TOUR Insider: Shell Houston Open

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Some golfers like to play their way into a major championship and others prefer to take off the week prior to a grand slam event so they can work in solitude to iron out flaws and develop a game plan.

This week's $5.6 million Shell Houston Open caters to those in the first camp.

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Weather made last year's scores a little lower than anticipated.

TOUR Insider's Power Ranking

Shell Houston Open

Pos. Player '07 Finish 1. Stuart Appleby T2 2. Geoff Ogilvy DNP 3. K.J. Choi T19 4. Anthony Kim T5 5. Adam Scott 1

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With a respectful nod toward next week's Masters Tournament, officials at the Shell Houston Open have again proactively set up Redstone Golf Club's Tournament Course in a manner similar to what players will encounter at Augusta National Golf Club. At 7,457 yards, par 72, Redstone's Tournament Course, designed by Rees Jones and David Toms, is nearly the same length as Augusta National is. Minimal rough borders the fairways and chipping areas around the greens are shaved down.

"The course was in as good of condition as any golf course we played last year. It was beautiful," said defending champion Adam Scott, whose 271 total topped fellow Australian Stuart Appleby, the 2006 winner, by three strokes. "The fairways were really in perfect condition, and the rough, I think they kept it a really nice length and obviously trying to prepare it a little bit like Augusta where the rough is not very long and they did a good job of that.

"It was playable, still challenging. The only disappointing thing that happened was the amount of rain that we got, and that made the greens soften up, and that's probably why the scoring was low."

Well, yes, there was rain, which is common in the spring in Texas (and elsewhere), which didn't prepare many for what they encountered at wind-whipped and dried out Augusta National. Still, Appleby led the Masters through 54 holes before tying for seventh with Padraig Harrington, who also came off a top-25 in Houston.

Scott is among five of the top 10 players in the Official World Golf Ranking entered this week, drawn by the advertised Augusta-light setup. Joining him are No. 2 Phil Mickelson, No. 4 Steve Stricker, No. 8 K.J. Choi and No. 10 Geoff Ogilvy, winner of the World Golf Championship-CA Championship.

Ogilvy was a late addition, and the Aussie couldn't have made a better choice, given what his compatriots have accomplished in the event though the years. Scott became the sixth Australian to win in Houston, the most Aussie victors of any PGA TOUR event. The others are Appleby (twice), Robert Allenby, Bruce Crampton, Bruce Devlin and David Graham. What's more, international players have won the last four titles and seven of the last nine.

FEDEXCUP POINTERS

• Two-time Masters champion Jose Maria Olazabal will make his first start of the season in the U.S. and second of the season at the Shell Houston Open. Olazabal, who finished 61st at last week's Andalucian Open in his native Spain, has been sidelined for more than six months with rheumatism in his lower back. He twice has finished third in Houston, but missed the cut last year.

• Steve Stricker's missed cut at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans was a surprise given his recent efforts after changing irons midway through the PODS Championship. Armed with Titleist AP2 irons, Stricker shot the low round of the tournament the final day with a 66, and he closed with a 63, again the event's low round, at the CA Championship. Incidentally, that same week Greg Kraft won the Puerto Rico Open presented by Banco Popular using Titleist's ZM muscleback blade irons for the first time.

• Sony Open winner K.J. Choi, who lives in Houston, switched from the square-shaped Sumo2 driver to the conventional Sumo 5000 driver at the CA Championship. Choi tied for 12th at Doral, his fifth top-20 finish of the season in seven starts. In his two appearances at the Tournament Course at Redstone he tied for 19th and sixth.

• Another Houston resident, Jeff Maggert, has missed the cut in four of his last seven starts in his hometown event, but he also leads the filed with five top-10s in 19 appearances. In the four most recent events in which he did make the cut, Maggert was 17th or better, including joint 14th in 2007.

• After Maggert, the players with the most top-10 finishes in Houston, with four apiece, are 2006 champ Appleby, 2003 winner Fred Couples and John Daly. All are in the field, including Daly, who received a sponsor exemption. Couples is returning after missing the last three years.

• Australian Steve Elkington, who lives in Houston, will be making his 21st start in the Houston Open this week, which is second only to Blaine McCallister, a fellow University of Houston product, who is scheduled to make his 25th appearance.

• Frustrated after missing the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Steve Flesch dropped the belly putter he used to win twice last fall in favor of a conventional putter at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. The left-hander wielded a 34-inch Never Compromise mallet-headed putter in Crescent City and finished joint 23rd at TPC Louisiana thanks to a slight improvement from his season average in putts per round.

• A feel-good story for 2008 that of Dudley Hart. The veteran collected $110,825 for his 12th-place finish at the Zurich Classic to earn a full exemption for the remainder of the year. Hart had been playing on a major medical extension after his wife, Suzanne, was diagnosed last year with lung cancer and underwent surgery. Hart, who was limited to 12 events last year, needed $485,931 in 15 events to regain his card; he's already earned more than $500,000.

• Driving distance isn't usually a statistic that correlates directly to success, but it seemed to have a bearing last year at Redstone where four players among the top 18 longest hitters finished in the top 10, including winner Adam Scott and Bubba Watson, who tied then defending champion Stuart Appleby for second place. The others were Robert Garrigus and Anthony Kim, who tied for fifth.