This course belongs in this pantheon of legendary tracks the way Howie Mandel belongs with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor. It's not a cow pasture or anything. It's a perfectly presentable new course, and in another year, when golf doesn't play its majors at shrines, maybe the PGA's choice of Valhalla isn't such a story. But Augusta has Rae's Creek and Amen Corner. St. Andrews has history and pot bunkers carved out of the moonscape by large grenades.
Pebble Beach has the wind and the rain and the ocean licking at the Pacific coastline.
Well, it's the Al Gore of this year's majors courses. In mythological lore, Valhalla is the place where heroes' souls go to rest. What's worse, Valhalla has become the PGA's unofficial new favorite golf course, the organization having purchased the joint and then announcing it would play here often during the new millenium. Duval doesn't have to worry about Valhalla this season, having pulled out of the PGA with a bad back. If he had played, he would have noted the improvements, the new challenges that make it a more a solid target-style course.