"The 41-year relationship between the PGA Tour and Westchester Country Club was like a good marriage gone bad."

While Bill Pennington celebrates the elegance of Tillinghast's Ridgewood, Sam Weinman files a compelling dissection of the messy decision to leave former Barclay's host Westchester. He writes for golf.com:

The 41-year relationship between the PGA Tour and Westchester Country Club was like a good marriage gone bad. There was the innocent beginning, the complacent middle years and then, finally, when the Tour's wandering eye led it to Ridgewood Country Club in Paramus, N.J., the bitter, dish-throwing end.

And this does make any rational soul understand why the Tour had had enough:

Among the membership's longstanding agreements with the Tour was that during tournament week members could still play the adjacent South course, still play tennis on the courts that bordered the par-3 1st hole and still have access to the sports house that included the pros' locker room and a fitness center.

The uneasy coexistence was best encapsulated by an incident at last summer's Barclays, during which Tour player Aaron Baddeley was kicked out of the fitness center by a Westchester member who said Baddeley didn't belong there. (Westchester president Phil Halpern confirmed that an "older member" mistakenly thought the room was for members only.)

"I think what happened is that the Tour and its tournaments evolved, and what was acceptable and overlooked in the 1970s and '80s was no longer the case," says a PGA Tour official who requested anonymity. "Every host venue has evolved or been replaced, but they simply weren't of the mindset to evolve. You won't find another venue on Tour where they play tennis off the 1st hole or play the other course when the tournament's going on. I guarantee you there's not another locker room on Tour shared with members."