The 2006 U.S. Open Golf Tournament begins today at New York’s venerable Winged Foot Golf Club, so the following will provide you with some interesting reading while you enjoy this year’s edition of golf’s most challenging tournament:

This NY Times article describes how Phil Mickelson’s recent success in major golf tournaments is largely the result of his team of advisors refining Mickelson’s preparation for major golf tournaments;
A family of golf pros with strong connections to both Winged Foot and Houston provide helpful hints on surviving Winged Foot;
Nike is going to try and make us cry on Father’s Day, which Jim Corrigan finds appalling;
Speaking of Tiger Woods, this NY Post article reports on Tiger’s yacht, which he is using this week in lieu of a hotel while playing at Winged Foot, and includes Tiger’s morning greeting to the gawking reporters (“It’s a little early to be taking pictures out there, isn’t it? Have a nice f- – -ing day.”);
By the way, PGATOUR.com writers Joe Wojciechowski, Dave Shedloski and Brett Avery are following Tiger during his U.S. Open rounds and blogging about it here;
The Guardian’s Lawrence Donegan reviews the brutal conditions at Winged Foot and includes this quote from Mickelson:

Phil Mickelson went as far to suggest the course was “on steroids”. “I’m going to make a prediction,” he added. “Someone will hit the wrong ball out of the rough this week. There are not hundreds of members’ balls out there, but thousands, and you just can’t see them even when you are standing over them. It is thicker and denser than any rough I have ever seen.”

John Hawkins reports that some of the pros are not thrilled with the condition of Winged Foot’s greens;
And, although not U.S. Open-related, don’t miss this video of Fuzzy Zoeller’s incredible hole-in-one a couple of weeks ago during a Champions Tour event in Des Moines.

In preparation for the next weekend’s U.S. Open at venerable Winged Foot Golf Club in New York, Golf Digest’s Bill Fields weighs in with this entertaining article on former Winged Foot head pro and former Houstonian, the late Claude Harmon (pictured on the left with his old friend, Ben Hogan). Claude — who was a formidable PGA Tour player and teaching professional during his life — was the father of the famous quartet of Harmon brother teaching professionals, Butch, Craig, Dick (see here also) and Billy. In addition to Claude, both Butch and the late Dick Harmon lived in Houston for a substantial part of their lives, and each of the Harmon brothers has been regularly rated among the best golf instructors in the U.S.
For the final decade of his life, Claude was the pro emeritus at Houston’s Lochinvar Golf Club, where Claude’s green jacket from winning the 1948 Master’s Golf Tournament is still displayed prominently in the clubhouse’s trophy case. As noted in Fields’ article, Claude was an extraordinary golf talent who regularly beat Hogan in their daily games during the winter months in Florida and who tied for 3rd in the 1959 U.S. Open at Winged Foot, the best finish by a club pro in the U.S. Open other than Horace Rawlins’ victory in the first U.S. Open in 1895.

Houston’s Steve Elkington failed to qualify for next week’s U.S. Open Golf Tournament at New York’s venerable Winged Foot Golf Club during yesterday’s sectional qualifying tournament at Houston’s Lakeside Country Club, but at least he went out with a splash.
As this Steve Campbell/Houston Chronicle article reports, Elk left Lakeside yesterday before even teeing it up when U.S. Golf Association officials informed him that he could not wear metal spikes on his golf shoes while playing the golf course at Lakeside, which has a local rule that players may only use soft spikes (which cause less wear and tear on the greens) on the course. Inasmuch as the PGA Tour allows its members to use either metal or soft spikes in its golf tournaments and many other golf courses that the USGA uses for its qualifying tournaments have the same rule, Elk — who is a notorious golf traditionalist — told the USGA officials at Lakeside that adoption of a different rule at the Lakeside qualifier was wrong and left in a huff before his 8:50 a.m. tee time, leaving the USGA officials blathering about “a rule is a rule.”
Quick tip to Lakeside — it’s not going to do any damage to your greens to allow players in one golf tournament to use metal spikes. Next time, waive the friggin’ local rule for the tournament.
By the way, two college players — Ryan Baca of Baylor and Ryan Posey of Oklahoma State — earned the two Open spots at Lakeside by shooting sturdy 6-under-par 136’s over the 36 hole qualifier.

My neighbor in The Woodlands, Jeff Maggert, shot a 31 on the back nine yesterday of the TPC Southwind Golf Course in Memphis on his way to a final round, five-under-par 65 and his first PGA Tour win in seven years. Maggert’s 72-hole winning score of 271 won the Fed Ex St. Jude’s Tournament by three strokes.
Maggert is an interesting fellow. A 42 year-old graduate of Texas A&M, he has an impeccable swing, has played on three Ryder Cup teams (1995, 97, and 99) and has often been in contention in major championships over his 15 year PGA Tour career. However, his three career wins seem somewhat low for a player of his talent, although his streaky putter probably explains much of that.

Continue reading →

First, it was the Shell Houston Open reeling from the consequences of some dubious decisions.
Then, a change of date and a mediocre golf course is generating concern over the future of Dallas’ EDS Byron Nelson Open.
Now, this Kevin Sherrington/Dallas Morning News column (free registration required) notes that the best Tour players are turning their backs on the venerable Colonial Invitational in Ft. Worth and the tournament is losing its title sponsor to boot.
And, just to remind, San Antonio’s Texas Open is played in October, smack dab in the middle of football season.
Does anyone with PGA Tour management notice or care that the Tour’s Texas tournaments are quickly becoming afterthoughts?
In the meantime, this Alistair Tait column about Darren Clarke’s costly example of sportsmanship at the recent Irish Open reminds us of one of the big reasons that golf is such a special game.

This weekend is the 60th anniversary of the Bank of America Colonial Invitational Golf Tournament in Ft. Worth, so the sponsors have invited a number of the tournament’s former champions to this year’s event to celebrate the venerable tournament. One of those past champions is Austin’s Ben Crenshaw, who passed along a funny story about the lengendary Ben Hogan, as reported in this Steve Campbell/Chronicle article.
Hogan, of course, was one of the best ball-strikers of all-time. A self-taught player who quit school as a youth to earn money as a caddie to supplement his impoverished family’s income, Hogan was a taciturn and serious man who literally outworked his competitors by refining his skills on the driving range. Hogan lived in Ft. Worth most of his life, and ended up dominating his hometown tournament during the immediate post-WW II era, winning it five times (1946, 1947, 1952, 1953 and 1959) and coming in third as a 54 year-old in his second-to-last Colonial tournament in 1967. But for developing a case of the “yips” while putting in his later years, Hogan was such an extraordinary ball-striker that he likely would have continued to win golf tournaments well into his 50’s.
Crenshaw, on the other hand, was a product of the post-WW II boom in wealth in the United States. Growing up in a relatively wealthy family during the 1950’s and 60’s, Crenshaw developed his game on the country club circuit of Austin and then as a collegiate golfer on the University of Texas’ outstanding golf teams of the early 1970’s. Although Crenshaw developed into one of the best putters in PGA Tour history and was a gifted natural athlete, he was never considered a particularly good ball-striker and often struggled with his golf swing during extended periods of his career.

Continue reading →

This earlier post pointed out the troubled nature of the four PGA Tour events in Texas these days and, picking up on that them, this Gary Van Sickle/SI.com article scours the Tour’s latest attempt to make the rather pedestrian TPC Course at Four Seasons Resort and Club in Las Colinas a more challenging venue for Dallas’ EDS Byron Nelson Championship. Commenting on the Tour’s decision to install a lake on the left side of the 18th fairway of the course, Van Sickle notes:

The new hazard — OK, it’s not really big enough to be a lake, so let’s call it the Nelson Puddle — got a workout [in last week’s EDS Byron Nelson Open] . . .
“The 18th hole was a pretty good hole,” tournament host Byron Nelson said. “Now it’s a great hole. Even if some players carry it over the water, they’re still behind the trees. It’s become a dogleg out to the right now.”
With respect to the 94-year-old Mr. Nelson, everyone’s favorite legendary golfer, the 18th is still not quite ready for its close-up. It’s true, adding a water hazard has created a new element of danger. It is now a more difficult hole, yes. A great hole? Probably not. [. . .]
The reason the 18th isn’t a great hole is that the water hazard, like a lot of the TPC course, looks artificial. It resembles a swoopy Las Vegas hotel pool with a fountain in the middle. Plus, not many water hazards naturally occur halfway up a hillside.
“It’s a little contrived,” veteran player Billy Andrade said. “It doesn’t look like it fits. This course is kind of a funky layout anyway. I didn’t like the look of it before, either. It doesn’t change a player’s strategy much. You didn’t want to go left before, either.”
As for the players who found the Nelson Puddle early in the tournament, he added, “Maybe they thought it was a mirage and didn’t know it was there.”

With the top PGA Tour players fleeing in droves from this week’s Bank of America Colonial Invitational in Ft. Worth, the Texas swing of the PGA Tour continues its relentless descent into obscurity. When will Tour officials sit up and take notice?

This earlier post reviewed the problems that continue to plague the Shell Houston Open Golf Tournament on the PGA Tour schedule. However, to the north of Houston, the EDS Byron Nelson Open — which begins Thursday in Dallas — is facing many of the same problems that the Shell Houston Open is experiencing.
Due to its current spot on the PGA Tour schedule a month or so after The Masters, “the Nelson” has generally enjoyed one of the stronger “non-major” tournament fields — including Tiger Woods — because most players view it as a timely tune-up for The Memorial Tournament later in the month and then the U.S. Open in June. However, Woods is not participating this year because of the death of his father last week and my sense is that Dallas — as with Houston — may not see Woods again for a very long time.
Not only did Woods’ consecutive-cut streak on the PGA Tour end at last year’s Nelson, but the Nelson is played on two mediocre courses, Cottonwood Valley (for only the first two rounds) and the TPC Four Seasons, neither of which are particularly favored tracts among PGA Tour players. Moreover, next year, when the Players Championship moves to the second week of May, the Nelson will be moved up to the final week of April, just three weeks after the Masters. Thus, the Nelson will be followed by the Wachovia Championship in Charlotte and then the Players Championship the following week.
Notwithstanding Byron Nelson’s drawing power, it’s not likely that Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and other top Tour players will cut their post-Masters layoff to two weeks to play in the Nelson when many of them will be playing the pre-Players tuneup the next week at Wachovia and all of them the following week at the Players. In short, the Nelson is about to begin experiencing the type of fields that the Shell Houston Open has endured over the past several years.
With San Antonio’s Texas Open already relegated to an afterthought during football season in the fall, and Ft. Worth’s Colonial Invitational gradually losing the best players because of the tight layout that is not conducive to the floggers, the PGA Tour better sit up and take notice — its four tournaments in the one of nation’s premier golfing states are suffering from serious neglect. How much longer will the thousands of Texans who volunteer their time to run those tournaments — and the tens of thousands who fund them — continue to do so in the face the subpar fields that the PGA Tour is serving up in Texas?

Any excuse to run the outstanding picture on the left of PGA Tour golfer John Daly, eh?
Although a winner of two majors (1991 PGA and 1995 British Open) over a decade ago, Daly has won only golf tournament in the past 11 years. Nevertheless, he remains one of the most popular and colorful members of the PGA Tour. Married four times with periodic alcohol problems, a big heart and a reality television show to his credit, Daly is one of those larger-than-life characters who seem to attract many of the same folks who watch auto races in anticipation of the crashes.
This week, Daly raised more than a few eyebrows around the rather staid PGA Tour as a result of being the subject of a rather odd promotional campaign for his new autobiography, My Life In and Out of the Rough (HarperCollins 2006), which hits the stores on Monday. The promotional campaign is highlighting Daly’s wild days and nights on the PGA Tour and, according to this Mike Bianchi/Orlando Sentinel review, the book is not for the fainthearted. After reading Daly’s description of various sexual exploits, Bianchi notes:

It’s always amazed me why Daly is so beloved among sports fans when he is 10 times more corrupt than Terrell Owens, Barry Bonds and Ricky Williams combined. I guess it pays to be a good ol’ boy white golfer.

Meanwhile, most of the media coverage focused on the gambling habit that Daly claims in the book has cost him between $50 million and $60 million. Daly’s gambling revelations garnered so much publicity during the week that former NBA basketball star Charles Barkley was prompted to remind folks that he, too, is a character in that he had lost $10 million or so at the gaming tables. To top it all off, Daly will be the subject of the seemingly obligatory segment during this Sunday’s 60 Minutes show on CBS.

Continue reading →

As noted in this earlier post, the Tournament Course at Redstone Golf Club — the new home course of the Shell Houston Open golf tournament — received mixed reviews from the players who played in last week’s tournament, a view echoed in this GolfWeek magazine report after the tournament. However, it appears that the verdict on the new course from spectators may not even reach the level of mixed.
First, Chronicle sportswriter and columnist John Lopez noted over the weekend that some spectators were complaining to him of the inordinately long walks between the parking areas and the course entrance, and also the long hikes between the 1st hole green and the 2nd hole tee and the 17th green the 18th tee. That view was shared by a spectator who made the following comment to the Chronicle’s Sports Update blog:

“The golf was fine, but the layout is very poor and too massive for a fan-friendly event. The walking distances are much too long and there is minimal multi-hole viewing. The HGA has really messed up on this venue.”

But that barb was nothing compared to the scathing criticism that I received yesterday from a friend who attended the tournament over the weekend:

“I got to go to the Shell Houston Open on Friday and Sunday. What the hell is the HGA doing? That course is not PGA quality nor fan-friendly. The only holes you can watch easily are 1 and 18. Not too many folks want to make that 20 minute walk over the bayou to chase down another group on holes 2-17. I also got to watch first hand some pretty pissed-off caddies as they lugged their bags from 17 to 18. That was about a 10 minute walk. The viewing sites are sparse, no spectator mounds. No decent food pavilion. This tournament is doomed when it moves to the week before The Masters.”

H’mm. Consequences of bad decisions?