I have just returned from Lake County following my annual excursion to the upper Midwest. I had a two-fold reason for returning to Chicago, Milwaukee and Grand Rapids this time around. I was in Milwaukee for my 40th annual college reunion and I was in Grand Rapids for my father’s 93rd birthday. Yet there was a potentially damp aspect to my mini-vacation and it had nothing to do with the Chicagoland rains. I will have knee replacement surgery in three months on my left knee, the victim of way too much basketball on concrete during my childhood. It suffers nowadays, even when I play just nine holes. For the first time in decades, I didn’t bring my golf clubs with me for the six days I was there.
What’s a golfer to do when there is no golf to be played at places such as Midlothian, Ravisloe, Brown Deer and Egypt Valley? Well, I filled in my time with other golfing pursuits. On day one in Chicago, I traveled some 50 miles northwest of downtown and visited Crystal Woods Golf Course in Woodstock, Illinois. Crystal Woods is where former Rob Roy golf professional Bob MacDonald works and lives these days. It is a longtime family business begun by his parents and currently managed by his sister. Two of his nephews are golf professionals at Crystal Woods. In fact, there are five PGA professionals on staff at the classically Midwest layout that includes a beautiful tree-lined championship course as well as a nine-hole beginner’s course.
On the day I visited Crystal Woods, Bob and the staff had just gotten a large tournament grouping onto the course for their 1 p.m. shotgun start. In Lake County, we have tournaments for the SIRS, the Early Lake Lions and the Volunteer Firefighters. That day, the marquee at Crystal Woods welcomed the Mink Ranchers Tournament. Raising mink for their fur is a big business in the upper Midwest and obviously a lot of them like to play golf too. By the way, mink are on the nasty side, so don’t try to pet them unless you are looking for a nickname like Stumpy. Bob and his charming wife, Sue, live in an old-style house adjacent to the ninth tee. I am happy to report that Bob and family are doing well and he was in his element at a very busy course on a Wednesday afternoon. He was a great host.
The rest of my Chicago trip included my first visit to Wrigley Field (I grew up a White Sox fan), a journey to the Sidney Marovitz Golf Course on Chicago’s lakefront to check out a nationally ranked nine-hole course, and a quick visit with my former high school basketball team captain, Doug Bruno. Bruno will be starting his 30th season as the head coach of the DePaul University women’s basketball program, and he and the girls were on numerous posters throughout campus memorializing their first-place finish in the Big East Conference this past season. Doug also coached the Chicago team in the WPBL, the forerunner to the WNBA.
After a couple of days at Marquette University in Milwaukee, I got up at 5 a.m. Sunday morning and began the five-hour drive to Grand Rapids that would take six hours because of the time change to the Eastern zone. I connected immediately with my brother and we were off to Blythefield Country Club for the playing of the Meijer LPGA Classic. Blythefield is another old-time club, built in 1929 by William Langford and Theodore Moreau (Lawsonia, Wakonda, CC of Lansing). The foursome dedicating the course that day included Walter Hagen and Horton Smith. Arnold Palmer won the 1961 Western Open at Blythefield and this is the second year that the club has hosted the Meijer LPGA. I played it in the Grand Rapids Amateur years ago.
My brother has limited knowledge of the LPGA Tour, yet he knew I was a fan of the women’s circuit and his company, Cumulus Media, was one of the event’s many sponsors. We walked the course for a while and then we settled into the grandstands behind the 18th green with a side view of the ninth green. I used to take my daughter Liz and her friend, Lisa Copeland, to the Longs Classic at The Ridge in Auburn and later on at Blackhawk Country Club in Danville. LPGA tourneys aren’t as crowded and hectic as PGA Tour events and while the caliber of play is outstanding, the ladies play a game most of us can understand with 260-yard tee shots on 410-yard par-4s. They are very good to the fans and go out of their way to acknowledge them.
The LPGA Tour is a decidedly international circuit with golfers that day from the United States, South Korea, Japan, Paraguay, France, Wales, Taiwan, Chinese Tapei, Sweden, Germany, Australia, Spain, England, Thailand, Columbia, China, Israel, the Philippines and Canada. While a number of the American players are from warm weather climates such as Florida, Texas and California, there were contestants from North Dakota, South Dakota and Indiana. Juli Inkster from Los Altos was in the field as was Lisa Ferrero of Lodi.
There were some surprises this time around for me. I was quite surprised with how many of the women used colored golf balls, both orange and yellow. While the temperatures were in the low 90s, a number of LPGA professionals wore long-sleeved clothing. I think it was in an effort to protect themselves from the sun. Also, a few of the women used umbrellas to ward off the sun. I didn’t see a long putter or a belly putter, a common occurrence on the PGA Tour and the Champions Tour. Perhaps 10 of the caddies were women, something that isn’t at all common on the men’s tour unless the caddie is working for her father.
In the end, up and coming LPGA star Lexi Thompson shot a 65 and came from four strokes back to run down Lizette Salas of California. We saw a number of the LPGA stars that day including world No. 1 Inbee Park, Christie Kerr, Brittany Lincicome, Anna Nordqvist and Morgan Pressel. The Grand Rapids community supported the tournament in a big way with large galleries. The Meijer Corporation, a giant super store grocery chain, has a four-year commitment to continue to sponsor the event. The total purse for the women that day was $2 million, slightly less than the amount Jordan Spieth collected for himself when he won the Masters earlier this year. Yet regardless of the size of the purse or the prestige of a weekly LPGA event, the women put on a great show and were very fan friendly.
I was back in Lake County very early Wednesday morning. I knew I was back home because the hillsides weren’t that color of lush green that I had seen all week in the Midwest. I also knew I was back home as I drove past Orv’s on Highway 20 in Williams. The price of gas was $3.69, a mere $1.40 more than I had paid in Chicago that morning. Still, it’s good to be back.
