Daily Archives: March 26, 2007

The folly of the “resemble Augusta” approach

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sho_logo032607.jpgIn 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.

The Gonzales affair

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alberto-gonzales.jpgI leave to the political blogs the current spat over former Houstonian and current Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ handling of the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys from various parts of the country, but I did chuckle over Jay Leno’s comment from one of his monolouge’s from late last week:

President Bush held a news conference where he accused the Democrats of playing politics with the firing of the U.S. attorneys. You know, the attorneys he fired for not playing politics.

I don’t know enough about the facts of this affair to make an informed judgment on what ought to be done. However, it does occur to me that the President should be a bit troubled that his Attorney General does not know how to fire some subordinates properly. The database of emails relating to the firings is here.

Lopez on McNair’s Carr miscalculation

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bob%20mcnair.jpgFollowing on this weekend post on the end of the David Carr era for the Houston Texans, John Lopez — who for my money is the Chronicle’s best sportswriter — provides this column that provides the type of insight (i.e., how the relationship between Texans owner Bob McNair and Carr protracted the Texans’ mistake in relying on Carr) that was utterly missing from fellow Chronicle sports columnist Richard Justice’s commentary on Carr’s exit:

McNair loved David Carr until it hurt. That was the biggest problem of all.
For all the other things that hurt this club, all the people and decisions involved, all the bad luck and bad contracts, it was the relationship between owner and quarterback that set so many things spiraling downward.
McNair loved all the things Carr stood for as a man, a husband and father. He loved the way Carr handled himself as the face of the franchise.
Love was blind.
The Texans, specifically coach Gary Kubiak and general manager Rick Smith, are in one fine mess now, their careers clinging to a life preserver named Matt Schaub, for a number of reasons. Many of the problems, they inherited. But it started with McNair investing too much emotionally.

Read the entire column. Lopez is on the money that there are operational problems in the Texans front office in the area of player evaluation and contract negotiation. It’s not clear to me by any stretch that the Kubiak coaching regime has corrected those problems.
By the way, the current thinking around the NFL is that Carr will be reunited with former Texans coach Dom Capers (now the defensive coordinator) in Miami.