The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

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.