sept4 TGinwindycity

TG is ‘slumming it’ this week…with one Tiger Woods.

Courtesy of an invitation from event backers BMW, TG’s privileged Courses editor Kevin Brown and the world no. 1 – and virtually the whole of the 70-strong field in fact – are staying at the Hyatt Lodge at Oak Brook just outside Chicago for the BMW Championship which starts at Cog Hill tomorrow (thurs).

Living next door to TG – for the week anyway – is Justin Rose who offered a warm handshake to his neighbour before popping downstairs last night for a romantic evening with Mrs Rose…

But this is no ordinary hotel. Not only does it offer sheer luxury and monster rooms and suites, it’s in the grounds of the McDonalds Campus and is on the opposite side of the road from the McDonalds worldwide HQ. That’s the Big Mac, the Ronald McDonald people by the way if you hadn’t already guessed.

The striking McDonalds ‘M’ is quite literally all over the place – there’s even a Hamburger University on the site for goodness sake. No, I’m not kidding: that’s it’s actual title though it’s not frequented by folk seeking to create the perfect Big Mac, but for business and corporate meetings and get-togethers.

Apparently Tiger arrived late on Monday night from his exploits in Boston and no doubt he’ll be putting himself through his paces in the hotel’s quality gym as soon as it opens its doors at 5am tomorrow (wed) in order to get himself ready for his 7am Pro-Am tee-time.

But there are a couple of notable absentees at the Hyatt hotel, namely Phil Mickelson, who has controversially pulled out of the event, and England’s Luke Donald, the Local Hero – he has made his home in Chicago.

After his decision to pull out, Mickelson has become the modern-day Al Capone – the Chicago fans were looking forward to seeing him in action and won’t take too kindly to him going home, specially as he was playing in a corporate event down the road at Medinah yesterday.

It’s the third and last leg of the PGA Tour’s much-maligned FedEx play-offs and despite Mickelson going AWOL and the flak the end-of-season FedEx series has received, this event deserves to succeed.

Event sponsors BMW have thrown a mountain of cash into it and on paper it’s a tournament that fairly bristles with glitz and glamour. Clearly no expense has been spared with the participation of legendary Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman in the Pro-Am being another plus point. Hopefully he’ll be up for a shot at the coveted TG Tenner!

Also, the build up included a visit to a local racing circuit where top US player Stewart Cink tried to out-drive – in terms of which travelled the fastest – professional racers mounted on BMW’s hottest set of wheels (four and two that is). To see who came  on top see separate story.

Finally, Chicago is known as the ‘Windy City.’ I only wish it lived up to its name as we could all certainly do with a bit of a breeze. Conditions have been stifling here ever since I touched down on Monday.

Anyway, got to go now as I need to get a good night’s kip for that early morning gym apppointment with Tiger….