Raynor fans gather at Blue Mound Golf & CC
When Seth Raynor was designing golf courses, it’s unlikely he would have imagined his work being celebrated by a group of passionate architecture fans more than 100 years later.
The Seth Raynor Society, which has about 190 members, held its spring meeting last week at Blue Mound Golf & Country Club, a Raynor design. Some 45 members attended the meeting, coming from as far away as California, Connecticut, Texas and Massachusetts. The Sweet Spot was honored to be invited to the Wednesday night dinner, at which Blue Mound superintendent Alex Beson-Crone and club historian Mark Ruttum gave presentations.
Raynor, who was trained as an engineer and died in 1926, was a protege of Charles Blair Macdonald, considered the father of golf course architecture in the United States. The two combined to build the Lido Golf Club on Long Island, a “lost” course that is being faithfully reproduced by Tom Doak at Sand Valley in the Town of Rome.
Other vaunted Raynor courses include Chicago Golf Club, Camargo Club, Shoreacres, Yale University Golf Club and Monterey Peninsula Country Club.
The pre-dinner conversation was stimulating in a course-architecture-nerdy way, as Society members shared opinions about template holes, discussed bunker restoration and tree removal and debated whether a front hole location on a Biarritz green was kosher.
Ruttum pointed out that champions at Blue Mound have been some of the biggest names in golf, among them Gene Sarazen (1933 PGA), Babe Didrikson Zaharias (1940 Women’s Western Open) and Cary Middlecoff (1955 Miller High Life Open). The Sweet Spot was surprised to learn that Ben Hogan and Jimmy Demaret played an exhibition at Blue Mound in 1947.
Blue Mound will be the stroke-play partner course when Erin Hills plays host to the U.S. Mid-Amateur Championship, Sept. 10-15.
Huss, sans appendix, ready for U.S. Open Final Qualifying
It was quite a week for University of Wisconsin golfer Cameron Huss of Kenosha.
“I got my appendix removed a week ago and have been recovering since,” Huss wrote Saturday in a text to the Sweet Spot.
Suffice it to say the week ended a lot better than it began for Huss. He learned Friday that he has been assigned to Columbus, Ohio, for U.S. Open Final Qualifying and will play June 6 with former Badgers teammate Griffin Barela and PGA Tour golfer Peter Malnati in the last group off No. 1 at Kinsale Golf & Fitness Club in the morning and the last group off No. 10 at Wedgewood Golf & Country Club in the afternoon.
“It will be a good experience, for sure,” Huss wrote. “(I) should be good to go (physically) for next Monday but it will be a good experience getting to see all the tour guys and playing with Grif!”
Hudson’s Bennett Swavely also will be in Columbus, playing Wedgewood in the morning and Kinsale in the afternoon.
Former Marquette University golf Hunter Eichhorn and Oostburg native and 2020 Wisconsin State Open runner-up Patrick Stolpe will be in consecutive pairings off No. 10 at the back end of the draw at Woodmont CC in Rockville, Md. Marinette’s Ty Kretz, a rising sophomore at South Dakota State, will play at The Admiral’s Club in Jupiter, Fla.
Keep calm, and carry on
Golfers everywhere were impressed with the way Mito Pereira handled his 72nd-hole meltdown at the PGA Championship.
Equally impressive was the way professional sports gambler Rufus Peabody handled Pereira’s crushing double-bogey, when a par would have given the PGA Tour rookie the title and a bogey would have put him in a playoff with Will Zalatoris and eventual champion Justin Thomas.
Per a story on golfwrx.com, Peabody, who oversees data at Unabated, a stats-based sports information company, had bet $500 on the former Korn Ferry star to win $150,000. Peabody tweeted a copy of his bet with the caption, “Well, that hurt.”
He could have been excused for throwing a brick through his television, but Peabody took Pereira’s collapse in stride. He later tweeted, “Yeah, I feel gutted. But nothing I can do. Outside my control. Experience the disappointment. Then reset, and move on. No ‘what-ifs’ allowed. That’s how you survive doing this as long as I have.”
Golf participation slipping; is the COVID boom over?
Is the nine-month trend of declining golf participation a sign that the COVID-19 boom is over?
It depends on how the latest National Rounds Played Report from Golf Datatech is interpreted, according to Joseph F. Beditz, president and CEO of the National Golf Foundation.
April rounds were down 13% compared with April 2021. Rounds in 2022 are down 10% year to date, which exceeds the decline in the second half of 2021, when rounds trailed the boom year of 2020 by about 7%.
Beditz pointed out that weather appears to have had a significant impact so far in 2022. Golf playable hours — computed using detailed weather data from across the country — were down 14% over the first four months of the year, compared with the same period in 2021.
Beditz wrote, “Golf’s winter generally accounts for 20% of total annual rounds, so while we’d of course like to the start the year up, being down 10% equates to only a 2% annual impact. Other metrics and parts of the golf business continue to show strength. Club and ball sales are up 14% in wholesale dollars year to date, golf’s online search popularity remains elevated and stable, and though rounds played are down, golf revenue per round is up compared to last year. … With 80% of 2022 rounds yet to be played, it’s much too early to speculate on how the year might end up.”
A bad day at the office
Organizers of the 122nd BMW Philadelphia Amateur Championship apparently didn’t check the playing credentials — or handicap — of an entrant named Zane Pysher.
In stroke-play qualifying recently at Inniscrone Golf Club, Pysher shot a robust 64-over 134. The Twitter account Monday Q Info reported that Pysher’s card included a score of 18 on the 17th hole.
Unsurprisingly, he did not advance to match play.
Tap-ins, lip-outs and double-breakers
Steve Stricker, who withdrew from last week’s KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship after contracting COVID-19, is in the field this week for the Principal Charity Classic in Des Moines, Iowa. He’ll be joined by his brother-in-law, Mario Tiziani, who was given a sponsor’s exemption. … The PGA Tour Canada season starts Thursday, with three Wisconsin golfers in the field at the Royal Beach Victoria Open: Chippewa Falls’ Thomas Longbella, Oconomowoc’s George Kneiser and Janesville native and former UW golfer Jordan Hahn. … Tournament officials and representatives from Sentry Insurance announced last week that the 2022 Sentry Tournament of Champions raised $642,490, which was distributed to more than one dozen Maui nonprofit organizations. … Club Champion is looking to fill positions in its warehouse in Willowbrook, Ill., as well as in its stores nationwide. Visit clubchampiongolf.com/careers.