Dustin Johnson is still on a roll after winning last week on the PGA Tour by a whopping eleven strokes. After today’s third round in the BMW Championship, he is tied for first place with Hideki Matsuyama with a one-under, par 54-hole total of 209. They are playing at Olympia Fields North Course in Illinois, just outside of Chicago. This high scoring with good weather shows how difficult that golf course is.
This tournament used to be the Western Open back in my day on the PGA Tour. For many years, that tournament venue changed locations each year in the metro-Chicago area. It was sponsored by the Western Golf Association. Then the WGA moved the tournament to Butler National Golf Course in Oak Brook for many years.
The WGA had a very strong caddy program that sent many young men to college on WGA golf scholarships. Also back then, the WGA had an agreement with the PGA Tour in which only caddies furnished by the WGA were allowed to caddy in the Western Open. It was the only week when Tour caddies had to take the week off, although I think that happened at the Masters for some years. Caddies were selected from the golf clubs all around the Chicago area to caddie that week in the Western Open. It was really a great thing to do for mostly teenage boys.
Olympia Fields is one of the oldest golf courses in the U.S. They have surely lengthened that course out since I last played it, which was the U.S. Senior Open on the PGA Tour’s Senior Tour (now Champions Tour), in 1997. I was thinking, then, that I liked that golf course since I shot 69 and 69 the first two rounds in that tournament and was leading after 36 holes by one stroke. But the next day was one of the worst in my pro golf career since I ballooned to an 80. If I’d have shot par 70, I would have won the tournament.
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