Excitement par for the course

Memorial Park welcomes fans as players vie for $1.35M prize

No restrictions on attendance. A setup for fan experience on hole 15 similar to the famous 16th hole at Phoenix. A good number of the world’s top golfers playing on a special piece of property.

There’s plenty to get excited about for the 2021 Houston Open golf tournament, which starts Thursday and will be played for the second straight year at historic Memorial Park Golf Course. This time with a full force of fans.

“We’re excited to see this show really happen for the first time at Memorial Park the way we’ve envisioned it for three years,” tournament director Colby Callaway said.

The 74th Houston Open runs Thursday through Sunday. The winner receives $1,350,000 of the $7.5 million purse as well as the prized 500 FedExCup points.

Four-time major winner Brooks Koepka is back. The 132-player field includes Shane Lowry, Jason Day, Scottie Scheffler, Patrick Reed, Tony Finau, Lee Westwood, Gary Woodland and defending champion Carlos Ortiz.

“We’re able to draw here because we take care of the players, and it’s a fun place to be,” Astros owner Jim Crane said.

Houston-based Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the tournament title sponsor in support of the Astros Golf Foundation, which Crane founded in 2018.

“We’ve got a bunch of guys that really make this fall event what it can be, what it should be,” Callaway said. “We’ve got this fun group of players, lot of major winners.”

It took effort and work from a number of people to get the PGA Tour tournament moved from Humble to the heart of Houston after years at Golf Club of Houston.

“This is where we wanted to be,” Crane said. “The key to this event is to get it in a venue where people will show up. We got some fun things for the week. All the excess capital goes back into the community and the various charities.”

This year, the tournament will have a stadium atmosphere on the risk-reward par-3 15th hole. A small green with a great deal of slope. The hole is circled by hospitality areas and bleachers similar to the famed hole at the Waste Management Open in Phoenix.

“Number 15 is an unbelievable experience, real exciting, real loud,” said Giles Kibbe, president of the Astros Golf Foundation. “It’s going to be fun and loud watching the players hit to a difficult par 3. We’re trying to create a very exciting atmosphere there.”

The short 15th hole stretches out to play at 145 holes. The 16th hole at Phoenix houses 16,000 people. In time Crane would like to see the Houston Open’s enthusiastic hole rival the one at Phoenix.

“We got that ideal from the Phoenix Open, where it’s got a very big gross and we think we can catch them at some point for the highest-grossed tournament in the PGA,” Crane said.

Last year’s Houston Open was limited to around 3,000 fans a day because of COVID-19 protocol. This year there is no ceiling on fan attendance. General admission tickets remain available.

Two of the hospitality areas on hole 15 are for the general public. The final four holes will be full of hospitality tents. Structures have been added on No. 9 for general public as well as upper-end hospitality.

“It’s going to be electric; the crowd’s coming,” Callaway said.

In its third year away from the PGA Tour’s spring schedule, the Houston Open is proving to be one of the premier fall events. A good number of players now play the fall portion of the 2021-22 schedule to begin accumulating important FedExCup points.

“The way the FedExCup works now, they can’t skip all the fall tournaments, they’ve rearranged their schedule,” Crane said. “The guys have got to get some rounds in the fall and we’re trying to create a place that they want to come every year, the bigname players and create a great field for the fans to come out and see them.”

Other players in the field include Sam Burns, Jason Kokrak and Adam Scott.

“There’s a ton of FedEx points,” Callaway said. “When they threw all the points in the fall, they guys started to realize how important it is not to get behind.”

During the past three years the Astros, as well as donors, sponsors and community leaders have poured more than $34 million into facilities and upgrades into architect Tom Doak’s renovation of Memorial

Park Golf Course.

“It’s going to be a really fun event for the public,” Kibbe said. “We’re hoping everyone comes out; we have a great field.”

Last year was a learning curve for the Astros Golf Foundation, which was running the Houston Open for only a second time and first at Memorial Park.

There’s been several tweaks of the course, including the second and ninth greens. Hole No. 9 went from three bunkers on the left to one and softened the left area that was too penal, making it more receptive for balls landing. On No. 2, square footage was added on the front of the green, making more space for pin locations on the front side.

There’s also been around 75 trees added to the course.

The course plays extremely difficult when it’s firm and fast, like it played over the first two days last year when scores were high. The course has been softened. Depending how the greens are reacting because of weather issues, tee boxes will be adjusted throughout the week.

A public golf course, Memorial Park was well received last year by the golfers. The tour event returned to Memorial last year for the first time since 1963.

Lowry came off the 18th green on the final day last year telling Calloway that Memorial Park has one of the best tracts on tour. The course will continue to mature each year.

“The field’s good for a reason; they’re not going to come if the golf course isn’t very good,” Callaway said.