By D.A. Weibring
Last week I had another busy week. I went to the Quad Cities after play on Sunday and spent a couple of hours at the TPC at Deere Run making a couple of adjustments to the course prior to the John Deere Classic being played there in a few weeks. It's a course we designed more than 10 years ago and I'm really proud of how it has held up, and how well it's been received by the players. Like all good designs, it has remained competitive even with the changes in golf balls, and club head technology.
I've always said that the easiest thing to do is to build a difficult golf course, but what's really difficult is to build an enjoyable and competitive golf course for all levels of play. The TPC at Deere Run has held up very well, but everything changes so what we're going to do is add a couple more championship tees, and just a couple of bunkers. Many of the other courses on the TPC network have already started resurfacing greens and making major changes, spending literally millions of dollars. At Deere Run we re-edged the lake at 9 and made one tee a little bit larger and that's really all we've done to improve the competitiveness of the golf course.
I only spent a couple of hours there before driving over to the Chicago area where I had plans to see some family. My wife's family lives in that area and they have a new house and I wanted to visit them. My plan was also to spend Tuesday and Wednesday with my son Matt, who plays on the Nationwide Tour. He's having a steady year, just missing in the second stage of the U.S. Open qualifier. He was about 50th on the money list going into the week and this is one of their top events, the LaSalle Bank Classic at the Glen Club.
He had missed his last two cuts by one shot, which is really frustrating. My plan was to spend Tuesday and Wednesday with him to show him a little support and hopefully give him a little confidence. He was struggling a little bit on Tuesday, and I walked with him on Wednesday in the pro-am. My plan was to walk 5 or 6 holes and then leave in the middle of the afternoon and fly to Boston to play in the Bank of America Championship.
I've played well there the last couple of years, finishing second and third. The idea was to kill two birds with one stone by visiting with Matt, and then going on to play in Boston but the weather was bad in New England as it had been all spring. I called and double-checked with the Tournament Director; she said they had already cancelled the Wednesday pro-am and they were considering canceling the Thursday pro-am as well. The forecast was terrible and I thought, man, why should I go out there if the weather looks so bad, so I decided to hang around on and watch Matt play all 18 holes in the pro-am.
Not long after, the Tournament Director called back and told me that Thursday's pro-am had been canceled, so I thought, I'll just stay another day and watch him play. Matt played at 8:10 Thursday morning and shot 72, on a difficult golf course with breezy conditions in very cool Chicago conditions.
Thursday afternoon I called Boston once again and they weren't even sure if they were going to play on Friday. At that point I needed to decide where I was most needed and the decision wasn't difficult. I don't get a chance to see my son play too often, so I decided because my wife and I were both there, and my son's wife's parents were also there, it would be a great week to stay and support Matt, and to see if we could give him a little more momentum and confidence, so I withdrew from the Bank of America Championship.
Friday Matt shot 73 two over par and made the cut. He was playing well and shot 74 on Saturday. Later that day I found out that they cancelled the tournament in Boston. They never played a shot. They're going to try to reschedule later in September, making my decision to withdraw one of my best decisions of the year.
I kept encouraging Matt by telling him that he was hitting the ball well and doing all the right stuff. I told him to be patient even though he had not made the score he thought he deserved. You've got to understand how well you've played and know that your patience will pay off. Well, on Sunday he got rewarded and we got to watch. He birdied the fifth hole, bogeyed the sixth, a very hard par 4, and then made a run on the backside by birdying 9, thirteen, fourteen, and fifteen. He had a great birdie at 17, and a 8 to 10 foot putt on the last hole to shoot 66, but his putt caught the edge of the hole and spun out for a 67, moving him from 45th up to tie for 16th and shooting the low round of the day.
So, I've had a great couple weeks watching my youngest daughter dance, and my son Matt play on the Nationwide Tour. My oldest daughter Katey, who is the professional dancer, is getting ready to move to Los Angeles to pursue her career. She's dancing in a show Friday and Saturday and I promised her I'd be there and I will. It has been an amazing couple of weeks for my family, both with and without golf; but you may have figured out by now that golf always takes a backseat to my family.
No time to rest, I've got tournaments coming up in Long Island and Kansas City, and then it's the Senior Open in Hutchinson, Kansas followed closely by the Ford Seniors Championship in Detroit, which is one of our majors. It's been great watching my kids pursue their passion over the last couple of weeks and now it's time to pursue mine.
