BETHESDA, Md., July 4 — Establishing Tiger Woods as the face of this week’s AT&T National might have been the way to draw spectators from across the Washington area. But for the 120 golfers who accepted invitations to play the tournament, the motivating factor was something else: the Blue Course at Congressional Country Club.
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Nick Wass/Associated Press

Phil Mickelson called the Blue Course a “wonderful challenge.”
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The par-70, 7,255-yard course has attracted one of the strongest fields outside the major championships, a field that includes the top four players in the world. The tournament, which begins Thursday, was announced in March as a replacement for the International, forcing the top players to change their schedules.

Jim Furyk, the No. 3-ranked player in the world, said Wednesday that he decided which tournaments to enter based primarily on the courses, and “obviously you’re not going to skip Congressional.” Adam Scott, ranked fourth, said Congressional’s course was “definitely in the top five on tour, for sure.”

After playing Wednesday in the Earl Woods Memorial Pro-Am, Phil Mickelson said: “Congressional is just a U.S. Open venue, a straightforward good hard test of golf. And I think that’s why so many people are enamored with the place. It’s just a wonderful challenge.”

There are other factors that could contribute to the success of the inaugural AT&T National: Woods’s role as host; the honoring of United States military members; and the timing of the event around July 4, two weeks before the British Open. But Congressional, which most recently played host to the 2005 Booz Allen Classic and the 1997 United States Open, seems to be the prevailing reason for player attendance.

“You give these guys a golf course like Congressional, and they’ll want to come play it,” said Mike Cowan, Furyk’s caddie and a member of Congressional for seven years.

The Blue Course was a PGA Tour mainstay from 1980 to 1986, when it was the site of the Kemper Open. But that tournament moved in 1987 to the T.P.C. at Avenel in nearby Potomac, Md. It eventually became the Booz Allen Classic, an event that was held at Congressional once but was left off the PGA Tour’s main schedule before this season.

Some players have suggested that Woods’s tournament could become one of the PGA Tour’s main attractions, like the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill or Jack Nicklaus’s Memorial Tournament.

“Given the steps that have gone into the first year — the purse has been increased, we’re playing on a great venue, the way he has incorporated the community, the military — I think this can really be one of the elite events,” said Mickelson, who will try to play this weekend with a left wrist that he described as “not quite 100 percent” after an injury. “It looks like it’s already starting.”

Although some have already labeled the tournament a success, there was a degree of controversy surrounding it because the tournament is an invitational with a limited field.

Greg McLaughlin, the director of the AT&T National and president of the Tiger Woods Foundation, said in a telephone interview from the course Wednesday that 112 of the tournament’s golfers fit into 10 main categories of criteria for selection, like major championship winners. There were eight exemptions for the tournament, four for PGA Tour members and four for anyone with a 2-handicap or better, McLaughlin said.

“There wasn’t really much inviting done,” McLaughlin said. “I think the term ‘invitational’ just denotes a limited field.”

The AT&T National also has an uncertain future after next year’s tournament, the second in a six-year deal. Congressional is scheduled to play host to the 2009 United States Amateur and the 2011 United States Open, which will likely force Woods’s event to another location.

McLaughlin said he thought Avenel would still be undergoing a renovation in 2009. Tim Finchem, the commissioner of the PGA Tour, said Tuesday that he would not rule out moving the AT&T National to another area of the country, but that both the Tiger Woods Foundation and the Tour want the tournament to be based in Washington. For now, most players are applauding the choice of a course that some of them have not played in 10 years.

“I think it would have been a ridiculously strong field even if anyone was a host, or no host and they just had AT&T,” Fred Funk said Wednesday. “It’s the golf course that did it.”