Jordan Spieth, the three-time major champ, went off early with what has become a familiar pattern: alternating amazing and horrific shots.
HOUSTON — He’s back in his home state and Jordan Spieth certainly looks comfortable.
The three-time major champ went off early at Memorial Park Golf Course on Thursday and the final event before the Masters started with what has become a familiar pattern for Spieth: alternating amazing and horrific shots.
For example, at the 522-yard par-4 first hole, Spieth pushed his opening drive of the day wildly right. No problem, however, as the 11-time PGA Tour winner rebounded with a solid approach and then stuck a chip to three feet to save par.
Jordan Spieth’s first hole at the Vivint Houston Open.
Spieth hasn’t cracked the top 35 in the first four events of the new season, missing cuts at both the Safeway Open and U.S. Open. He finished T-38 at the CJ Cup and then T-41 at the Zozo Championship and has slipped to 75th in the Official World Golf Ranking and 99th in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings.
But Spieth looked like the former World No. 1 as he crafted a beautiful iron into a trick green, then dropped the putt.
Spieth followed with another birdie on No. 3 to take the early lead out of the gate. Of course, with Spieth’s recent track record, it’s difficult to know what will come next. Spieth entered the week as a 50-1 longshot to win the Vivint Houston Open, which is being played at Memorial Park for the first time since 1963.
In advance of the Vivint Houston Open, the former World No. 1 beamed while discussing the project at Memorial Park.
HOUSTON — Don’t mistake Brooks Koepka’s involvement in the Memorial Park Golf Course renovation project as meaning the four-time major champion was an equal partner in converting the Houston municipal course into the gem it is today.
The $34 million reboot funded through a foundation headed by Houston Astros owner and Koepka’s friend Jim Crane was largely handled by Tom Doak, the masterful architect who has a bevy of top courses on his resume, including a pair at Bandon Dunes.
But Koepka was indeed a team member on the project, which took nearly a year to execute once shovels entered the ground. And when asked about it on Wednesday in advance of the Vivint Houston Open, the former World No. 1 bragged at length about the process — before quickly explaining his part in this production was minimal.
Brooks Koepka on the putting green at Memorial Park Golf Course on Wednesday in advance of the Vivint Houston Open.
“I’ll be honest, I give Tom all the credit. He came up with 99.9 percent of (the ideas) and I just kind of threw in a couple ideas here and there,” Koepka said. “He’s a hell of an architect and designer, so it was fun to work with him.”
OK, so Koepka can’t take credit for many of the details about the revamp, one that has converted Memorial Park into the second municipal golf course on the PGA Tour schedule.
But the Florida State product admits something stirred in him while seeing the process through. Koepka took the gig simply to appease his buddy Crane, but as it wore on, he warmed to the concept of watching the course mature.
“To be honest with you, I had no aspirations of ever being like, ‘I want to design golf courses,’ — nothing,” Koepka said. “But then being asked to do this, it’s a really cool idea. Obviously, I wanted to help Jim out. I think any time you can play a hand in having some opinion on a course that we’re going to play out here, I think it’s unique, it doesn’t happen very often.
“And it’s been cool just to see it evolve. I know this golf course is quite difficult. It’s quite long. You’ll see some high numbers especially if the wind gets up, it kind of resembles a little bit of a U.S. Open I think some people would say, which I feel like I’ve done pretty good at.”
Of course, Koepka’s not in Houston to simply marvel at the work he’s helped produce. This week’s event is largely a tune-up for next week’s Masters, and Koepka believes his body is finally in a place where it can help him secure that coveted green jacket.
He’s played just one Tour event since August, finishing T-27 at the CJ Cup in Las Vegas two weeks ago, but said on Wednesday that all systems are go for this week and beyond.
“I feel great, I feel better than I did even three weeks ago, two weeks ago, whatever I did at Vegas. That’s behind me now. I feel as good as ever and just go out and play,” he said. “I need some reps just because it feels like it’s been so long. That’s why we’re playing this week.”
But since he’s here, Koepka will certainly enjoy playing holes he helped craft. For example, his idea was to make a strong finishing stretch that could tighten up a leaderboard on Sunday. Doak helped make that vision a reality — No. 15 is a short par 3 that will punish players who miss the green, 16 is a reachable par 5 and 17 is a risk-reward short par 4.
And for someone who never saw course design or management in his future, Koepka certainly talked like an architect when he discussed some of Memorial Park’s best features.
“I’ve seen so many different versions of this place from the first, I guess, architectural designs to basically playing it today. I mean, there’s been I don’t know how many versions of it, but it’s been quite interesting to see the little things change, the subtleties that maybe a lot of people would never notice,” he said. “It’s been fun, I’ve enjoyed the process. It’s been cool just to put my, I guess, hand in something else other than just playing golf.”
Memorial Park is beautiful, and will be on display all week for the PGA Tour’s Vivint Houston Open.
HOUSTON — The font size on the sign that adorns the Memorial Park Golf Course driving range ball dispenser is so large it’s not to be missed. The letters, in bold and all caps, scream at those dropping a token in the slot below:
STRICTLY IRONS ONLY TODAY
This inner-ring Houston municipal golf course’s fancy new driving range — one that resembles a public school version of Topgolf — has yet to allow patrons the opportunity to rear back and take unhealthy cuts with the driver of their choice.
Of course, the sign comes with a backstory. The new double-decker structure was built in advance of this week’s Vivint Houston Open, the first time Memorial Park has welcomed a PGA Tour event since John F. Kennedy was president, and weekend warriors who frequent the municipal course had been hitting range balls into a neighboring tennis court even before the rebuild. The extended distance capabilities from upper-deck stalls would have made tennis patrons sitting ducks.
A sign on Memorial Park’s driving range ball dispenser.
The court has since been moved and new netting has been installed in time for this week’s tournament.
But the course’s renaissance, one that has ties to the city’s baseball team, has a million quirky stories similar to that of the tennis court ambushes. For example, longtime Memorial Park patron Carlos Trejo said a creek that’s now one of the defining features was largely hidden under brush and tree cover for decades. Despite playing the course for 30-plus years, Trejo said he was one of many consistent players who had no idea the creek even existed.
“Now it seems like it’s everywhere you turn,” he said. “That just shows you how different this course is now.”
This week, a strong PGA Tour field will witness the rebirth of Memorial Park Golf Course first-hand as a revamped schedule has backed the Vivint Houston Open up against the first-ever fall Masters, meaning the world’s best and brightest are honing their games before the calendar year’s final major. It’s a familiar spot in the batting order — the Houston Open preceded the Masters 10 times from 2007 through 2018 — but in an unfamiliar season.
And while Augusta National’s exclusivity has always been part of its charm, watching PGA Tour pros on a municipal course with greens fees that dip as low as $21 should provide an interesting contrast for golf fans who aren’t privy to private clubs.
Memorial Park is beautiful, thanks to architect Tom Doak’s exhaustive work— a $34 million renovation funded through a foundation headed by Houston Astros’ owner Jim Crane.
But it’s accessible, as well. The price to walk the track — and Trejo insists it was made for walking — never gets higher than $38, even on holidays. And Memorial Park becomes just the second municipal course on the current PGA Tour schedule, the other being Torrey Pines, the host of the Farmers Insurance Open.
For longtime patrons, getting the chance to see world-class golfers in person — and the PGA Tour is allowing 2,500 fans on-site per day for this event — is like a dream come true.
“I wanted to volunteer because I wanted to see how this was gonna work and how these guys would play the same holes I play,” he said. “I mean, this is like finding out your kid’s going to be on national TV. We’ve seen the birth of this from what it was two years ago to what it is now, and it’s just been awesome.”
The history
Memorial Park has always been the crown jewel of the Houston public golf scene. Originally built as a nine-hole course in 1912, an extensive redesign by John Bredemus (who had co-founded the Texas Professional Golfers Association in 1922) led to its “official” 18-hole opening in 1936.
From 1947 to 1963, the course hosted a PGA Tour event 14 times. Arnold Palmer won it once and Jack Nicklaus had a second-place finish. Famously, 1965 PGA Championship winner Dave Marr asked that his ashes be spread at Memorial Park — even though he never won there, he credited the track for shaping his career.
And while it maintained its status as one of the state’s top municipal courses for decades after the Tour left in 1964, the big names were gone, heading like so many other amenities to the suburbs. It appeared Memorial Park’s day as a top-flight course had come and gone.
Ups and downs and the rebirth
The muni was due for a refresh in the 1990s and the city found $7 million to provide an adequate if underwhelming facelift to the property. Then, a few years ago, Astros’ owner Jim Crane starting asking about the potential for hosting a PGA Tour event at Memorial. The Astros Golf Foundation was born.
According to a release from AGF:
The Astros Golf Foundation took ownership of the tournament in 2018 with three key objectives: to ensure the PGA TOUR event remained in Houston, to bring the tournament back to its glory and into the heart of the city, and to provide much-needed resources and funds to the citizens and community of Houston through park improvements, charitable fundraising and investing in youth. These objectives were achieved through a $34 million renovation to Memorial Park Golf Course completed in two years. The renovations include an upgrade of the municipal course to PGA Tour standards, construction of a short course for First Tee participants, an expanded driving range, and a new clubhouse that will serve First Tee Houston programming throughout the year.
The city of Houston approved a plan to allow for the renovation, and in January of 2019 the work began in earnest. Doak was brought in as the architect and Brooks Koepka provided input on the course’s revamped design, focusing on a tough closing stretch that should make for climactic tournament golf.
Some 10 months later, the renovation was complete and local players were introduced to a new version of an old friend.
“It was a completely different course,” Trejo said. “They took a bunch of trees out and it changed the way the course played and looked. It used to be when you played here, you kind of forgot you were in the city. They took those trees out, and now you can see everything. They just knocked it out of the park.”
Jhonattan Vegas, who is playing this week’s event on a sponsor’s exemption, lives just north of the city in The Woodlands, and he’s long been a backer of the Memorial Park project.
“Nearly everyone I have spoken to, they have asked me about the course,” Vegas told the Houston Chronicle. “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.”
And to Vegas’ point, the city’s towering skyline is noticeable throughout the walk. For example, the 64-story Williams Tower is clearly visible from the first tee box, a striking but sensible image on a course that sees about 60,000 rounds per year.
Many of the pros on hand for Tuesday’s practice round were getting their first look at Memorial Park. Scottie Scheffler was asked for his take on the course, and the former University of Texas star said he expects the ride to be a fun one.
“I have not been around this place yet. My caddie went around the front nine, he said the greens are real undulated and very firm. When you put in new Bermuda, it’s extremely firm and I’m assuming that’s what the greens on the course are going to be like because the course is pretty much
brand new,” Scheffler said. “So I think it will be challenging hitting approach shots into these greens just the way they’ll be bouncing and it should be a fun, exciting week.”
