FAVOURING STRAIT SHOOTERS
PGA offers big hitters a safe Haven
Whistling Straits is a little over 70 miles north of Milwaukee off Highway 43, which appears to have been assembled from unevenly joined six- foot slabs for maximum teeth-rattling effect.
It’s sort of near Kohler, the company town named for the swish plumbing fixtures outfit whose owner is the PGA of America’s favourite person in the whole world, judging by the fact that the PGA Championship is being held here for the third time in 12 years at the sprawling, faux- links golf course Herb Kohler had Pete Dye build on the western shore of Lake Michigan.
Its actual location — is it in Sheboygan? Kohler? The closest burg is really the hamlet of Haven.
This week Whistling Straits is at the intersection of enough subplots to make the 2015 PGA a lot more than the major that has to bill itself “This Is Major” so that people don’t forget. In no particular order: The return to the scene of the crime by Dustin Johnson, who lost his place in a playoff for the 2010 PGA Championship because of a sandy blotch of fan- trampled rough which he learned — only after a two- stroke penalty for grounding his club in it — was actually a bunker.
The return to defend his crown of the game’s most accomplished young star, Rory McIlroy, possibly against the advice of cautious medics who think he could be risking re- injuring the ankle ligaments he ruptured playing soccer with his buddies after the U. S Open.
The continuing quest of phenom Jordan Spieth, whose single- season Grand Slam bid was derailed by a whisker at the Open Championship, but who could still do the rare triple with a win here.
The potential return to major contention of Tiger Woods ( emphasis on “potential”), who when last seen appeared to be slowly figuring out which end of the club to strike the ball with, and who is so serious about preparing for this week, he missed Monday’s grand opening of his new restaurant, The Woods, in Jupiter, Fla.
Of the bunch, it is probably McIlroy’s declaration of participation, after a couple of weeks of dropping teaser clues on Twitter and posting a video of his driver swing, that will get the biggest cheer from the golf world.
“To play golf, it’s 100 per cent. To go back on a soccer pitch, it wouldn’t be quite ready,” McIlroy said, smiling, to a small knot of reporters behind the 18th green Monday.
He said he played four rounds in Portugal last week to test himself away from the public eye.
“We wanted to do it behind closed doors and without anyone knowing what was going on,” McIlroy said. “But I passed that test, sort of like a fitness test. Felt like it was the right time to come. I was ready to go. It’s not like I was just trying to get back for this.”
It’s no guarantee he’ll have anything like his A- game here this week, but still — “I think it’s just the competition — of feeling what it’s like to play in a tournament,” McIlroy said.
“Especially coming back and playing in a major, it’s a bit different. Everything feels good. It’s just that sharpness and competitive edge, I guess. That’s the thing you really hope is there when you get back.”
For Johnson, who has lost more than a few heartbreakers, most recently June’s U. S. Open where he three- putted the 72nd hole from 12 feet to hand the trophy to Spieth, the actual venue of his 2010 robbery is largely obscured now.
The PGA, hardly unique in building corporate skyboxes that creep ever closer to the field of play, has erected one off the 18th fairway that covers up most of the Johnson bunker.
Fortunately, there are 1,011 other hairy- edged sand pits of which to run afoul.
Once a flat military site, what Dye has wrought out of this massive piece of clifftop property is visually spectacular; something that looks like a links course but won’t play anything like one this week.
The fairways are lush and green and springy underfoot, more like Augusta than anything seen in the Old Country, and after a series of brief thunderstorms Monday that caused repeated delays to practice rounds, it’s too late to make it hard and fast for the championship.
So cue the big boys, the bombers, the Bubbas and the Dustins and the Jason Days. Long off the tee will be good here all week.
Wherever here is.