North Speaks!

Looks like Gary Van Sickle's caddie stint inspired Andy North to speak his mind, as evidenced by this Rob Schultz piece in the The Capital Times looking at Milwaukee's PGA Tour stop:

Madison's Andy North, who has played an important role over the years to help the tournament succeed, hopes he can continue to help draw good-sized galleries and satisfy its sponsors. He is here playing on a sponsor's exemption this week, and tournament officials had him busy playing in and emceeing Tuesday's celebrity pro-am shootout and emceeing a pro-am draft dinner Tuesday night.

North believes the U.S. Bank Championship might be wise to consider other options other than the usual PGA Tour setup. One option he'd like to explore is teaming senior golfers with regular-tour golfers. That would take advantage of the interest top seniors like Loren Roberts and Fred Funk have for the Milwaukee tournament.

"Let's have 64 teams of one senior tour player and one regular tour player," North said.

If the setup remains the same, North said the U.S. Bank Championship should offer an invitation to Michelle Wie, the 16-year-old phenom from Hawaii who has already played in several men's events but has yet to make a cut in any of them. The U.S. Bank's Brown Deer Golf Course might be the perfect setup for Wie because, at 6,759 yards, it's the shortest regular stop on the PGA Tour.

"She would be the ideal person to get here to play," said North, who plans to discuss inviting Wie with tournament director, Dan Croak. "It will be two weeks before the women's British so that could be a possibility.

"We'll see what happens," added North. "Our commissioner (Tim Finchem) doesn't always do us the biggest favor."