The possibility of having Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy playing in San Antonio might have gotten a little closer on Tuesday. The Valero Texas Open and Greg Norman Productions announced a multi-year deal on that brings some clout to an already historic PGA Tour event.
Greg Norman’s company will take over leadership and operations of the Valero Texas Open immediately and get to work at hopefully making the event one of the premier stops on the PGA Tour. Larson Segerdahl will be the new Tournament Director going forward and lead the team of Golf San Antonio employees already in place from years’ past. Segerdahl has led the PGA Tour’s Mayakoba Golf Classic in Cancun since 2007. He takes over three months after Golf San Antonio Executive Director Tony Piazzi resigned. Golf San Antonio previously was the organization who operated the event, but has already split operations to focus on the First Tee San Antonio and all the San Antonio Amateur tournaments.
Greg Norman already has a solid relationship with TPC San Antonio after designing the AT&T Oaks course which the tournament is played. But the tournament has run into some roadblocks as of late. The players are not too fond with some of the green designs at the AT&T Oaks course. Norman is currently working with PGA Tour officials in making some changes to the course to satisfy some of these complaints. Four have been redesigned and will be ready for play this April but only time will tell if this will change some of the players minds and persuade them to come to San Antonio.
One of the biggest attractions the Valero Texas Open has in their favor this year will be the date. The tournament is moving to April 4-7 this year – the week before the Masters, which typically attracts some of the biggest names who want to play a tune-up before the season’s first major. But the big question is who will be coming to San Antonio after all the negative comments about the course. These players aren’t going to play unless the course is set-up to mock certain conditions at Augusta National, the same way Redstone was able to do at the Shell Houston Open.
The next 7 ½ months should be interesting and I’m looking forward to hearing what changes Greg Norman Production Co. will bring to the Valero Texas Open here in San Antonio. Tiger Woods is probably out of the question. I would set the odds at Phil Mickelson coming to San Antonio in April at 75/25 that he won’t be playing. As mentioned above, only time will tell what this company can do for the Valero Texas Open.
[…] year after having a blast last year walking inside the ropes with the NBC Golf team. This year, Greg Norman Productions has taken over the tournament management and they have promised big changes to the Valero Texas […]