Houston Open attracts only two top-50 players to its new fall slot

Houston, we have a problem.

 The return of the Houston Open in a new slot as part of the fall schedule after an 18-month hiatus has attracted just two of the top 50 players in the Official World Golf Ranking.

Henrik Stenson, No. 37, and Keegan Bradley, No. 43, represent the highest ranked players in the field this week at the Rees Jones-designed Tournament Course at Golf Club of Houston, a par 72 tipping out at a beefy 7,441 yards.

Among the most notable absentees is defending champion Ian Poulter, who birdied the 72nd hole to force a sudden-death playoff with Beau Hossler in April 2018 and punched his ticket to Augusta in dramatic fashion. Poulter will instead be teeing it up at the European Tour's Italian Open.

As a two-time winner of the Italian Open, Poulter clearly has fond memories there, including hoisting the trophy at Olgiata Golf Club in 2002, the last time it hosted Italy's national championship. Still, it is rare for a defending champion to skip his title defense. Francesco Molinari, Justin Rose, Shane Lowry and Paul Casey, the 2009 Houston champion, also are skipping the Houston Open.

These defections and an inordinate number of top players choosing to take a breather has turned the Houston Open field into a glorified Korn Ferry Tour stop, albeit one offering a purse of $7.5 million and a berth in the 2020 Masters.

Things looked bleaker still when the Tour struggled to replace sponsor Shell, which bowed out in 2017 after a 26-year run, and a tournament that dates to a Byron Nelson victory in 1946 lost its popular pre-Masters warmup slot when the Tour rejiggered its schedule last season.

The event was on life support until the Houston Astros Foundation, and more specifically, golf nut Jim Crane, owner of the Astros as well as The Floridian Golf Club, saved the day. This marks the first year of a five-year agreement between the PGA Tour and Houston Astros Foundation, which explains the use of the baseball club's uniform colors in the tournament's colorful logo.

The tournament returns to The Golf Club of Houston while a $13.5 million renovation of Memorial Park, just five miles west of Minute Maid Park, where the Astros call home, is completed by Tom Doak and player consultant Brooks Koepka. In what has the potential to be a game-changer for Houston municipal golf, the Astros Golf Foundation has committed to making an annual donation of $500,000 to The First Tee, and beginning in 2020, an annual contribution of $1 million to the city for the benefit of the Houston Parks and Recreation Department and Memorial Park Conservancy.

Until then, expect golfers to endure one more year of nightmares over the eight-acre lake running adjacent to the left side of the par-4, finishing hole at Golf Club of Houston. That was dubbed the "Big Ball Washer," by a caddie after his player deposited a tee shot in the lake in rounds one, two and three of the 2006 tournament, the first year the tournament was played there.

Tour veteran Robert Garrigus, who has hit 11 balls into the water at 18 since 2006, knows how it can ruin a round all too well. All told, the 18th hole at Golf Club of Houston has yielded the second most balls in the water on the final hole on Tour with 656, which ensures that no lead is safe until the leader survives one final test.