The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

Last week, it was D.A. Weibring and Tony Navarro making PGA Tour news Quad-Cities-style near Dallas.

This week, it’s former John Deere Classic tourney director and Walcott, Iowa, native Kym Hougham’s turn to carry the Q-C torch on the Tour scene.

It’s Wachovia Championship week, no small deal in Tour circles. Our man Kym is overseeing one of the biggest, non-major-championship events the Tour annually hosts and at Quail Hollow, an awesome venue where the U.S. Open, PGA Championship or Ryder Cup would be proud to land.

Hougham already got some face time on the Golf Channel Monday night, and could see more as the week progresses because people tend to make a big deal of the ameneties the sponsor and director supply pros at Quail Hollow Club, starting with Mercedes Benz courtesy cars.

I had the pleasure of spending a couple of days at the Charlotte, N.C., event a few years ago. And,with virtually all of the biggest names on Tour on the range, I can assure you this week feels a little bigger than the your average weekly Tour stop.

It continues to speak well of the JDC that Hougham got the Wachovia gig because of the work he did with our “Little Tournament That Could,” and the fact that Kym keeps hitting the ball out of park down in Carolina puts into perspective the tourney-saving advances the JDC made under his direction.

Here’s another thing you have to say about this considerable step up in Hougham’s career: It simply couldn’t have happened to a nice guy.

And speaking of former Q-C tourney directors, signs are Tony Piazzi’s Texas Open down in San Antone is line to take a quantam step forward.

Word is that tournament next year will move away from its “Lost in Space” fall dates to the April spot occupied last week by the Byron Nelson. This happens as Tour commissioner Tim Finchem finally takes the concerns of a tourney title sponsor into account and moves the Nelson to mid-May.

EDS, the Nelson sponsor last week said it would re-up through 2014, but only if the Nelson returned to May, where it can expect a stronger field. A report out of San Antonio this week said that can happen because AT&T is dropping its sponsorship of the May event in Atlanta after this year. So the Atlanta event goes away.

No PGA Tour stop in Atlanta? Just one more reminder how lucky the Quad-Cities is to have John Deere backing our event. If you ever are tempted to forget that, stop and don’t.

Boo Weekley was on last week’s first list of John Deere Classic commitments, and, if he comes, he will be one fun addition to the field.

Weekley is a homespun Floridian who swears he would rather hunt turkey than birdies and eagles, spits tobacco on the pristine fairways of the PGA Tour and, this week, didn’t know lead CBS golf announcer Jim Nantz from Jim Neighbors.

Weekley just is funny whether he means to be or not.

He swears chewing tobacco doesn’t particularly help his game.

“I just like to spit a lot,” he said.

He enjoys keeping a steady banter with his galleries during a round.

“These people paid their money to come out and watch us play,” he said en route to his second Verizon Heritage Classic victory last week. “Why not talk to them a little bit?”

Weekley played on the same high school golf team as Bubba Watson and Heath Slocum, and figures to be a lot of fun if he is here in July.

One problem: His wife is expecting and due to deliver a week or two before the British Open. Weekley was an early commit last year, too, but ultimately changed his mind.

Golf’s celebration of the Little Iowan Who Could starts today in Augusta, Ga., where Cedar Rapidian Zach Johnson beat the big boys on Easter Sunday 2007 with a game fueled by precision wedges and stealthy putting.

The Masters knows how to celebrate its past champions, and Johnson will be duly feted this week.

See how the Augusta Chronicle chronicled Johnson’s victory and his year beyond in an exhaustive multi-story package on Sunday:

Of course, much of the pre-Masters focus will be fixed on the inevitably of a guy who finished second last year to Johnson this week winning his 14th major and launching his march to the calendar Grand Slam.

Sure, Tiger Woods can play a little. And, yes, he is rightly the heavy favorite to prevail this year, but Johnson last year proved that the only thing that’s inevitable in the game of golf is that it will humble you — incessantly for most of us, very, very ocassionally for Woods.

Quad-Citians, though, need only look an hour or so south or west to understand that the concept of Any Given Sunday could apply more easily to the PGA Tour than to the National Football League.

Todd Hamilton beat Ernie Els to win the British Open in 2004. Johnson bested Woods, Retief Goosen and Rory Sabbatini at Amen Corner last year. And, of course, right at home, there’s our man Jack Fleck’s 1955 U.S. Open upset of the great Ben Hogan.

Johnson since has been defined by post-victory quote: “I’m Zach Johnson and I’m from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. I’m a normal guy.”

He is much more than just that, of course. But there are much worse ways to be remembered and those words do certainly capture the admirable humility of this God-fearing Iowan.

Johnson, of course, validated his Masters win with another PGA Tour “W” up the road in Atlanta just six weeks later and then rebounded from a mid-year slump that seemed to start with a pressure-filled missed cut at his “hometown” John Deere Classic by finishing second at the year-end Tour Championship.

So it would be silly to suggest he has fallen prey to the slumps that befell Hamilton and Fleck. Johnson, though, has posted a lone top 10 finish so far this year and hardly rides into Augusta as a serious pre-tourney favorite.

Still, he will be celebrated. He will host the Champions Dinner on Tuesday and, while he hasn’t identified a menu yet, count on corn-fed pork chops and corn fresh off the cob to punctuate those Iowa roots he wears so proudly.

The Champions Dinner is a Masters tradition as special as the green jacket and Johnson will forever be a member of an impressive fraternity.

“I’m excited,” Johnson said last month of hosting Tuesday’s affair. “That’s a lifetime dream right there and knowing I’ll be able to go back to that meal until, well, forever, is pretty special.”

Meanwhile, don’t count the plucky Iowan out when they tee it up on Thursday. He has earned right to be counted in. More importantly, as a result of his classy reign as defending champion, this humble son of Iowa has earned a lifetime of respect.

How do you not love Woody Austin?

The PGA Tour’s most animated man was at it again on Sunday near New Orleans, where, bidding to overcome a one-shot deficit to Andres Romero on the final hole, the Woodman topped a hybrid a mere 10 feet from a gnarly lie, then proceeded to make triple bogey.

It was the kind of shot that would have compelled the likes of you and me to declare ourselves choking dogs. Which is precisely what the Woodster did, in full earshot of national television audience.

The wounderfully emotive Mr. Austin, now best known for his AquaMan faceplant into a pond at last year’s Ryder Cup (where he showed up the next day wearing goggles and a snorkel) simply is a delight to watch (and hear) on a golf course and in a press room and his star absolutely should continue to grow on Tour.

It is Austin, not the demonically troubled John Daly, who should be viewed as the game’s everyman, the guy to whom we duffers best can relate. He is truly one of us, and Quad-Cities golf fans should appreciate that more than anyone because, remember, Austin last year essentially chose to honor his John Deere Classic commitment ahead of a last-minute invite to play the British Open.

That, he said, was because he was both a man of his word and more of a JDC-Memphis-Buick kind of guy than a major player on Tour. Plus, he likes our craps tables.

A month later, Austin proved he actually was a pretty major player in addition to a likeable blue-collar fellow by finishing second to that Woods guy at the PGA Championship.

Here’s hoping he is back at Deere Run in July because there he will be a star attraction and a highlight film waiting to happen.