Tag: Fred Couples

Remember this? Fred Couples broke drought with 2003 Houston Open win

On this day in 2003, Fred Couples fired a 67 to capture a four-stroke win. He became the first University of Houston alum to win the event.

(Editor’s note: This is part of a series, looking back at great moments in golf history.)

It had been five painstakingly difficult years for Fred Couples on the PGA Tour without a victory when he returned to his second home of Houston, Texas, for the 2003 Shell Houston Open.

Couples had played collegiately at the University of Houston, and although he’s originally from the Northwest, he felt right at home in the Lone Star state.

After an opening-round 65, and subsequent rounds of 67 and 68, it was on this day in 2003 — April 27 — that Couples fired a 67 to capture a four-stroke victory over the likes of Stuart Appleby, Mark Calcavecchia and Hank Kuehne.

The victory left Couples emotional, as he broke down in a post-round interview.

The victory was Couples’ last on the PGA Tour, although he’s added 13 wins since joining the PGA Tour Champions.

In the process, he became the first University of Houston alum to win the event, which had just moved that year from the TPC at the Woodlands to the Golf Club of Houston.

Masters champions weigh in on move to November

What do Masters champions like Jack and Gentle Ben think about the Masters moving to November? We’ve got answers.

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The 84th Masters, if contested as now scheduled on Nov. 9-15, truly will be a tradition unlike any other. The Masters has been played in April every year apart from the inaugural event in 1934, which ended in late March. How will Augusta National play differently than it typically does in April? Who will it favor? Well, several Masters champions have weighed in with insights and perspective that only those who have mastered its fairways and greens could know. We asked Freddie, Gentle Ben, the Golden Bear and more.

Masters Champions

Fred Couples, 1992

Fred Couples getting help putting on the green jacket from 1991 masters champion Ian Woosnam. Couples won the tournament at -13 under par. (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)

I’ve only gone to Augusta once other than getting in there on the Sunday before the Masters and it was the end of November. We teed off at 8 a.m. and I hit driver, 2 iron into the first green. The next day it was cold and windy and I needed a rescue. So, I’m not sure what the weather will be like in early November, but I will say this, the greens were unreal and as good as any Masters I ever played. The fairways were a little thin, but we’re talking Augusta, usually it’s an 11 out of a 10 when we play. I don’t think it will touch 70 degrees, so it will play extremely long and be a unique situation.

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Wearing spikeless Ecco Street shoes at Augusta, Fred Couples changed golf style

To celebrate the anniversary of Fred Couples wearing the Ecco Street shoes, the company is re-releasing the footwear that changed the game.

Back in 1980, a 20-year-old Fred Couples was in Tucson, Arizona, playing in one of his first PGA Tour events as a pro, when he spotted Johnny Miller on the range.

“I literally flipped out,” Couples said. “He was such a cool guy.”

Couples, the winner of the 1992 Masters, is now 60. For a generation of golfers, Couples played a role similar to Miller as that cool guy. The effortlessly powerful swing, the walk, the casual mannerisms, the hair. Boom Boom is the complete package when it comes to cool, and a decade ago, he unwittingly became a style icon when he wore a pair of Ecco Street golf shoes while playing the 2010 Masters.

To celebrate the 10-year anniversary, Ecco is re-releasing the Golf Street Premiere ($150) and the limited-edition Golf Street 10 ($230).

The story really begins in November 2009, when Couples was living and playing golf in Palm Desert, California. A friend who ran a pro shop that sold a lot of Ecco shoes called Couples and asked if he’d seen the new Street shoes. The former University of Houston star had not, so he got in his car and drove to the shop.

“He showed me the shoes and in a roundabout way, I paid for them,” Couples said. “He wasn’t allowed to give them to me because he didn’t have many pairs and they were so new.”

Ecco Golf Street (Ecco)

Couples started playing golf in them, sockless, which in Palm Springs was easy because the weather was perfect. However, when he brought three pairs of Street shoes (and no cleated footwear) to the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai in Hawaii, “all hell broke loose.”

Sure, Couples shot 65-66-64 to finish second that week on the Champions Tour, but all anyone wanted to ask him about were his shoes.

“People started calling them deck shoes, boat shoes, walking shoes,” Couples recalled. “I said, ‘Yeah, basically you can do all that in these shoes.’”

Aside from the casual style, what made the Ecco Street unique back in 2010 was the sole. At that time, golf shoes were cleated. Everyone wore golf shoes with plastic, replaceable spikes except a few pros who continued to wear steel spikes. Spikeless, hybrid-style golf shoes with traction-enhancing elements were more scarce than double eagles at Augusta National. Until a few months later when Couples, still sockless, wore Ecco Street shoes at the 2010 Masters, played in the final group on Sunday alongside Phil Mickelson and finished sixth.

Fred Couples
Fred Couples at the 2010 Masters. (Don Emmert/ Getty Images)

At that point, demand skyrocketed. The shoes looked comfortable to wear and Couples had proved that you could compete and play serious golf in the spikeless Street shoes.

The 2020 version of the Street has a leather upper that has been given a water-resistant Hydromax treatment to help repel water. The rubber outsole is covered with small nobs that create over 800 traction angles to enhance traction while you swing.

“It was kind of comical,” Couples said, thinking back to the 2010 Masters. “I was playing pretty well and was in the golf tournament, and all anyone worried about is the shoes that I’m wearing!”

Hey Fred, no one said being cool was easy.

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Brett Quigley leads Fred Couples by two at Cologuard Classic

Brett Quigley backed up an opening 64 at Tucson National’s Catalina Course with a second-round 68 and leads by two at the Cologuard Classic.

Brett Quigley moved a little bit closer on Saturday to padding his professional win column. That’s significant for the 50-year-old who won his first PGA Tour Champions title earlier this year in just his second start on the senior tour. Quigley had five runner-up finishes in 408 starts on the PGA Tour but never was a champion.

Quigley backed up an opening 64 at Tucson National’s Catalina Course with a second-round 68 and now leads by two shots at the Cologuard Classic.

Quigley nearly went bogey-free for a second day. He didn’t have a blemish on his card in the first round, but his sole bogey of the second round came at the par-4 11th.

“To back up yesterday’s round with a pretty good round today, 5 under,” Quigley said. “Hard to keep track of par out here with 73 being par. I think it was 5 under. A little off the back nine, but managed to shoot under par, so certainly happy overall.”

Quigley leads Fred Couples by two shots after Couples backed up an opening 68 with 66. Miguel Angel Jimenez and Rod Pampling are tied for third at 11 under.

John Daly dropped seven spots on the leaderboard with his Saturday 71 and now is in a share of 10th at 8 under.

Couples, 60, calls Quigley “the kid.” Asked what he thinks of that, Quigley said he was not unhappy to have the nickname.

“Certainly I feel like a newbie again, definitely a neophyte out here. It’s against all the guys I grew up playing with and a lot of guys I grew up watching, so it’s fun.”

Quigley and Couples, along with Jimenez, will be paired together in Sunday’s final group.

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Fred Couples knows the obstacles facing the Premier Golf League

Fred Couples spoke about the Premier Golf League concept at Thursday’s Chubb Classic on the PGA Tour Champions.

Fred Couples has an idea of how this feels.

Back in 2002, Couples was among those involved with what was going to become the Majors Champions Tour. They had talked a TV contract with Fox and were pushing forward with the idea of creating a tour for pros ages 37 to 55 who had won major championships.

Then it never got off the ground.

Now there’s discussion of another new tour, the Premier Golf League, with a team concept and millions of dollars in purses, and with Phil Mickelson talking about it publicly and even playing with some of its backers.

After the tour’s stop at Torrey Pines in San Diego, Jay Monahan, the PGA Tour commissioner, sent a memo to players that was obtained by The Associated Press. In the memo, Monahan talked of the Tour’s strength, reminded players of the releases needed to play other tours and also noted that the tour would not be working with the Premier Golf League.

“If the Team Golf Concept or another iteration of this structure becomes a reality in 2022 or at any time before or after, our members will have to decide whether they want to continue to be a member of the PGA Tour or play on a new series,” the memo read, according to The AP.

And that’s all it took for Couples to share his thoughts on the chances of the Premier Golf League coming into existence.

“I saw Jay Monahan’s quote. That’s how long I follow it,” Couples said Thursday from The Classics at Lely Resort, where the two-time Chubb Classic champion was practicing for this week.

“You play there, you don’t play on the Tour,” he said in summarizing Monahan’s sentiments. “Your choice. You want to win one of these things or you want to win the L.A. Open?

“So that’s what I was reading.”

With the discussion of the Premier Golf League, Greg Norman’s idea for a world tour that was also, according to Norman, derailed by the tour in 1994 (only for the World Golf Championships to come into being a few years later) has been brought up.

The Majors Champions Tour also got close to becoming reality. At least it had something close to a TV contract, as compared to the Premier Golf League at this stage.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Couples had talked to Terry Jastrow, who had been a senior producer of golf at ABC for 20 years, about drawing up a proposal and also trying to get a TV deal. Jastrow met with Fox, which termed the proposal “interesting.”

The tour was slated to play traditional courses such as Merion, Winged Foot and Oakmont, with a guarantee per player of $500,000 – again, this was in 2002.

At that time, players who would’ve been eligible included names like Couples, Norman, Bernhard Langer, Nick Price, Nick Faldo, Curtis Strange, Mark O’Meara, Tom Lehman, Corey Pavin and Paul Azinger.

“I was talking to them,” Langer said Tuesday. “Again, it’s in competition with the existing tour. Those guys, so if you take top 50 in the world or whatever, 10 might fall out because they want to have the young talent come up. So where do those 10 go? You’re not exempt anywhere, so where do you go? You’re done. The tours didn’t like it basically, I think. You’re dealing in direct competition unless they’re involved.”

“I just don’t think it’s viable,” said Jack Nicklaus, whom Jastrow contacted, back in 2002. “I just don’t think financially they can make it. I don’t think they’ll ever get the golf courses. I don’t think the tour would ever let it happen. I don’t think the guys would leave. There’s just so many things that have to happen, I just don’t think it’s possible.”

On Thursday, the other part of the equation Couples and Lehman pointed to regarding why the Premier Golf League will have a hard time is the health of the current Tour, which has a $9.3 million purse this week in Los Angeles and is on the verge of a new TV deal with a reported 60-percent increase over the previous one, according to Sports Business Journal.

“I really don’t know very much about it,” Lehman said Thursday of the Premier Golf League. “I think professional golf has a good thing going, so I would hate to see something come along that just ruins it. And I’m not saying that something new would ruin it, I’m just saying be careful.”

“So, what are these guys going to pay?” Couples said, referring to the Premier Golf League, which has a reported Saudi Arabian financial backing. “Who cares? … These guys are making a bundle. If they make another million and a half or two, God bless them. But when you cannot play the PGA Tour, but play that?

“… The PGA Tour ain’t going away, last I checked on it.”

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Miguel Angel Jimenez beats Ernie Els, Fred Couples in playoff, wins PGA Tour Champions’ opener

Miguel Angel Jimenez won a playoff against Ernie Els and Fred Couples to claim the PGA Tour Champions’ opener in Hawaii.

What’s better than a victory cigar in Hawaii?

Miguel Angel Jimenez made a clutch 12-foot birdie putt on a second playoff hole Saturday night, taking down Ernie Els to win the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualala, the season opener for the PGA TOUR Champions.

Fred Couples made bogey and lost in the first playoff hole.

“I said to my caddie, `The winning score is going to be 15-under par and we need to hurry up and make birdie,'” said Jimenez, who went on to make clutch birdies on holes 13-15 to get into contention.

The 56-year-old now has won in each of his seven seasons on the senior tour, with nine victories total, including a previous win at Hualalai in 2015.

Leaderboard: Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai

“Played well every year here and it’s nice to have a second win,” Jimenez said.

“Disappointing, obviously,” Els said of his debut on the senior circuit. “I would have loved to got it through, but I had a couple of chances, didn’t quite get the right speed or the right line, but all good. Congrats to Miguel.”

The PGA Tour Champions tee off again Jan. 30-Feb. 1 at the Morocco Champions at Samanah Golf Club in Marrakech, Morocco.

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