Golf: John Deere Classic perseveres through hard times

SILVIS – With the likes of Jordan Spieth, Zach Johnson and Steve Stricker providing fantastic finishes in recent years, and a nationwide Golf Channel and CBS audience lapping it up, the John Deere Classic has gained a reputation as one of the more enjoyable PGA Tour events to watch.

Adding to that is the small-town flavor of an event famous for pork chops (see: Pork Chop Hill, near the 16th green).

It hasn’t always been so rosy at this tournament, however, as it nearly went the way of the dodo bird on several occasions. This marks the 50th anniversary of the tournament, and its ups and downs have been chronicled in a book, “Magic Happened: Celebrating 50 Years of the John Deere Classic.”

It was written by Craig DeVrieze, Director of Communication at St. Ambrose University in Davenport. He also covered the golf tournament as a sportswriter for the Moline Dispatch and Quad City Times from 1984-2011. He currently covers it for PGATour.com.

A 1976 graduate of United Township High School in East Moline, DeVrieze, 62, looks at the book as a triumph of a relatively small area to put together and keep a big-time event. He began doing research and interviews in 2015, starting at a senior golf tournament in Des Moines to talk to players who competed in the early stages of the JDC. In all, he interviewed 150 people.

“I wrote the story, and I was privileged to write the story,” DeVrieze said, “but it was really written by the behind-the-scenes people who worked so hard on this tournament, the Quad Citians who really, really, really wanted to keep this event alive. They worked through hard times in 1975, 1984 and 1985, and again in 1994 and 1996. Those were the near-death moments, and this community just wouldn’t let this thing go away.”

The event started in 1971 as the Quad-City Open Golf Tournament, and it was held for 4 years at Crow Valley Country Club in Bettendorf. A group of well-heeled members who owned a combined nine Hardee’s fast food restaurants liked the idea of bringing a professional event to their new course.

Deane Beman won the first two tournaments at Crow Valley, which would provide benefits down the road. He went on to become PGA Tour Commissioner, and noted several times he had a soft spot for the pro event in the Quad Cities, as it helped launch his pro career.

By 1975, Crow Valley had established itself as a viable course and didn’t feel it needed a pro tournament. That’s when the Quad Cities Council of Jaycees stepped in as a sponsor, minutes before a news conference that was to announce the event was ending. A press release had been drafted and distributed to media members at the WQAD studio in Moline.

“Two members of the Jaycees, Dick Farrell and Cliff Montgomery, met upstairs with [tournament co-chairmen] Whitey Barnard and Art Swift to ask them to give them a little more time to try to pull this thing together,” DeVrieze said. “[WQAD general manager] Swift walked downstairs and said, ‘Throw those press releases away. That’s not the announcement today.’ "

Beman, by then the PGA Tour Commissioner, had decreed a $125,000 purse was needed to have a tournament, but lowered that to $75,000 for 1 year. The tournament was moved to Oakwood Country Club in Coal Valley, and the Jaycees recruited Ed McMahon, who was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on The Tonight Show, to be the tournament’s host.

McMahon brought some of his Hollywood buddies, including Jerry Lewis, George Goble, Bob Hope, Mickey Rooney and Telly Savalas, to participate in the pro-am, boosting the event’s profile.

“Oakwood served as the tournament host for 25 years, and that turned into a great relationship,” DeVrieze said. “The Ed McMahon years only last through 1979, but they really gave it a kick in the butt. It kind of enticed the Quad Citians who weren’t necessarily invested or didn’t have a passion for the game of golf, but liked a good summer party and liked a good Quad City community event. That was instrumental to helping the event continue.”

McMahon’s time with the event ended in 1979. In 1981 and 1982, it was simply the Quad Cities Open, then Miller High Life, then Miller Lite, stepped in as a sponsor from 1982-86. Even with the beer company’s help, in 1984, Quad Cities residents had to raise $149,000 to keep the event from going away.

“Volunteers manned phone banks at three different insurance agencies in town and WQAD studios, and at night, they’d dial up Joe Quad Citian and asked for a contribution to keep a great event in the Quad Cities,” DeVrieze said. “They pulled it off. They raised $96,000, which was their target figure, to retire a portion of that debt. In addition, businesses in the Quad Cities took dimes on the dollar to money they were owed to make sure this thing didn’t go away.”

Another near-death event for the golf tournament came in 1985, when Beman decreed the tournament purse had to be increased from $200,000 to $300,000. The tournament asked municipalities to donate hotel and motel tax money toward the goal of raising extra money. Four communities (Moline, Coal Valley, Rock Island and Davenport) did that, and $26,500 was raised.

The Illinois Tourism Bureau had a program in which those funds were matched. Another $15,000 was contributed by the PGA Tour, at Beman’s urging, and the tournament was saved for a year.

Things began to turn around in 1986. Hardee’s stepped in to sponsor that year, and stayed on as sponsor until 1994. The driving force for that sponsorship was Jim Jensen, a regional vice president for the company.

“Jensen was riding a bus to the tournament and saw a Burger King coupon on the back of his ticket,” DeVrieze said. “He said, ‘This won’t do. This is Hardee’s country.’ Hardee’s stepped up for 9 years and really gave the tournament the stability it needed.”

The Hardees Golf Classic saw its purse go from $400,000 to $1,000,000 during that time.

Despite losing Hardees as a sponsor in 1994, the tournament took a turn for the better. Tim Finchem, PGA Commissioner after Beman retired in August of 1994, was looking for a tournament that could be held opposite the hugely popular Ryder Cup, as well as the fledgling Presidents Cup. The Quad City Classic, as it was now known, volunteered.

During that time, the tournament drew better fields, as it brought in players who didn’t qualify for U.S. Ryder Cup or Presidents Cup teams looking for a place to compete. The PGA kicked in $1,000,000 to the purse.

Still, DeVrieze wasn’t sure the tournament would survive.

“That [1995] was a three-round tournament because they had lost the first round in late September to snow,” DeVrieze said. “D.A. Weibring made the last putt at Oakwood to win his third title in the Quad Cities, and as I walked out of that tournament that year after filing my stories, I had a feeling that was it. It didn’t seem like there was another way moving forward.”

A boost came in 1996, when a rookie named Tiger Woods nearly won the event before falling to journeyman pro Ed Fiori. Several reporters left the Presidents Cup near Washington D.C. to see if Woods could pull it off that Sunday.

The ball really began to roll in 1997, when Moline-based Deere & Company agreed to donate land from a horse farm it owned in Silvis to the PGA Tour to build its latest Tournament Players Club, which would be dubbed TPC Deere Run. In exchange, Deere equipment would be used at all TPC courses and Deere would be the title sponsor of the John Deere Classic.

The first JDC at TPC Deere Run was in 2000, and the event has grown in stature ever since. It now boasts a purse of $6.2 million dollars, with $1.116 million going to the champion. Players who have qualified for the following week’s British Open, this year to be held at Royal St. George’s in England, get a trip overseas on a private John Deere jet.

The JDC also has one of the best track records when it comes to giving back to its communities. A total of $133,096,019 has been donated over the first 49 years of the event. More than $130 million of that has been raised since Deere & Company came on board in 1998. Last year, when the tournament was canceled due to COVID-19, $12.22 million was still distributed to local and regional charities.

“Magic Happened: Celebrating 50 Years of the John Deere Classic” is available at JohnDeereClassic.com, and all money will be donated to the John Deere Classic’s charity arm, Birdies For Charity.

“It’s a terrific book,” said Barry Cronin, Media Director of the JDC. “It’s a real work of real journalism because he went out and interviewed the people who were involved in the tournament from the very beginning. He was able to interview them before they were no longer here. The stories that he tells are very interesting and compelling, and they demonstrate the character of the community that helped save this event over and over and over.

“The book paints a picture of the character of the community, which is hard work, determination and overall helpfulness. It’s a great Midwestern values type of story.”