The Hole Story by Craig DeVrieze

I withhold his e-mail address only because he works for a sister publication, but Loren Nelson of the North County Times near San Diego won’t be getting any pressroom pork chops if ever he comes “slumming” at the John Deere Classic.

Nelson went for the tired tractor jab in likening a Buick Invitational without Tiger Woods this week to our mid-summer JDC.

“If San Diego were Silvis, Ill.,” Mr. Big City said, “and Tiger Woods were Kenny Perry, and everyone in LaJolla drove lawn tractors to the convenience store, then this week’s Buick Invitational would be the biggest spectacle ever to hit town.”

Nelson goes on to refer to Ryder Cupper Perry, who only won his 13th Tour title Sunday in a little burgh called Phoenix, as “winner of the tractor-sponsored event last year in the middle-of-nowhere Midwest.”

Nelson’s point, such as it was, was that without Woods, who typically plays the San Diego tourney but is sitting out this year with an injury, the Buick might as well be our JDC.

“Yeah, we’re spoiled,” Nelson wrote. “With all due respect to the John Deere Classic, this ain’t the John Deere Classic.”

Well, at least he gave us our due respect …

Never mind that the argument is  dumb – Phil Mickelson, Padraig Harrington and Retief Goosen,among others, are in the San Diego field — it’s also the same old arrogant nonsense lazy writers trot out whenever they are looking to demean one event or another by making mock of our smalltown affair.

Well, here’s the deal. We are a little out in the middle of the Midwestern nowhere, and we kind of like it that way. And we, most of us anyway, respect the level of talent on display in any PGA Tour event enough to get by-golly- excited when serious players like Perry and J.B. Holmes and Woody Austin and Zach Johnson come and show us their stuff.

In short, we are what Nelson isn’t — educated golf fans who know the game is bigger even than Tiger Woods.

Now, if you don’t mind, I believe I’ll get on my tractor and go home.

There’s nothing in golf quite like the 16th hole at the FBR Open in Phoenix.

Wouldn’t it be fun if there was? Like say the 16th hole at TPC Deere Run? How would that play?

The 16th hole at TPC Scottsdale is simply the rowdiest, least genteel atmosphere you’ll find around The Gentleman’s Game. There, 20,000 fairly gin-soaked zanies hoot and hollar after every shot, heckle the pros who hit bad shots, and some who hit good.

Some players love it. Some players hate it.

But it is undeniably fun.

16 at Deere Run is a scenic little hole — recently, in fact, it was voted one of the most beautifully brutal par 3s in the country — that certainly creates some John Deere Classic excitement.

It is among the tourney’s most closely watched holes, although creating a Phoenix-like amphitheater could be a challenge given that the entire left side of the hole is a fawning cliff.

Actually, when Deere Run was constructed, I envisioned 16 at Deere Run being something like the 18th hole at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, S.C. There, luxurious yachts line the Calibogue Sound to the left of the green and sound their horns when a Verizon Heritage champion is crowned.

In my mind’s eye, I saw shirtless Quad-Citians in bass boats lining the Rock River astride 16 and sounding air horns every time a JDC pro hit it close.

OK. Just an idea. Never said it was a good one.

Neither, probably, would be attempting to emulate 16 in Scottsdale. The JDC was honored by the PGA Tour last year for having the most engaged community on the circuit. It wouldn’t fit our warm and sensible smalltown Midwestern image to ”engage” in beery hooting and hollaring at Deere Run’s signature hole.

So … never mind.

And for our loyal The Hole Story commenters, I’ll just say I once saw Michelle Wie birdie 16.

Any number of reasons can be cited for the United States’ surprisingly easy Ryder Cup win over Europe in Louisville over the weekend.

One is the superb stem-to-stern coaching of U.S. captain Paul Azinger.

The European press, meanwhile, is pointing to a confused performance by Euro captain Nick Faldo. (You’d have to think the British tabloids have been waiting for this opportunity ever since the acerbic Faldo thanked them from the bottom of his bottom after winning the British Open 16 years ago.)

The Europress also could point to the power failure of the power trio of Padraig Harrington, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood, who were a combined 0-7-5 at Valhalla Golf Club.

Quad-Citians might point with some pride to the outstanding and steady veteran leadership delivered by native Kentuckian and reigning John Deere Classic champion Kenny Perry, .

Has anyone yet been crazy enough to cite the absence of Tiger Woods?

Call me crazy.

Hard as it is to envision an opposite outcome had the world’s unquestioned best golfer been healthy enough to join Team Zing, I would suggest it is a suggestion that bears suggesting.

Woods, after all, was on the losing side in four of the previous five Ryder Cup events and has won six majors more than he has career Ryder Cup points. He is 7-11-2 in his Ryder Cup history.

And while, as a colleague here noted, you are more likely to have a losing record when you play on losing teams, I’ll just say that when it comes to playing for God and Country, Tiger ain’t Boo.

That. of course, is as in Boo Weekley, the lovable, countrified lunk who positively flourished in his maiden Ryder Cup voyage, playing to the Stars-and-Stripes crowd with an enthusiasm that wore on a few European nerves but almost certainly was positively infectious to U.S. mates, young and old.

Almost as juiced for the battle were fellow youngster rookies J.B. Holmes, Anthony Kim,  Hunter Mahan and Ben Curtis, the latter’s bag having been toted by the Q-C’s own Tony Navarro.

Combined the youthful quintet fashioned a record of 9-2-6 over the three days of competition.

This means pre-match concerns about a record six Ryder rookies on the U.S. side were woefully misguided.

This means untainted youth ultimately can be the salvation for the Stars-and-Stripes’ previously flagging Ryder Cup hopes.

The only rookie who struggled at Valhalla was the battle-scarred Steve Stricker, who went 0-2-1, and the only other losing records for Team Zing were posted by two of the veteran-most Ryder Cuppers, Stewart Cink and Phil Mickelson.

Mickelson, of course, may be the most talented golfer this side of Woods, but here’s a thought: When the U.S. heads to Wales to defend the Cup in 2010 leave PhillyMick at home. Tiger too.

Reason being, there is an I in Phil.

Just like there is an I in Tiger.

And, yes, yes, yes. There is no I in team.

Team golf is a unique and even slightly contrary concept, and it is possible that someone as singularly wired to succeed as Woods simply lacks the team gene.

(Until Valhalla, his precise opposite appeared to be Garcia, who has never won a single major but had excelled at the Ryder Cup, with a 14-4-2 record.)

Further evidence? Witness Woods’ pedestrian 13-11-1 record playing for a U.S. Presidents Cup team that has topped the International side in four of his five turns in that much lower-keyed competition. (Mickelson? He’s an malodorous 11-13-9 in seven PCs.)

This is not to say Woods doesn’t enjoy team competition.

This is not to say he and Mickelson are not trying when faced with the challenge of playing only for the love of country.

It is certainly not to suggest that Woods first and foremost is a citizen of the U.S. of Nike or the State of Buick.

It just is to say that Woods can go from zero to 60 in a second if he is chasing a major championship trophy and the opportunity to run past  Jack Nicklaus’ legacy.

The guy is teeming with talent.

He is less talented with teaming.

That’s all I’m saying.

Second in last year’s Tour Championship, Iowa’s Zach Johnson won’t get a chance to supplant the injury-idled Tiger Woods at the top late next month in Atlanta.

Johnson is idled now too after being eliminated from the new and more punative FedEx Cup playoffs after a sluggish summer followed by a missed cut at last week’s playoff-opening Barclays Championship.

In a system that now allows players to move up more easily, and, conversely, to fall farther faster, Johnson fell from 112th in the FedEx standings to 131st post-Barclays, failing to make the 120-player field for this week’s Deutsche Bank Championship or the two big-money playoff events that follow next month.

It could mean an enforced five-week layoff for the 2007 Masters champion, but Johnson still is hoping to get in some golf two weeks from now in Louisville, Ky.

That, of course, is where the Ryder Cup will take place, and, though he is a longshot to be one of four wildcard players chosen by captain Paul Azinger on Monday, Johnson hasn’t surrendered hope.

“I don’t have an inkling what Captain Azinger and his assistant captains are thinking,” said Johnson, who finished 17th in the U.S. Ryder Cup points chase but also acquitted himself nicely with a 1-2-1 record as a Ryder Cup rookie two years ago and was 2-2 in Presidents Cup action last year. “I’m sure they are brainstorming. I’ll support their decision.”

Whether he gets some action at Valhalla, Johnson plans to try and rescue a so far disappointing year on Tour by playing as many as four times during the post-Tour Championship Fall Series.

A win in one of those largely forgotten events quickly could make a bad year better.

“I am very encouraged as to where things are in my golf game and I know where I need to go to get it to a better state,” he said. “And I don’t think I’m that far off.

“I am hoping that regardless of the numbers, 2008 will be one of my better years,” he said. “I think it has potential.”

Johnson sees potential, too, in the charter flight to the British Open debuted by the John Deere Classic in July. He said the direct flight from Moline to Manchester, England, was well-received following last month’s JDC by the 23 participating pros.

Johnson slept 75 percent of the flight, he said, and said, “It didn’t feel like I flew that far.”

He said a charter reprise next year could yield an even better JDC field.

“I think it was well-received. I don’t know how it couldn’t be,” he said. “Once the awareness gets out there how good and how easy it is, I think it is just going to get better every year.”

Not since Tiger Woods threatened to win his first title here in 1996 has the John Deere Classic garnered so much national attention.

That’s because in the eyes of many national golf writers, the “next Tiger Woods” apparently is a soon-to-be 48-year-old Kentuckian named Kenny Perry.

Perry, you may remember, made his case as the hottest player on a suddenly Tiger-free planet when he won the JDC earlier this month. It was his third win in five starts and Perry went on to Milwaukee to post another top 10.

He was in the headlines that week, too, of course, largely as a target of scorn for having bypassed the British Open. But, with the WGC Bridgestone Invitational up this week followed by next week’s PGA Championship, the golf-writing press has moved on and now warmly is embracing nice-guy Perry’s middle-aged emergence as the feel-good story we knew it to be during JDC week.

Perry was featured in the New York Times on Thursday. Sports Illustrated spent three days with him at home in Franklin, Ky., last week and a Perry story figures to be a prominent piece of the magazine’s PGA Championship preview next week or, perhaps, of its Ryder Cup coverage in September.

No story, of course, can fail to mention Perry’s win at TPC Deere Run.

It’s a nice bonus, and it beats being remembered as the joint where Michelle Wie was felled by the heat.

It’s no secret I am one of Michelle Wie’s most fervent backers. Someone who unquestionably was excited to see her get herself back into contention at an LPGA event last weekend and someone who was mystifed and dismayed when she made the inexplicable mistake of failing to sign her scorecard last Friday in Springfield.

Who does that?

This. remember, was Michelle’s third major rules miscue. First, the DQ in her first pro start for taking an improper drop and then there was the issue of touching a leaf in her backswing in a bunker at the Ladies British Open two years ago, which constituted grounding her club in a hazard.

She mocked the rules book then, noting it wasn’t her favorite bedtime reading. But, for goodness sake, you’d think she would have read it by now.

Too, you would think that, after the miserable two years she has endured since her WD at TPC Deere Run in ‘06, Wie and her handlers would stick to her vow earlier this year to focus on the LPGA Tour.

Instead, she has accepted an invite to next week’s Legends Reno-Tahoe Classic.

Please, understand, I am not one of those who dismiss Wie’s desire to challenge the men. I think there was a time she could do it, and she proved it at the 2005 JDC.

I also hope there will be a time when she can do it again, and do it consistently. I just don’t think that time is now.

She needs to build up her confidence as well as rehabilitate her reputation. One nearly magical weekend in Springfield simply is enough to do the former, and the debacle in the scorer’s tent only served to do further damage to the latter.

Meanwhile, I sincerely wonder if Wie’s need to hit it far enough to compete on a PGA Tour set-up hasn’t been a contributing factor to her inability to hit fairways anywhere. I just don’t see how playing next week in Reno gets her any closer to being the otherwordly talent I still believe she can be.

Of course, it doesn’t matter what I or anyone else thinks. Wie has proven she will stubbornly set her own course, which, frankly, is one of the things that that makes her a true trendsetter.

The concern here is that she hasn’t proven she can learn from her mistakes, which could just be the thing that derails her still promising career.

They call ‘em truisms because, well, they’re true.

From the internet, a few spot-on rules of golf:

1. Don’t buy a putter until you’ve had a chance to throw it.
2. Never try to keep more than 200 separate thoughts in your mind during your swing.
3. When your shot has to carry over a water hazard, you can either hit one more club or two more balls.
4. If you’re afraid a full shot might reach the green while the foursome ahead of you is still putting out, you have two options: you can immediately shank a lay-up or you can wait until the green is clear and top a ball halfway there.
5. The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about the golf swing.
6. No matter how bad you are playing, it is always possible to play worse.
7. The inevitable result of any golf lesson is the instant elimination of the one critical unconscious motion that allowed you to compensate for all of your many other errors.
8. Everyone replaces his divot after a perfect approach shot.
9. A golf match is a test of your skill against your opponent’s luck.
10. It is surprisingly easy to hole a fifty foot putt – for a 10.
11. Counting on your opponent to inform you when he breaks a rule is like expecting him to make fun of his own haircut.
12. Nonchalant putts count the same as chalant putts.
13. It’s not a gimme if you’re still away.
14. The shortest distance between two points on a golf course is a straight line that passes directly through the center of a very large tree.
15. You can hit a two acre fairway 10% of the time and a two inch branch 90% of the time.
16. If you really want to get better at golf, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.
17. Since bad shots come in groups of three, a fourth bad shot is actually the beginning of the next group of three.
18. When you look up, causing an awful shot, you will always look down again at exactly the moment when you ought to start watching the ball if you ever want to see it again.
19. Every time a golfer makes a birdie, he must subsequently make two triple bogeys to restore the equilibrium of the universe.
20. If you want to hit a 7 iron as far as Tiger Woods does, simply try to lay up just short of a water hazard.
21. To calculate the speed of a player’s downswing, multiply the speed of his back swing by his handicap; i.e., back swing 20 mph, handicap 15, downswing=300 mph.
22. There are two things you can learn by stopping your back-swing at the top and checking the position of your hands: how many hands you have, and which one is wearing the glove.
23. Hazards attract; fairways repel.
24. A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.
25. If there is a ball on the fringe and a ball in the bunker, your ball is in the bunker. If both balls are in the bunker, yours is in the footprint.
26. It’s easier to get up at 6:00 am to play golf than at 10:00 to mow the yard.
27. A good drive on the 18th hole has stopped many a golfer from giving up the game.
28. Golf is the perfect thing to do on Sunday because you always end up having to pray a lot.
29. A good golf partner is one who’s always slightly worse than you are. That’s why I get so many calls to play with friends.
30. If there’s a storm rolling in, you’ll be having the game of your life.
31. Golf balls are like eggs. They’re white. They’re sold by the dozen. And you need to buy fresh ones each week.
32. It’s amazing how a golfer who never helps out around the house will replace his divots, repair his ball marks, and rake his sand traps.
33. If your opponent has trouble remembering whether he shot a six or a seven, he probably shot an eight (or worse).
34. IT TAKES LONGER TO LEARN TO BE A GOOD GOLFER THAN IT DOES TO BECOME A BRAIN SURGEON. ON THE OTHER HAND, YOU DON’T GET TO RIDE AROUND ON A CART, DRINK BEER, EAT HOT DOGS AND FART IF YOU ARE PERFORMING BRAIN SURGERY.

Although her profile slips a notch with every poor finish, Michelle Wie remains big news wherever she goes, which means you can expect a few headlines when she arrives at the Michelob ULTRA Open in Kingsmill, Va., this week.

The LPGA event will be Wie’s first tournament start since she made the cut but finished dead last, 72nd, in February at the Fields Open in her native Hawaii.

Wie scratched from one spring event after a recurrence of the wrist problems that plagued her last year, when she struggled and appeared to have lost track of the transcendent game that saw her come within four holes of making the John Deere Classic cut in 2005.

OrlandoSentinel.Com golf blogger Jeremy Fowler caught up with Wie while she was working on her game at swing coach David Leadbetter’s Golf Academy in Central Florida on Monday. He reported that she answered a few questions before being whisked away and, from here, that seems a small sign she learned a little from the P.R.-blunders Team Wie made while appearing a bit imperious and haughty in the midst of last year’s struggles.

Even at the height of her popularity, Wie rarely spoke outside a media room — where, for the most part, she seemed genuinely honest and likeable, judging at least from what we saw over two appearances at TPC Deere Run.

Now, with a year of college under her belt, Wie’s brief but seemingly earnest answers to four Fowler questions would seem to indicate she is maturing nicely and, hopefully, is unscarred by the pummeling she took last year from the press, some deservedly, and by the vitriol, none of it deservedly, she consistently has endured from the small-minded many who resented her willingness to challege the men at tournaments like the JDC.

“I realize golf is not the biggest deal in the whole world,” she said in one telling response. “Golf is just a game. It won’t kill anyone.”

The Michelob tournament launches a busy summer that will see Wie return to Illinois in mid-July for the LPGA State Farm Classic.

Here is hoping her wrist problems are behind her and that she can show the amazingly fluid swing that once promised to make her the Tiger Woods of women’s golf.

When — not if — she does, I’m guessing there is another mid-July Illinois pro golf tournament that would love to welcome her back next year.

Click here for Fowler’s interview:

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.