SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS | John Huh
didn’t win the Valero Texas Open Sun-
day, but he made a remarkable come-
back from a front-nine 44 on Thursday,
where he was 9-over par at one time.
After his opening nine, which led to a
first-round 77, he rallied with rounds of
68 and 67 which left him in Sunday’s final
pairing. Huh continued his good play with
a final-round 69 to finish tied for second.
“I had been hitting the ball well, but
I just kept short-siding myself Thurs-
day and couldn’t get up and down,” he
said of his opening nine holes, which
included five bogeys, two doubles and
two birdies.
fall as an amateur while he decides his
professional future.
“This week wasn’t going to change a
lot for me, unless I won, of course. I’m
still looking forward to college and to
see what happens after that.”
Jordan Spieth has now made three
out of four cuts on the PGA Tour.
Amateur sensation
Jordan Spieth
made his third PGA Tour cut in four
tries at the Texas Open, further has-
tening the time the University of Texas
freshman will be on the play-for-pay
circuit full-time. He had already made
the cut as a high school student in his
hometown Byron Nelson PGA Tour
event twice, but said doing it in another
city was another milestone.
“I think I proved some things this
week. Not so much to myself, but to
others. I showed it wasn’t just a home-
town thing. Staying in a hotel, playing a
different course was something new.”
He finished at 77-70-72-75 – 292
and was headed back to the
college circuit where Texas is top-
ranked and a favorite to win the
NCAA golf title.
This summer, Spieth will enter
the U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills,
outside of Denver, and also hopes
to get sponsor invitations to possibly
the AT&T National and the Reno-
Tahoe tournament. He has already
decided to enter Q-School this
After three years of playing the
TPC San Antonio layout as host for the
Valero Texas Open, which has produced
a constantly high level of complaints
and an equally high level of player
defections, with only two of the top 50
in the world in this year’s field, changes
will finally be made.
Multiple sources confirmed that
work will soon begin on greens Nos. 1,
4, 10 and 12 to eliminate some slope
and contour of the oft-savaged course,
which ranked 50 out of 52 Tour courses
in a confidential PGA Tour player poll
earlier in the year.
“It’s the architect’s fault (
Greg Nor-
man
) and the PGA Tour’s fault for not
crossing the T’s and dotting the I’s. This
is no one’s fault but themselves, but we
have a plan in place to right what is clear-
ly a wrong,” said PGA Tour player and
Tour Policy Board member
Joe Ogilvie
.
“This is an A-plus facility, an A-plus
city, an A-plus charity, an A-plus state
with a green complex that is an F. As
soon as they bulldoze the greens, play-
ers will start to come back.”
Stuart Appleby
said the course,
which hosted the Tour event since 2010,
has hurt both the title sponsor and the
tournament’s reputation.
“It’s definitely not attracting the
players Valero would like,” he said. “I
heard as many negatives as anything.
I don’t think it’s a bad course, but I’ve
seen some of Greg’s other work and I’m
not sure this measures up; it’s certainly
not his best. Considering it’s Texas
and it’s windy, the course has not been
designed that well for the wind.”
The unknown question for both the
tournament organizers and PGA Tour
players is what the changes will do for
future tournament fields.
“Changing four greens is a good
start, but how will the changes help? It’s
hard to know. There is always a lag to
what the players hear and how long be-
fore it gets back to them,” Appleby said.
Former PGA Championship winner
Shawn Micheel
had the most adven-
turesome 24 hours at the Texas Open
last week, but not in a good way. After
an opening 77, he shot a Friday 71 to
place at 4-over 148. Sure that he had
missed the cut, he shipped his clubs
back home to Memphis on FedEx and
caught an early flight home.
But when he arrived in Memphis, he
found a flurry of text and voice mails
saying the cut had risen, the second
highest of the year at 4 over, and he had
made the weekend. After several calls
to FedEx, he was unable to reroute his
clubs, so he dashed home, assembling
a set of clubs, mostly older Callaway
irons in an old TaylorMade bag, and
caught a 10: 30 p.m. private charter
back to San Antonio.
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