Rory Spears

Introducing Rory Spears: Spears on Golf

Introducing Rory Spears

Chicago Area Golf is proud to announce that Rory Spears has joined its staff as a columnist.

Spears, a 28-year veteran of covering Chicago sports, grew up around golf. He worked for nine years at Rob Roy Golf Course in Prospect Heights and two more at Chevy Chase in Wheeling.

A graduate of University of Wisconsin-Parkside, Spears has journalistic credentials that are impeccable. He worked for ESPN’s former wire service Sportsticker for 18 years and was among the original staff members of WSCR-The Score. Additionally, Spears has been a longtime contributor to ESPN Radio, the AP audio broadcast, and the Illinois Radio Network. He has also worked for Metro Source national radio network for 13 years, running the Chicago sports bureau for 10 of those years.

During his time at Sportsticker, Spears wrote on golf events from various tours, including several major championships and a Ryder Cup. He is in his third season with “Golfers on Golf” on AM-1530 WJJG. Previously, he hosted his own show, “Spears on Sports,” on WJJG for seven years.
 

 Where Have All the Pro Events Gone?

On September 19–25, the BMW Championship will be held at Cog Hill on course No. 4, otherwise known as Dubsdread.

After that, the next professional tour stop in Chicago is, well, nobody really knows. Sorry, the Ryder Cup at Medinah in 2012 doesn’t count. Even though it’s played by touring professionals, it’s not part of any pro tours.

The BMW Championship has a contract with the PGA Tour through 2014. In 2012, because of the Ryder Cup, the BMW will be played at the Crooked Stick Golf Club near Indianapolis. In 2014, the BMW will drive off to the suburbs of Denver, Colorado, and the Cherry Hills Country Club.

So, why does the PGA Tour keep leaving Chicago and moving off to other cities? It’s a simple answer: money and more money. In 2008, when the Jemsek family renovated Cog Hill’s course #4, the tournament had to move. So it relocated to St. Louis, where the Western Golf Association (WGA) made close to $1.5 million more than it did in Chicago in 2007.

An extra million-plus dollars over what the BMW earned in Chicago in 2010 are expected to be made in Indiana next year. It seems that cities that don’t get a PGA Tour event every year go all out when the tour makes a rare appearance. The crowds at Cog Hill have shrunk since the Western Open was declared over by the folks at the PGA Tour, and the annual Fourth of July party got moved to football season in September.

If Chicago fans want the BMW Championship to continue here, two things have to happen. One, people need to show up this fall and support the event so the WGA and the Evans Scholars Foundation make enough money to put over 860 caddies a year through colleges on scholarships. Two, the course conditions at Cog Hill have to be perfect so there aren’t the complaints we heard last year from the pros in the field.

Cog Hill director of grounds Ken Lapp and new superintendent Scott Pavalko, brought in from the Jack Nicklaus-built Muirfield Village course in Ohio, are already working hard to make sure every blade of grass and grain of sand is just perfect for the game’s top players.
The decision on where the BMW will be played in 2013 will be made in short order after this year’s winner grabs the check and the trophy. If Cog Hill isn’t an option, then where do the Tour and the WGA go?

The first effort will be to stay in Chicago, but only several courses can handle the tournament. If it changes its membership policies, Butler National is a preferred site since it has hosted the Western Open. But if Butler doesn’t change—and it likely won’t—other options are Medinah, Olympia Fields, The Glen Club, Conway Farms, Kemper Lakes, or the new Chicago Highlands if it gets a clubhouse built. If these options don’t pan out, then the tournament will go out of town again, leaving the Windy City without a PGA Tour stop in 2012, 2013, 2014, and maybe beyond.

The Senior Tour—or Champions Tour as it’s called these days—left town after 2002. It was supposed to be back by 2004 or 2005, but has never returned. The LPGA left town almost seven years ago and isn’t back yet. The Solheim Cup was supposed to be a launching pad for a new LPGA Chicago event in 2010, but we’re still waiting. Even the Nationwide Tour left The Glen Club after local sponsor Lasalle Bank was bought up by Bank of America.

The people who run the great new public courses in Elgin, The Highlands and Bowes Creek, have had talks with the LPGA. The LPGA is interested but needs a sponsor. The Champions Tour is telling the folks at Cantigny the same thing.

Can we please get one local company to step up and bring a tour event back to town? Or is Illinois just such a bad business climate that corporations can’t or won’t do it? It’s telling that Chicago-based Northern Trust Bank is sponsoring the Los Angeles Open.

The John Deere Classic in the Quad Cities has become the only regularly scheduled tour stop in Illinois. Kudos to Moline-based John Deere Company and tournament director Clair Peterson for stepping up and running a great event.

Maybe some company would step up if the PGA Tour came back to town in July, and 50,000 people a day were showing up. Question for PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem: Is it to late to get our Western Open back? CG