PGA whiners should zip their lips about Cog Hill

Maybe it was strategy for some of the world’s best golfers to criticize Cog Hill during BMW Championship week.

Otherwise few would have noticed these guys were here amid football gearing up and baseball gearing down.

The louder the pros are about Cog, the more the tournament should be contested out there every year.

Heck, play the U.S. Open on the Dubsdread layout, too. Put the course in the British Open rotation. Move the Masters to Lemont.

The Ryder Cup is coming to Medinah Country Club next year? Reschedule it for Cog Hill.

You know, just to irritate these guys even more.

What a bunch of crybabies. Not all of them. Most either like Cog Hill or are gentlemanly enough to keep their dislikes to themselves.

To my knowledge Justin Rose hasn’t had a bad thing to say about Dubsdread all week. No wonder he has a cushy lead entering today’s final round.

But Phil Mickelson? Arrogant whiner. Geoff Ogilvy? Sarcastic whiner. Steve Stricker? Uncharacteristic whiner.

Stop it, fellas. Nobody here wants to hear it. After the heat and rain we had this summer a lot of us are grateful we can pay to play on dirt fairways and bald greens.

Don’t these guys understand how spoiled they sound when they’re privileged to play golf for a living?

Complaining to sports writers about the condition of a golf course is like sports writers complaining to construction workers about uncomfortable chairs in the press box, or construction workers complaining to oil-fire fighters about the heat from the sun, or oil-fire fighters complaining to Navy SEALs about jeopardy on the job.

Golfing is way down the list of hardship occupations, especially when the BMW has a total purse of $8 million with $1.44 million going to the winner.

For that kind of money Mickelson should be thrilled to play on a cow pasture. Stricker should be thrilled to putt on O’Hare runways. Ogilvy should be thrilled to chip in the snake pits at Brookfield Zoo.

Oh, they couldn’t score well there? Tough tootsies. I’d rather see a scrambling par than a routine birdie anyway.

The best golfers should be able to play in adversely diverse conditions — different grasses, different yardages, different green speeds, different bunker depths, different climates, different degrees of difficulty, different levels of fairness, different whatever.

Stricker described some putts on Cog Hill as being to “an up-the-hill, over-the-hill, down-to-a-pin location.”

Too bad. It’s not like he has to make them all. Just get down in fewer strokes than the competition does.

Think about this: No one on the PGA Tour has to worry about being tackled unless he’s playing with Happy Gilmore; golf has rough but no roughing; nobody even plays defense in this sport.

A NASCAR race happens to be in Joliet this weekend, a few miles from the BMW in Lemont. Maybe golfers would rather tour Cog at 180 mph with concrete walls and hard charging metal menacing them.

Nobody ever said a golf course is supposed to be the way golfers want it. It’s supposed to be the way nature and some macabre golf architect want it.

The world’s best golfers should be forced to play under conditions that appear to be unplayable.

And be forced by USGA rules to be quiet about it.