It's official: 2018 BMW Championship will be held at Aronimink

   Aronimink Golf Club’s membership made it official this week when it agreed to stage the 2018 BMW Championship at their Donald Ross-designed gem in Newtown Square.

   The BMW Championship is the next-to-last stop in the FedEx Playoffs on the PGA Tour.  The playoff field is whittled to 70 by the time players arrive for the BMW Championship and the top 30 then survive and advance to the Tour Championship.

   The event tries to trace its lineage to the Western Open, although that’s a bit of a stretch. The Western Open dates back to 1899 and was considered a major championship among professional golfers before that term was really popularized when somebody dubbed the Masters, the U.S. Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship the Grand Slam. Pretty sure it was a sports writer who so dubbed those four events the Grand Slam, so take that for what it’s worth.

   The Western  had a much longer tradition than the Masters did, but the Masters had Bobby Jones and all those azalaes and all the sports writers could hit it on the way back from spring training and voila, it was a major championship.

   The one historical connection the BMW Championship has with the Western Open is that proceeds from the event benefit the Evans Scholars Foundation, which is the Chicago area version of the J. Wood Platt Caddie Scholarship Fund run by the Golf Association of Philadelphia. As a proud former J. Wood Platt Caddie Scholarship Fund recipient, I am all for anything that benefits caddies.

   There is some concern that a golf tournament played in the Philadelphia area in mid-September won’t draw flies because all anybody cares about around here once football season starts is the Eagles, but I have always thought that was overblown.

   I wondered if anybody would come out to Aronimink on a Fourth of July weekend when the AT&T Championship was staged there in 2010 and 2011, but the galleries were large, enthusiastic and knowledgeable. Yes, there were  more people there the first year when that Woods guy played than there were the second year when he did not.  But a lot of that 2010 following of Woods had as much to do with the still fairly recent headlines about his extramarital dalliances than it did with his golf game.

   And the Philadelphia golf community got well-deserved kudos for the way it pulled together to make sure the 2013 U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club’s historic East Course was a success despite dire predictions that the physical plant – not just the golf course, but the surrounding area -- just flat-out didn’t have enough space to stage a 21^st-century major championship. Well, it sort of didn’t, but the membership at Merion, with a lot of support from Haverford Township and Delaware County in general, Lower Merion Township, the city of Philadelphia and golf fans all over this region, got it done.

   Among PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem’s typically corporate remarks upon announcing that the BMW was coming to Aronimink was, “Philadelphia is one of America’s great sports cities …” Thanks Tim, but we already knew that.

   “We look forward to bringing a major world-class event to Aronimink,” said Steven Zodtner, president of Aronimink. “Our membership and the Philadelphia golf community are excited to partner with the WGA, BMW of  North America and the PGA Tour to showcase our championship golf course and to return professional golf to our region.”

   And as golf fans, we can only thank the Aronimink membership for stepping up to the plate and making their golf course available for a big-time event such as the BMW.

   Turns out the Western was staged in Pennsylvania once in its previous life in 1959 when Mike Souchak won the event at the Pittsburgh Field Club.

   The event had become a staple on the Chicago sports scene and I’m pretty sure there was some grumbling when the PGA Tour sort of co-opted the event and said it was going to move it around. Pretty sure there is a promise that once every three or four years it has to be in the Chicago area, as it will be this year when it’s contested at the Conway Farms Golf Club in Lake Forest, Ill.

   So if the Western Golf Association and the PGA Tour want to sell the BMW Championship as a direct descendent of the Western Open, who am I to argue? I’m just happy that me and the rest of the people around these parts who love the game will get to see its finest practitioners competing on the grand stage that is the 7,190-yard Aronimink layout  in about as important  – and rich – an event as you’ll find this side of a major championship.

Kan helps Purdue finish sixth

   Aurora Kan, the 2010 PIAA champion at Chichester, and her Purdue teammates got better every round to finish sixth in the team standings at the Hurricane Invitational, hosted by the University of Miami at the Biltmore Golf Course in Coral Gables, Fla. another classic layout designed – at the risk of starting to sound like a golf course design geek -- by that Donald Ross fella who created Aronimink.

   The Boilermakers were led by junior Anna Appert Lund, a Swede who fired a brilliant 4-under 67 in the second round on her way to a tie for eighth in the individual chase at 3-over 216. Appert Lund sandwiched the 67 with rounds of 75 and 74. Individual honors went to Daytona State’s Tiffany Chan, a sophomore from China, who had rounds of 71, 71 and 70 for a 1-under 212 total.

   Purdue had an opening-round 297 and followed it up with rounds of 293 and 291 for an 881 total. The Boilermakers’ Big 10 rival Northwestern put up fairly ridiculous totals of 280 and 282 in the first two rounds before falling back to earth with a final-round 297 for a 7-over 859 total, but still won the team title by six shots over host Miami (865). Iowa State finished third at 868, Louisville was another five shots back in fourth at 873, and another of Purdue’s Big 10 rivals, Minnesota, took fifth at 878, three better than Purdue.

   Sophomore August Kim, the St. Augustine native playing in her home state, sandwiched solid rounds of 71 and 70 around a second-round 79 and was Purdue’s second-best finisher in a tie for 21^st at 220. Marta Martin, a freshman from Spain, finished tied for 38^th with consistent rounds of 76, 73 and 73 for a 9-over 222 total. Kan, the team’s senior leader, finished in a tie for 48^th with rounds of 75, 74 and 76 for a 225 total, and freshman Linn Andersson, another Swede, had rounds of 77, 82 and 74 and finished in a tie for 74^th with a 233 total.

   With Kan and a talented group of youngsters, look for Purdue to just keep getting better as Kan writes the final act to her career in West Lafayette, Ind.

   An old rival of Kan’s, Penn State senior Ellen Ceresko, was in the field along with the rest of the Nittany Lions. Ceresko, the two-time reigning Pennsylvania Women’s Amateur champion, had rounds of 76, 72 and 75 to finish in a tie for 34^th at 223.

   The Nittany Lions finished 15^th in the 16-team field with rounds of 297, 305 and 300 for a 902 total. They were led by senior Katlyn Elliott, who finished in a tie for 33^rd with rounds of 74, 76 and 72 and a 222 total. Junior Elyse Archambault, like Elliott a Canadian, matched Ceresko’s 223 total with rounds of 71, 80 and 72 to finish in that group that was tied for 34^th.

   When Kan won the 2010 PIAA title, she survived a three-way playoff and one of the participants in that playoff was Stani Schiavone. The former Bangor standout who started her collegiate career at Baylor, but is now at Ole Miss, had rounds of 81, 84 and 75 at the Biltmore to finish in a tie for 87^th place. The Bulldogs were last in the field of 16 with a team total of 932.