The raw deal that became official Monday wouldn’t be happening if the soon-to-be former Western Open had a strong local sponsor and the PGA Tour was thrilled about Cog Hill.
Since neither is the case, Chicago golf fans will see their tournament portion cut in half.
Beginning in September 2007, the tournament will be known as the BMW Championship, becoming the third stop of the Tour’s new season-ending Championship Series.
During BMW’s six-year commitment, the event will be played at Cog Hill in 2007, 2009 and 2011.
It will rotate to Bellerive in St. Louis in 2008, Crooked Stick in Indianapolis in 2010 and Hazeltine in Minneapolis in 2012, although the Hazeltine deal is still incomplete.
Champagne was served at a splashy Grant Park news conference Monday. Perhaps BMW was looking for a way to make the news go down easier. It didn’t work.
Imagine if the NBA said we want to expose pro basketball to major markets in the Midwest that don’t have teams, so we’re going to play every other Bulls’ “home” season in St. Louis and Kansas City. How would that play with local fans?
That’s what’s happening on the golf front. We’re about to go on a three-tournaments-in-six-years diet.
Officials, using well-rehearsed lines, tried to explain why Chicago golf fans shouldn’t feel jilted.
“We really don’t look at it as abandoning Chicago,” the PGA Tour’s Tom Wade said. “We look at it as really upgrading and bringing a top-level, world-class event to Chicago.”
How much of an upgrade do we need?
Sure, the September field will be deeper, but Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh are Western Open regulars and Phil Mickelson is an occasional visitor.
Are the crowds, which average in the high 40,000 range on the weekend, going to be substantially bigger because Retief Goosen is in the field? I’d rather see Woods every year and take a pass on Goosen.
The fact is, a strong local sponsor never would have allowed the tournament to be moved.
It remains a mystery why, after Motorola bowed out in 1999, a Chicago-area company never stepped up to support the event.
Now BMW, for a substantial $12 million to $14 million per year investment in sponsor costs, has renamed the tournament. It’s hard to see the Western Open name go, but at least Evans Scholars will see a major boost in funding. That’s one upgrade we can accept.
It wasn’t BMW’s decision to rotate tournament locations. That ruling came from the PGA Tour.
Publicly, the tour will say it loves Cog Hill. However, there has been an undercurrent that the tour isn’t enamored with the public facility, which is set for a major renovation. Make no mistake, if the tour was wowed by Cog Hill, the tournament wouldn’t be moving around.
The PGA Tour wants to take the Western, er, BMW, to venues that have played host to majors–Bellerive, Crooked Stick and Hazeltine. Then they can say, “Look, we’re at major championship courses.”
St. Louis, Indianapolis and Minneapolis are the winners in this while Chicago loses–three times in six years, to be exact.
A senior PGA Tour official recently heard me vent about how I couldn’t believe the PGA Tour would do this to Chicago. Finally, he said, “There’s nothing I can say that will make you feel better about this.”
Chicago golf fans should feel the same way.
———-
esherman@tribune.com
ON THE NET
Read Ed Sherman’s blog at bancodeprofissionais.com/edsherman
