BMW Championship appears headed back to Crooked Stick in 2016
CARMEL, Ind. Only an Aug. 28 membership vote stands between Crooked Stick Golf Club and a signed contract for the club to serve as host of the PGA Tour's 2016 BMW Championship, and approval appears to be, in Hoosier parlance, a slam dunk. Many of the club's 225 members aren't waiting for the meeting; 133 already have cast electronic ballots.
The count: 133-0.
"We think it's very special to host the 70 best players in the world and be able to bring this kind of event and feel to Central Indiana," Crooked Stick president Nick Deets said. "There are a lot of golf courses in Indiana but I think we have a special place and a unique ability to bring this kind of tournament to the area and when we can do it our membership fully supports it."
Why wouldn't club members want a return of the BMW Championship, the elite third event in the four-tournament FedExCup Playoffs that bring the tour season to a climax?
The tournament was contested at Crooked Stick in 2012. It was named the tour's tournament of the year. It was won by the world's No. 1-ranked player, Rory McIlroy, and conspicuous beneath him on the glittery leaderboard were many of golf's most eminent stars. Phil Mickelson, Lee Westwood, Tiger Woods, Dustin Johnson and Adam Scott all finished in the top seven.
A week-long gallery in excess of 143,000, including mobs of 38,000 on Saturday and more than 40,000 on Sunday, made it one of the tour's best-attended events of the year. The enterprise was underwritten by $6 million in corporate sponsorship sales, a figure then unprecedented in tournament history.
Crooked Stick frothed with birdies and excitement.
The players shared in it: Mickelson called the support "unreal." McIlroy's choice of terms was "phenomenal" and Woods said what made the week memorable was "the people."
The co-sponsoring associations shared in the enthusiasm: "It was a rousing success from the WGA perspective and the PGA Tour perspective and we raised ($3.1 million) for the Evans Scholars Foundation (which provides full college scholarships to caddies)," Vince Pellegrino, the Western Golf Association's senior vice president for tournaments, said today.
"Those factors contributed to us looking at Crooked Stick and coming back for a future event."
Not everything came off perfectly.
Crooked Stick absorbed nearly five inches of rain over the six days preceding the third round in 2012. More than two inches fell Friday night, turning a grass parking area for 6,000 cars into a bog. That necessitated the use of alternative parking sites and shuttles, and also resulted in a delay in the opening of spectator gates to allow for course cleanup.
As a result, many fans who paid $75 and more for passes waited in line for two hours. Planning and communication, responsibilities of the sanctioning WGA and the tour, were inadequate.
Pellegrino said it was a case of balancing spectator convenience afforded by grass-surface lots near the golf course against the certainty afforded by paved lots at a greater distance with longer shuttle times.
"We have and we are taking a strong look at a weather-proof parking situation where we have asphalt parking for the entire week," he said. "The good thing about coming back to a venue for a second time is you can make things better, make the spectator experience better."
The 2016 BMW Championship is likely to come with a bonus. Plans call for the WGA to bring its prestigious Western Amateur Championship to Crooked Stick in 2020. The event dates to 1899, making it golf's third oldest amateur championship, behind the British Amateur (1885) and the U.S. Amateur (1995).
The Western Amateur's champions' roll includes Chick Evans and Francis Ouimet, Jack Nicklaus and Tom Weiskopf, Ben Crenshaw, Mickelson, Woods and Scott.
"A foundational principle here is to challenge the best golfers in the world and that includes female, amateur and junior golfers, too," said Tony Pancake, Crooked Stick's director of golf and club operations. "Hopefully there will be some players from around here who can participate."
As to preparations for the 2016 BMW Championship, Deets said, "We've already started."
Email Star reporter Phil Richards at phil.richards@indystar.com and follow him on Twitter at @philrichards6.
Champions roll
Crooked Stick Golf Club has been the site of some of golf's biggest events, professional, amateur and open. The rundown:
Year, Event, Champion
1982, U.S. Junior Amateur, Rick Marik
1983, U.S. Senior Amateur, William Hyndman III
1989, U.S. Mid-Amateur, James Taylor
1991, PGA Championship, John Daly
2005, Solheim Cup, Team USA
2007, U.S. Women's Amateur, Maria Jose Uribe
2009, U.S. Senior Open, Fred Funk
2012, BMW Championship, Rory McIlroy