Vijay Singh took advantage of long John Daly‘s hooked drive into the water on the first playoff hole
Although the Houston Open is one of those relatively insignificant golf tournaments that take place in the dreaded “down” period between The Masters and the U.S. Open, the entertaining final round probably garnered its share of television viewers who chose it over meaningless first round NBA playoff games and early season baseball games. Daly shot a 5 under 67 on Sunday, including birdies on the difficult 17th and 18th holes to catch Singh, who misread a 5 foot birdie putt on the 18th hole that would have won him the tournament in regulation. Unfortunately, Daly consumed too much caffeine in chugging Diet Cokes while waiting for Singh to finish his round, so he promptly pull-hooked his 3 metal into the water hazard on the left side of the first playoff hole.
As usual, CBS commentator Gary McCord had the crack of the weekend on Sunday. McCord and the other CBS announcers were discussing “golf demons,” those devilish quirks that always seem to torment golfers in the heat of competition. Suddenly, during this “golf demon” discussion, the television screen showed Daly’s haggard face as he prepared to take a shot. Without mentioning any of Daly’s well-chronicled bouts with alcohol abuse, smoking, multiple wives (the latest of which ended up in prison) and overeating, McCord declared:
“Now there is the Mothership of demons!”
So, the Houston Open ends its three year run at the Jacobsen-Hardy Course at Redstone Golf Club and moves across the street next year to the new Rees Jones Course at Redstone that has been specially designed and constructed to host the tournament. The Houston Golf Association is placing its bets that the new course will reach a stature similar to Champions Golf Club‘s Cypress Creek Course among the top PGA Tour members, who will then make an effort to come and elevate the Houston Open to the elite level of non-major PGA Tour golf tournaments. As noted earlier here, I’m not convinced that this is a sound strategy, but I hope that I am wrong. The HGA does a great job of running the tournament, Shell is a fine title sponsor, and the tournament is already among the top PGA Tour events in terms of raising money for charity. Consequently, the tournament definitely has some things going for it, and perhaps a great new course will be answer to the problem of being an afterthought on the PGA Tour.