The Shell Houston Open concluded on Sunday with the top-rated player — Adam Scott (3rd in the World Rankings) — winning the tournament (final leaderboard here) by making a par on the 72nd hole even after pulling his drive into the water. The Chronicle’s Steve Campbell’s postscript on the tournament is here, while earlier posts on the tournament are here.
After seeing how good the Tournament Course at Redstone looked on television last Thursday afternoon, my buddy Jerry Sagehorn and I visited Redstone on Friday morning to check out the tournament and the course. In so doing, we were able to get a close-up look of what ails the local tournament and why it is unlikely ever to be more than a second tier tournament on the PGA Tour (i.e., behind the majors and the first tier tournaments such as the Players and the Memorial).
Although Redstone is impressive in several respects, the facility is located next to a housing development far away from any of the Houston area’s large entertainment or commercial centers. Unlike The Woodlands — which is one of the most beautiful areas of Houston and has luxury hotels, shops, restaurants and one of the best entertainment facilities in the Houston area to offer — the area around Redstone is rather bland and has nominal commercial activity. Accordingly, if you go the SHO at Redstone, you go for the golf only and then leave. There is no ambiance to the area around the course.
But the area around Augusta National is no great shakes, either. So, if the golf course is appealing, then the best golfers might overlook the lack of ambiance and come to the tournament, anyway. Unfortunately, the Tournament Course is not — and likely will never be considered — a great golf course. That is not to suggest that the course does not have some interesting holes. The 18th hole in particular proved to be a challenging finishing hole. Moreover, the spectator viewing lines around the course are really quite good.
However, as the map below denotes, the course is really split into three separate courses. First, the 1st and 18th holes are next to each other and form a long tarmac leading to the other two parts of the course on the other side of a large and unsightly drainage ditch. Then, the 2nd through 9th holes and the 10th through 17th holes form separate loops that are not easily reached from other parts of the course. Adding to the disjointed nature of the course is that the front nine does not end at the clubhouse and the back nine does not start from the clubhouse.

Thus, the players and spectators are required to walk at least a quarter mile from the 1st green to the 2nd tee (this year, the players and caddies got a ride in a golf cart). Similarly, between the 9th green and the 10th tee, there is another long walk of at least 300 yards. And then, after trudging around the first two parts of the course, the players, caddies and spectators must trek another couple hundred yards from the 17th green to the 18th tee.
Thus, despite having some entertaining holes, good sight lines and being in top condition, the Tournament Course at Redstone is simply not an endearing golf course. That was reflected by the crowd on Friday morning, which was a fraction of the size that used to attend the tournament on Friday mornings when the tournament was played at the TPC in The Woodlands. Although the rain on Saturday morning certainly held attendance down on that day, the crowds on the weekend also did not appear on television to be as large as those that used to attend the tournament in The Woodlands. Perhaps reflecting the lower attendance, neither the HGA nor the Chronicle broadly publishes attendance figures as they used to do when the tournament was played in The Woodlands.
So, what can the SHO do to improve the experience for the players and fans? There has been some talk that Redstone is considering building a Houstonian-type resort facility on the property to attract the better golfers such as the Four Seasons Resort does in Dallas, but my sense is that the lack of surrounding amenities makes such a venture about as likely as redevelopment of the Astrodome into a resort hotel.
Can the tournament attract more than two of the top ten, eight of the top 30, and 20 of the top 60 players in the World Rankings? If Shell or Redstone pursues lucrative sponsorship deals with some of the top players in the same manner as Buick has done with Tiger Woods, then maybe those players would play the SHO in the same manner that Woods plays several Buick-sponsored tournaments. But those deals are costly and risky (some players do not stay on top for long), so I doubt that will happen. Finally, the HGA is going to have to address the knotty problem of how to move spectators and players around the long stretches of the course, which — unless resolved — is likely going to deter spectators from making return visits to the tournament.
Thus, my sense is that the SHO is firmly entrenched as a second tier PGA Tour event even after the HGA’s prodigious investment with Redstone. That’s unfortunate because Houston is a golf hotbed and has a rich golfing tradition, and the HGA is a fine charitable organization that had laid a foundation of success for the tournament over a 20 year period in The Woodands. Shell has signed on as the title sponsor of the tournament through 2012, so the next several Houston Opens are going to be key ones for the HGA. Come time to negotiate an extension of that sponsorship arrangement, will Shell have better things to do with its sponsorship dollars than to support an afterthought on the PGA Tour?

The Masters Golf Tournament gets underway on Thursday and the fine Masters website is streaming video of the practice range so that we can watch the pros hit the rock pile in preparation for the tournament. And the NY Times chimes in with this profile on new Augusta National Golf Club chairman Billy Payne. Finally, Golf Digest has its typically thorough preview of the tournament here.
But the prestige of The Masters is simply a signal for Scottish golf writer John Huggan to tweak the controversial changes that have been made to the hallowed course over the past several years:

In what is nothing less than a direct and disrespectful contravention of [Augusta National course designer Alistar] Mackenzie’s and [Augusta National founder Bobby] Jones’ original and delightful philosophy, the Augusta National that will this week host the world’s best golfers resembles nothing more than just another one-dimensional country club. Aerial photographs published in the April issue of Golf Digest graphically portray the tragedy that is the modern Augusta National. In place of what were once spacious and tightly cut fairways, rough has been grown and trees have been planted. What was once the most democratic of courses — one that allowed every standard of player to figure out his own way of playing each hole — has become a golfing Zimbabwe, a misguided dictatorship that has all but eliminated freedom of thought and expression.

Huggan is just getting warmed up, so read the entire article. Huggan better watch it or he will end up at the same place as CBS golf announcer Gary McCord during Master’s week.

It may not be Augusta National or even one of America’s top 100 golf courses, but the Tournament Course at Redstone Golf Club looked pretty darn good on television yesterday during the first round of the Shell Houston Open. In fact, the aerial shots looked downright gorgeous.
Inasmuch as Redstone is not a subdivision course, there are no homes lining the fairways to detract from the overall appearance. Moreover, Redstone has bountiful trees, ponds and marshes that provide a pleasing appearance. Check out my FilmLoop Tour below of the Tournament Course that I prepared upon playing the course shortly after it opened a couple of years ago, the related blog post for which is here. Finally, the Chronicle’s Steve Campbell is blogging the SHO here and the Chron’s SHO page is here.

Every two years, Golf Digest ranks America’s 100 greatest golf courses and the issuance of the list is always widely-anticipated in golf circles. Here is Ron Whitten’s Ron Whitten’s article on Golf Digest 2007-08 list of America’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses (my blog post on the 2005-06 list is here), including a pdf of the entire list. The following is the top 10:
Pine Valley
Shinnecock Hills
Augusta National
Cypress Point Club
Oakmont CC
Pebble Beach Golf Links
Merion G.C. (East Course)
Winged Foot G.C. (West Course)
Seminole G.C.
Crystal Downs CC (Michigan)
Only two Texas courses made the top 100, Dallas National Golf Club at 59 and the venerable Colonial in Ft. Worth at no. 80. Given the number of extraordinary golf courses in Texas, it’s surprising that only one or two makes the Golf Digest Top 100 each year. But it’s hard to quibble with the vast majority of the Golf Digest selections. Here are the six new courses in the top 100, along with the designer:
Lost Dunes G.C., Bridgman, MI (Tom Doak)
Calusa Pines G.C.., Naples, FL (Michael Hurdzan/Dana Fry)
Monterey Peninsula C.C., (Shore) Pebble Beach, CA (Bob Baldock/Mike Stranz)
Tullymore G.C., Stanwood, MI (Jim Engh)
Sycamore Hills G.C., Fort Wayne, IN (Jack Nicklaus)
Kiawah Island Club (Cassique), Kiawah Island, SC (Tom Watson)
Tom Fazio — the designer of the acclaimed Fazio Course at Carlton Woods in The Woodlands — has 14 original designs on this year’s ranking of America’s Top 100.
Update: Golf course design expert and author Geoff Shackelford has more observations on the GD 100.

In the Chronicle’s seemingly never-ending campaign to give the Shell Houston Open relevance, this Steve Campbell/Sunday Chronicle article reports that SHO officials are planning on setting up the Tournament Course at Redstone in a manner similar to the way that Augusta National will be set up for next week’s Master’s Tournament.
Except that Redstone is a flat-land course with none of Augusta National’s dramatic elevation changes. And Redstone has relatively slow bermuda grass greens that contain little of the severe undulation found in many of Augusta National’s lightning-fast bentgrass greens. And despite the fact that only 23 of the players playing in the SHO have qualified for and will be playing in The Master’s.
Coincidentally, during Sunday afternoon’s telecast of the final round of the CA Championship at Doral and just hours after the foregoing Chronicle story ran, NBC interviewer Jimmy Roberts asked Phil Mickelson why he is departing this week from his usual policy of playing in the tournament that immediately precedes a major tournament. Mickelson — who has not played in the SHO in years — replied that he is not playing this week because the Tournament Course at Redstone is nothing like Augusta National and Redstone’s bermuda greens will do nothing to prepare him for Augusta’s bentgrass greens. Mickelson’s comments were a clear shot at the SHO and the PGA Tour’s decision to move the tournament to a date the week before The Masters.
So much for that “resemble Augusta” approach to reinventing the SHO. Ironically, if only the Houston Golf Association and The Woodlands Corporation could have overcome their clash of egos several years ago for the good of the tournament, the SHO could be playing on a course that actually does have some of the elevation changes of Augusta National.
As with last year’s tournament, only two of the top 10 players in the World Golf Ranking are playing in the SHO (Adam Scott and Padraig Harrington). Also, the highest-rated Texan — Chad Campbell — is again not playing in the SHO. Although only eight of the top 30 players in the world and 20 of the top 60 will be playing in the SHO, that’s an improvement over last year when only four players in the top 30 and 12 of the top 60 played. In the difficult world of tournaments that have fallen into the Tiger Chasm, that passes as improvement for the SHO, which continues to suffer from the consequences of some dubious decisions.

With the following breathless description of the additional player commitments for next week’s Shell Houston Open, the Chronicle continues to put the best face on an increasingly troubling situation for the local tournament:

SHO update
The Shell Houston Open fortified its field with commitments from David Howell of England (No. 19 in the world), Robert Karlsson of Sweden (No. 29), Jeev Singh of India (No. 46) and 2006 U.S. Ryder Cup team member Vaughn Taylor.
The SHO has commitments from two of the world’s top-10 players, Adam Scott (No. 4) and Padraig Harrington (No. 10). Among the other top-50 players who have made plans to be at the Redstone Golf Club Tournament Course next week are David Toms, K.J. Choi, Jose Maria-Olazabal, defending champion Stuart Appleby, Tim Clark, Michael Campbell, Lucas Glover, Arron Oberholser, Rory Sabbatini and Steve Stricker.
The SHO also received a commitment from a rejuvenated Rocco Mediate, a five-time winner whose second-place finish Sunday at Bay Hill was his best in 74 starts. Lee Westwood, Justin Leonard, Bernhard Langer, Charley Hoffman, Jeff Quinney and Boo Weekley also have committed.

“Fortified” its field with two two players from the top 10 of the World Rankings, only four from the top 20 and a smattering from the top 50? Leave it to longtime Tour player Brad Faxon to sum up how most Tour professionals are thinking about the Shell Houston Open these days. After failing to qualify for Doral this week and The Masters the week after the Houston Open, Faxon observed about his upcoming schedule:

“Week off, then I’ll go to Houston, then another week off. I’ll be playing all the unimportant tournaments,” Faxon said. “I’m not mad at any anybody but myself. I knew the rules.”

Shell’s sponsorship deal with the Houston Open runs through 2012. But given the Tour’s questionable policies toward tournaments such as the Houston Open, a course that is unfriendly to fans and neither convenient nor noteworthy for the players, and some very bad decisions by the Houston Golf Association, is Shell going to continue an expensive association with what is increasingly appearing to be an afterthought on the PGA Tour?

Greg Owen is a professional golfer from England who has struggled to become a solid regular player on the PGA Tour. On Sunday of this week last year, he came to the 17th hole at Bay Hill with a one-shot lead, just two holes away from his first PGA Tour championship and a congratulatory handshake from the Bay Hill tournament chairman and golf icon, Arnold Palmer. Owen had never even met Palmer.
Owen’s tee shot on the par-3 17th missed the green, but he chipped his second shot to 40 inches from the cup, so it appeared that he had saved par. However, he missed the putt and then proceeded to three putt the hole, missing the second putt while angrily attempting to tap it in from just inches away. The double-bogey cost him the lead and a bogey on the final hole of the tournament sealed his fate. A devastated Owen dutifully handled the post-tournament media sessions and then immediately left for his home in Orlando. His chance at a congratulatory handshake from Palmer was gone, perhaps forever.
As the newly-christened Arnold Palmer Invitational got under way yesterday at Bay Hill, Golf Digest’s Steve Elling passes along the contents of a letter that Owen found in his mailbox a few days after his meltdown at last year’s tournament.

March 22, 2006
Dear Greg:
Not to belabor the point, but I want you to know how I sympathize with how you have to be feeling about what happened at the end of the tournament last Sunday. In somewhat different circumstances, I’ve been there a time or two over the years myself.
You should try to draw some consolation that, until that happened, you had outplayed everybody in contention. There’s no reason why your time to win shouldn’t come further down the line.
You handled your disappointment very well afterwards and I wish you well the rest of the season.
Sincerely,
Arnold Palmer

Owen immediately framed the picture. And Arnold Palmer reaffirmed his place among the great sportsmen of our time.

Mark Wilson is a 32 year-old journeyman PGA Tour player who won last weekend’s Honda Classic. The victory was the first in 111 starts for Wilson, who has been to the pressure-packed PGA Tour qualifying tournament an excruciating eleven times in attempting to obtain or maintain his playing privileges on the PGA Tour. However, this Randall Mell column explains why Wilson’s victory was particularly noteworthy:

Gather the children around.
They should know about Mark Wilson, because he did more than win the Honda Classic in Monday’s playoff at PGA National. In the Machiavellian world of sports, where the ends increasingly justify the means, where it seems as if winning is all that matters, he broke ranks spectacularly.
That was the real story here.
In a time when we routinely worship achievement at the expense of character and integrity, he reminded us why golf’s so admirably different.
He showed a commitment to doing the right thing no matter what the cost.
And a commitment to being relentlessly honest even though it made winning so much harder.
Wilson claimed his first PGA Tour victory despite calling a two-shot penalty on himself Friday, when even in golf, where respect for the rules is so integral to the game, other players might have overlooked this type of violation. It fell in such a gray area that even the rules official Wilson consulted in the second round paused uncertainly.
“If I were sitting here, and had not called it on myself, every time I looked at that trophy, it would be tarnished,” Wilson said after defeating Jose Coceres, Boo Weekley and Camilo Villegas in the four-way playoff.
Wilson, 32, penalized himself two shots in Friday’s second round after his caddie gave advice on club selection to a fellow competitor at the fifth tee.
News of the self-imposed penalty didn’t leak out until the Golf Channel reported it Saturday night, after the third round. Wilson would have shot 64 on Friday, the low round of the tournament, and he would have been one shot behind the leaders instead of three back. But while other players would have been quick to blame a caddie ó it happens all the time ó Wilson kept it to himself. He never raised the issue until pressed by media. [. . .]
At the fifth hole Friday, Wilson hit his tee shot with an 18-degree hybrid. Villegas was up next at the 217-yard par three. Villegas asked his caddie, Matty Bednarski, what club he thought Wilson had hit. Bednarski said he thought it was a two- or three-iron hybrid.
“Oh, it’s an 18-degree [hybrid],” Wilson’s caddie, Chris Jones, told them.
That response violated Rule 8-1 of the Rules of Golf, which prohibits a player or his caddie from giving advice to anyone but each other, or a partner in match play. It’s such a gray area because the rules actually permit competing players or caddies to go up and look in a fellow competitor’s bag to see what club is being used.
“I played out that hole and immediately called an official over to see what he thought,” said Wilson, who grew up in suburban Milwaukee and lives in suburban Chicago. “He wasn’t sure at first if that was necessarily advice, but within 60 seconds, he made the decision.
“It’s an important rule to me. The Rules of Golf are there to be fair to everyone. It’s a tough rule. There’s a lot of camaraderie among caddies and players.”
Jones, 30, who has been Wilson’s caddie since last season, said he was shaken when Wilson pointed out the violation.
“I heard Camilo and his caddie talking, and I just blurted it out,” Jones said. “I was getting too comfortable and too friendly.”
Wilson immediately confronted Jones.
“I felt so low and sick to my stomach,” Jones said.
Two holes later, Wilson could see Jones was suffering, so he put his arm around him to make sure Jones knew he was forgiven.
“After the round, I broke down and couldn’t hold it in,” Jones said. “If we would have lost this tournament, it would have really killed me. I felt so bad about what I had done to him, our team, his wife and family.”

Read the entire article. Wilson won $990,000 for his victory and will have the opportunity to play in The Masters in early April if he can remain among the top 10 money-winners this season until then. More importantly, the win gained him fully exempt status on the PGA Tour through 2009, so he gets a well-deserved reprieve from going back to the PGA Tour qualifying tournament for almost three years. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.

The Shell Houston Open begins playing an earlier time slot this year and, thus, is only three weeks away. In reviewing the tournament website for prospective participants, only one top 10 player in the World Rankings has committed to play in the tournament (Adam Scott, no. 4) and only one other top 20 player has committed to play (David Toms, no. 19). In fact, the tournament only has five — count’em five — top 30 players committed to playing Houston.
Has the Shell Houston Open fallen into the Tiger Chasm (see also here)? Or is this lack of interest in the tournament from top pros just another consequence of some really bad decisions?