Magic Happened: Chapter 14

A Wie Bit of Excitement

From the moment the Official World Golf Rankings debuted in April of 1986 through the end of the 2018-2019 PGA TOUR season, only 23 men had held the rank of No. 1 golfer in the world.

All but nine of the 23 competed in the Quad Cities before or after reaching the pinnacle of their sport. More than a few contended. Two were victorious.

Vijay Singh didn’t win twice here like Jordan Spieth, but he did tie for fourth in his title defense in 2004. Tiger Woods, Greg Norman, Tom Lehman and Justin Thomas also scored top 5 finishes in front of appreciative QC galleries. Fred Couples, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Justin Rose didn’t contend but they did tee it up here on their way to No. 1. David Duval, Bernhard Langer, Luke Donald, and Nick Price visited after they’d reached the top.

All but Woods, Couples, DJ and Rose visited more than once. All totaled, those 14 No. 1s have played in the Quad Cities 47 times — and counting.

The World Golf Hall of Fame, meanwhile, has inducted 42 men whose active careers spanned the life of the QC tournament. Through 2019, 24 of those 42 teed it up at Crow Valley, Oakwood and/or Deere Run.

Deane Beman, Payne Stewart and Singh won. But there also have been three runner-up finishes by Hall of Famers: Tom Watson, Curtis Strange, and Stewart. Top 10 finishes were posted by Sam Snead, Hale Irwin, Langer, Norman and Lanny Wadkins. Snead shot his age on Friday in 1979 — a smooth 67 — and then bettered that score by a shot two days later. Strange tied for eighth and 10^th in addition to his runner-up finish behind Scott Hoch in 1980. Stewart tied for seventh while defending his 1982 title. And, again, Singh was fourth the year behind his 2003 win.

We have seen greats of the game coming and going. Snead and Tiger Woods stood tied for the all-time record for PGA TOUR wins after Woods won in Japan in the fall of 2019. Notably, Snead held the last 54-hole lead of his career at Crow Valley in 1974. And, of course, Woods held his first professional 54-hole lead at Oakwood in 1996. And then, alas, it was quad city for Tiger Woods.

For five decades now, many of the best of the very best have played, contended, lost and won in our midst. And that is an important point to remember as we acknowledge the Classic historically has been challenged to attract fields on par with many higher-profile PGA TOUR events.

To an extent, the strength-of-field debate is an Open and shut case. The JDC’s proximity on the calendar to the Open Championship for most of its 50 years — 16 years directly opposite, 21 the week before or after — has been both its salvation and its curse.

The imperfect date was its salvation, obviously, in those perilous times — 1975, 1984 and 1985 — when the QCO likely would have been erased and/or replaced had it not been tethered to the major championship across the Atlantic.

It has been a curse because, as noted by former tourney director Kym Hougham: “If you’re the week before or after a major, there are certain players that aren’t going to play. Especially when you have to travel five time zones to get there. And it’s hard to get the general public not to expect a lot of big-name players.”

The TOUR’s newly compacted summer schedule only has compounded the challenge. Over a span of 11 weeks starting in mid-June of 2020, top players will have the U.S. Open, the Open Championship, a World Golf Championship, and then, perhaps, the Olympics in Japan and three playoff events to pencil in before they even can think about adding a regular TOUR event to their itinerary.

And yet, despite the amped-up challenge that jam-packed summer creates for events like the John Deere Classic, QC golf fans never should lose sight of one very important fact regarding the PGA TOUR schedule.

The JDC is on it.

Still on it.

For 50 years now.

And counting.

That is a remarkable thing no resident of the United States’ 141^st largest Metropolitan Statistical Area ever should take for granted.

Right here in a community that’s basically a third of the size of Knoxville, Tennessee, 14 of the 23 men who have been ranked No. 1 in the world and 24 certified Hall-of-Fame talents have played their sport at its highest level multiple times for significant prize money and all the benefits a victory can reap.

Doubt any of the latter? Ask Spieth.

Or ask Watson, that lonely grinder a teen-aged Kym Hougham stood watching putt for hours on the Crow Valley practice green in 1972.

Today, Watson stands among the legends of the game.

“That was the first time I’d been in contention,” Watson remembered years later of his runner-up QC finish. “That was the very first step. I won my first tournament in 1974, had a good year in 1975. And when I won the Masters and three other tournaments in 1977, that was the culmination of all those building blocks. Of learning how to win. And the first building block was right there in the Quad Cities.”

49 years later, the John Deere Classic has mitigated its challenging date with a luxury charter jet that has delivered major players virtually to the front gate of every Open Championship since 2008. For Deere & Company, the $350,000-plus investment in leasing the jet is a more cost-effective means of boosting the field than spending several million more on a different date that still wouldn’t ensure a better field.

“We’ve done analysis a couple of different times of what a different date would accomplish,” said Deere & Company’s Sam Allen. “We would have to significantly increase our purse, because we get a big discount with what the TOUR calls a ‘disadvantaged date.’ So it would be much more costly for Deere & Company. And what we’ve found it is that even with some tournaments early in the year, the John Deere Classic will have every bit the field they have. We’ve been pretty fortunate in who we’ve gotten and who we’ll continue to get.”

The bottom line is the bottom line, and what’s important to know is that a date that won’t bring a return on investment for Deere & Company wouldn’t be a better date. Not even if it guaranteed a field featuring Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and re-incarnated versions of Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson in their prime.

Besides, the John Deere Classic’s niche has always been as a launching pad for early incarnations of players like Watson, Stewart and Spieth. At Deere Run, Hougham and particularly Clair Peterson have made this a strategic point of emphasis. And, increasingly, strong young players — of which there are more today than ever before — are looking to the JDC as the place to get their parties started.

In 2019, Peterson extended sponsor’s exemptions to a crew of newly turned professionals fresh from starring in the NCAA Tournament, just as he had in previous years.

Matthew Wolff, Collin Morikawa and Viktor Hovland didn’t just command headlines and create excitement as favorites at Deere Run. The talented trio made news across the spring, summer, and fall.

On arrival, Wolff and Morikawa didn’t even need sponsor’s invites. They officially played their way into the field by finishing first and second, respectively, at the inaugural 3M Open the previous week.

Reigning NCAA individual champion Wolff’s walk-off eagle booked instant exempt status on TOUR.

Morikawa secured his special temporary card days later with a fourth-place JDC finish. Two weeks after that, he won the Barracuda Championship in Reno, Nevada.

Hovland, the 2018 U.S. Amateur champion, didn’t join Wolff and Morikawa in the 2019 PGA TOUR winner’s circle, but he did earn a 2020 PGA TOUR card through the Korn Ferry Tour fall qualifying series. He also established a new TOUR record with 19 consecutive rounds in the 60s, four of which came at Deere Run en route to a tie for 16^th.

That really-ready-for-primetime trio fit right in with the long list of young stars who have been granted JDC sponsor’s exemptions through the years.

It is a group that includes major champions in the aforementioned Justin Thomas, as well as Spieth, Zach Johnson, Patrick Reed, Webb Simpson, Jason Day and Lucas Glover. And it includes Jon Rahm, a big-hitting Spaniard who made his second pro start here in 2016 and already ranked on anyone’s list of the best players yet to win a major as the 2020 campaign dawned. Aaron Wise and Charles Howell III were Rookies of the Year a year after getting early starts in the QC, while Matt Kuchar, Bill Haas, Camilo Villegas, and Nick Watney went on to win big money and big, big tournaments. D.A. Points, Danny Lee, Kyle Stanley and Kevin Tway all have won as well. David Gossett only won once in a star-crossed career, but it was at Deere Run as a sponsor’s exempt invite in 2001.

Spieth and Bryson DeChambeau were among 18 amateurs given a chance to play with the pros via an exemption over the first 20 years at Deere Run. Each learned enough to bag their first pro win in their next JDC start.

“The exemption in 2012 was really important,” said Spieth, who tied for 58^th as an amateur. “It helped me make my decision to turn professional and to really understand where my game needed to be to make that leap.”

He figured it out fast. Before you knew it, the Texas teen was leaping out of the bunker at 18 and into golf history.

“I was playing well and on an upward swing after some Top-10s earlier in the year, so being able to take that momentum into the John Deere and capitalize with my first TOUR win ever was something I’ll never forget,” the now 25-year-old star said of his 2013 breakthrough at Deere Run. “That win changed everything for the year, sending me to my first Open Championship, helping me secure a spot in the Playoffs and eventually earning a spot on the 2013 Presidents Cup team.”

For the tournament, the even bigger payoff was Spieth’s return as the biggest story in golf in 2015. In that sense, sponsor’s exemptions can be an investment on the future. Woods never returned. But, like Spieth, many others have, through a sense of gratitude and appreciation for all the JDC has to offer.

Jason Day got his first pro start through an exemption here at the age of 18, then returned to the Quad Cities four straight years after earning his PGA TOUR card in 2008. Howell has been back 12 times since finishing third on a sponsor’s exemption in 2000. Glover has returned 10 times since his 2002 debut, including as the reigning U.S Open champion in 2009. Reed, Simpson, and Kuchar all have been back once or more.

“With a history of difficult dates, we have always looked at sponsor exemptions as a great way to enhance our immediate success as well as a way to invest in the future,” Peterson explained. “There are no shortage of requests each year but we work hard to pick players who fall into two basic categories. The first are players who have supported us through the years but for one reason or another would not get in on their current status. Those are pretty easy. The second category are young players who have no status yet. We sometimes start talking to these players a year in advance to get to know them better. We want great people as well as accomplished athletes.

“The process has worked well in that we have a pretty strong relationship built before they ever tee it up. There are no guarantees they will come back but it always starts the relationship in a positive way and allows us to have a positive experience to remind them of when they eventually do succeed.”

In the history of the TOUR, few sponsor’s exemptions have been repaid in as meaningful a fashion as the two granted Johnson in 2002 and 2003. The stalwart Iowan has never wavered in his commitment to play the JDC in advance of the Open Championship. Not after winning the Masters in 2007. Not before winning at St. Andrews in 2015.

“It was a PGA TOUR event that was closest to my hometown when I started to make a name for myself and it was the one that gave me two chances before I got my TOUR card,” said the future Hall of Famer who has grown into a quasi-tournament host. “So because of that, it has always held a major, major high regard in our family.”

Proof that good things happen to good people came when Johnson flew back to the States with the Claret Jug in 2015. In a way, even that was a recruiting statement on behalf of the JDC. Johnson followed Todd Hamilton (2004) and preceded Francesco Molinari (2018) in winning the Open Championship after playing the week before at Deere Run.

“There’s something to be said about what I’ve done in the Open and having never not played the John Deere Classic,” the Iowa native said. “I made 12 straight cuts there and had quite a few great finishes. I can still get acclimated and play at a high level while playing the John Deere Classic because they make it so easy for us with the plane.”

Sponsor’s exemptions have been a part of the PGA TOUR since before the launch of the 1971 Quad Cities Open. Today, the TOUR holds eight spots in every non-invitational field for players who don’t otherwise qualify. Two must be given to former TOUR players, and two others must be given to players from the Korn Ferry Tour graduating class who didn’t make the field through their status. The final four exemptions can be awarded to anyone with a scratch handicap or lower.

Anyone.

More than once, the tournament has extended exemptions to young pros with area ties and dreams of making the TOUR — Bettendorf’s Brady Schnell and Eugene Elliott (both who eventually did earn their cards) and Moline’s Ben Weir and David Lawrence. For several years, the best player on the QC amateur scene was granted an automatic entry as a means of supporting competitive golf in the area.

In July of 2005, a Hawaiian teen with a passion for anything pink and a penchant for colorful golf fashion arrived at Deere Run as the most out-of-the-box sponsor’s exempt player in tournament history. By week’s end, no one could argue that she — yes, she — was undeserving.

When midway through her second round, 15-year-old Michelle Wie birdied the 18^th hole, her ninth hole of the day, she reached 4-under par for the tournament, a shot inside the projected midway cutline. She went to the next nine with a chance to become the first woman in 60 years to play on a weekend on the PGA TOUR. It was a bid for history that put a charge in the mid-afternoon air reminiscent of a Friday morning at Oakwood nine years earlier.

Wie’s performance justified a Peterson invite that engendered controversy in some circles, including corners of the Deere Run locker room.

“It was a tremendous opportunity to give us visibility that we didn’t have before,” Peterson said years later. “John Deere was all in. They never questioned it at all. It was the biggest media event that we’d ever had at the John Deere Classic. We had to build a second media center.

“A lot of players weren’t happy about it. But it was the right thing to do for us. We explained over and over that a sponsor’s exemption is defined as someone who is not in your field in any other way who you would like to have to generate more ticket sales or more interest. And Michelle did that.”

Wie had already contended as an amateur in LPGA major championships. In 2004, she made her first TOUR start at the Sony Open in her native Hawaii. With a long, languid swing that echoed that of PGA TOUR standout Ernie “The Big Easy” Els, she rightfully earned the catchy nickname “The Big Wiesy.”

The prospect of a teenaged girl following the fabled Babe Didrikson Zaharias into gender-bending history drew golf-writing media to Deere Run from Tokyo, New York and all points between. That mid-afternoon birdie on Friday earned an instant call to Media Director Barry Cronin from a producer for ABC News wondering where they should park the satellite truck that was en route from Chicago. Wie was looking like the lead story on the ABC Nightly News.

“I can’t recall what I was thinking as I approached the back nine but I have strong memories of a very special week,” the now 30-year-old Wie remembered of an adventure half-a-lifetime ago. “I guess I don’t think about the history side, more just what a neat experience it was for a young girl to get to be part of such a big event and be made so welcome. It is certainly something I will never forget.”

Who can say what the weekend might have had in store if only Wie had left her driver in the bag at the short par-4 sixth hole? A 3-wood might have kept her out of the left-side fairway trap, from which she found a greenside bunker and made double bogey. Another bogey at the par-3 7^th all but ended the dream. Wie finished two shots shy of history, and that ABC News satellite truck made a U-turn and headed back to the big city.

“I never really look backward, and I think I was even more like that as a teenager,” Wie said when asked years later if she’d like a sixth-tee Mulligan. “I always try to look forward rather than worry about what I could have or should have done.”

That’s true still today for the bright young woman who became a newlywed in 2019 and was expecting her first child as the calendar turned. Largely due to injuries, Wie has never accrued the kind of big success on the LPGA Tour some thought was inevitable. She turned professional months after the 2005 JDC, and returned to Deere Run a year later but was 10-over par when heat exhaustion forced her to withdraw midway through the second round. In all, she played 13 times in men’s professional events, making the cut in one Asian Tour event in 2006. Her five LPGA Tour wins include the 2014 U.S. Open.

Pundits sometimes wonder if her career trajectory might have been different had she not challenged her still-developing body playing from the men’s tees as a teen. But Wie has a Stanford degree, a new TV announcing career, a bright future on or off the golf course, and a bright outlook on her life, both past and present.

She did enjoy hearing years later how her near-Deere-success inspired a number of female JDC volunteers, some who were younger than Wie was when she took on some of the best male golfers in the world in the Quad Cities.

“I love hearing that, and it is something I really have tried to keep in mind throughout my career in how I act and present myself in the hope that I can be a positive role model,” she said, before adding, “I think I am in a really privileged position of being a role model for young girls and boys.”

(This content, first published in 2021, is shared with the permission of the Quad City Golf Classic Charitable Foundation. Please consider a donation to Birdies for Charity.)