The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

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.