WGC officials had grown weary of fielding the regrets that streamed in every year from the pros who simply didn't like La Costa. Ernie Els was one. Last year Sergio Garcia passed it up, saying he was 'tired' even though he had two weeks to rest up. Tiger Woods would generally show up, and he even won in 2003 and 2004, although he never did really warm up to the course.
La Costa underwent a major reworking recently to try to bring it up to WGC standards. But there were several factors that repeatedly sabotaged it. Frequent deluges played havoc with the yardages, and in 2005 La Costa suffered the ignominy of having one of its par-4s changed to a par-3 because so large an area became unplayable. Entire days have been washed out, throwing the event into major panic if it is one of the earlier rounds where 36 matches were scheduled.
Photo: © Stan Badz/WireImage |
| Rains and then flooding played havoc at the Accenture while it was at La Costa. |
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Now - please don't forget the flip side of the coin, the two Masters championships and the PGA victory. That's three majors in the last three years. But no one understands as does Phil Mickelson what a sickening word "almost" is. After all, in his entire 15-year career, he has almost as many "almosts" as does Greg Norman.
And let's face it - this is a posh resort course for 51 weeks of the year, a playpen where wealthy codgers with 18 handicaps sashay around the acreage. KSL, the company which owns La Costa, wasn't going to grow the rough nor substantially change the bunkers and greens just to make it more difficult for pros who came there one week a year. The owners were quite happy for the prestige that the tournament and the PGA Tour provided them, but they weren't going to ruin their cozy little course just to give the Mr. Bigs a little sterner challenge.
Photo: © Joann Dost / Gallery Golf Club |
| The 10th at Gallery Golf Club, will be a gem of a par 5 for risk/reward giving players a tough second shot on this 540-yard hole. |
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Now this year, the players are going to face many of the obstacles at Gallery Golf Club in Tucson that they faced in La Costa. The tournament is single-elimination, which means that players face the possibility of going home after playing only 15 or 16 holes in one round. This isn't a huge imposition for those who were already out West for the tournament in Los Angeles. But for anyone coming from another continent, that is a huge price to play for four hours of work. Many players are from Europe, others come from Australia. They will fly at least 10 hours with a change of planes before they get to Tucson.
For what? Maybe for less than one round of tournament golf. In 2002, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and David Duval - then the best three players in the world - all lost in the first round.
And the weather will always be a factor. While rain was always - ALWAYS - a threat in February at Carlsbad, so, too, is morning frost going to be a potential snafu at Dove Mountain. As luck would have it, the downpours are scheduled again this week at La Costa Friday and Saturday. And while Tucson isn't predicted to get frost this week, still temperatures early in the morning will be in the mid-40s. And, sure enough, rain is due in on Saturday.
Despite having the best players on the planet, the attendance at La Costa just wasn't there for the Match Play. There could be several reasons - for one, the frequent rains were a major hindrance. Who goes out to a golf tournament to huddle in the chill under a plastic poncho?
Photo: © Joann Dost / Gallery Golf Club |
| The 4th at Gallery Golf Club, will be tough par 4 at 465 yards with a big drive over a lake. |
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And then there was something that was even more of a factor - the Buick Invitational.
The Buick is held only a couple of weeks before the Match Play, and it is held just down Interstate 5 in La Jolla, also north of San Diego. In fact, it is much closer to the population center than is La Costa. People who want to see the big names of the tour have already seen them at the Buick. They know these men are, generally, going to be playing for four days. So the sentiment has always been, let's go to the Buick where we know what we are getting, rather than the Match Play where the major players may or may not still be in the competition.
In Tucson, of course, they have a similar problem. The Phoenix area plays host to the FBR Open only a short time before this tournament is scheduled. However, Phoenix is approximately 110 miles away. People in Tucson haven't had the saturation of golf that fans in Southern California have. The result - Tucson officials have had to limit ticket sales to 15,000 during the week and to 6,000 for the semifinals and finals on the weekends and those tickets are just about gone.
Match Play always runs the risk of a negative result - either the favorites don't make it past the first two or three days, or the latter matches are horribly one-sided. That certainly is true of this event, where three of the first four winners were Jeff Maggert, Steve Stricker and Kevin Sutherland, and the others in the finals were Andrew Magee, Pierre Fulke and Scott McCarron. But those are chances that are inherent in match play. And the bigger the field - this one is a bloated 64 - the greater the chance that you will end up with a No. 60 as the eventual champion.
Tucson, however, will make a great venue, if for no other reason than spectator support. In Carlsbad, this event was just a medium-sized fish in a big pond. In Tucson, it becames a whale in a fishbowl.
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