Michigan Golf News, September 24, 2010

Tom Doak

In This Issue

__/ Michigan Golfer Magazine Fall Issue Now Online http://michigangolfer.com/fall10/ __/ Michigan Finishes 17th At USGA Men's Team By Susan Smiley GAM __/ Doak and Detroit Get Serious Ink from Time http://www.golf.com/golf/tours_news/article/0,28136,2017665,00.html __/ New Shows on GLSP __/ Minzey's Musings __/ From the Vault - The Michigan Golf Classic __/ Michigan Golf Calendar __/ Michigan Golf Archives http://michigangolfer.com/mgn/archives.html __/ Michigan Golf History http://michigangolfer.com/mgn/history.html __/ Michigan Golf Association Links http://michigangolfer.com/mgn/associations.html

CIRCULATION 16, 347 Subscribe http://lyris.dundee.net/read/all_forums/subscribe?name=michigangolfnews Edited by Art McCafferty artmccaf@glsp.com Michigan Golfer Magazine http://michigangolfer.com/#pastissues Editor - Jennie McCafferty Archived, graphic, Michigan Golf News: http://issuu.com/michigangolfer ==================================================== MICHIGAN GOLFER MAGAZINE FALL ISSUE NOW ONLINE ==================================================== Contents http://michigangolfer.com/fall10/ Senior Tournaments Put Michigan Golf Back on the Map: By Jack Berry Michigan Tournament Round Up with Tim Hygh Strom Storms From Behind to Win Women’s Michigan Open Andy Matthews Wins Over Fouch and Do at the Tournament of Champions Brehm Wins Second Michigan Open at Orchard Lake CC Ron Beurmann Wins PGA Championship at Eagle Eye Teaching Pros Compete with the Touring Pros: By Brad Shelton Dyebolical: By Jack Berry The Golf Club at Harbor Shores Grand Opening: By BR Koehnemann For Pete’s Sake, Enough is Enough: By Bill Shelton Manitou Passage: Rebirth of King's Challenge: By Terry Moore Michigan Golfer Fall Issue http://michigangolfer.com/fall10/ Past Issues 1996 - 2010 http://michigangolfer.com/#pastissues ================================================================ MICHIGAN FINISHES 17TH AT USGA MEN'S TEAM - By Susan Smiley GAM ================================================================ Three GAM tournament players ventured to California last week for the USGA Men’s Team State tournament. Jeff Champine (Rochester Hills), Eric LIlleboe (Okemos) and Joseph Juszczyk (Dearborn) represented the state of Michigan and finished tied for 17th with Texas, Mississippi, and Massachusetts. The team had a score of 437 for the three-day tournament.

The team got off to a late start the first day of competition due to fog and was unable to finish before darkness. On day two, Wayne State University graduate Juszczyk shot a lights-out 69 to help his team move from 38th to 25th. He logged a score three strokes lower on the final day of competition while Lilleboe also had his best round with a 73. That catapulted Michigan to a share of the 17th spot.

Results were as follows: Juszczyk, 80-69-66-215; Lilleboe 77-80-73-230; Champine 78-74-79-231. ==================================================================== DOAK AND DETROIT GET SERIOUS INK FROM TIME AND GOLF MAGAZINE ==================================================================== DETROIT — Tom Doak has designed golf courses in the dunes of southern Oregon, on the sand hills of northern Colorado and along the edge of 400-foot cliffs in New Zealand. His latest project, a prac-

tice facility that is beginning to show signs of life here on the cozy campus of Marygrove College, may not inspire awe like some of his other credits, but it will inspire hope.

"It's rare for a piece of land like this to come up," Doak said Thursday, talking over the clatter of bulldozers and backhoes. "I think this facility could make a great difference."

It's rare because this five-acre plot is just 10 minutes from the center of a major city — a city, lest we forget, in the midst of a debilitating economic slump. It's a potential difference-maker because the mini-course will not only introduce thousands of Marygrove students and other urban-dwellers to the game, but also serve as the learning center for participants of Midnight Golf, a hugely popular Marygrove-based youth mentoring program that helps keep Detroit high schoolers off the streets and on the path to college.

More: http://www.golf.com/golf/tours_news/article/0,28136,2017665,00.html Thanks and a Tip of the Tam to Dave Richards for alerting us to this story. ============================== NEW SHOWS ON GLSP NETWORK ============================== Michigan Travel Television Scenes From Porcupine State Park http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxIq0yBh1H0 Michigan Skier Television Stephen Kircher -Winter Olympics, the Golf Market and Pure Michigan http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8ecYP9c_cc Michigan Golfer Television Scott Hebert at the PGA Championship - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-B_2Y2PGJM Wisconsin Golf- Peter Allen and Mike Duff discuss their favorites http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTmzwSPmA7w Sweetgrass GC - Jennie McCafferty interviews Dave Douglas, Dir. of Golf http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQ5g4spcm40 Michigan Runner Television Marathon Oasis de Montreal - http://michiganrunner.tv/2010montreal/ The 2010 Crim Festival of Races - http://michiganrunner.tv/2010crim Milford Labor Day 30K http://michiganrunner.tv/2010milford/ ================== MINZEY'S MUSINGS ================== New High School Exit Exam You only need 4 correct to pass High School Exit Exam (Passing requires 4 correct answers) *1) How long did the Hundred Years' War last? *2) Which country makes Panama hats? *3) From which animal do we get cat gut? *4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution? *5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?* , , , *6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal? *7) What was King George VI's first name?

*8) What color is a purple finch? *9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from? *10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane? *Remember, you need 4 correct answers to pass.** * *Check after calendar listings ============================================================= FROM THE VAULT - THE MICHIGAN GOLF CLASSIC - By JACK BERRY ============================================================= In these days of weekly $5,000,000 (those zeroes are impressive, aren't they?) PGA Tour events with a $1,000,000 top prize (zeroes still impressive), it's fun occasionally to remember the Michigan Golf Classic, the aptly nicknamed Mother Hubbard Open where the week's leading money winner earned $500 (oops, the zeroes shrunk).

That's what Tom Shaw got for winning the pro-am.

Larry Ziegler got Zero, just a plain Zero with nothing in front of it for winning the tournament, beating Homero Blancas on the second playoff hole with a birdie. It had been Ziegler's best day as a pro, rallying from three shots back with a course record 64, the lowest round of the tournament.

It was September 7, 1969 and the purse at Shenandoah Golf Club was advertised as $100,000, fairly normal then.

Larry Adderley, then with Channel 7, walked back to the clubhouse with Ziegler and told him talk was going around that there wasn't any money to pay the purse. Ziegler was incredulous.

How did it happen? Go back one year earlier, 1968, to Birmingham Country Club.

The club hosted the United States Women's Amateur that summer and JoAnne Gunderson (Carner) won for the fifth time. She turned pro in 1969 and Birmingham members were happy they'd seen the Great Gundy in her final amateur championship.

Marshall Chambers, the club member who was General Chairman, was very pleased and thought of doing something bigger and better than the Women's National Amateur championship.

Jim Dewling, who has gone on to a long golf career including president of the Michigan PGA Section and building and managing courses around the state, was Birmingham caddymaster at the time. Dewling said that at the end of the season he sat in the grill with Chambers and club pro Ray Maguire and Chambers raised the idea of putting on a PGA tournament and looking for a site.

Dewling, who'd been at Edgewood Country Club in Union Lake before going to Birmingham, said he knew that some former Edgewood members built a course on Walnut Lake Rd. in West Bloomfield.

It was Shenandoah Country Club and the father-son team of Bruce and Jerry Matthews designed it in 1963 and it opened in 1964.

“There wasn't a lot of money and it was a basic, simple design,” Jerry Matthews said. “It was a fun experience. Designing on paper is one thing but getting on the ground is different and it was the first one with housing that I worked on.”

Chambers toured the facility and made a deal with the owners to rent it for the tournament. Up to then, the Motor City Opens, which ended in 1962, had been held at Detroit's premier clubs – Meadowbrook, Plum Hollow, Red Run, Western and Knollwood, which staged the 11th and last Motor City Open. The MCO died because it was upstaged by the Buick Open in 1958 and paid a purse double the size of the MCOs. The top pros knew and liked the MCO courses. Ben Hogan, Cary Middlecoff, Lloyd Mangrum, Doug Ford, Mike Souchak, Bob Rosburg and Doug Sanders were among the winners.

But when the Michigan Golf Classic was announced, word spread on the tour that Shenandoah wasn't the caliber of the courses they knew.

Further, the date conflicted with the World Series of Golf which pitted Masters champion George Archer, U.S. Open winner Orville Moody, British Open champion Tony Jacklin and PGA winner Raymond Floyd against each other at Firestone Country Club in Akron. It was nationally televised.

And it came when the tournament players were breaking away from the club pro-dominated Professional Golfers Association of America and hired respected former U.S. Golf Association executive director Joseph C. Dey Jr. to lead them. The tour players wanted to run their own game. Consequently only three of the top 20 money winners entered the Shenandoah tournament.

Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, golf's Big Three, didn't enter. Neither did Billy Casper, Tom Weiskopf or Lee Trevino. The biggest names were Chi Chi Rodriguez and Doug Sanders, and Sanders withdrew before the tournament started. Hale Irwin, in his second pro year, didn't make the cut.

Two Michigan pros, Mike Hill of Jackson and Cass Jawor of Detroit, did well, tying for fifth. But Mike's brother Dave, always a crowd-pleaser, didn't enter.

Tickets didn't sell. The weather was wet. Galleries were embarrassingly low. There wasn't an organization like the old Motor City Open Steering Committee that was accustomed to bringing the clubs together to sell tickets and supply volunteers.

Chambers' money men were Phil Lachman, who owned a trophy store, and John Brennan, the general manager of Oakland Hills Country Club. No one had deep pockets.

Dewling had been hired to recruit caddies for the tournament and he went around to local clubs to get them. That was the time when tour players were required to hire local caddies.

“At 1 o'clock on Sunday afternoon,” Dewling said, “Mr. Lachman says 'Jimmy, let's go for a cart ride.' He said I seemed to be the only one around there who knew what went on. We drove out to a spot where there was no one around and he told me there was no money and they weren't going to pay the purse.”

“I think 'Wow! This is wild.' He said Chambers hadn't come up with any money and the pro-am didn't generate any money. We drove back to the clubhouse and he got in his car and left.

“When presentation time came, everyone disappeared,” Dewling said.

When Dey got word, he was furious. In April a regulation was established that a tournament had to have the prize money in escrow before the first ball was struck. Unfortunately, the Michigan Golf Classic contract was signed prior to the rule.

The Tour did eventually pay all of the players and when Ziegler won for a second time, the 1975 Greater Jacksonville Open, he cracked “I have my check (for $30,000) but I haven't taken it to the bank yet.”

Dewling said Lachman made “a beautiful trophy” but no one seemed to know where it was and what happened to it.

Mike Bergsma, the Shenandoah caddymaster and starter at the time, said the trophy was in a storeroom and he figured Lachman had retrieved it “and probably melted it down.”

Bergsma, official scorer at a number of regular Tour and Senior Tour events, said he found a box of crests with the Michigan Golf Classic logo – a car superimposed on the outline of the state of Michigan -- when he moved two years ago. He presented one to Ziegler at a Florida Champions Tour stop.

“He said he still would've liked to get the trophy and would've paid $10,000 for it.”

On the morning after the “Un-Classic,” Dewling said Lachman drove to Birmingham Country Club and paid him the $500 he'd been hired for to recruit the caddies.

“I wish now I'd made a photocopy of it,” Dewling said.

David DeBenedictis, an Evans Scholar at the University of Michigan, had caddied for R.H. Sikes at the Buick Open that summer and Sikes hired him at Shenandoah. Sikes tied for 37th and DeBenedictis, now a financial planner, said Sikes paid him after the tournament. It wasn't much but it was more than Sikes got that day.

Months later Lachman told the Associated Press that “By far, the majority of the creditors have been taken care of. Most have been very patient about it. The first thing we did was pay all the little people.” Earlier Lachman said Chambers “was a terrific smoothie.”

While the Mother Hubbard Open lives on in infamy, the embarrassment of a golf community that regarded itself quite highly led to Oakland Hills Country Club taking on the PGA Championship in 1972.

Gary Player won. And was paid. =============================== 2010 MICHIGAN GOLF CALENDAR =============================== September 26-28 23rd Annual Pepsi Charity Invitational, Treetops Resort, Gaylord, MI Registration: http://www.treetops.com/index.php?method=golf&subpage=pepsitournament Videos of Past Tournaments http://glsp.com/treetops October

1-3 Ryder Cup, Celtic Manor Resort, Newport, Wales 2 Golf League Championship Tournament. Eagle Eye Golf Course, Bath http://www.migolfleague.com or http://www.mgcoa.org 9-10 Toughman Scramble, Treetops and Black Bear GC, Gaylord and Vanderbilt, MI http://www.treetops.com/index.php?method=golf&subpage=Toughman_Tournament 15-16 MHSAA - Girls Finals (LP) Division 1 - Eagle Crest Resort Division 2 - Forest Akers West Division 3 - Forest Akers East Division 4 - The Meadows -----------------------------------------*ANSWERS TO THE QUIZ** * *1) How long did the Hundred Years War last?** 116 years *2) Which country makes Panama hats?** Ecuador *3) From which animal do we get cat gut?** Sheep and Horses *4) In which month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?** **November *5) What is a camel's hair brush made of?** Squirrel fur *6) The Canary Islands in the Pacific are named after what animal?* *Dogs *7) What was King George VI's first name?** Albert *8) What color is a purple finch ?** Crimson *9) Where are Chinese gooseberries from?** New Zealand *10) What is the color of the black box in a commercial airplane?** **Orange (of course) *What do you mean, you failed? Me, too. *(And if you try to tell me you passed, you LIED!) *Pass this on to some brilliant friends.