Illinois Open kicks off tight schedule with string of championships
The 71st Illinois Open - the state's biggest tournament - concludes Wednesday at White Eagle in Naperville. A day later the PGA Championship tees off at Harding Park in San Francisco.
Before August is over the PGA Tour will have completed its FedEx Cup Playoffs, which conclude the 2019-20 season, but this year's U.S. Open and Masters still will not have been played. The Open was postponed until September and the Masters to November.
Locally, the Illinois PGA didn't have a tournament until July due to the pandemic. Now its second biggest of the section's four major tournaments, the IPGA Championship, is three weeks after the Illinois Open.
Given all the postponements and cancellations caused by the pandemic, tournament pileups were inevitable. Big events for pros and amateurs, local and national, will come fast and furious and run to December. The LPGA's biggest events - the U.S. Women's Open and Tour Championship - are back-to-back weeks that month.
Here are some things to keep in mind from the standpoint of Illinois players:
PGA Championship: Wheaton's Kevin Streelman has handled the scheduling pileups better than most of his tour colleagues. With two runner-up finishes and four top 10s, Streelman could contend for his first major title in the PGA Championship. He's also No. 19 in the FedEx standings, so he's in good position to stay in the top 30 and make it all the way to the Tour Championship Sept. 7. The three playoff tournaments are huge money events, and Streelman looks ready to cash in. One is the $9.5 million BMW Championship Aug. 27 at Olympia Fields Country Club.
PGA Tour: Doug Ghim, the Arlington Heights product in his rookie season on golf's biggest stage, has struggled. He's survived five of 15 cuts but things are looking up. Though he didn't qualify for the PGA Championship, Ghim cashed the last two weeks in tour stops - a tie for 18th (his best showing of the season) at the 3M Championship in Minnesota, and a tie for 48th in last week's Barracuda Championship in California.
Korn Ferry Tour: PGA Tour cards won't be awarded until the end of the 2021 season but Northwestern alums Dylan Wu (4) and David Lipsky (16) and Illinois product Nick Hardy (19) are in the coveted Top 25 spots in the rankings and in position to move up to the premier circuit if they can stay there. The Korn Ferry has two Illinois stops - the Lincoln Land Championship Sept. 3 to 6 at Panther Creek in Springfield and the Evans Scholars Invitational Sept. 10 to 13 at Chicago Highlands in Westchester.
Illinois Open: Whoever wins Wednesday didn't have to beat the defending champ. Bolingbrook's David Cooke, a two-time winner, called off his title defense when Chesson Hadley made the 36-hole cut (and finished tied for 17th Sunday) at the PGA Tour's Barracuda Championship. Cooke is Hadley's caddie.
PGA Tour Champions: The 50-and-older circuit restarted its season last week with The Ally Championship in Michigan. Jeff Sluman, the only Chicago player on the circuit, withdrew after a 74-72 start.
Women: Winnetka's Elizabeth Szokol suffered a similar fate as Sluman when the LPGA restarted in Ohio with the Drive On Championship. She shot 80-74 and missed the cut.
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