Stormy finish
Most anticlimactic PGA Tour win ever? Houston Open sees its run of great champs end in the rain
By the time D.A. Points wrapped up his second career PGA Tour title, he wasn't just putting in approaching darkness. He was putting in anonymity.
Most of the spectators outside of friends, family and tournament personnel were long gone. So were almost all the big names, Phil Mickelson and Rory McIlroy included. A good chunk of the media left too, moving on to Minute Maid Park for the Houston Astros' American League opener. This is how the 2013 Shell Houston Open would end — with an unremarkable journeyman wrapping up a title that few who don't know him care about.
The 36-year-old Points did it in as much style as he could, draining a gutsy 13-foot par putt on 18 to keep Henrik Stenson and Billy Horschel at bay, carding a one-stroke win. The finish came after a nearly three hour rain delay that cleared out Redstone Golf Club.
Call it a final bit of indignity for a golf tournament that deserves better.
Pushed up a week earlier than usual to accommodate the San Antonio PGA Tour stop's desire to not play on Easter Sunday, the Houston Open often seemed to struggle to finds its groove this year. This was little fault of its own. The tournament was still exceedingly well run. The crowds still mostly came, especially on Saturday. Those crazy socks were fun.
Call it a final bit of indignity for a golf tournament that deserves better.
But the big names never really produced — with the exception of a brief charge by Mickelson early Sunday. McIlroy, the recently deposed No. 1, played anything like a champ or anything close to a real threat to Tiger Woods. He finished in 45th place, 12 shots behind Points' winning 16-under score.
Even the big strength of this year's tournament — how tightly packed the leaderboard became was hurt by the super rain delay. It's almost fitting that it was won by a journeyman like Points, ending a run that saw big names like Hunter Mahan, Phil Mickelson, Anthony Kim, Paul Casey and Adam Scott emerge as Houston champions in recent years.
Those are major level winners — with the possible exception of Kim, who's never truly lived up to his flashy hype. D.A. Points in 2013 isn't going to stack up with that group.
Points is a good story — having come into this tournament missing cut after cut after cut, growing so desperate he turned to borrowing his mother's old putter. He put that putter to good use at Redstone. Now he gets to play in the Masters.
But there's a difference between a neat story and a major one.
