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In Sports Commentary

By Dave Begel Special to OnMilwaukee.com E-mail author | Author bio More articles by Dave Begel

Published Feb. 3, 2009 at 5:25 a.m.

Tags: us bank championship, brown deer park, bill bertha, lpga, natalie gulbis

Now that the dust and public shock are settling after U.S. Bank pulled out of its sponsorship of the golf tournament in Milwaukee, it may be time for a little reflection.

I began covering this tournament in its very first year, so I have a little bit of a connection to what I always call the Greater Milwaukee Open.

For years, the GMO has been the little tournament that could. It has always had bad dates that conflicted either directly or approximately with the British Open. It never got appearances from a lot of the big names. Occasionally, someone you recognized would drop in, but over the years even that has disappeared.

Put bluntly, nobody cares about the players who now come to the GMO. Nice Guys. Good Golfers. Caring Fathers. Civic Boosters. But, a collection of nobodies.

These guys are real "Slumdog Millionaires" and there's only room for one of those in our lives.

Bill Bertha, who heads U. S. Bank's operations in Wisconsin, was very candid when he announced the withdrawal of sponsorship.

"We're not blaming anybody," Bertha said. "Other companies didn't see the value of entertaining clients. No revenues were being generated above operating costs, other than what we were subsidizing. Nobody cared.

"A very good analogy is that we threw a multimillion-dollar party for Milwaukee and Wisconsin, in a park with tents, refreshments and entertainment -- all the bells and whistles -- and nobody showed up. It was just apathy out there."

Dan Croak is the executive director of the golf tournament. He's a great guy and has done a magnificent job making the tournament as good as it can be. But he's whistling past the graveyard.

He says he's confident that a new title sponsor will be found. Like I said, whistling past the graveyard.

The rumors persist -- and they are growing -- that the PGA Tour wouldn't mind if the Milwaukee tournament died a quick death. I think the Tour is happy that Milwaukee is willing to put something on for the other guys to play while the best in the world are at the British Open. We are being used.

Milwaukee ought to tell the PGA Tour to take a hike, run to the LPGA and begin working to bring the women to Brown Deer.

The LPGA has so much more than the men. They've got the culture clash of Asian golfers versus American golfers. They've got sexy golfers. They play a game that is much closer to what "average" golfers play than the PGA players do. They would absolutely love the Brown Deer course.

If they play it right, the Milwaukee guys could have one of the best tournaments on the entire women's tour.

Here's the choice. You are a guy who is playing in the pro-am. You have a choice of getting a pro to play with your group. You have a choice between Richard Johnson and Natalie Gulbis.

Hmmmmm....

It's time Milwaukee recognized the handwriting on this wall. Nobody cares about this tournament except for a tiny group of people who spend their time and money on something hardly anybody cares about.

The time is right to make Milwaukee a very special stop on a professional golf tour. It's just not going to happen with the men.

7 comments about this article. Post a comment / write a review.

Recent Talkbacks ...

Posted by mike3333 on Feb. 5, 2009 at 2:33 p.m. (report)

******* nice legs *******

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Posted by HometownSC on Feb. 3, 2009 at 6:11 p.m. (report)

Not a bad idea, Dave. Get the tournament in a good date on the LPGA calendar (or even getting a Champions Tour stop with the names that graced the GMO in years past) and it can succeed. Pulling together a collection of sponsors to put up the necessary purse for an event on one of those tours should not be as arduous a task as getting one for a PGA stop and would help market Milwaukee as a viable city for sport (which it is, provided we're not trying to duplicate our Windy City friends' efforts in that arena).

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Posted by DanEBoy on Feb. 3, 2009 at 2:06 p.m. (report)

Dave: Having an LPGA tourney here is not a bad idea in replacment of the US Bank fiasco. I've said for years that this community would probably better support an LPGA or Champions tour better than a second rate PGA field. US Bank is crying that they spent all this money and no one shows up, neither spectators nor players. This may be true, but I think the real problem lies with the all around golf coverage or lack there-of which the Milwaukee Journal- Sentinel gives golf in general. I have sent a couple of letters to the Journal-Sentinel "speak out" section. This past Sunday they printed one of them. After they edited and deleted, the brief letter that they did publish missed the point that I was trying to convey. If you don't mind I'll share with you what I wrote. And this is where I think the real problem lies with regard to low attendence at the US Bank tourney. Jan.27 2009 Letter to Journal- Sentinel I wrote a letter very similar to this one several weeks ago and sent it to the Jounal- Sentinel. I'm sure that it ended up in the trash. Now that US Bank is pulling it's sponsorship of the PGA tournament here. I find the need to "speak out" again. Now that Gary D'Amato has been allowed to spread his wings so to speak, with regard to covering other sports tha golf. We seem to be getting less golf coverage. In as much as I am happy for Gary and do enjoy his work on things like the Olympics and college basketball. There seems to be a big void in golf coverage. Milwaukee wants to be a golf city. But the coverage of many top PGA, LPGA, Champions, and Nationwide tours has been lacking, to say nothing of the prestigious USGA Mid-Am which was held here . It's to bad that we have to go out and track down a Chicago Tribune or USA Today in order to gain this news . Maybe it's to late, but if the Journal- Sentinel cares about Milwaukee remaining a PGA tour city, we need more all around golf coverage.

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Posted by Daus on Feb. 3, 2009 at 11:18 a.m. (report)

This article completely misses the whole problem. It has nothing to do with PGA versus LPGA. It has to do with having Title Sponsors willing to put up for a big enough purse to draw names. Even the LPGA is going to require a $1.5 million purse to draw names and to hold a good weekend in the middle of the summer. To get a real title sponsor you would need to demonstrate you could draw from Chicago, and Brown Deer is not a draw from a venue standpoint. You would need to move it up to Kohler perhaps, but Herb isn't going to let that happen.

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Posted by sijan_heights on Feb. 3, 2009 at 9:42 a.m. (report)

Although I would rather watch future stars of the PGA mix it up with the journeymen, I think you have a point. The entire PGA Tour is going to be radically altered, from the number of tournaments to the amount of prize money because of the current economic climate, several host sponsor banks and insurance companies have gone belly up in the past year. The LPGA is also feeling that same crunch to a much larger extent, losing one of their big three tournaments last week. I bet they would love to play here. I would even welcome the Nationwide Tour. Finally, there could be a bright side to all this, perhaps if Brown Deer loses the PGA Tour, the smug staff there will quit acting like they are working at Augusta National. I know it's your home course Dave, but more often than not, those guys are a bunch of self righteous, clubby, jerks. It IS after all a PUBLIC course.

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