Hardy golfers headed to Whisper Creek soon after winter thaw
SUN CITY – Tee boxes are all painted bright and shiny, fairways and greens have been inspected and raked, debris has been cleared out, and the ice and snow have melted away.
Whisper Creek Golf Course is ready for the 2014 golf season. Now, it’s up to the weather – especially the wind – to cooperate.
The first hardy golfers showed up at the course in Sun City on Friday, March 28, and the season unofficially opened on Sunday and Monday, March 30-31, the best days of the spring so far. But the winds, described by some as the “Huntley hurricane,” did not play along on Monday.
One golfer came to the pro shop that morning and said, “Can we get a rain check for our tee time today? The wind is 50 miles an hour out there, it’s ridiculous.”
Joe Bidro is beginning his second season as general manager of Whisper Creek. Though he doesn’t get to play on Sun City’s course as often as he’d like, he called it “deceptively difficult.” (Chris La Pelusa/Sun Day Photo)
Fortunately, the course’s general manager, Joe Bidro, is familiar with the challenges of managing a golf course in the Chicago area. Now starting his second season at Whisper Creek, Bidro is a Chicagoland native.
“It helps to be familiar with the things that a Chicago winter can do to a golf course,” Bidro said. “We like snow on the course in the winter, but we don’t like ice, and we had a lot of both this year. Fortunately, the course did not sustain any significant damage.”
This is the eighth season that Billy Casper Golf has owned and managed the course. Whisper Creek is one of about 25 Chicago area courses managed by the organization, which manages more than 150 of them nationwide.
Bidro himself is a former course pro who has been managing courses for four years. He joined Billy Casper in 2006.
“I am a little bit unique because I didn’t take up golf until I was late in my teens,” he said. “But I enjoy building relationships with golfers of all ages and skills and organizing a course as a popular destination. I believe that’s what Whisper Creek is.”
A new incentive this year for regular and league golfers, as well as newcomers, will be 72 new carts, which will arrive in late April, Bidro said.
“They will have new GPS technology that is compatible with iPads and smart phones,” he said. “They will permit Internet access.”
According to Bidro and other golfers, Whisper Creek, a links course, is “deceptively difficult.”
“It doesn’t have a lot of trees near the fairways, and it has two or three short holes that aren’t afraid to give up an average of 8-12 holes-in-one each season,” Bidro said. “But it has uneven and rolling fairways, a number of strategically placed water hazards, and some challenging rough areas, many featuring tall prairie grasses, that trap many errant shots.
“The course may look tame, but once you start playing, be careful,” he added.
Whisper Creek is home to the Sun City Golf Club, which has over 400 members. The club operates several leagues every season, and the club’s sign-up for 2014 is scheduled in late April, with league play set to start in early May. Illinois junior and senior amateur tournaments have been held on it, and the Illinois Public Links Amateur tourney and the state senior amateur were held here in 2013.
“We host from 35,000 to 37,000 rounds of golf here every season, and we have played host to high school post-season tournaments here in the past,” Bidro said. “We hope to do more of that again in the future.”
Billy Casper, the 1970 Master champion and one of the Professional Golf Association’s premier players in the ’70s and ’80s, came to Whisper Creek a decade ago when he was personally involved in designing the course.
Today, Bidro oversees a staff of about 30, most of them seasonal part-timers.
“The biggest part of my job is to coordinate the staff’s work, and to interact with our customers as much as possible,” he said.
Bidro proved this on March 31 when he spent some time answering the phone and arranging tee times while his assistant manager was not in the shop. Whisper Creek’s full-time instructor is Tony Malatesta, and the maintenance superintendent is Brian Bromann.
“I have gotten used to [being] a golf administrator, instead of a player,” Bidro said. “They warned me when I joined Billy Casper Golf that I would be too busy running things to get out on the course much, and they were right. I only played about five times last season.”
