One Quick Point about Pro Golf’s Current Controversy

Jeff Olson smiles after recording a hole-in-one on the ninth hole at Alpine Golf Course. Submitted.

A lot of Americans – and the 11 or so Door County residents who sweat over fantasy golf – hate the Saudi-backed LIV golf tour.

Some call its golfers traitors for taking the money to play on the rogue tour. One could compare LIV to the old Dr. J-era ABA, only with millions of dollars to lure big-name stars away from the major leagues. It gives players throughout the field – including Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson – a fortune just for showing up. It also guarantees them 54 holes of golf, with no cut-down day – and perhaps very little stress.

I’ve heard Door County sports fans who don’t follow golf say they don’t understand why the defectors got banned from the PGA Tour. One told me, “Why can’t they just play wherever and whenever they want?” But I liken their actions to barnstorming by 1920s major-league players, who were duly suspended and fined for taking their skills out for an unsanctioned show on the road.

And those baseball players surely needed the extra cash more than Mickelson. Anyway, you can criticize the golfers all you want, and certainly you can frown at the source of their cash.

But I must defend one person and one entity briefly associated with LIV golf: Please don’t harbor ill will toward the host of a LIV event when it takes place at a course west of Chicago over the Sept. 16 weekend. That’s when privately operated Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Illinois, is opening its gates to spectators and the pros. 

I’ve met and interviewed the course owner, Jerry Rich, a couple of times and found him to be simply a guy who absolutely loves golf, supports the sport and wants more people of all ages to enjoy the game and get better at it. 

Well, maybe not “simply.” A small-town Midwesterner, Rich made a fortune creating an integrated computer system for Wall Street traders. His 1,800-acre property has a private collectible-car museum. He had a locker room designed to replicate the clubhouse at Augusta, and some of his initial invitees before he had more than a dozen members included Michael Jordan and Sam Snead, Rich’s longtime golfing buddy at Pine Tree in Florida.

Thanks to a friend, I played at Rich Harvest during the early 1990s, after Rich had completed nine holes with three separate sets of tees that created a 27-hole layout. One green accommodated three holes on the scorecard – a par-3 over the lake, and a par-4 and a par-5 around the water’s edge.

When I met the owner, he made a point of giving us a ball-mark repair tool, along with a lesson about how to properly repair a pitch mark. Instead of just prying up the middle and damaging a few roots, he encouraged us to poke the grass around the edges of the mark, then pull the top of the tool toward the middle of the dent. Then, repeat a couple of times, circling on three or four sides, until the dent became a little dome, and then tap it flat. (It’s easier to show than to describe.)

At the time, we were the only golfers on the course, and we were expected to protect and preserve the massive greens and the course in its truly pristine condition.

Over the next decade, Rich improved the course into an 18-hole dream track that earned a spot on Golf Digest’s top 100 courses in the world and reached the top 50 at one point. He has given away millions of dollars to teach young people to golf and learn about life, at one point through the First Tee and Hook a Kid on Golf organizations, and later through a foundation.

Rich invited the NCAA to hold its 2017 men’s and women’s Division I golf championships at his place. He has hosted U.S. Golf Association qualifiers and even a prestigious international women’s team event, the Solheim Cup, in 2009. He has hosted U.S. Senior Open play-ins and other qualifiers, too. Rich transferred a massive portion of the revenue from those events to charity and the Kids Golf Foundation of Illinois.

His course has never had more than 60 members. He keeps the club extremely private, but he loves welcoming the public to events on the course. He has even allowed Northern Illinois University players to practice and host tournaments, including an annual invitational and the Mid-American Conference championships, at Rich Harvest – not a bad home course for a lesser-known college squad.

The par-72 course is also not easy, at least for mere mortals. It isn’t tricky, just tough, with a slope of 151 and a rating of 78 – meaning a scratch golfer should not expect to have an easy time breaking 80. The current No. 1 player in the world, Scottie Scheffler, had a fourth-round 78 to fall into sixth place after turning in three stellar rounds of 68 at the NCAA tournament five years ago at Rich Harvest.

Back to the Peninsula

Door County senior and sculptor Jeff Olson carded his first career hole-in-one Aug. 30. Playing from the senior tees along with witnesses Mark Dufeck and Jim Hamann, Olson knocked in a shot with a 6-iron from about 145 yards out on hole #9 at Alpine.