Shell Houston Open has unique spot on Tour

The Shell Houston Open has been an annual stop on the PGA TOUR since 1946 and in the 60th edition of the event, will once again serve as the lead-in tournament to golf’s first major championship of the year, The Masters.

With its new pre-Masters date the 2007 Shell Houston Open attracted 23 players who played in Augusta the next week. The event has been contested at Redstone Golf Club in the Houston suburb of Humble since 2003.

Shell and the Houston Golf Association are the main sponsors of the tournament which had a purse of $5,500,000 in 2007 with $990,000 going to the winner.

In last year’s tournament, Adam Scott held off Stuart Appleby with a 6-under-par 66 on Sunday, saving par with a 50-foot putt on the 72nd hole after hitting his tee shot into the water. Scott finished at 17-under, three strokes ahead of Appleby, the defending champion, and third round leader Bubba Watson.

Scott became the sixth Australian to win the Shell Houston Open, joining Appleby, Bruce Devlin, Bruce Crampton, David Graham and Robert Allenby. Appleby and Crampton have won it twice and the eight victories by Australians are the most in any PGA TOUR event. Only the British Open (9) has had more champions from down under.

The Redstone Golf Club is just the latest in a long line of Houston Golf Clubs to host the event.

The tournament was played at several Houston venues until the 1970s, starting at River Oaks Country Club in 1946 before moving to Memorial Park Golf Course in 1947 and, after a year off, moving again to Pine Forest Country Club in 1949 and BraeBurn Country Club in 1950.

After this period of wandering about, the event settled in at Memorial Park from 1951-1963. In 1964 and again in 1965, the event was played at Sharpstown Country Club, before moving to Champions Golf Club from 1966-71 and Westwood Country Club in 1972.

In 1973 the event ventured outside of Houston, being played at Quail Valley Country Club in Missouri City, Texas. In 1975, the event relocated to The Woodlands, Texas, first at Woodlands Country Club until 1984, and subsequently to the TPC Woodlands until 2002. In 2003, the event moved to its current location at Redstone Golf Club.

The new fan-friendly home of the Shell Houston Open was designed specifically to host a PGA TOUR event by renowned architect Rees Jones and player consultant David Toms. The 7,457-yard, par-72 layout was carved out of woodlands lush with oak, pine and cypress trees. It is an open-to-all, daily fee course, which gives every golf fan the opportunity to tee it up where the pros play.

Free of commercial or residential real estate development, the course has striking natural wetlands filled with native plants and flowers. The routing plan of the courses gives patrons easy access via fairway crosswalks, allowing them to move from front nine to back nine in order to follow tournament action.

Jones, noted for his work on U.S. Open venues, has now designed three courses in Houston for Redstone Golf Management. The other courses include ShadowHawk Golf Club and The Houstonian Country Club.

The HGA has been hosting this event every year since 1946 with only two exceptions. There was no tournament in 1948 and no tournament in 1969 when the HGA co-sponsored the U.S. Open at Champions Golf Club.

Byron Nelson won the first Houston TOUR event conducted by the HGA in 1946. He bested Ben Hogan and Sam Snead at River Oaks Country Club. Records show that it was the only time those Hall of Fame players ever finished 1-2-3 in a tournament.

The HGA is well known for its charitable fundraising. Since 1974 its volunteers have generated more than $44 million for local worthy causes. Promoting golf for the benefit of local charity has long been HGA’s mission statement. The HGA raises money for charity through the Shell Houston Open in three distinct ways.

The first is taking net proceeds from tournament revenues. These funds are usually targeted for the tournament’s core charities who supply workers for the event.

Secondly the tournament accepts direct contributions through the Charity Partners Program in which $30,000 of a $65,000 sponsorship fee is allocated for agencies chosen to receive those funds by the sponsor. Nearly 200 different organizations have received funding through this program.

Finally, the tournament helps by collecting the monetary pledges that participating organizations in the Birdies for Charity program secures for donors. HGA provides collateral material for non-profit organizations to use when they seek pledges based on the number of birdies made by competitors during tournament play. All of the collected pledges go to the participating organizations.

NBC Sports and The Golf Channel are the homes for the 2008 Shell Houston Open. Thursday’s first round and Friday’s second round action will be televised on The Golf Channel. Saturday’s third round and Sunday’s championship round will be televised by NBC Sports.