Well, after effectively taking a weekend off from golf due to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, I apparently only missed two things.

1) Adam Scott choking like a bitch. You’re how many 15 under and poised to be the number one player in the world, and you shoot 76 in the final round to lose by 2. A 76 in the final round isn’t going to cut it.

2) Matt Every’s middle name is King

Every plays great in the final round and all people care about is his middle name. I guess that’s twitter for you. Only coming up with the important information.

Luckily for the PGA tour, the NCAA Tournament field is shrinking, which means there’s time to watch both the PGA Tour in the afternoon and the basketball at night! I can’t wait to see what tournament comes after Bay Hill since it can only be a good one right?

Oh, it’s the Valero Texas Open… But hey, Phil Mickelson is playing. He’s pretty good. And Jordan Spieth! And… well… this tweet pretty much sums it up.

Yup. They’re the lone stars in this relatively dismal field.

I’m also dubbing the Valero Texas Open as the first tournament on the two tournament “Texas Oil Swing”. The second leg happens next week with the Shell Houston Open. Here’s to hoping that BP sponsors a tournament next to the gulf next year. Odds are pretty low on that unfortunately.

In reality, the tournament is scheduled in a tough spot, between Bay Hill and The Shell Houston open and two weeks out from the Masters. The good players don’t want to play four weeks in a row with the most important tournament at the end. So they end up skipping the poor VTO.

Even though this scheduling kind of sucks, it’s actually a way better spot than 2007 and 2008 when it was part of the Fall Series, meaning the tournaments that you play because you suck and can’t make money at the real ones. The current purse reflects this change with a bump of about 1.5 million dollars when moved into the FedEx Cup time frame.

Tidbits

Remember watching this tournament in the past and seeing the roller coasters in the background? In 2010, the course moved from that course, to TPC San Antonio. They took away pretty much the only thing that made this tournament memorable, and moved it to

Also, since apparently the cool new thing to do is pick on Kevin Na, let’s look back on a highlight from the 2011 VTO…

Pretty sure that would have garnered him the card of the week that year.