Schedules affect fields, but Houston still looks strong

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Phil Mickelson will be headlining the Shell Houston Open this year.

It's seldom the first thing thrown out in conversation, but, trust us, it doesn't take long to get to the topic.

Why doesn't he ever play here?

Last week it was Tampa. Next week it'll be Houston. Then New Orleans. Then ...

You get the drift.

The bottom line is simple --Tiger Woods can't play 'em all. No one can. But all too often, his absence casts a huge shadow on a brilliant field.

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Take the Shell Houston Open, which will host seven of the world's top 10 next week, including Phil Mickelson. Plus Greg Norman and Fred Couples. It's the best Shell Houston Open field since the tournament got Jack Nicklaus just after his epic sixth Masters win.

Having the date that precedes the Masters has its perks, especially when players like the course, and the tournament has worked hard to emulate Augusta-like conditions like fast greens and shaved banks. But it also has that one negative: No Tiger -- who has played the week before a major less than a half dozen times in his career.

Which begs the question currently making the rounds -- whether players should make an effort to play every tournament at least every four years or so.

It's always been a conundrum, even back in the day when there were less tournaments and there really wasn't just one player whose commitment could make a tournament director downright giddy.

Take that 1986 then-Houston Open. Nicklaus was the exclamation point, but back then it took a village -- as in Tom Watson, Curtis Strange, Nick Faldo, Greg Norman, Ray Floyd and a host of others. Of course, we remember, too, the look on then-tournament director Duke Butler's face when Nicklaus drained a 15-foot birdie on the 36th hole to make the cut and hang around for the weekend. It wasn't today's Tiger-in-the-hunt bump, but for 1986, it was magic.

Even back then, some of those glitzy names came courtesy of a release that Nicklaus, for one, received to play overseas in a Skins Game opposite Houston the previous year. Back then, rules required players to play the PGA TOUR event they missed at least once in the next few years, and Houston had everything fall together when Nicklaus committed there for the first time since 1977.

Golf wasn't such a global game back then, unless, of course, your name was Gary Player. Oh, there were still appearance fees -- tame by today's numbers -- and a burgeoning international presence led by Norman and Faldo. But, there were about half as many events and, with the exception of Jack and Tom -- think Tiger and Phil -- most players pretty much made their way around the schedule.

Today, it's not as easy. The argument becomes one of theory vs. reality. Would it be great to have Tiger or Phil or any of the other boldface names visit every tournament every so often? Indeed it would. Great for the sport. Great for the tournaments' economy. One less question for those tournament directors on the outside looking in to answer.

But will it work? Not so much.

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As long as the Shell Houston Open takes place the week before -- or after -- the Masters, you won't see Tiger in the field.

Take Houston again. The city has seen Tiger before, but only when Champions Golf Club was part of THE TOUR Championship rotation before the event settled on East Lake as a fulltime home. Heck, Tiger won the 1999 TOUR Championship the week Payne Stewart died.

Yet the Houston Open was never on his schedule. It didn't fit into his post-Masters lull when it was scheduled there, and it won't be in his or several others' plans if it remains the lead-in to the Masters. Some players whose schedules are tailored to the majors simply don't want to play the week before one of them. You have to respect that.

You have to respect, too, the tournaments that get creative like Houston or the John Deere Classic, which has a charter available to whisk players to the U.K. for the British Open.

We see all sides: Paul Goydos' honesty when he talks about players supporting the TOUR and, gee, playing for another $1 million-plus winner's check; Mickelson's argument that, with fortysomething events in a season, it's going to be a tough, tough sell; and then there's the no-one-can-play-every-week-plus-some-courses-don't-suit-my-game argument.

Adam Scott, the 2007 Shell Houston Open champ, will skip the event this year because Arnold Palmer asked him to play at Bay Hill and, of course, he said yes. It's hard to say no to the King. And he doesn't want to play both weeks leading into Augusta.

Mickelson, on the other hand, is skipping Bay Hill and playing in Houston.

Another alternative is to shake up the schedule every so often -- even more than the normal changes (think the Valero Texas Open moving to the spring or Houston moving from the end of April to the end of March). But that will be a tough -- no, impossible -- sell for tournament directors who have the dates they want.

No one said it would be easy, yet, in this economy, players have to at least think about it. It's always easier for a sponsor to weather a field with one or two boldface names in a bull market than it is in a downturn or full-blown recession.

We wish we could offer a solution, but we can't. The perfect scenario would be everyone working together, but the chances of that ...

So we'll let the debate continue behind closed doors at PGA TOUR HQ.

Until then, all we know is the Shell Houston Open has a brilliant field without Tiger -- one the fans will embrace. But even they won't be able to stop asking why he never plays at Redstone.

Melanie Hauser is a columnist for PGATOUR.COM. Her views do not necessarily represent the views of the PGA TOUR.