The PGA Tour shifts to Texas for two weeks before the Masters arrives, though Scottie Scheffler will not be joining the field that tees up for the Texas Children’s Houston Open on Thursday.
Scheffler withdrew early this week citing family reasons. He and his wife Meredith are expecting their second child.
The field loses a bit of luster without the Texan who happens to be the world’s best golfer on site at Houston’s Memorial Park Golf Course. The top player in terms of both FedEx Cup points and world ranking is Chris Gotterup, a name few casual fans had heard of a year ago.
But Gotterup is one of the tour’s potential breakout stars after he beat Rory McIlroy at the Scottish Open last summer and won two of the first four tournaments this season, the Sony Open in Hawaii and WM Phoenix Open.
The 26-year-old’s fast rise has helped him qualify for the majors — most importantly, his first Masters.
“It’s strange in the fact that, especially I think (at the) Players last year, I felt like completely lost in terms of just really struggling with my game, no consistency whatsoever,” Gotterup said on Wednesday. “Then to come back a year later and be ranked inside the top 10. I had three wins during that stretch. Just cool in the fact that I feel like I haven’t changed much in my world. I just feel like I have put my nose down and worked hard.”
Just three top-25 players in the world rankings are in this field, but scratch beneath that surface and you’ll find a number of other familiar names.
Shane Lowry of Ireland is scheduled to tee it up for the sixth time in seven weeks, a month after fumbling a Sunday lead at the Cognizant Classic and missing the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players.
Sam Burns, a native of Louisiana, is three years removed from his last win on tour, the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play in nearby Austin.
The defending champ is Australia’s Min Woo Lee, who found the PGA Tour winner’s circle for the first time when he fended off both Scheffler and Gary Woodland for a one-shot win. Lee survived a water ball on the 16th hole Sunday as time ran out on his pursuers.
“I made a decent bogey … Scottie made birdie as well, so then it became one shot,” Lee recalled. “It was nice to have a bit of a cushion in the last two holes. And then yeah, holed a — not holed, but nearly holed a really long putt on 18. It felt like I holed it. Yeah, it was just a nice sigh of relief having a tap-in.”
Lee’s 20-under-par 260 broke the tournament record.
Since the tournament moved to Memorial Park, there have been six rounds of 8-under-par 62, including Scheffler, Woodland and Finland’s Sami Valimaki just last year.
The par-70, 7,475-yard track is a municipal course that underwent a renovation in 2019 with consulting from none other than Brooks Koepka — years before the PGA Tour added the course to its rotation, and before Koepka’s four-year stint with LIV Golf.
Now Koepka will play competitive rounds at the course he helped update.
“This is the first time I’ve seen it in kind of the overseed, and the golf course a little more mature, so it’s fun to see how much it’s developed,” Koepka said on Wednesday. “… This is kind of how I envisioned the golf course being played when we were walking it and doing it. With the overseed, it will be a fun test this week.”
