Chris Condon/PGA TOUR/Getty Images

Heath Slocum barely made the playoffs, but now he is No. 3 in the points race.

Every week of the 2009 PGA Tour season, the editorial staff of the SI Golf Group will conduct an e-mail roundtable. Check in on Mondays for the unfiltered opinions of our writers and editors.

Alan Shipnuck, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Greetings, fellow golf gluttons. We have another celebrity guest this week, Geoff Shackelford, the learned historian, esteemed blogger — is that an oxymoron? — revered critic of golf course design and now a budding architect in his own right. Welcome, Geoff, and we'll get to the really important stuff (UCLA basketball) shortly. Gritty win by Heath Slocum at the Barclays, and we'll get to the near-misses of Tiger and Ernie et. al., but the host venue, Liberty National, generated a lot of buzz throughout the week. So, Geoff and everyone else, what did we think about the site of the first, ahem, playoff event?

Geoff Shackelford: What — Ty Votaw wasn't available? Well, I'm honored to be here. As for Liberty National, all I could think of was the scene in "America's Sweethearts", where an audience is watching the premiere of the $85 million disaster and John Cusack whispers to Billy Crystal, "You know sometimes you watch a film and you say, 'Where did the money go?'" I kept whispering the same thing as I watched Liberty National. Where did $250 million go?

Shipnuck: Advice to a newbie: refrain from referencing chick flicks. As for Liberty, it's no Pebble Beach, I didn't think it was that objectionable. The pros did a lot of kvetching about Liberty but it was their complaints (and, especially, Tiger's antipathy) that precipitated a move from Westchester, a very different track I happen to love. How do you know a Tour player is complaining? Because his lips are moving!

David Dusek, deputy editor, Golf.com: The best jokes about the course I heard in the locker room this week were, "They took a perfectly good waste dump and ruined it by building Liberty National on top of it," and "Even Lady Liberty turned her back on this place."

Jim Herre, editor, Sports Illustrated Golf Plus: Heath Slocum had no complaints.

Damon Hack, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Didn't a few of the players actually give it their blessing? Padraig Harrington said it was a major championship venue. Ian Poulter loved it, too. Of course, they were heading for top 10s this week.

Dusek: I'm about the farthest thing from a course-design expert as you can get, but I think this summed up a lot of players feelings this week. As I walked nine holes inside the ropes with Geoff Ogilvy on Wednesday, he hit a sweet 3-wood at the 250-yard par-3 11th which landed 20 feet short of the hole. The ball released, rolled past the cup and went up a backstop. But instead of bringing the ball back to the middle of the green where the hole was cut during the pro-am, the backstop turned the ball to the right, into a collection area. Ogilvy, still on the tee, looked at me and said, "I just hit a great shot and I'm going to make a bogey on this hole." There was no club that he could get onto the putting surface from the back tee that the green would receive.

Shackelford: There are so many things egregiously wrong with Liberty National — the plethora of bunker styles, the junky collection area shaping that leads to swarms of divots, the old Gambino crime family gates in front of 15 tee and the overall A.D.D. look to the design. But worst of all was the tree planting. There must have been 15 varieties and no rhyme or reason except to try and shield some of the surrounds that we were told are so amazing.

Cameron Morfit, senior writer, Golf Magazine: It looked fantastic on TV, which counts for a lot.

Gary Van Sickle, senior writer, Sports Illustrated: Cam has it right. Liberty National is almost a made-for-TV golf course. Great views, not much substance. But remember, it was a dead-flat toxic waste dump. What's going to spring up from that — Pebble Beach? Geoff said it all about design. It looks like "Potpourri for $100, Alex." Why plant trees when you've got those views? Every tree is a potential view-blocker in ten years. You don't want that. Go with the links look the whole way, don't half-ass it.

Hack: One thing to remember about Liberty. It's a young golf course. I imagine its personality will change some through the years. But with all of those blimp shots, Lady Liberty, the skyline, the bridges, my guess is the tourney will come back at some point. [Tour commissioner Tim] Finchem seems to dig the idea of a rotation. And, really, how many of these old-line New York/New Jersey clubs are going to want a PGA Tour event every year? Quaker? Winged Foot? Baltusrol? No, no and no.

John Garrity, contributing writer, Sports Illustrated: If, like me, you're watching on television in Kansas City, those Lady Liberty and NY skyline visuals are fantastic; Big Apple = Big Event. I love Westchester, too, but on television it is indistinguishable from any of the fine New Jersey courses they'll be playing on in the future. If they hadn't already spent an obscene amount building Liberty National, I'd tell them to throw another few million at it, make it a better course, and turn it into a Tour icon.

Shipnuck: Geoff, we're making you Tour czar for a day — where would you take the Barclay's? Gimme three or four dream venues.

Shackelford: I think they've got them lined up beautifully. Ridgewood, Plainfield and maybe Essex County which D. Hack played this week and which was just remodeled by my buddy Gil Hanse. Who is also consulting at Ridgewood and Plainfield and is doing his best to make next week's playoff site, TPC Boston, playable.

Shipnuck: That's our headline — G. Hanse saves the Barclays!

Shackelford: Actually, credit the tour's Steve Wenzloff for following Gil around and doing his part to explain to Tim Finchem why you can't play courses like Liberty National, no matter how much they pony up.

Garrity: Hanse's star is rising. I played his new Castle Stuart course in Inverness, Scotland, in July, and it is one spectacular links course. So if you thought Royal Dornoch and Nairn weren't reason enough to drive up to the Highlands — now you've got three great courses within easy reach.

Morfit: It's sort of amusing how much the Barclays keeps bouncing around. Seems like anyone has a shot to host. I hear Chelsea Piers is getting it next year.

Jim Gorant, senior editor, Sports Illustrated Golf Plus: Along those lines, I was informed earlier this week that the Barclays people have made several visits to Essex County CC, a Seth Raynor-Charles Banks layout in West Orange that's the oldest course in the Garden State. Based on that, and the announcement that Ridgewood and Plainfield would get the next two, I think we can expect this event to keep bouncing around Jersey.

Van Sickle: Despite the course, it was an exciting finish. Tiger Woods had a relatively short putt to win and didn't make it. I repeat, didn't make it. Heath Slocum had a 20-footer to win on the final hole and made it. I repeat, Heath Slocum made it. This was the opposite of Tiger's recent history. Usually, he makes and guys like Slocum miss. You think Y.E. Yang's PGA win is a turning point in Tiger history or was this another fluke — Tiger not putting well on greens he didn't care for?

Morfit: It's so fitting that with a murderers row awaiting a playoff at 8 under (Els, Harrington, Woods), Slocum would make that putt to win at 9. The way the whole year's gone.

Shipnuck: Slocum played great and made an all-world par on the 72nd hole to ice the victory. Is he potentially a big-time player or was this just one great week?

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