Chicago Public Golf

Hey, the Sox open at home next Monday against the Cleveland Indians and I have a feeling that Cleveland ace C.C. Sabathia will be on the mound at some point. Yes, it’s the same C.C. Sabathia that gave up golf this spring so he wouldn’t get injured again.

I’m serious. Harken back to last year when Urlacher quit golf to prevent injury. Well, it seems that football players aren’t the only ones bitten by the injury bug from the nasty sports and gaming pursuit known as golf. In the March 16, 2007 issue of GolfWorld, John Strege talked with Sabathia who says that his stint on the DL for the last two Aprils was because of golf. I quote:

“So I’m going to give up golfing, and let’s see if I can make it through April this year.” Sabathia, who stands 6-foot-7 and weighs in the vicinity of 300 pounds, presumably takes an aggressive swipe at the ball, claiming to hit it 300 yards. “I shoot in the 90s,” he told the paper. “It’s not worth it for me to go out and shoot 90 then go on the disabled list.”

Well, I can’t disagree with you tough guy. Good luck on getting better.

If these injuries start to accumulate, I may eventually have to start calling golf a sport (versus a sports and gaming pursuit). If danger and the physical toll of performing the action are any measure of whether a game graduates to a sport, golf would certainly qualify in this aspect as a sport.

When I discovered that I could look at overhead photographs of golf courses in Google maps, I was a happy guy. It makes the winters go by a lot faster if I can blow an evening here and there just checking out my favorite courses from a satellite view. Sometimes it’s even cooler checking out courses that I will never get on. In fact, Google maps is about as close as many of us will ever get to Medina or Butler National.

Pictured above, via Google maps, is one of my favorite holes in the region. This is the 5th at Village Links of Glen Ellyn and it’s a dastardly short par 4. So dastardly, that I often have nightmares that the pin is back left, every day, for the rest of my life.

If you can’t tell, the hole runs from right to left on this picture. It plays 400 yards from the black tees but I usually play the blue tees, so it measures 369 yards. If you look on the right side of the photo, the blue tees are at the back of the second tee box in, right where the cart path loops around.

You stand on the tee and the water looms large about 160 yards out on your left. The two bunkers straight away on the right side of the fairway are 271 yards out. You can’t see the water on the right.

What makes it so sinister is something that you don’t notice from this overhead shot; at the bend of the dog leg there is a large mound running all along the right side of the fairway. That means that everything is going to bounce left, right towards the water. It really thins the fairway out a lot. Fear. That’s all I’m feeling at this point.

Your eye is drawn towards those two fairway bunkers. I think the designers put those there hoping that you aim at them with a club that will leave you just short. But wait a second. Draw a line from the tee box to those bunkers. It skirts the edge of the water on the left. You already know the fairway slopes left, so unless you can carry it about 240 (from the blue tees), you are in the drink, even with a straight ball. Don’t fall for it. I think the best play is a three or four wood aimed out to the crest of the hill on the right. But don’t go too far right, because if you hit the top of hill and bound right, you have an uphill, blind approach, or your in the water.

Say you prevail, and you hit a nice 210 yard three wood and you have a six or seven iron left. You’re still not out of the woods, especially if the pin is back left. There is a big mound that roughly traverses the green diagonally, from that back bunker to the middle of those front bunkers. If you fly anything hot to the back half of the green you’re in trouble because it all slopes away from you. Just aim for the middle of the green and hope you get lucky. If the pin is in front, just play short, don’t risk dealing with the other slide of the mound.

I like this hole a lot. I don’t hit the driver 240 consistently, so it presents a significant challenge and I really enjoy matching wits with it. In fact, this whole course is great and my review will come out sometime this year.

Throughout 2007, we’ll be visiting great golf holes in the Chicago area. Tell me what some of your favorites are and the crack staff here at the Chicago Golfcast will put some analysis together.

I know, it’s beautiful out. My sources in Indianapolis tell me that not only is everything green and lush down there, but they’re actually cutting the greens and mowing fairways already. We may not be quite at that point in Chicago, but it looks like everything is better than playable.

I’m going to try and get out Thursday afternoon, which is the first day that us carriers of a USGA handicap can officially post a score. That’s right. Say you went out this weekend and blew up to 100+ and you’re drooling to post it because it’s going to knock off a low differential and start the ball rolling to some “handicap restoration.” Not so fast my friend (hey, when did Lee Corso show up?). You can’t do that. We are officially “out of season” until Thursday so you just wasted a blow-up round (hopefully you didn’t lose too much cash).

If this is news to you, or just confusing, go to the CDGA website and get the lowdown. I strongly encourage you city dwellers to get a handicap from one of the clubs that allows you to post online. I do it and post 100% of my scores online. I actually only play my home course (Schaumburg GC) about twice a year (which is not good, because it’s a great place). I think you can even register online now, but I’m not sure. I couldn’t figure it out from the website. Regardless, it’s now easier than ever to have a full-fledged USGA handicap. If you don’t, you’re cheating yourself.

If you care, here are the 14 dates that the CDGA recalculates your handicap, so get posting.

1. March 29
2. April 19
3. May 10
4. May 24
5. June 7
6. June 21
7. July 5
8. July 19
9. August 2
10. August 16
11. August 30
12. September 13
13. October 4
14. October 25

Erin Hills was on the short list for a golf road trip this summer, but Bradley Klein from Golf Week gave it a review so horrible that I might need to rethink my road trip plans.

I usually take one day trip up to Wisconsin to get a little golf in. Last year I went with a buddy to play Brown Deer Park about a month after the US Bank Championship. Awesome road trip. The course was still fast and hard from the tournament. It’s beautiful. It’s reasonably priced. And it’s very manageable for golfers of any playing level. Perfect for a day trip because you shouldn’t have to drive more than two hours unless you are coming from the far south side.

I was anticipating Erin Hills because the new course generated a lot of buzz. The project included the involvement of popular (and expensive) designers like Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, got some good early press (probably because Ron Whitten, editor of Golf Digest, co-designed also), and has some really cool pix on the web site. It looks like it’s only about 2.5 hours from Chicago so this place is right in my wheelhouse for a day trip.

However, in the 3.10.07 issue of Golfweek, Klein gave it an epic beatdown. Here are a few of the comments:

• …the routing is a mess, in large part because Whitten insisted on moving no dirt at all-thereby taking trendy “minimalism” to its absurd extreme.
• …much of the bunkering is overexcavated and unmaintainable.
• …and the completely blind par-3 seventh “Dell Hole” plays up and over to the bottom of a vast taco shell. They should have thought “inside the bun” on this one.

Wow, you know someone doesn’t like the design if they crack out the Taco Bell reference. Klein’s acidity is somewhat perplexing and probably over the top. Who knows. Maybe he is jealous of Whitten because he works for a larger and more popular golf publication and probably makes more money that Klein. But then again, maybe Klein is right.

I won’t know until I play it. I am still planning on getting to Erin Hills this summer. Even if I don’t like it, it will still give me some insight into golf course design. Plus, since when do I listen to the media? I am my own man, I am golf man, hear me roar.

It’s just not necessary to haul around 14 clubs. This chart should give you the framework to bring fewer clubs and enhance your golf life. By carefully culling out unneeded clubs in a systematic manner, you can do so with minimal impact on your handicap.

Think about all the benefits:

• You can walk 36 holes and not feel beat down for that final 9.
• You free up a lot of space in your trunk so you can pick up all your buddies for that road trip to a far off course.
• Air travel is much simpler. My wife and I only bring one travel bag for air travel, we put both of our clubs in one regular bag and then I just stuff an old Callaway Pencil Bag (I don’t think they make it anymore) in the travel bag. Piece of cake.
• Fewer clubs allows you to develop better feel because you are forced to hit the same club multiple distances.
• If you have to cross a creek or brook, you can just leap over it rather than finding a bridge because you are so nimble with the lighter bag. This makes you look like a bad-ass and intimidates your playing partners.
• It feels good to break the game down into the four components and attack it from that perspective. It doesn’t matter how many clubs you have, you still only need to be able to Drive, Approach, play the Short Game, and Putt. You just have to be more creative and strategic when you use fewer tools in those aspects. If you like puzzles, brain-teasers, and thinking your way around the course, this is for you.

It’s not something that you leap into quickly though. I would start with no less than 11 clubs then gradually make your way down to the seven club package. I don’t always play with this few clubs. I like to mix it up a lot so I will switch back and forth.

The benefits for a trunksmasher are evident. It’s easier to walk, easier to travel (road or air), and easier to manage out of your trunk. Later, we will get into how exactly this can be used to grow the game by making it “stickier.” You gotta stop back for that analysis.

I’m happy for SIU, yes, great. They are in the Sweet 16 and played some great ball this weekend as I understand it. You see, I didn’t watch much hoops over the weekend. My eyes were on the real tournament, the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill.

Yes, I saw Duke get beat and watched the end of the Ohio State vs Xavier game, but those did not collide with the golf. As a rule, if golf is in HD, it takes precedence over any other programming. That includes the NCAA tournament, it’s that simple. Those overhead shots of Bay Hill this weekend, especially the last three holes, were amazing. HD really makes the blimp shots shine. They had this blimp shot of Vijay hitting a wedge and you could see the ball sailing directly at the camera then arc towards the hole, beautiful.

However, even if the tournament was broadcast only in regular TV, it still would have been worth watching versus the hoops because of the dramatic shot Vijay pulled on the 12th. Did you see that? Let me see if I can recall it correctly.

Okay, so Sergio birdies 13 while Vijay is coming up the par 5 12th. That puts Sergio at -7 and Vijay is sitting at -8, so it’s getting tight. Vijay is right in the middle of the fairway on the 12th and decides to hit a driver off the deck. Johnny Miller just about has a cow. Johnny called the shot “kooky” or “nutty,” I can’t actually remember which. And it appeared that Johnny was right because Vijay yanked it left behind a tree. So here we are, Vijay behind a tree on the 12th with virtually no shot at the green. If he gets a bogey, it’s all tied up at -7, and Johnny Miller probably gets his ass kicked by Vijay after the round. Who would turn the channel?

Not me, thankfully.

Vijay eyeballs the situation and decides that he can’t go over the tree, he can’t go under the tree, and he can’t go to the left or the right of the tree; so, he goes through the tree. Yes! He has to execute this wedge so that the ball leaves the clubface at such an angle to go above a large branch about 10 feet off the ground and below some leafier branches about four feet above that branch. Piece of cake, huh? He executed it perfectly and left himself about a 20 footer for birdie. He runs it in, which basically won him the tournament, and the announcers start the Vijay love-fest. Even Johnny (I love Johnny) tossed Vijay some love. He said that Vijay “practices more than anybody in the history of the game.”

It was great drama. So this weekend, when in-state SIU is battling for some NCAA tournament glory and the sports bars are full, you will probably find me in front of my TV watching Doral. Because the Blue Monster won’t take a seat behind anything this weekend.

I checked out the Wheaton Center for History golf exhibit called the Fairways, Greens & Clubs Exhibit. It was really cool.

The history of golf in this area is rich. The Chicago Golf Club, in Wheaton, was the first 18 hole golf course in the USA (1892). It was finished slightly earlier in the year than Shinnecock…I think. However, the first golf course in the Chicago area was not The Chicago Golf Club, but some course in Lake Forest, but it was only like seven holes or something so the The Chicago Golf Club gets all the fame because it was 18 holes.

The Chicago Golf Club actually originated in Belmont (now Downer’s Grove) before they moved it to Wheaton. It was only 9 holes in Downer’s Grove though. There is still a little friction between Wheaton and Downer’s about who was first and who is more important. The Downer’s course is now the Downer’s Park District course I think. There are pictures and other memorabilia relating to C.B. Macdonald, the architect. He was very prolific and quite a character. The staff has a lot of good stories about the guy and about other famous golf personalities associated with Wheaton.

This is only a smattering of the information that you can get by spending a few hours in the Fairways, Greens & Clubs exhibit in downtown Wheaton. For $7.50 you get a guided tour through about four rooms full of golf memorabilia. There are four people on the staff at the Center and a couple of them are always on duty. I went there with my wife and mother-in-law and we had the place to ourselves. We spent about two solid hours there and had both staffers at our disposal for questions. I would have liked to have spent more time on the golf side of things, but my wife and mother-in-law were highly interested in the exhibit on the Eastland Disaster, so I relented and pretended like I cared.

I want to spend another couple of hours at this place. I think I am going to plan an outing at Cantigny or Arrowhead and then head to downtown Wheaton for some history and some food. The downtown is full of great restaurants so it works well as a great after-golf option if you are with that special woman (or man, depending on, you know, what you like).

Check out this interesting post at Point 1 Golf. Point 1 Golf is a Chicago golf blog that I suggest you add to your blogroll.

The post speaks to growth of the game and the fact that it has been stagnant recently. He points to a Golfweek article by Bradley Klein who poses that maybe part of it is that “fewer gen-X’ers are growing up as caddies.” Which makes sense. I’m a Golfweek subscriber and Bradley Klein always has some good stuff to say, so I look forward to reading it. The writer, I think his name is Tom, paints a couple of possible scenarios, both worthy of getting me to jump start my efforts, however humbly, to grow the game.

I have a lot of theories on how we (yes, that includes you) are going to get this game back on track. We have to go on a mission to grow this game and 2007 will hopefully be the year when we turn the beast around…at least in Chicago. Here’s where I’m going to focus my efforts:

• Provide a forum for combining golf with other life-enhancing activities (food, fitness, and entertainment) in and around Chicago (Chicago Golfcast).
• Simplify the game and make it less expensive for all with a detailed theory on equipment and playing venues (Trunksmasher Golf).
• Help the community through golf in some way, shape, or form.

Stop back often.

In no particular order, comments…suggestions?

1. Have a bias for walking. Walking 18 holes gives the round a more natural rhythm than riding.
2. Fourteen clubs is too many clubs. A set of substantially fewer doesn’t detract materially from your score and could make you a better player. Plus, it saves your back and shoulders.
3. A golf weekend away with 3 or more members of the same sex does not make you a bad spouse, an uncaring boyfriend/girlfriend, or a neglectful parent.
4. Memorize the entire contents of your golf bag.
5. When you arrive at the course, if the bag boy drives up to your car while you’re putting on your golf shoes to see if you “need help with your clubs,” you should politely decline and disregard any reprisal from the bag boy or your playing partners.
6. Have a desire to grow the game and make golf more accessible to those not as passionate or proficient as you.
7. Playing an emergency 18 holes after already playing 36 because “there are at least 2.5 hours of daylight left” is normal and is an acceptable alternative to “having a few beers by the pool” or “getting a good steak.”
8. Always have a towel handy in the trunk to wipe off a small space on your back bumper to sit while you put on your golf shoes so you don’t get dirt on your ass.
9. Bag-drop, what’s that? Couldn’t it damage my clubs if you drop them?
10. A five hour round is not stressful and waiting on half of your shots should not be met with bitching and moaning. Actually, this situation could be construed as relaxing. It gives you more of a chance to converse with your playing partners and contemplate the resolution of world problems.

In the wake of the Mark Wilson victory, I felt the need this morning to look through the scoreboard in the sports page to see how he was doing this week in Tampa. I grabbed both papers in the Starbuck’s and glanced at the scoreboard thinking that his name, along with other Chicago connected golf pros, would be in a boldface font for easy recognition. Not so for either of our city-based papers, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times.

I don’t get this. In the past 24 months I’ve had occasion to read the print versions of the Palm Beach Post, the Orlando Sentinel, and the Denver Post. Each of them puts local players in boldface font in the print editions. Is that too much to expect? Maybe it is. If I have any readers in other cities let me know if your local folks are highlighted somehow in the scoreboard. Maybe I’m nuts and nobody is doing this anymore.

Where is everybody on this issue? Should I organize a write-in campaign to get the names of players like Luke Donald, Jeff Sluman, Steve Stricker, and Mark Wilson in boldface? Or am I just a whiny baby with too much time on my hands?