Sergio Garcia was born a continent and ocean away in Borriol, Spain, but he’s made up for lost time since moving to Austin, Texas.
A common phrase in Texas for those who weren’t conceived or delivered in the Lone Star State says, “I wasn’t born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could.”
Sergio Garcia was born a continent and ocean away in Borriol, Spain, but he’s made up for lost time since moving to Austin, Texas. After marrying former Golf Channel reporter Angela Akins, Garcia has become a staple at Texas golf functions, including Ben Crenshaw’s Save Muny gala to benefit Austin’s Lions Municipal Golf Course.
A number of other celebrities attended the gala at the Four Seasons Hotel in Austin, including comedian Ron White, former University of Texas football star Derrick Johnson, motivational speaker Kondo Speaks, and actresses Becca Tobin and Jamie-Lynn Sigler. “Bachelor” host Chris Harrison served as emcee of the event.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DB9K5Zau9nh/?hl=en
According to a release from the organization:
Fore Kids ATX 2024 benefitted organizations near and dear to Sergio and Angela’s hearts, including Dell Children’s Medical Center, Foster Village, The Muny Conservancy Austin Youth Golf Academy and The UGLI Foundation – organizations dedicated to providing youth medical care, support for foster children, anti-bullying solutions and youth golf community programming.
“You look here at this setting like this … it’s going to be super dramatic.”
LAKEWAY, Texas — Beau Welling stood on a spot perched high above Lake Travis on Tuesday and talked very little about what will likely be a breathtaking golf hole.
The architect of the Travis Club, which officially broke ground this week near Austin, Welling insisted what drew him to this project was the idea that a golf course can do more than just determine a handicap. In fact, he said in his first meetings about the property, the conversation had more to do with experience than it did layout.
“We didn’t talk about golf holes. We talked about what this project could mean to the community, even the greater community of Austin and the Hill Country and I immediately was attracted to that,” Welling said during his introductory speech on Tuesday, noting that at 54 his best playing days are behind him, but he still finds happiness on the golf course.
“The light bulb that went off was that golf was something that attracts people together to have these human moments, create memories and be together. And I think we all learn kind of going through the pandemic that we as a species like we need to be around other people. Well, golf is an incredible fosterer of that. And that’s kind of what we talked about in some of our initial conversations.
“I think about my life and half the memories of my father on the golf course, half my friends come from the golf course. And I think what’s driven our practice really is trying to take our craft, the golf course design and create golf experiences that allow people to have these human moments.”
Although he hails from South Carolina, Welling is familiar with the Lone Star State, having crafted one of the two golf courses at Fields Ranch, the PGA of America’s new masterpiece in Frisco, as well as Bluejack National outside Houston and Escondido near Marble Falls.
Cloudy day, but this will eventually be the fifth hole at Travis Club, a new golf community to be shaped by @beauwelling near Austin, Texas. The official groundbreaking ceremony was Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/rOjMXFYcy1
And while he talked primarily about relationships, he did add that the piece of property where the signature fifth hole sits — the site of Tuesday’s groundbreaking — should be special. The hole will likely max out at about 221 yards from the back tee, offering a spectacular view of the lake and its surroundings.
“You look here at this setting like this, when the lake fills back up it’s going to be super dramatic. It’s super dramatic right now with this big ravine, this big canyon,” Welling said. “Alister MacKenzie, the designer of Augusta National, Cypress Point and Royal Melbourne, he said that the chief consideration of any good golf hole is this idea of drama or overcoming a hazard and that all good golf holes have that. And so we will have tons and tons of drama throughout the experience that will be the Travis Club.”
Architect Beau Welling speaks on what will be the fifth tee at the Travis Club in Austin, Texas. (Photo: Errich Petersen for Travis Club)
The first phase of the project, which includes 106 home sites, is about half-sold and the remaining sites, which range from a half-acre to just under three acres, start at about $800,000.
“We are thrilled to introduce this new lake and golf community on Lake Travis. What sets this project apart is the unique natural beauty and recreational opportunities that Lake Travis offers. We have designed Travis Club intentionally by taking great care to preserve and complement the local environment and surroundings, with over 50% of the property dedicated to golf, open space, or conservation areas,” said Leisha Ehlert, CEO of Travis Club. “We have integrated the stunning lakeside views and lush landscapes with the development of exceptional facilities, providing members and their families the ability to enjoy the serenity of lakeside living while having access to a world-class golf and recreation experience.”
Crenshaw, Sergio Garcia, Kyle Chandler, Asleep at the Wheel and more were on hand for the event.
AUSTIN, Texas — Ben Crenshaw has worked on golf courses all over the globe, first as a two-time Masters champ and PGA Tour star and now as part of the illustrious Coore & Crenshaw golf course design team.
But one of the courses he’s worked hardest on, Lions Municipal Golf Course in this Texas capital city, still hasn’t seen the outcome he’s been hoping for.
On Sunday, Crenshaw and a cavalcade of stars were on hand at Austin City Limits’ Moody Theater, raising money as the Muny Conservancy attempts to purchase or lease the land and maintain it as a golf course and greenspace.
The land on which Muny sits is part of the 500 acres known as the Brackenridge Tract, all owned by the University of Texas. The course is considered the first fully desegregated municipal course south of the Mason-Dixon line and the city has leased 140 acres for Muny since 1936, paying UT about $500,000 a year. If the parties don’t come to an understanding, the university could be free to lease the property to another entity, develop it or sell it.
On Sunday, the group raised another $1 million for the cause, marking the third straight year the gala could be considered a major success. Musical talent included Asleep at the Wheel lead singer and Save Muny Board Member Ray Benson, Larry Gatlin, Jimmie Vaughan, and Gary P. Nunn.
But those on hand admitted some frustration as talks continue to lag, and university officials have done little to show which direction they might be leaning with the property.
“We’re hoping for a long-term resolution. We’d love to have a long-term lease,” Crenshaw said while flanked by his wife, Julie. “The city and the university need to get together somehow. And we need to extend it. It’s a hundred years, 100 years of success in our town. It’s not only a golf course, but it’s a great space. We’re growing so fast. In this town, we’re losing space rapidly. So it’s a multi-pronged asset. To me, it’s the health and vibrancy of the community. Because I think it raises good people.”
Among others on hand was actor Kyle Chandler of “Friday Night Lights” fame. Chandler has long been an advocate of the cause and he lives in Austin, where he has been known to play Lions with Crenshaw’s longtime manager and friend Scotty Sayers and others.
Chandler is hoping the fundraising and visibility will be enough to dissuade university officials from making a poor decision, but he’s also surprised this has carried on as long as it has.
“I’m always kind of shocked that it’s even an issue that this piece of property, this land, this piece of history would be an error on a piece of paper erased from the community,” Chandler said. “That is what it is. It’s community. It’s family. It is the history. It means a lot to people.
“And hopefully, the people involved in making these decisions can be a lot smarter than expecting people 20 years from now saying, ‘Man these strip malls are absolutely gorgeous, I hope they last another 80 years.'”
The more quiet the university gets, the more worried Muny friends get and the more at risk the future of the course becomes.
AUSTIN, Texas — For years now, we’ve heard the pleas, and the voices are getting louder. But so is the silence on the other end.
Save Muny. Preserve one of the oldest public golf courses in Texas, its staunch supporters say.
But this is about so much more than golf and keeping a venerable course built in 1924, the same year Royal-Memorial Stadium went up on the University of Texas campus. It’s about social history, about civil rights as the first desegregated public course in the South, about opportunities for young and old, about high school golfers and senior golfers, about teaching the game, about a university’s umbilical cord with a city that supports it, about urban green space, about doing the right thing.
And, yes, it’s about money. Alas, the rallying cry might be falling on deaf ears.
Lions Municipal Golf Course is every bit as much in danger today as when the city’s lease for the historic property on the north bank of Lady Bird Lake expired in May 2019. Ever since, under an agreement between landlord UT and the city of Austin, Muny has operated on a five-month rolling lease.
Basically a handshake agreement. And the more quiet the university gets, the more worried Muny friends get and the more at risk the future of the course becomes. The site is already listed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation as one of the 11 most endangered historic sites in America.
“The university has an opportunity to embrace this and understand what a great jewel it is and heal a part of the tortured past it has with the issue of race,” said Gary Bledsoe, the president of the Texas NAACP. “It’s a really big deal. This is an opportunity for the university not to continue its history of hostility toward African Americans. I don’t know if I’m disillusioned, but I have a great deal of concern and alarm.”
Ben Crenshaw reads a Golfweek article about a course in Palm Beach, Florida, that’s working with the PGA of America. Crenshaw is working to save Austin Lions Municipal Golf Course, the course he started playing as a kid. (Tim Schmitt/Golfweek)
Looking for a cause? Follow the money
The problem is money, as it always is. Muny sits on the 345-acre Brackenridge tract, and the 141 acres for the golf course could command a price tag ‘in excess of $750 million,” one prominent local real estate developer told the American-Statesman last week.
And the figure could grow even higher with density allowances and possible height variances that other large tracts in Austin have received. The developer said he could see the land being used for “high-density housing” but also including commercial offices and upscale retail stores. Such a deal would probably require keeping up to 20% of the land devoted to green space.
The Muny Conservancy is hoping at a minimum that the 18-hole golf course amid the thick canopy of oak, elm and ash trees tucked away in that West Austin neighborhood could survive as that mandated green space, even if UT wants to develop the rest of the land.
“The land where the golf course currently sits was donated to the university to benefit our students,” Kevin Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, told the Statesman in a statement Wednesday. “The Board of Regents and the university leadership take their responsibility to steward this gift and all gifts seriously. We will continue to work with the flagship to understand all options that accomplish the best long-term use of the asset, making sure our students for generations to come benefit along with the Austin community.”
Bob Ozer (Left), Ken Tiemann, Peter Barbour and General Marshall at Lions Municipal Golf Course in Austin, Texas.
Are you listening, Texas?
The best option is probably to keep Muny as it is. Simple as that.
So is the university actively seeking a buyer for this attractive property just minutes from downtown?
“We don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors,” said Scotty Sayers, Ben Crenshaw’s longtime manager and co-chair of the Muny Conservancy with Crenshaw. “They hope nine holes is what we settle for and they can develop the rest. But for a golf facility to thrive, to have it be a teaching facility and host competitive tournaments, it needs to be 18 holes.”
By the way, this year is the 100th anniversary of the course, established by the Lions Club. What better way to celebrate the land that in 2016 was designated as a civil rights landmark by the National Register of Historic Places than to announce a 100-year lease to the city?
Oh, yeah, it’s much more than a golf course.
It’s one of the first peacefully desegregated golf courses in America and became such in 1950 when two Black kids no older than 9 chose to play at Muny. After initially being stopped, they were given the famous go-ahead from Austin Mayor Taylor Glass. “Let them play,” he said.
“This was an enormous action by people of power,” Bledsoe said. “It was not just look the other way. They opened up the course. When African Americans found out they could play there, they drove in from all over the state. And this was 19 years before Julius Whittier,’ a tight end from San Antonio who became the first African American letterman for the UT football team.
Meanwhile, Heman Sweatt from Houston was becoming the first African American in the UT School of Law, thanks to a successful appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court after the university initially refused to admit him.
“This occurred in 1950, the same year Sweatt went to UT Law School and the dangers and fears he felt walking to law school,” Bledsoe said. “His first night, his tires were slashed. But he was supported by a group of white supporters who provided protection for him.’
That’s why Derrick Johnson, the national president and CEO of the NAACP, stopped by recently to declare his organization’s full support for saving Muny. He recognized the significance of preserving history and appreciating it and learning from it.
“Golf is a game of power, a vehicle that has been utilized to advance business, policy, and build relationships with some of the most influential individuals in our society,” Johnson said. “As we work to advance progress for our community, it is crucial that we preserve and create new pathways for Black America to have access to the game of golf.”
Amen. Are you listening, Texas?
Scotty Sayers, left, and Ben Crenshaw enjoy a laugh during the Imagine Muny gala at ACL Live’s Moody Theater on Sunday night. The event netted around $800,000 for renovations at Lions Municipal Golf Course. (Photo courtesy of the Muny Conservancy)
Lions, UT are at a historic crossroads
Hey, February just happens to be Black History Month, too. What better timing could there be to preserve a place in history? Like the Meadowood tobacco farm in Connecticut where a young Martin Luther King Jr. worked during summers and was inspired to become one of our nation’s biggest social activists. Like the Pullman National Monument in Chicago celebrating the birthplace of the first Black labor union. Like historical black districts and homes.
Others have joined the chorus of voices lending their support.
Muny Conservancy will sponsor a third annual, celebrity-filled gala March 24 with another live auction that has already raised more than $1 million. They need it to finance needed repairs such as paint jobs for the pro shop and a new roof, but it’s hard to go full bore to raise money without any assurances the course will survive.
Muny remains the most used public golf course in the city, with more than 65,000 rounds every year. Last year’s participation rose 6%. It’s also home to 124 golf tournaments a year and 58 nongolf events. Where would those be held?
Mayor Kirk Watson is on board. So is actor Kyle Chandler. Angela Garcia, the daughter of All-America quarterback Marty Akins, and husband Sergio endorse Save Muny. Heck, maybe Lions should invite Travis Kelce and Taylor Swift to get married on the Muny grounds.
And the number of supporters is growing.
Clearly, UT needs the money. Wink, wink. After all, the American-Statesman and USA Today recently reported that the school had generated $271 million in annual athletic revenue, including $122 million in profit from football alone. This is a school estimated to have a $42.3 billion endowment, second only to Harvard.
Muny has been recognized by the National Register of Historic Places as an important civil rights landmark. Consider that upwards of 95,000 sites in the country are designated as historically significant, and just 32 of them, including Muny, are dedicated to civil rights or Black causes.
Heck, former UT golf coach Tom Penick and his legendary brother, Harvey Penick, held Longhorns weekly golf practices at Muny for 30 years. Heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis got in a couple of rounds there. Ben Hogan has a hole named for him. Golf Hall of Famers Tom Kite and Crenshaw learned the game there.
We haven’t even discussed the enormous traffic gridlock that would result from a commercial development on the property.
We don’t need less green space in the city. We need more. It’s part of what makes Austin Austin. These sacred grounds are two years older than Zilker Park, for Pete’s sake.
“We’re hoping the community lets Texas know how important Muny is,” Bledsoe said. “This is something we want to keep. It will take that kind of outcry to really grab their attention. This course benefits everyone.”
History and heritage collide at this very public and significant intersection, and we wait to see what UT truly values as it prepares to join the SEC and tell those schools what Texas is all about.
“UT can come out looking like heroes,” Sayers said. “We want everybody to win.”
David McLay Kidd will build 18 holes along the Pedernales River in Hill Country outside Austin, Texas.
Scottish architect David McLay Kidd, designer of dozens of courses around the world that include the original layout at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and the highly ranked Gamble Sands in Washington, has signed on to build his first course in the southern United States.
Kidd will design the course for the new, private Loraloma community in the Lake Travis area outside Austin, Texas. The layout is scheduled to open to preview play in late 2024 with a full opening in the spring of 2025. Kidd will break ground on the course this month.
Loraloma will be a 2,200-acre masterplan community in the Hill Country, built with a goal of respecting the land’s natural beauty, as stated in a news release announcing the plans for golf. Areté Collective is the development company in charge, and plans call for premium amenities including fitness, wellness, culinary, equestrian and nature-based experiences along with golf. Turnkey homes will range from two-bedroom to five-bedroom cottages, villas and estates, with a selection of custom homesites.
An artist’s rendering shows how the David McLay Kidd-designed course at Loraloma will look near Austin, Texas. (Courtesy of the Areté Collective)
“The Loraloma landscape is vastly more visually inspiring than most of what exists in the Austin area today,” McLay Kidd said in the news release. “Our goal is to open up this compelling landscape to golfers for a world-class experience, and I will tread very lightly to preserve and protect this land so that it can be enjoyed and embraced for generations to come.”
Several of the holes will play along cliffs above the Pedernales River while others are placed atop peaks offering dramatic elevation changes and views of the Hill Country and Balcones Escarpment. The course is slated to play to a par of 72 at 7,060 yards across 120 acres. The greens will be bent grass, and the fairways will be zoysia.
An artist’s rendering shows how the clubhouse at Loraloma will look near Austin, Texas. (Courtesy of the Areté Collective)
“Areté Collective is thrilled to partner with such an accomplished architect to bring this course to life, and we hope that every member and resident who plays golf at Loraloma feels McLay Kidd’s sense of exploration and adventure while exploring this vibrant landscape,” said Tom Hogan, co-founder and CFO of Areté Collective and a former CFO of Augusta National Golf Club. “The rules of golf require the player to play the ball as it lies, and the beauty of the Loraloma course is the fact that he has designed a sustainable course around the existing lay of the land.”
StrackaLine offers hole-by-hole maps for Austin Country Club, site of the 2023 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play on the PGA Tour.
Austin Country Club’s course, site of the 2023 WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play on the PGA Tour, was designed by Pete Dye and opened in 1984.
The club was founded in 1899 but changed sites several times before building the current course. The layout has been the site of the Match Play since 2016, and this will be the last year of the event at the club.
The course will play to 7,108 yards with a par of 71 for the Match Play. The PGA Tour has advised the course might look a little different this year, as an ice storm in February damaged more than 1,200 trees.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the pros face this week.
When he saw a second appearance at the Tito’s Shorties Classic pop up on his schedule, the affable Higgs was eager to let loose.
After finishing tied for 14th at the Masters last April, Harry Higgs has seen the walls of competitive golf close in a little tighter, much of the fun of a game he grew up adoring squeezed dry.
He does what he’s supposed to, hitting the range for hours on end, and following with a thorough routine of putting and chipping drills, often at his home club of Trinity Forest near Dallas.
But even Higgs, known for his gregarious personality and insightful one-liners, admits that some of the fun has been sucked out while competing at the game’s highest level. He missed five straight cuts after leaving Augusta and lost his Tour card after a disappointing year that saw him finish just once inside the top 10.
So when he saw a second appearance at the Tito’s Shorties Classic pop up on his schedule, the affable Higgs was eager to let loose and have a little fun.
The event, held at Butler Pitch and Putt in downtown Austin, Texas, is a four-person skins game on a postage stamp in the heart of one of the most vibrant cities in the country. Drinks in hand. Trash talk flying. Dogs and PGA Tour pros walking together. And in the end, perhaps just the potion Higgs needed after a rough stretch.
The event took place in November but will air on Golf Channel on Jan. 11, 2023, at 7 p.m. ET, with Amanda Renner and the Bob Does Sports crew handling commentary. Tito’s donated to the charity each was playing for, with a total donation of $290,000.
“I went on a guys trip with four guys from my club, and I’ve done a few other things for fun here or there, but every time I do something like this, I think and say aloud to basically anybody that will listen, and obviously knowing me that turns into everybody, that holy s—, it is so nice to be reminded of it, but this is supposed to be fun, right?” Higgs said.
“One of the things that surprised me the most in, now, this is now my fourth year, how quickly this turned into a job, which I probably knew was coming, but maybe not as quick as it did.”
The Shorties Classic doesn’t feel like a job, even though he got paid for the event, along with returning player Joel Dahmen and newbies Keith Mitchell and Beau Hossler.
Joel Dahmen raises his hands during the Tito’s Shorties Classic, which will air on Golf Channel while Keith Mitchell and Beau Hossler watch. (Photo courtesy PGA Tour Entertainment)
Higgs and Dahmen will forever be linked through their half-naked escapade at the WM Phoenix Open last year and Mitchell is an old friend who Higgs often lived with while playing on the PGA Tour Latinoamérica. Hossler is a University of Texas grad and the player Higgs called “the smartest guy in the foursome, although he thinks he’s even smarter than he is.”
And according to Higgs, this year’s version of the event lives up to the debut, which featured Pat Perez getting shutout and Harold Varner III winning the top prize for charity by sinking a 15-footer on the final hole with one hand on his putter and the other wrapped around a beach ball.
“This is why we got into the game or anybody got into the game was to hang out with their friends. You know, to be outside and maybe travel to some fancy places. But you don’t travel around. You just go to a place like Butler, because, you know, you might just live just down the street. That’s why we all got into the game, was to have fun with our friends,” Higgs said. “Obviously, enjoy some competition here and there. But like, oh s—, just go have fun with your friends. That’s exactly what this was.”
Higgs is known for fun. And he hopes his game is trending in the right direction after making the cut in his last two events, both sponsor’s exemptions. The SMU product shot a second-round 62 at Mayakoba en route to a T-31 and then followed with a T-21 at the RSM Classic.
And while he can’t reveal how he played at Butler, it fits that he might have shown off the skills that helped him to 13 top-25 finishes in his first two seasons on Tour.
Most important, he thinks the foursome kept it clean enough to give Golf Channel a healthy 22 minutes of programming, something he worried about last year.
“I think we did a pretty decent job at entertaining folks this year, certainly in person and I would imagine it’ll come across on TV as somewhat entertaining,” Higgs said. “Last year I couldn’t believe they found 30 minutes without curse words based on how we had gone. I was shocked when I saw it, I was like holy cow, they didn’t have us cursing at all, because we cursed the entire time.”
“I’d heard some stories about Butler before I agreed to play here last year but I’d never been. I had some friends in Austin, or here in Dallas who got wind that we were going there and basically gave me a heads up,” he said. “But every major city, or not so major city, needs something like this. Butler kind of makes the event, right? There were probably, I would say, close to a thousand people in there, kind of walking around and hanging out, and to a man or woman, they were either saying it out loud or you can see it expressed on their face, how proud they were that we were there at their local pitch ‘n putt.
“I do not believe that PGA Tour pros should necessarily be in the business of growing the game. That gets talked about a lot and I’ve always been a little like, eh, you shouldn’t listen to us. But if you ask me, we need more courses more things like Butler. And you know, maybe having us come and highlight those courses for the area, and obviously for a good cause like we did, that will certainly help grow the game.”
With a big battle in the Big 12, ESPN’s College GameDay was in Austin, Texas as the Longhorns host TCU. It’s a top 25 matchup, one with College Football Playoff implications. The picking crew of Desmond Howard, Pat McAfee, Kirk Herbstreit were joined by Master’s Winner Jordan Spieth, a Texas alum to make their choices for week 11 below.
In addition to “College GameDay,” Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff” will be in Austin. This is very interesting because Alabama hasn’t played on Fox in mroe than a decade, so it will be the first time this crew covers a Tide game.
While many are disappointed this game did not receive a prime-time slot, it is a can’t-miss matchup.
Pat McAfee is joining College GameDay Built by The Home Depot as an analyst as part of a new multi-year agreement with ESPN. McAfee wil be a full-time member of college football’s pregame show, beginning this Saturday, in Austin, Texas before the Alabama-Texas game. pic.twitter.com/wIWGw4KhD8
Are you ready for Big Noon Saturday? Big Noon Saturday. Powerhouses collide as Bryce Young and the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide take on the Texas Longhorns. At 10 eastern with the Big Noon Kickoff crew live from Austin, and then it's 'Bama, Texas at noon eastern on FOX! pic.twitter.com/JuRISKQuvz
Contact/Follow us @RollTideWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Alabama news, notes and opinion. You can also follow Sam Murphy on Twitter @SamMurphy02.
Let us know your thoughts, comment on this story below. Join the conversation today!
The $375 million dollar Moody Center is just days away from its grand opening on April 20. The future home of Texas basketball holds upwards of 15,000 people and will be one of the top-end arenas in college basketball.
The University of Texas announced the project in 2018, partnering up with Oak View Group. The Moody Center is set to replace the historic, 45-year-old Frank Erwin Center.
It is located on campus right off highway I-35 near Darrell K Royal-Memorial Stadium and Mike A. Myers Stadium.
The Moody Center has already scheduled to host an exciting list of performers in 2022. John Mayer, Bon Jovi and Justin Bieber are among the notables coming to Austin in the near future.
Before the official ribbon cutting session takes place on Tuesday, the media got a first look at the completed Moody Center during a tour on Monday afternoon. Here are some of the cool new features fans can look forward to seeing:
