MAY/JUNE 2007
Can it possibly be 40 years?

Milwaukee has been a major player in the world of tournament golf since 1968, when the first Greater Milwaukee Open was contested at North Shore CC in Mequon.

Since those four days in July, during which Dave Stockton won the first of his two Milwaukee titles, the tournament has moved around on the summertime and early fall calendar, and it has traveled to several Milwaukee-area courses – from Milwaukee’s North Shore area where it began to a long run at Tuckaway CC in Franklin on the south side, and back north again to Brown Deer Park GC.

The tournament itself has changed names. The aforementioned GMO was officially relegated to posterity in 2004 when U.S. Bank became the title sponsor and the tournament was officially renamed the U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee.

Now, in the U.S. Bank Championship’s 40th anniversary season, the tournament faces some new challenges, as it will be played the same week as the British Open (July19-22). But the little tournament that could keeps chugging down the track.

In short, the U.S. Bank Championship has been on a wild, woolly and wonderful ride for the last 40 years. And along the way it has become a Wisconsin and Milwaukee institution.

The Beginning

 Milwaukee – a city that loves a good party – was feeling its big-city oats in 1968, as the city welcomed two summertime events which would boost Brew City pride and attract untold thousands of visitors. In 1968, Milwaukee put on the first Greater Milwaukee Open at North Shore CC in Mequon and the inaugural Summerfest, which would grow into the world’s largest music festival, along the city’s Lake Michigan shoreline. Both events are celebrating 40th anniversaries in 2007.

Milwaukee had hosted the top professional golfers since 1940, when the Milwaukee Open sponsored by the Milwaukee Junior Chamber of Commerce was held at North Hills CC in Menomonee Falls. That tournament, with a field of 22, including legends Ben Hogan and Sam Snead, was won by Ralph Guldahl. Milwaukee hosted eight more professional opens in the years 1951-61, sponsored by Pabst and Miller breweries and finally again by the Junior Chamber of Commerce. But Milwaukee would wait another seven years for its next PGA Tour event.

Into the tournament void stepped a group of avid Milwaukee amateur players led by Rocco Bunino, a Pabst Brewing Co. executive and member at North Shore CC. With a background in public relations and sales, Bunino took early retirement from Pabst and assumed the title of president of Greater Milwaukee Open Inc. Following the approval of the tournament and its dates by the PGA of America in the fall of 1967, Bunino became a tireless promoter of the event. According to news stories written by longtime Milwaukee Journal golf writer Billy Sixty, Bunino – whom Sixty called Generalissimo Bunino – gave speeches to booster and civic groups all over southeastern Wisconsin for months leading up the tournament, and he traveled to other pro tournaments around the country at his own expense to study their operations.

The tournament that Bunino and his staff put together, in concert with business and community support, was unlike anything Milwaukee had previously experienced. Two-year-old North Shore CC was a modern championship golf course stretching 7,155 yards. The site offered parking for 7,000 automobiles and plenty of room for bleachers and scoreboards. Pinkerton detectives were hired to help with crowd control, and North Shore superintendent George Duga’s staff was said to swell from its usual seven employees to 40.

Steps also were taken at the first GMO to ensure accurate scoring following the scorecard error suffered by Roberto De Vicenzo a few months earlier at the 1968 Masters. De Vicenzo signed an incorrect scorecard for one stroke higher than he actually shot and lost the Masters title outright to Bob Goalby instead of advancing to a playoff. In the run-up to the GMO, much was made of the tournament’s plan to utilize local women as scorekeepers walking with each group, and a scorer’s tent – called an isolation tent – was placed near the 18th green so players might concentrate better while checking their scorecards.

Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of that first GMO was its $200,000 purse, the $40,000 winner’s share and the impressive field which they attracted to Milwaukee.

A few days before the start of the tournament, Bob Tuthill of the PGA of America, which sanctioned the tournament, told a Milwaukee Journal reporter that the GMO field was “the finest of the 1968 season.”

The Players

 It’s the players who the fans come to see, and Milwaukee has been blessed to attract an amazing collection of talented golfers through the decades. Though we’ve seen our share of big names over the years, the U.S. Bank Championship has often served as a springboard for young pros. Major championship winners such as Mark O’Meara (1984), Corey Pavin (1986, 2006), Mark Brooks (1991) and Jeff Sluman (1998, 2002) have won here, as well as other prominent players such as Jim Colbert (1972) and Billy Mayfair (1993). So have the not-so-famous, including Jim Gallagher Jr. (1990) and Mike Springer (1994). The list of champions also includes Deane Beman (1970), who would later become the PGA Tour commissioner, and PGA Tour bad boy Ken Green (1988), who had several well-publicized run-ins with Beman and his successor, Tim Finchem.

But the tournament is defined by more than its champions. Consider this im-pressive list of runners-up: Sam Snead (1968), Gary Player (1969), Lee Trevino (1978, ’79), Chi Chi Rodriguez (1981), Tom Watson (1984), Jack Nicklaus (1985) and Tom Lehman (1999). Broad-caster and funnyman Gary McCord even finished second twice (1975, ’77).

More specifically, the tournament has been significant to the African-American experience on the PGA Tour, as it counts three black players among its list of champions. They are Lee Elder (1978), two-time winner Calvin Peete (1979, ’82) and Jim Thorpe, who out-dueled Nicklaus down the stretch in the 1985 tournament. That trio won 19 career PGA Tour events, including those four GMO titles. Furthermore, both Peete and Thorpe notched their first PGA Tour victories in Milwaukee.

Despite that history, the U.S. Bank Championship is primarily associated with another African-American player,  Tiger Woods, who also happens to be the only black player to win a PGA Tour tournament since Thorpe’s final tour victory in 1986. Woods played just once in Milwaukee, in 1996, but since it was his first tournament as a professional the appearance remains a memorable one in the minds of Wisconsin golf fans. Tiger not only turned pro here, he also made his first ace as a professional in the final round on the way to tying for 60th place.

Subsequent tournament champions have come from all corners of the planet, befitting golf’s increasingly global influence. Other U.S. Bank Championship winners of the recent past include Australian Greg Norman (1989), Canadian Richard Zokol (1992), Carlos Franco of Paraguay (1999, 2004) and Shigeki Maruyama of Japan (2001).

For a northern state, Wisconsin has been well represented on tour in the last dozen years or so, and over that period some of our home-state players have come tantalizingly close to winning the U.S. Bank Championship. Jerry Kelly of Madison, who has referred to the U.S. Bank Championship as his “fifth major,” has finished second twice, including a sudden-death playoff loss to Loren Roberts in 1996.

Madison’s Steve Stricker finished one stroke behind Jeff Sluman in 1998, and Appleton native J.P. Hayes has twice tied for third.

Another Madison player, Andy North, who for years served as the U.S. Bank Championship’s unofficial ambassador on tour, holds the record for the most U.S. Bank Championship starts. In 2006, North played in the tournament for the 28th time.

The Move to Brown Deer

 North is a key figure in U.S. Bank Championship history for another reason. North and his golf design partner Roger Packard renovated Brown Deer Park GC prior to the tournament’s move to the venerable Milwaukee County course in 1994. After hosting the U.S. Public Links Championship in 1951, ’66 and ’74, Brown Deer suffered through the 1980s from a combination of dying trees, irrigation and drainage problems and overall neglect.

With a budget of more than a million dollars at their disposal, North and Packard addressed the infrastructure issues, upgraded the practice area and constructed six new greens. They also shortened Brown Deer’s par-5 18th hole to about 525 yards – it has been lengthened to 557 yards since then – to create a more exciting, risk-reward finishing hole.

Tom Strong, who worked for the GMO from 1987-98, including 11 years as tournament director, recently recalled the relocation to Brown Deer as “a tough move,” but one that had to be made.

“Tuckaway was a solid golf course for the event,” Strong said.

Still, Strong was among those who thought moving to Brown Deer was in the best interests of the tournament. As a county-owned golf course, Brown Deer was a less expensive tournament host than private Tuckaway. Perhaps more important, Brown Deer offered considerably more room for corporate tents, which now line the 18th hole on an annual basis. Tuckaway, situated on a hilltop, didn’t offer the same sort of viewing opportunities on the closing holes, and that also made it less profitable as a tournament venue.

“Brown Deer became kind of the best choice at that point,” Strong said. “It was a tough move, but from a financial standpoint, the best move we could make.”

Charity

 Over the last 39 years, the U.S. Bank Championship has become an important player across Wisconsin’s charitable landscape. In 2006, the tournament eclipsed the $5 million mark in total charitable giving, according to tournament director Dan Croak, and overwhelmingly those funds have been dispersed among Wisconsin charities. In 2006 alone, funds were dispersed among more than 50 deserving charities and organizations.

It’s people who make the tournament possible, of course, but it takes more than just players who can hit a golf ball 300 yards. Approximately 1,000 volunteers work during tournament week fulfilling dozens of jobs – from car parkers to locker room attendants to standard bearers. Hundreds more work in all sorts of actual playing jobs, including a large contingent of PGA Tour officials who come to town during tournament week.

So the U.S. Bank Championship has become more than just a golf tournament; it’s a Wisconsin “happening,” as much Milwaukee as beer and brats, Brewers and Bucks. And that’s no accident.

“Everybody who wanted to be involved was involved,” Strong recalled of his time with the tournament and the source of local pride which it became. “They were involved because it helped support the community. Someone buying a ticket would feel like, ‘Hey, not only am I buying a ticket, I’m helping charity.’” 

Pettits provided stability
This summer it’s like 1968 all over again