COAL VALLEY, Ill. — Before TPC Deere Run opened in 2000 in Silvis, the John Deere Classic had many different names, and it was played at two other courses.
From 1971 to 1981, it was called the Quad Cities Open. From 1971 to 1974, it was played at the Crow Valley Golf Club in northeast Davenport. In 1975, it moved to the Oakwood Country Club in Coal Valley, and it stayed there through 1999. In 1980, there were two great basketball coaches who played in the Pro-Am.
Lute Olson
The late Lute Olson coached at the University of Iowa from 1974 to 1983 before leading the University of Arizona to a national championship in 1997. When Olson played in the Quad Cities Open Pro-Am in 1980, Iowa was breaking ground on the now Carver Hawkeye Arena.
"That's going to be a great thing for Iowa Athletics," Olson said the day he played in the Pro-Am. "It's going to help all of us with the recruiting. We're going to have new offices in there for everybody, and we're really excited. It's been one thing to talk about it, going around [Iowa] and to the arena meetings, but it was another great thing yesterday when we actually threw the shovel over, and they've already done a lot of work on the site."
Former Hawkeye Radio Host and News 8 Sports Director Jim Albracht used to talk to Olson all the time. He says Lute was very accessible for being a big time college coach.
"You would go into Lute's room to do the pre-game interview and go into his hotel room," Albracht recalls. "You'd sit down at the table, and he was cordial, and it was game day, and people had their game faces on, but I found him really easy to talk to."
Don Nelson
The other great who came to the Quad Cities Open Pro-Am in 1980 was former Hawkeye, NBA player and coach Don Nelson. His attendance was a homecoming though. Nelson was born in Sherrard. Then he moved to the immediate Quad Cities where he became a great basketball player.
"I had a chance to have a few beers with some of my old teammates at Rock Island High School," Nelson said the day of the Pro-Am. "I haven't been able to come back for a reunion yet, so this is kind of like my reunion."
Albracht says everyone knew Nelson was going to be good coming out of high school, but nobody knew he'd win four championships as a player with the Boston Celtics in the 1960's and '70's.
"If you grew up in the Quad Cities, Don Nelson was just somebody you couldn't believe was in the atmosphere that he finally got to," he said. "When I first saw him at the golf classic, he was just one of the nicest men you'd ever meet. He was unpretentious. He knows what he did. He didn't need to talk about it. We all know what he did, so I would say that besides moving to Hawaii to retire, which is one of my dreams, I just thought he was a classy guy."