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.