John Klemm wants the players in this week's Illinois State Amateur Championship to walk off his golf course with a stride somewhere between swagger and stagger.
That's also the general desire of the Chicago District Golf Association, which conducts the annual 72-hole amateur event that begins Tuesday and wraps up with a 36-hole test on Thursday at Piper Glen Golf Club.
"We don't want them leaving here with their tails between their legs," said Klemm, the owner of Piper Glen. "But we don't want the winner finishing 18 under par, either.
"Actually, the CDGA's goal is to have the winner at par or a little under. I think they should be able to do that."
A year ago, Bloomington's Todd Mitchell edged Rochester's Brian Anderson by one shot in the state amateur at Cantigny Golf in Wheaton. Some super-fast Cantigny greens helped produce a winning score of 7-over 291.
Mitchell, 24, will be at Piper Glen to defend his title, while Anderson hopes last year's experience combined with his familiarity with Piper Glen can make the difference this year.
The majority of the 132-man field won't have the local knowledge that could help players such as Anderson - who played at Piper Glen in Sunday's final round of the Men's City Golf Tournament - or Taylorville's Dave Ryan, a veteran of about 15 state amateurs who's had his share of local success at Piper.
Most of the other players, hailing from Chicago to Marion, will get acquainted with the course during practice rounds today.
The last time the state amateur visited Springfield was 1995, when they played at a course that already was heavy in golf tradition: Illini Country Club. It was the third state amateur held there, although it was the first since 1943, during the tournament's match-play era.
Piper Glen, by contrast, still was in the planning stage in 1995. It opened two years later, so it's a course trying to develop some tradition of its own.
If you include a few miles between Illini and Piper Glen, this is the second-southernmost site for a state amateur. Rend Lake, near Mount Vernon, was the CDGA's only trek farther south. That was in 1998.
Piper Glen actually begins a three-year central Illinois swing for the state amateur, which will go to Stone Creek Golf Course in Urbana next year, followed by Crestwicke Country Club in Bloomington in 2005.
"I think we were chosen because even at this young age, we were looked at because we kept the course in good shape," Klemm said. "Plus, it's a challenging course."
As it turned out, the only factor that almost worked against Piper Glen was its terrain. Having to play 36 holes on the final day during a central Illinois summer can turn into an endurance test.
"They told us we're just about at the edge of the walk-ability rating," Klemm said. "To walk this course twice in one day is pretty demanding. If it was any tougher, it probably wouldn't have qualified."
While Piper Glen is the host course, the state amateur definitely is the CDGA's event. The front and back nines will be switched for the 132-man field, creating a pair of interesting finishing holes. The 190-yard, par-3 eighth hole will serve as No. 17 this week, while the 517-yard, double-dogleg par-5 ninth hole will serve as No. 18.
The course will play to almost its maximum length: 6,961 yards. The only hole that won't be played from the gold tees is the par-4 16th (normally No. 7), which will measure at 374 yards instead of the gold-tee maximum 396.
Piper Glen head superintendent Matt Hanner and his 15-man crew gradually have been conditioning the course to the CDGA's recommendations. Klemm emphasized they are just recommendations, but Piper Glen has tried to comply.
"I think the greens are getting firm enough where they can still hold a shot that's hit in there, but they're not so soft that you can hit right at the pin every time," Hanner said Wednesday.
"They want the stimpmeter (which is used to measure green speed) running about nine or 91/2. Right now, they're about eight or 81/2, which is a full point or so higher than what they usually are.
"They want the rough between three and four inches high. This summer, we've had outstanding, great grass-growing weather."
Klemm said last year's 7-over-par winning score may have had something to do with the speed of the greens at Cantigny, where "their greens were about an 11 on the stimpmeter. Our greens may have more undulation than (Cantigny's). If we're at 91/2 , I think that will be enough of a challenge."
In making preparations beyond the golf course, Piper Glen head pro Erik Anderson said one of his main duties this week will be coordinating volunteers and caddies.
"Since we're doing real-time scoring, we need a volunteer at every green," Anderson said. "We have to make sure we get each person out to their hole, because they get each player's score as they come off the green, then they enter it into a laptop they'll have."
Klemm said the data is transmitted into the tournament's scoring system, and scoring updates are placed on the Internet (www.cdga.org) within 60 seconds. There also will be four electronic leaderboards placed at various spots on the course.
Klemm, who has attended the previous three state amateurs, said the tournament atmosphere is similar to a professional event in terms of how it's run by CDGA officials. The galleries aren't very big, but Klemm said in the event the 140-spot main parking lot fills up, some nearby open lots in the Piper Glen subdivision can be used.
The biggest variable, of course, is the weather. When the state amateur was at Illini eight years ago, temperatures approached the mid-90s all three days. The long-range forecast sounds more tolerable this week, calling for temperatures in the 80s.
But a tournament host takes nothing for granted.
As Klemm puts it, "You can only do the things you can control. We're looking forward to the experience, but we're always apprehensive about certain things. What if we get 2 inches of rain Sunday or Monday night?"
There's always something to worry about, but Klemm welcomes the chance to have those worries.
"Some places don't want to host something like this because they have to shut down for four days," he said. "But we really wanted it. We're just 7 years old, so this is a feather in our cap.
"I don't know what we'll do with that feather after we get it, but we might look for another big event sometime down the road."
Dave Kane works for the State Journal-Register and can be reached at 788-1544 or dave.kane@sj-r.com.
