Legal Commentary

It's 2008 Shell Houston Open Week

By Tom Kirkendall

Following on this post from a couple of weeks ago, this week's Shell Houston Open at Redstone Golf Club has its best field in years (previous posts here), which includes the following top 25 players in the World Golf Rankings: Phil Mickelson (2), Steve Stricker (4), defending champion Adam Scott (5), The Woodlands' K.J. Choi (7), Geoff Ogilvy (11), Padraig Harrington (12), Angel Cabrera (17), Aaron Baddeley (18), Trevor Immelman (25). Other popular notables in the field include 2003 champ Fred Couples, Houston's Steve Elkington, Texans Chad Campbell and Justin Leonard, Davis Love III, Jose Maria Olazabal, The Woodlands' Jeff Maggert and Argentinean hot-shot Andres Romero. For a non-major and non-Tiger event, 10 of the top 25 in the World Golf Rankings and three of the top five provides a very sporty field.

Started in 1922, the Houston Open is tied with the Texas Open as the third oldest non-major championship on the PGA Tour behind only only the Western Open (1899) and the Canadian Open (1904). This is the third Houston Open to be played on the Tournament Course at Redstone Golf Club and the sixth event overall at Redstone, which hosted its first three Houston Opens on the club's Jacobson-Hardy Course while the Tournament Course was being built. This is the SHO's second year of being played the week before The Masters and, despite the tradition of some of golf's all-time greats not to play the week before major championships, the strong SHO field this year is an encouraging boost for a tournament that has struggled generating quality fields ever since leaving The Woodlands' TPC Course after the 2002 tournament. Although the Houston Golf Association promotes the tournament with players by grooming Redstone's Tournament Course in a manner similar to Augusta National, the Tournament Course is actually a flat-land course that bears little resemblance to the hilly venues of Augusta.

The following are several posts from over the years that will give you a flavor for the SHO:

• Visiting the SHO in 2007;

• The folly of the "resemble Augusta" approach;

• Initial player views of the Tournament Course at Redstone;

• My round at the Tournament Players Course (with pictures); and

• The story of how the SHO left its successful home in The Woodlands for Redstone.

Full post as published by Houston's Clear Thinkers on April 02, 2008 (boomark / email).