Muni Time In Houston — Everyone’s New To Memorial Park

PGA Tour players get to know their favorite stops, the courses that set up well for them, the places that suit whatever their style of play might be.

But when the Tour comes to a new place, well, everyone’s in the “learning” mode.

This week’s Houston Open has flourished out in the suburbs but now the field will be playing in the city limits thanks to a huge renovation at municipal Memorial Park.  It cost just short of $35 million.

Those big bucks came from the Houston Astros Foundation, a 501-C-3 founded by Jim Crane, who happens to own the Astros.

Crane hired famed architect Tom Doak to oversee the renovation.

So the task came with a unique set of problems.  Doak had to make it playable for a municipal player base but also had to make it able to challenge PGA Tour-caliber players.

Doak brought in four-time major champion Brooks Koepka as a sounding board, an advisor if you will.  Both agreed up front that defending par against today’s tour players wasn’t something at the top of the priority list.  The one thing they agreed on was a run of finishing holes that could create some excitement, late round drama, if you will.

Another milestone this week is the return of spectators to a Tour event for the first time since the pandemic cancelled The Players Championship.  The number will be limited to 2,500 each day but at least it’s enough to create some noise.   “We wish we could have 30,000 people out here and we unfortunately can’t, that’s what we’re dealing with,” tournament director Colby Callaway said. “But what we’ll do is we’ll create a really fun base.  The people that have the opportunity to come out will walk away saying, ‘Wow, what a great golf course, great routing.’ It’s so much more user friendly and hopefully, word of mouth will spread and we’ll create that grass-roots campaign with those fans and really start something special inside the loop and inside the city limits.”

They are indeed in the city limits.  The former site,  the Golf Club of Houston, was in Humble, Texas.  Many of the players this year will stay in hotels in the Galleria area of downtown.

One player who is familiar with the course is former University of Texas golfer Jhonny Vegas, who lives nearby at The Woodlands and he has had more than a few calls from fellow tour players.  “Nearly everyone I have spoken to, they have asked me about the course,” Vegas said. “I tell them it’s a championship course, a new golf course that has some growing up to do, but it’s going to be a phenomenal venue. You combine that with right in the middle of the city where guys and their families are going to have a great time, you’re going to have guys coming back.”

In addition to a totally different Memorial Park Golf Course brought about by Doak, a tour-quality practice facility expansion for the pros was recently completed. The Chevron education center, which will be utilized all but one week of the year, brings a program of science, technology, engineering and math to underserved children. A First Tee program will be moved to Memorial Park.  The center will serve as a locker-room for the players.

The course will play around 7,300 yards for the tournament — it can be shortened or lengthened, depending on how the Tour  sets it up.

Players to watch this week include the world’s No. 1 — Dustin Johnson, No. 10 Tyrrell Hatton, former world’s No. 1 Brooks Koepka (now 12th), 15th-ranked Adam Scott, No. 17 Tony Finau and the man who had a lot of momentum before he caught COVID-19, 30th-ranked Scottie Scheffler.

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