Houston Officials Try To Copy Augusta, Right Down To The Really Petty Stuff Too!

Melanie Hauser on the impressive job Steve Timms has done making Houston a key pre-Masters stop, right down to mimicking the humorous fairway mowing patterns designed to help Augusta's USGA members save face for not having controlled distance  to cut down on the deleterious impact of golf ball roll.

Alvaro Quiros, who has moved up to 25th in the world, decided to play after talking to Garcia.
"He told me that Houston is a good tournament for many reasons, but one of the more important ones is the setup, you know,'' Quiros said. "For example, when we arrive to the second shot on the first hole, Sergio told me look, "Can you see the grass is cutting against you? It's typical of The Masters."

"Normally we have the grass cut in our favor or to the green and here it's against. It's a good thing the mowing of the greens and the speed of the greens are very close. It was raining. After three, four days of sunny -- this is very good. The shape of the rough is a little bit lower. I heard about last year -- it was a little bit higher or thicker so, yeah, it's a good test for me especially for this one.''