“Next year when we go there, if it's not good, it'll get beat up because the other one was so good."

Richard Oliver details the textbook PGA Tour move from classy old course near a population base to a new TPC course away from civilization. In this case it's the Champions Tour's 2011 AT&T Championship moving from classy old Oak Hills after this week, in favor of a new Pete Dye design outside of town at the TPC San Antonio. The players are besides themselves, but of course, they'll show up no matter where the suits send them.

“I hate losing them,” Perry, a 14-time winner on the PGA Tour, said of historic, old-style layouts like Oak Hills. “We shouldn't lose them. They need to figure out a way to keep them.”

AT&T says it's all about the infamous naming rights deal.

AT&T spokesman Mike Barger said the telecommunication giant's significant investment in the TPC San Antonio property was a deciding factor. AT&T was named rights sponsor of the resort's two layouts in 2008.

“I wouldn't say it was a foregone conclusion,” Barger said of the choice to end the relationship with Oak Hills. “I can't get real specific with the decision made, but our investment in the PGA Tour is highlighted by our investment with the TPC and JW Marriott project.

“We are confident we can continue to advance the event.”

Lee Trevino, isn't so confident.

“These courses they play now are 7,200 or 7,300 yards,” Trevino said. “They've got water everywhere and bunkers and humps and bumps and everything else. They're just monsters.”

AT&T Canyons, at just more than 7,400 yards, is roughly 800 yards longer than Oak Hills.

The poor tournament director who has to go from selling tickets to a course minutes from downtown and the airport, to something out in the countryside, put this spin on the move.

“I think it's sad that we're losing such a great facility with so much history,” AT&T Championship director Colby Callaway said. “But we're excited about the new opportunity out there. Our team is a big fan of challenges.”

Whatever the case, Champions Tour star Fred Couples offers a word of caution.

“Next year when we go there, if it's not good, it'll get beat up because the other one was so good,” Couples said.

The move out to TPC San Antonio mirrors what AT&T did here in LA with its Champions event. They left the inner-city options where the event was very well attended (Rancho Park, then Wilshire CC) for Valencia Country Club, which was supposed to be a temporary home until the new TPC Valencia was ready. But because of the TPC's sheer hideousness, even the briefcases couldn't see themselves slugging it around there during a pro-am and kept going back to Valencia, a long slog well away from the population base (which is hard to do in the L.A. basin!).

Not coincidentally, AT&T folded the AT&T Champions Classic after the 2009 edition.