Tiger's PopStroke will test the best putters in national tourney By Len Ziehm

Tiger's PopStroke will test the best putters in national tourney

By Len Ziehm

How could Tiger Woods' new PopStroke National Putting Championship be scheduled any better for us?

The finals are Oct. 26-28 in Sarasota, FL., about three miles from our home here, and the first list of qualifying tournaments included a Sept. 10 elimination at Deerpath, in Lake Forest. We have family members living within walking distance of that public golf facility.

PopStroke, for now at least, is a Florida thing. Woods opened his first location in Fort Myers and the second in our former hometown of Port St. Lucie (we enjoyed our introduction to the concept there). Since then he's opened a location in Orlando prior to this year's debut of PopStroke Sarasota, which is pictured here.

Basically the PopStrokes are high-end mini-golf destinations but they're a lot closer to real golf than the miniature golf version, where you putt around contrived hazards to get the ball into a clown's mouth (or something like that). In PopStroke you have artificial greens created by TGR Design (Woods' design firm), and they're challenging.

Woods made his announcement of the national tournament on the same day that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced radical changes coming for the PGA Tour. Just a coincidence? I doubt it.

Anyway the qualifier at Deerpath will give Chicago golfers a chance to get introduced to The Lawn - a 30,000 square foot putting and chipping green that opened on July 6. It'll be set up for a nine-hole putting course from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sept. 10.

Golfers pay $10 per round and can go around as many times as they wish to post a qualifying score for the national tournament. The first and second-place finishers qualify to play in Sarasota where a $100,000 prize fund will be on the line.

The tournament in Sarasota will be over 72 holes and will be open to both amateurs and professionals.

Revised: 08/26/2022 - Article Viewed 568 Times

About: Len Ziehm

My 41-year career on the Chicago Sun-Times sports staff ended with my retirement on June 30, 2010. During that stint I covered a wide variety of sports, but golf was a constant. I was the paper's golf writer for 40 years, during which time I covered 27 U.S. Opens, 10 Masters, 17 PGA Championships, four U.S. Women's Opens and the last 34 Western Opens in addition to a heavy load of Chicago area events.

For 20 years I was a columnist for Chicagoland Golf, a newspaper that suspended publication following the death of founder and good friend Phil Kosin in 2009. (This is not to be confused with the publication of the same name which was introduced in 2013 after being known as Chicago Area Golf for three years). I also contributed a chapter to a history book on the Solheim Cup and have been a member of the selection committee for the Illinois Golf Hall of Fame.

As a player I remain just an avid hacker with a handicap that never has dipped below 16.