presidents Cup in Washington, D.C.,that morning and flew tto the Q-C to chronicle history in the making.)

History didn’t happen, though. Steady Eddie “The Grip” Fiori’s closing 67 bested Woods’ by five shots that day. Tiger tied for a deflating fifth.

But who knew then that that ’96 Sunday at Oakwood still would hold a place in Tiger’s personal history for 12-plus years.

It did. Until Sunday, when Y.E. Yang joined The Grip in the rare class of Tiger tamers.

Rest assured, that will remain a very exclusive club in the years to come.

Let’s play a nine holes of catchup with the local golf scene:
1) Fresh off an appearance at last week’s U.S. Senior Open, former Crow Valley pro Curt Schnell finished second in the Iowa PGA Section Championship played Tuesday and Thursday.
Schnell lost a sudden death playoff on the first hole at Harvester Golf Course in Rhodes, Iowa. The winner, Iowa State assistant coach Judd Gibb, claimed a spot in next year’s John Deere Classic field.
2) Props to a trio of local golfers who posted top 10 finishes in last week’s Iowa Amateur at Sunnyside Country Club in Waterloo.
Bettendorf’s Ben Peters tied for fourth with a former Bettendorfer, Gene Elliott, while former Bettendorf Bulldogs teammates Adam Seitz, Bettendorf, and Dusty Drenth, Davenport, were part of a three-way share of seventh-place.
3) A pair of Illinois side Q-C players will tee it up in next week’s Illinois State Am at Bloomington Country Club after surviving qualifiers a week ago.
Tom Miler, a Champions Tour-aged golfer from Kewanee, and David Lawrence, an Eastern Illinois sophomore golfer from Moline, both played their way into the 132-player field.
4) Miler also will play along with Rock Island’s Fred Lukasik in the Illinois Senior Am next month near Peoria.
5) A total of 100 points separate Peters and Drenth in the Player of the Year race on the Quad-Cities Amateur Tour.
Both players have won two of the Tour’s five contested events. Peters won the Quad-City Amateur at Emeis in May and at Palmer Hills earlier this month.
Drenth was a winner last month at Short Hills and a couple of weeks back at Glynns Creek.
Clinton’s Dean Cavanaugh was a playoff loser to collegian Kyle Bermel at his hometown Riverboat Days Am and took down first place PoY points there.
6) With three events remaining that race is far from run, but even more wide open is the Senior PoY chase, where 212 points separate first from fifth.
Davenport’s Mike Long is the leader with a Palmer Hills win to his credit. Other senior winners to date: Dan Dalziel (Q-C Am), Blaine Kernan (Short Hills) and Dave Waugh (Glynns Creek).
The local tour resumes this week at Pinnacle Country Club near Milan, then will make up the rained-out Hawthorn Ridge Am in Aledo in two weeks. It wraps up medal play with the major points Tour Championship at Arsenal Country Club Aug. 29-30.
7) Still to come beyond the Tour Championship, of course, is the annual Iowa-vs.-Illinois Hasley Cup matches Sept. 11-12 at Emeis.
Illinois’ chances of erasing Iowa’s stranglehold on the Cup don’t appear promising. Seven of the Tour’s 10 points leaders are Iowans, including each of the top five. The Quad-City Junior Tour wrapped up its fourth season last week at Pebble Creek. Congratulations to all the young golfers who competed in this year’s six-event schedule.
9) Skip Holton, a regular in Iowa club pro events and last year’s IGA Senior Golfer of the Year, died July 31 from complications related to a heart attack. He was 56.

Relax. The above is not an inappropriate question.

It’s a reaction to the sparse number of female competitors on the Quad-Cities links scene.

This occurred to me when I scoured last week’s list of Illinois Women’s Amateur contestants, looking for Quad-Citians, finding none.

It occurred to me when all of four women teed it up in last month’s Quad-City Amateur.

It occurred to me when a field of 75 juniors who took on Emeis Golf Course in last week’s first Quad-City Junior Tour event included 18 girls of all ages.

It occurred to Jim Hasley, the godfather of Quad-Cities golf a long time before that.

Hasley, who mucketey-mucked the Q-C Am for decades  as the former head pro at Emeis in Davenport, long has been a champion of women in golf.

Years back, he endured the huzzahs from the chauvenists on the links when he fought for the installation of women’s tees at Emeis.

Yet Hasley never saw more than 20 women sign up for the women’s field in the Q-C Am, even during a brief period a decade back when he scheduled it as an entirely separate event, played at Duck Creek. Most often, fields numbered in single digits.

Given an abundance of ladies leagues and Ladies Days across the Q-C golf-scape, Hasley stressed the issue isn’t a lack of women playing the game.

But that’s just it. They view it as a game, not a sport.

“I think there are more women playing golf,” he said. “But they don’t look at it as a competitive sport. In 40 years, I don’t think it has changed a lot.”

There’s nothing really wrong with that. I play the game for recreation myself and never would dream of embarassing myself in a competitive tournament.

But there are women out there who have more game than me who haven’t stepped up to show it. East Moline’s Patti Lee is a rare exception and she has lost count of the number of Q-C Am titles she’s won over the years, largely over paltry fields.

The real shame is that the lack of distaff competitors trickles down to the junior ranks, where Hasley thinks young female players are missing out on a good bet by declining to challenge themselves in high school and junior summer events.

Hasley now is program director of the First Tee of the Quad-Cities. Of the 6,000-plus young golfers who have gone through that program since its inception in 2002, a representative 600 to 700 have been young ladies.

Not nearly enough of thme have gotten as serious about the sport as Hasley wishes they would, however.

“I tell them the easiest way to get a college scholarship is through (women’s) golf,” he said. “They are crying for players.”

He also knows who he will have to beat to do it.

“I like his chances, I really do,” Perry said of a certain Tiger Woods.

Perry might be one of several million people picking the defending Open champion, who also was a red-clad winner at the last national championship staged at New York’s Bethpage State Park’s Black Course in 2002.

Perry is one of the 155, however, who will be battling next week to unseat the world’s top-ranked golfer and, with Stewart Cink, he was one of just two people playing alongside Woods and Jack Nicklaus, the legend Woods’ is trying to unseat as the best golfer ever, in a Skins Game last week in Columbus, Ohio.

“That was an honor for me,” said Perry, who was the defending champion at the Nicklaus-hosted Memorial that Woods went on to win last Sunday. “I mean I was in heaven. I loved it out there.

“I really paid close attention to Jack because that is probably the last time we will see him play in public. But I really paid attention to Tiger also, and his golf swing looks a whole lot better than it has.”

Perry said Woods appears to have shaken off whatever rust resulted from a 10-month layoff for knee surgery and rehabilitation following his win at the U.S. Open last June near San Diego.

“Every shot was in control,” said Perry, whose own golf swing has carried him to 13 PGA Tour victories, including last year’s John Deere Classic. “He didn’t overswing. He was hitting a hard slider, which when he played his best, that was the kind of shot he was hitting, and he has got the best short game on Tour by far.”

Despite a win and five other Top 10 finishes in his seven starts pre-Memorial, Woods had looked somewhat vulnerable due to an erratic driver that had him ranked outside the top 100 in fairways hit.

Woods hit 14 of 14 fairways en route to a come-from-behind win on Sunday in Columbus. He hit 87.5 percent of the Muirfield Village fairways over the course of the week.

If Woods hits fairways like that next week, conventional wisdom states, he’ll win in a walk.

Hold on, Perry said.

“Muirfield is a big, wide open golf course,” he noted. “Even though it plays like a U.S. Open course, it’s got 35-yard fairways. Now, when we get to the 20 yards (wide fairways) at Bethpage, it may be a different scenario.”

On the other hand, Perry noted of Woods, “He definitely has the strength and ability to move it out of the rough better than anyone else, also.”

Something else Woods has done with great success at previous U.S. and British Opens is to leave the driver in his bag and hit 3-woods and irons off the tee, a better way to avoid ankle-deep rough.

Bethpage could foil such a strategy.

“You know, Bethpage is 7,500 to 7,400 yards long,” he said. “I don’t know if he totally can put that thing away.”

But if Woods hits fairways? Look out.

“I like his chances, I really do,” said Perry, who finished four places ahead of Tiger at Augusta. “I think he’s not trying to overswing now, and I think he is highly motivated. He’s had a lot of time off and he has two kids now. He’s got college to pay for.”

I have few Illusions that the grousing won’t soon start over how the John Deere Classic lacks star appeal without the Tigers and Phils and Vijays in its field.

There is no end to the number of people who just don’t get it.

For one of the smallest communities on Tour to have a FedEx Cup date and a month-out field that includes Kenny Perry, Zach Johnson, David Toms, Chad Campbell, Jesper Parnevik, Jerry Kelly, Chris DiMarco, Todd Hamilton and Mark Calcavecchia is better than any Quad-Cities golf fan has a reasonable right to expect.

Anyone who expects a field to match that of this week’s Memorial or even next week’s event in Memphis is kindly encouraged to call 1-800-GETADOGGONEDCLUE.

This is a great start to an event that is sure to include at least a handfull more of equally exciting names.

If you are expecting way more exciting names than those listed above, you don’t seem to have a handle on where you live. This is not Chicago. This is not Memphis. This is not Columbus.

This is a quaint little river community that 156 of the best golfers breathing pay a call to every year, and if that’s not good enough for you, gas up the car, fight the traffic and go watch the Cubs and Sox waste another season.

Me? I’m pumped to see some great golf at TPC Deere Run next month.