PGA, LPGA to Make Stops in Maryland

Byline: Leonard Shapiro

It's going to be a glorious week for golf in Maryland starting Monday, when the PGA and LPGA tours showcase the top players in the game at the far ends of the state.

The men will be at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, where eight of the top 10 players in the world are scheduled to tee off Thursday in the Booz Allen Classic. Tiger Woods, No. 2 in the world rankings at the moment, is not coming, but Washingtonians have become accustomed to his annual no-show in the area's only tour stop of the season.

This year, it's his loss more than ours, because Woods absence will hardly be missed, considering that No. 1 Vijay Singh, No. 3 Ernie Els, No. 4 Phil Mickelson, No. 5 Retief Goosen and No. 6 Adam Scott, the defending champion are in the field.

The game's latest endearing story, Chris DiMarco, the hard-luck runner-up in the last two major championships will also be playing here. Throw in popular local hero Fred Funk, who won a big-time event when he took The Players Championship in March, and totally unpredictable John Daly and Congressional has a field worthy of its status as one of America's grandest golfing venues and frequent host of major championships.

By the way, there will also be a succulent golf appetizer on Monday, when more than 150 players--including several major champions and a slew of tour players--will go 36 holes on two courses at Woodmont in Rockville trying to qualify for the U.S. Open a week later.

Local followers of the women's game will have to travel a bit off the beaten interstate to make their way up I-95 to Bulle Rock, the new site near Havre de Grace for the McDonald's LPGA Championship. Everyone who's played this relatively new course comes away raving about the facility, both in beauty and in degree of difficulty.

I must admit I was stunned when I heard the LPGA had moved its second major championship of the season away from the Dupont Country Club in the Wilmington, Del., suburbs. The area had supported the event for more than a decade and seemingly was a fixture on the local sports calendar. But Dupont needed to make some major renovations to the course and Bulle Rock--about 40 miles from Wilmington, and 90 minutes from the District--made a pitch to take over as the site and a deal was struck.

LPGA Commissioner Ty Votaw told me this week that advance ticket sales were booming for the tournament being played the same week as The Big Boozer. Then again, Votaw played a major role in that when he okayed giving Michelle Wie, the 15-year-old Hawaiian prodigy, a sponsor's exemption into the field. Surely Mcdonald's exerted serious pressure on the LPGA to get it done, and Wie's presence virtually guarantees the tournament will be a big draw at the gate and on television.

There's another reason to head the car north up 95 to get to Bulle Rock. Annika Sorenstam has already said her main goal this year was to achieve a single season grand slam, winning all four majors. She's kept her end of the bargain so far, prevailing at the Kraft Nabisco two months ago, and if she's in the hunt Sunday, it promises to be a potentially historic final round if she can win the second leg on a venue she's never even seen.

Meanwhile, back in the Washington suburbs, the Booz Allen people are expected to make a decision on whether to continue sponsoring the event beyond the end of its three-year contract that runs out after the 2006 event. That tournament will go back to the TPC at Avenel, a course that originally was supposed to be renovated in time for the 2006 tournament.

But that's not going to happen any time soon. Two weeks ago, PGA Tour officials finally came north and brought along their plans to improve Avenel to a meeting with Booz Allen executives in McLean. Avenel is not exactly a classic course by any stretch of the imagination, but the Booz Allen people insisted they liked what they saw and will seriously consider re-upping their agreement with the tour.

I didn't particularly like what I heard about the course changes, particularly the plan to make the No. 6 hole, a relatively short par 5, into a long par 4. Over the last dozen years I've covered the event at Avenel, No. 6 as currently constructed may have been the most entertaining hole on the golf course.

With a very slight dog-leg to the right, players hitting big tee shots down the left side almost always eschewed laying up in favor of going for the narrow green in two. Even players hitting drives toward the middle or right side considered giving it a go, much to the delight of hundreds of spectators all around.

It could truly be said several tournaments were won or lost at No. 6 on Sundays past, either with brilliant eagles that propelled men into the lead, or ugly double bogeys with second shots into the water fronting the green, ending any hope for victory.

One year Bobby Wadkins, brother of Lanny, risked his 54-hole lead with a dangerous second shot from the right side. It hit the tree guarding the corner, caromed dead right into jungle-like growth and disappeared, never to be found by about 50 people who volunteered to look for the ball.

Wadkins made triple bogey that day and blew the best chance he ever had to win a PGA Tour event. Now on the Champions Tour, he's still winless on either circuit for his career.

So next year, it's back to the same old Avenel. The tournament will be played the week after the U.S. Open in 2006, guaranteeing a far less luminous field than what we'll see next week at Congressional.

If the PGA Tour continues to treat The Big Boozer as a second class event, Booz Allen, apparently a first-class company, would be well justified in not putting up the $8-10 million a year any title sponsor is required to spend. But I'm going to try not to think about any of that right now. At the moment, it's simply time to revel in what's shaping up to be a glorious week of golf from one side of Maryland to the other.

Leonard Shapiro can be reached at Badgerlen@hotmail.com.

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