Courses
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club has announced that the 2007 Walker Cup match between Great Britain and Ireland and the United States of America will be played at Royal County Down.
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Golf course builders Heritage Links and SAJO Golf are combining their best features to offer a full range of golf course construction services. The combined firm, which will utilize the Heritage Links name, will offer both a golf and a utility division to meet their customers' needs.
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The PGA Grand Slam of Golf, the season-ending showcase of golf's major champions, will return to Poipu Bay Golf Course and Hyatt Regency Kauai Resort & Spa, in 2003 and 2004.
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Technology
Harbour Pointe Golf Club in Mukilteo, Wash., chooses to use the Cybergolf Broadcast System at their facility. The system includes email marketing functionality, email data collection, stats tracking and a online survey creator among its many inexpensive, easy-to-use features. Cybergolf will also build a new website for the club.
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Tours
The Ladies Professional Golf Association Tour membership votes to expand from three to five the number of exempt LPGA Tour cards earned through the Futures Tour money list.
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Tournaments
In an effort to become the premier tournament on the Champions Tour, the Bayer Advantage Invitational has been renamed the Bayer Advantage Celebrity Pro-Am.
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Equipment
Callaway Golf Company reclaims the title of the top driver brand across the world's major professional tours combined. A total of 157 Callaway Golf drivers were used on the PGA, Champions, LPGA and PGA European tours combined this past week, compared with 152 drivers for the nearest competitor, according to data from the Darrell Survey Co. and Sports Marketing Surveys Ltd.
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The Golf Factory, Ltd., of London enters into a long-term marketing and distribution agreement with SST to offer SST PURE technology throughout England as well as Spain, Portugal, France, Wales, Scotland, Egypt and the Republic of South Africa.
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Vince Ciurluini used the Harrison Pro 2.5 Ti Tip shaft as the engine to propel a drive 357 yards and win the season-opening qualifying school of the Long Drivers of America.
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Publications
Golf enthusiasts might not realize that Augusta National Golf Club has been drastically changed from its original design - and not at all for the better. So asserts golf historian Daniel Wexler in his new book, Lost Links: Forgotten Treasures from Golf's Golden Age ($45.00 from Clock Tower Press).
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Players
For the sixth time in as many tournaments, a new player took home the most Charles Schwab Cup points, leaving a host of players near the top of the year-long standings. At the SBC Classic, Tom Purtzer won his first Champions Tour title and earned 225 Charles Schwab Cup points.
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As golf tournaments go, The Honda Classic is on the lower tier of the food chain. It clearly isn't a major, or even a notch below. In the mid-90s it was simply the stop between Doral and Bay Hill. While some of its winners were top players like Fred Couples, Nick Price and Vijay Singh, many titleholders are lesser-known professionals.

The event had problems finding a home. After leaving the TPC at Eagle Trace in 1991, it was played at Weston Hills from 1992-95, went back to Eagle Trace in 1996 and continued at the TPC at Heron Bay in 1997-2002. The whole time at Heron Bay no one - players, media or tournament officials - had anything good to say about the course or the facilities, so eventually name players didn't come. An alternative had to be found.

A change came to the Honda Classic in 2003. It moved north to West Palm Beach, it was played on a new course and while all the facilities at The Country Club at Mirasol were not yet complete, the potential was huge in comparison to the previous facilities. This year's tournament site, the Sunset course designed by Arthur Hills, served as another temporary home while the Sunrise course designed by Tom Fazio grows in.

The Fazio course will be much longer and much more difficult than the Hills course, which gave 2003 champion Justin Leonard a venue to set a new tournament scoring record at 24-under-par, one of the lowest winning totals at a PGA Tour event.

The new course brought a compelling stage to a Tour that at times can be down right boring. And it was a wide-open event where hot equipment didn't make the difference, but ball striking, putting and course management were what was necessary to navigate the shorter Sunset course. Driving distance was never part of the discussion. Instead players were all hitting from relatively the same position on the fairway, and length was not an issue.

After their rounds, players talked about the difficulty of playing a course where if they made four pars in a row they were panicked they were falling behind. They had to stay overly disciplined not to get out of their game.

Inadvertently, The Honda Classic became a different golf tournament - different than any other event on the PGA Tour with the possible exception of the Bob Hope, which is played over four courses in the desert of Palm Springs and is noted for its easy course setup and low scoring.

Frequent birdies made watching the competition compelling for the fans, which is really what it's about - good golf.

The Honda Classic will never be a major and probably never be a top-tier tournament, but it can stand on its own and be a compelling golf event. The only way that can happen is to keep the event on the Hills Sunset course and not move it to the 7,400-plus yardage of the Sunrise course.

Golf should be fun. The Honda this year was a fun event. Let's see the professionals play this kind of game once a year.