The big boys on the world golf stage are in Akron, Ohio this weekend competing in the final two rounds of the World Golf Championship. The tournament is being contested at Firestone Country Club, an old-time traditional course that originally started out as a golfing playground for the employees of Firestone Tire. From 1954 through 1959, the PGA Tour’s Rubber City Open was contested at Firestone and then Robert Trent Jones was brought in for a major redesign job in the late 1950s. Jones made the course a whole lot longer and more difficult, and the end result was a trio of PGA Championships were contested at Firestone in 1960, 1966 and 1975, won by Jay Hebert, Al Geiberger, and Jack Nicklaus, respectively.
Firestone hosted the World Series of Golf and the American Golf Classic from the 1960s through 1998. In 1999 it became the site of the World Golf Championship Bridgestone Classic and this will be the 17th year that Firestone has hosted this 78-golfer, limited-field, big-money, no-cut event. I’ve written many times on these pages that golf is the ultimate meritocracy and this week’s tourney is no exception. The top 50 golfers in the World Golf Rankings are exempt into Firestone as well as the 28 winners of prestigious events of note throughout the world.
For instance, former Alameda High School and Cal-Berkeley golfer James Hahn is in the field at Firestone. Hahn is ranked 98th in the world, has played in just 77 tour events, has only six top-10 finishes in his career, and has pocketed just $3.5 million in his career. In comparison, Jordan Spieth has already won over $9 million just this year. However, Hahn won the prestigious Los Angeles Open in February and he’s in the field this week at Akron. Tiger Woods, who has 14 major titles to his name and eight World Golf Championship wins in 16 years at Akron, is on the outside looking in. True, he won five times on the PGA Tour just two seasons ago, but nowadays he is ranked 262nd in the world and has three missed cuts and a withdrawal in nine tourneys this year. In competitive golf, it’s all about what have you done lately. Tiger hasn’t.
Next week the tour journeys to Kohler, Wisconsin, a mere 60 miles north of Milwaukee, for the playing of the final major golf tournament of the year, the PGA Championship. This will be the third time that the PGA has been contested at the diabolical Pete Dye layout on the shores of Lake Michigan. It will also be the site of the 2020 Ryder Cup Matches. While I have been unable to play at Whistling Straits just yet, I have been at the 36-hole facility on three occasions and have played its sister course, Blackwolf Run, a former U.S. Women’s Open site, in nearby Sheboygan.
Whistling Straits looks like Ballybunion or Tralee in Ireland and yet the course is completely contrived. At one time it was merely rolling meadowland along the shores of Lake Michigan. During the 1950s it was an airfield called Camp Haven that was abandoned in 1959. Dye and his crew moved 800,000 cubic yards of earth to form what is now the Straits Course. It runs alongside Lake Michigan for two miles and eight of the holes are on the water. To keep the links feel intact, the Kohler folks imported a herd of 80 Scottish blackface sheep that reside at the facility. By the way, it’s a great place to simply visit for a brat and a cold root beer.
In 2004 and 2010, Whistling Straits rewarded power players. In 2004, Vijay Singh won the PGA Championship in the three-hole aggregate playoff against Chris DiMarco and Justin Leonard. Six years later Martin Kaymer won his first major title, again in a playoff. Kaymer’s 2010 PGA victory was one of the most bizarre conclusions to a big-ime tournament as Dustin Johnson grounded his club in a sliver of a bunker on the 18th and final hole to miss out on the playoff. Kaymer then defeated Bubba Watson in his first moment on the grand slam center stage. Kaymer would go on to win last year’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst for his second major title, Watson would go on to capture a pair of Masters’ green jackets in 2012 and 2014, and Johnson is still trying to nail down that elusive first major victory.
When I talk about favoring power players, I do mean power players. Whistling Straits plays to a par of 72 and the course can be stretched out to slightly less than 7,800 yards. The opening first hole is a 493-yard par-4. That’s about just as long as the par-5 second hole at Hidden Valley Lake and 20 yards longer that the par-5 seventh hole at Buckingham. To continue with this long par-4 theme, the fourth hole is 494 yards, the eighth hole is 507 yards, the 15th hole is 503 yards, and the closing 18th hole stretches out to 520 yards with water guarding the green. When you consider that the par-3 17th hole can play as long as 249 yards, you’ve got three monster holes among the final four as the leaders are coming down the stretch. Hitting the ball off the tee on the final hole a prodigious 320 yards means you still have 200 yards to go. This has to be uber difficult for the likes of British Open champion Zach Johnson, two-time major winner Jordan Spieth, and other former major titlists such as Jim Furyk. Expect linksters such as Bubba Watson, Dustin Johnson, Jason Day and Adam Scott to prevail in next week’s PGA Championship. By the way, the aforementioned foursome are among the top five in driving distance this year on tour alongside Charlie Beljan.
For a number of years, the PGA Championship used to promote its major by advertising it as “Glory’s Last Stand.” However, you didn’t hear that phrase last year and it won’t be a part of the broadcast promotions this year. That is not because some Madison Avenue advertising executive has come up with a better promo. Instead, the PGA of America, the organization that runs the PGA Championship, and the PGA Tour came to an agreement to phase out the phrase. The PGA Tour felt that “Glory’s Last Stand” was a slap in the face to the four-tournament Fed Ex Cup playoffs. The PGA of America was willing to walk away from the phrase as long as the tour would rearrange its schedule to accommodate an off-week every other year prior to the playing of the Ryder Cup Matches. The Ryder Cup is also coordinated by the PGA of America.
Say what you will about the Fed Ex Cup, the PGA Championship is truly the final chance in 2015 for a professional golfer to not only make a splash upon this season, but to stamp his ticket into golf history as the winner of a grand slam title. In light of the length of Whistling Straits, I think it is most improbable that Jordan Spieth (ranked 82nd in driving distance) will win his third major title and Zach Johnson, who hits the ball even shorter (ranked 162nd), will not be able to follow up his St. Andrews experience with a victory.
If a first-time major winner can break through, maybe it will finally be Sergio Garcia’s moment in the sun. Maybe Rickie Fowler will take the next step to build upon his career. Perhaps Jimmy Walker will make it a career with a win at Whistling Straits. It’s always hard to prognosticate a tournament with 156 contestants and we’ll know a whole lot more a week from Sunday evening in Kohler, Wisconsin.
