Another Winner of the 2007 Masters: The Shell Houston Open

There's two basic ways to prep for the Masters: 1. Show up early and get prepared for its unique challenges; or 2. Play a tournament the week before because the best preparation to play tournament golf is to play under pressure.

This year for the first time, the tournament the week before the Masters was the Shell Houston Open. Though the SHO had a large overseas contigent of players, the field had only 23 players who were also going to be playing at Augusta. Even so, the SHO tried to sell the tournament to the players as a Masters prep, and tried to replicate those conditions the best they could even though Houston is mostly flat and the greens at the SHO are bermuda.

It turns out that if you look at the top 16 including ties at the 2007 Masters, 5 of those players also played at the SHO: Padraig Harrington, Stuart Appleby, David Toms, Vaughn Taylor, and Tim Clark. By my count, 15 other SHO players also made the Masters cut. Seems to me that 20 out of 23 making the weekend at Augusta ain't bad.

Another benefit to the Shell Houston Open is Augusta National Chairman Billy Payne's announcement that they were reinstating the long-standing policy that allows tour winners to receive automatic invitations to the Masters. This will encourage good players not already in the Masters field to give it one last shot to qualify for it at the SHO.

Correction: Please see the comment from the SHO tournament director here. He says in part: "We cannot stress enough that the green surfaces at this time of year are NOT bermuda grass. At this time of year in our area bernuda grass is dormant. We have heavily overseeded greens with a bent and poa trivialis mix which allows us to maintain more consistency and faster green speeds (weather permitting)." Well, apparently, their hard work paid off for the players who played both the SHO and the Masters.