LEMONT, Ill. (AP) – Well, well, well, look who’s back in town.

Just three weeks after Jim Furyk left Olympia Fields with the U.S. Open trophy, the PGA Tour is paying the Chicago area another visit. This time, for the Western Open.

“A lot of people said, “Are players going to play because they were just in Chicago?”‘ tournament director John Kaczkowski said Wednesday. “I didn’t see that one time.”

In fact, the field for the 100th Western Open is one of the strongest in years. Six of the top 10 players will tee off Thursday, and a seventh, Davis Love III, planned to play until withdrawing Monday night because of neck pain.

Furyk and Masters champion Mike Weir are playing, as is Tiger Woods. Vijay Singh is here and Phil Mickelson, too.

“Not at all,” Woods said with a big grin when asked if he ever considered skipping the Western because it was so close to the Open.

The Western is actually one of Woods’ favorite events on the PGA Tour, along with the Memorial. Illness kept him out of last year’s Western, the first time he missed it since he turned pro.

He’s won the tournament twice, and his victory in 1997 produced one of the tournament’s greatest snapshots. Thousands of fans broke through the ropes to follow him, Pied Piper-like, up the 18th fairway.

And there’s plenty of history on display this year. This is the 100th Western Open, making it the oldest PGA Tour event. The greatest names in golf – Arnie, Jack, Ben and Sam – have played the Western, each winning it twice.

Impressive memories – and the Western is hoping for more this week.

“It’s a wonderful course and I have a lot of respect for the Western Golf Association,” Furyk said. “It’s one of my top 10 events every year. I slate this on my schedule every year.”

OK, so the players can’t get enough of Chicago. But what about the fans?

The Western is the only Chicago-area stop on the PGA Tour, so attendance is usually strong. The tournament has drawn close to 200,000 five of the last six years, with attendance getting a big bump whenever Woods is in contention.

Where the Open does hurt the Western is in corporate sales. When the PGA Championship was at Medinah in 1999, corporate sales were off by about 10 percent.

This year, it’s down about 20 percent.

“I wasn’t really ready for the impact of the power of their corporate sales,” Kaczkowski said.

But regular ticket sales are strong – thanks, in part, to the U.S. Open.

“We got a nice little bump up after the U.S. Open with ticket sales,” Kaczkowski said. “If Tiger were to play well this week and Phil Mickelson was on the leaderboard and the weather was decent, we’d have huge crowds.”

AP-ES-07-02-03 1838EDT

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