AT&T Championship to change its venue for next year
The Champions Tour recently announced that it will change the venue of its AT&T Championship from Oak Hills Country Club to a newly designed Pete Dye course in San Antonio.
This week will marks the last time that the event will be held on this historic property. The course is a private-members club and was built in 1922 and designed by premier architect A.W. Tillinghast.
The parkland style lay-out featuring century-old trees is a par-71 course that stretches to 6,670 yards.
Champions Tour veteran Bruce Lietzke was nostalgic when asked about the change of venue, saying that it: “became one of my favourite golf courses. Just a golf atmosphere here. No condos left and right.
There was always a hole in my resume because I didn’t win here.”
The AT&T Championship is the last tour stop before the season finale at the Charles Schwab Cup Championship played at Harding Park in San Francisco.
Oak Hills has spent the past nine years as a Champions Tour venue and before that it was the site of the PGA Tour’s Texas Open for 23 straight years. The venue remains a favourite among Champion Tour players
who remember the course from their younger years.
Former winners at this venue as PGA Tour stop include some of the game’s greats such as Lee Trevino, Ben Crenshaw and Hale Irwin. Also it has been the site of victory for more recent golfers like Corey
Pavin, Mark O’Meara, Nick Price, Jay Haas and Blaine McCallister.
The players that disagree with the change in venue are harshly critical of the replacement, which is a TPC course designed by Dye in the San Antonio area. Dye - architect of Whistling Straights and TPC
Sawgrass - is known for his ostentatious course designs.
Trevino has been particularly out-spoken in his criticism of the change in venue, protesting when the decision was announced, “I ain’t playing no TPC.”
Tags: