Florida Swing Notebook
Ernie Els re-thinking playing Honda Classic
Posted: Thursday March 04, 1999 01:50 PM
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Els says he does want to play again soon due to his quick Match Play exit. Stephen Munday/Allsport |
By Garry Smits,
FloridaSwing golf writer
MIAMI -- Ernie Els, the highest-ranked player on the World Golf Rankings competing in this week's Doral-Ryder Open, is re-thinking a start in next week's Honda Classic in Coral Springs -- which he actually entered before Doral.
If the fourth-ranked South African plays at Honda, he will have competed in six tournaments in a row, beginning with his victory last month at the Nissan Open in Los Angeles, and ending with defense of his Bay Hill Invitational title in Orlando March 18-21, and The Players Championship in Ponte Vedra Beach the following week.
One of those tournaments albeit was short work -- Els lost in the first round of the Andersen Consulting World Match Play. It was then that he decided to add Doral to his schedule. He already had committed to Honda, Bay Hill and The Players.
"I am checking it out -- I am not sure yet," Els said Wednesday. "I probably won't play six in a row. I really took it easy last year, and only played 15 events on the U.S. Tour. I have played four, maybe five in a row."
Els said because of his quick exit at the Match Play, he wanted to get back into competition as soon as possible.
"I wasn't going to play [Doral]," he said. "I was out of there [in the Match Play] Wednesday night and Friday morning, I thought, `I can't have another week off. I have to play sometime. And it's only a two or three hour drive from Orlando [his U.S. residence] so it actually worked out perfect. But I am looking at next week."
Els missed the cut at last year's Honda Classic.
Shark tracks
Greg Norman has one rule about his course design business -- he won't do renovations or re-designs.
So why are there signs on Doral Boulevard in Miami touting his renovation of the Doral White Course -- which will begin the day after the Doral-Ryder Open and be renamed, obviously, "The Great White."
"I am a bit of a traditionalist," he said. "I don't like to see that [renovations] happen. At least when you do [an original] golf course, people are either going to like it or not. When you redo a golf course, you've got a complete division straightaway -- people who wanted it done and people who didn't. They wanted me to renovate the White Course but I wouldn't do it. So they said, let's just blow it up and start all over again. And I was very happy to do that."
Weather woes
A sudden front moved through Miami around 12:30 p.m., and cleared the golf course of the pro-am participants because of lightning and rain. Play resumed at 2:15 p.m. but some groups didn't finish because of darkness. Among the best scores of those who finished were the teams headed by Lanny Wadkins (17-under-par), and David Frost and Bob Friend (each 15-under).
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