History: La Cantera Golf Club and the Valero Texas Open  PGATOUR.COM Contributor They look like numbers flashing on a speedometer's digital readout when traveling on the highway: 64, 62, 63, 65. It's impossible to think of those as 18-hole golf scores. Or at least it was until four Octobers ago, when Tommy Armour III shaved a few more shots off the PGA TOUR's 72-hole scoring record with one of the gaudiest weeks ever experienced.  Tommy Armour III during the first round of the Valero Texas Open played at La Cantera in San Antonio, Texas in September 2006. (Feldman/WireImage)
The grandson of Tommy Armour -- the member of the World Golf Hall of Fame who won the U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship in a pre-Masters career -- beat par by 26 shots at LaCantera GC's Resort layout. Say it slowly for the impact: twenty-six shots. And he bogeyed the last hole. His 254 total was two lower than the number Mark Calcavecchia punched up at the 2001 Phoenix Open. Quite remarkably, considering the plethora of low scores in professional golf in the 21st century, Armour's total remains the record book's top line. Texans will nod and say that it was fitting the mark should be set in their neighborhood. Calcavecchia clipped the total shot by Mike Souchak at Brackenridge Park GC, which joins LaCantera among San Antonio's renowned facilities. Of course, Texans had come to think of the 72-hole record as part of their heritage, considering Souchak set it in 1955. Armour wasn't around back then -- he celebrates his 48th birthday the Monday after this year's Texas Open. But it does sometimes seem as though Armour has been playing on TOUR forever, considering he turned pro in 1981, before advent of the full-season exemption for finishing top 125 on the money list. He's a journeyman who was born in Colorado, went to school at the University of New Mexico and now lives in Dallas. He bounced around the Asian and European circuits in his formative years and landed in the U.S. in the late 1980s. Success has been an elusive creature for Armour, who was continually compared to his grandfather. He won the Phoenix Open in 1990, the fourth year the event was contested at TPC Scottsdale, taking a five-shot margin over Jim Thorpe. That's the way Armour won the Texas Open, too, by gobs of shots. And in uncharacteristically calm conditions. Loren Roberts and Bob Tway shot 19-under 261s -- Tway began the week with a 61, and Roberts ended it by shooting 62.  Tommy Armour III in action. (Grayson/WireImage)
As Tway would say Sunday night, it would have been "a pretty good tournament" if Armour and his 254 had stayed at home. After all, Roberts had won with 261 the previous year. Armour trailed by three after an opening 64, a score that came as a shock considering his 2003 season. His first five starts resulted in a missed cut or WD, and he didn't crack six figures in official earnings until a mid-July tie for 17th in the Greater Milwaukee Open (now the U.S. Bank Championship in Milwaukee). Little by little, though, Armour's game started to show life following a series of swing changes, trying not to take the club back too far on the inside. He tied for 11th in the Canadian Open, then made only one bogey in 36 holes at the 84 Lumber Classic of Pennsylvania. Unfortunately for him and several other players, horrid weather meant trimming the surviving field by a few bodies to accommodate 36 holes that Sunday. Armour was among those left on the outside. So he arrived in San Antonio primed and playing well. He went the first day without a bogey and then didn't encounter any in a second-round 62. By the time he went another 18 and posted a 63, he'd gone 81 holes without dropping a shot. He finished Saturday's round with three straight birdies, dropping a 53-foot putt at the home hole. By that time, the tournament was all but a foregone conclusion. Armour was at 21 under 189 -- repeat this one for effect, too, one-hundred and eighty-nine. That was equal with the 54-hole totals by John Cook (64-62-63) in the 1996 FedEx St. Jude Classic and Calcavecchia in Phoenix (65-60-64). Duffy Waldorf was the closest pursuer to Armour, six back, and began the last day with a birdie-birdie-birdie start. Armour would be forgiven for shaking a little, considering his last time near a title was the 1999 Touchstone Energy Tucson Open. But he rapped home a 40-foot birdie at No. 4, and the slide began going back in his direction. Armour did throw the gallery a few moments to pay attention to. He finally bogeyed when he hit a so-so approach shot at the 10th hole to 45 feet and then misread the first putt (and needed two more). And he popped out that closing bogey, or else the record would have been even lower. |
