The PGA Tour makes its long awaited return to one of the more underrated golf courses on the schedule. A strong field will get a proper warmup to Augusta National this week at Memorial Park Golf Course for the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open. As always, here is your early deep dive on the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open and a preview of how to bet.
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2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open Preview
The Field
Highlighting the field is Scottie Scheffler. With his trusty new Spider Tour X TaylorMade putter to pair with the usual stellar ball striking, Scottie Scheffler is back to his winning ways. He comes into the Houston Open with two straight wins at Bay Hill and TPC Sawgrass. If the hot putting continues, he’ll win once again at the Houston Open.
Other notables in the field include Tony Finau, Wyndham Clark, Will Zalatoris, Sahith Theegala, and Jason Day.
For the full field, click here.
The Golf Course
For a few years, it looked like the Houston Open was on its last legs. The tournament was on life support after bouncing around from golf course to golf course. It lost critical sponsors. And when it was punted to the fall swing, hope was lost.
But then two key things happened in 2018. First, the Houston Astros’ foundation stepped in to save the tournament financially. Second, they agreed with the city of Houston that if they renovated one of the most famous public golf courses in America, the PGA Tour would come to Downtown Houston.
After that, the city of Houston got to work to find the perfect architect to restore Memorial Park Golf Course. Despite accommodating more than 60,000 rounds per year, the golf course was in desperate need of a facelift.
The golf course had become overgrown with trees and with all the foot traffic the greens on the municipal golf course were in poor shape. With the pressure on, the city needed to make a big splash with a big name to restore the golf course to its former glory.
In comes Tom Doak, a legendary architect who has a wonderful imagination in his golf course construction. He’s responsible for several bucket list golf destinations around the world, such as Pacific Dunes and Old MacDonald (part of the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort), Streamsong, Cape Kidnappers, Tara Iti, and the restoration of Pasatiempo. His profile is the stuff of legends.
But his design style wasn’t one that’s conducive for professionals. Doak courses also trade length for intricacies and character to deliver a wonderful and challenging golf experience for amateurs. For touring professionals, however, they’re able to hit it over all these quirks and overpower the place.
However, Memorial Park provided a canvas that was enough to bring his principles to a professional event. The golf course could be stretched to 7,300 yards. This is plenty long enough to handle the powerful players on the PGA Tour. Doak also brought in Brooks Koepka for consultation services into what he likes and doesn’t like about the golf courses he plays on the PGA Tour.
Through their collaboration, Memorial Park was reborn:
The duo of Koepka and Doak gave the golf course a massive facelift. In all, eight greens were repositioned. In addition, several holes were transformed, and lengthened tee to green.
Among the more notable changes was repositioning greens closer to natural waste areas and gullies. Thick forest obscured these areas from view. These trees were removed to allow greens to be rebuilt around them for a more scenic, challenging setting.
One will also notice a lack of bunkers overall on the golf course. This is by design. One of the notable contributions made by Koepka was bunker reduction.
He said that “many bunkers add difficulty for the amateur but are superfluous for the tour pro”. That doesn’t mean that bombers can hit it anywhere, however. Koepka also worked with Doak to create subtle uneven lies for any balls in the rough off the fairway that might be imperceptible to amateurs. To professionals, however, it’s noticeable and annoying.
There’s also only one primary water hazard on the course, which is in play on the 16th and 17th holes. Like the lack of bunkers, this was by design because they’re unnecessary eye candy for professionals while making the round of an amateur much more miserable.
Another change was to the green surroundings. Instead of deep rough, the areas around the greens were shaved down. Koepka felt that deep rough around greens makes it easier for professionals, as the ball stops once it runs off the green. Tight, sloping lies give them headaches, and oftentimes, professionals have a tougher time chipping off tighter lies than out of the rough. An amateur often takes a putter from tight lies off the green to get it onto the surface.
All in all, Memorial Parks seems like the perfect combination of a challenging track for a professional and one that is very playable and enjoyable for an amateur.
And for the last three Houston Opens, the pros haven’t had an easy time with the difficult tee-to-green conditions and significantly undulating nature of the greens. And with the Houston Astros providing the tournament with a big boost, its place on the PGA Tour schedule is secure.
Betting Strategies
To begin the betting strategies for the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open, here is general information about Memorial Park Golf Course.
Yardage: ~7,050 Yards
- The GCSAA lists Memorial Park at over 7,400 yards long. However, the first three Houston Opens at Memorial Park have only played between 7,000 and 7,100 yards long. Based on the agronomy of the course this year (see below), it appears as if they’re trying to mimic the conditions of Augusta National as much as possible. It remains to be seen if they’ll stretch it out to the full 7,400 yards to truly make it a warmup to the Masters.
Par: 70
- There are five Par 3’s and three Par 5’s. For the Houston Open, the Par 5 18th will instead play as a Par 4.
Fairway Width: 30-40 yards
- With a lack of hazards off the fairway, Memorial Park has very generous corridors for drivers.
Average Green Size: ~7,000 sq. feet
- While significantly bigger than PGA Tour average, the greens will play smaller due to their significant (and occasionally severe) contouring.
Agronomy
- Greens: Poa Trivialis Overseed
- Fairways & Collars: Ryegrass Overseed
- Rough: Ryegrass Overseed – 1.25″
The grass at the 2024 Houston Open is different than previous editions. When the tournament was held in the Fall, the golf course was wall-to-wall bermuda. In the Spring, the golf course will be overseeded. The greens are overseeded with poa trivialis, while the fairways and rough are overseeded with ryegrass.
In addition, the rough will be much shorter than it was for the Fall Houston Opens. The rough will only be cut to 1.25″ in length. In previous Houston Opens, the bermuda was cut to 2.5 inches.
At this point, an astute reader might be starting to make some connections. If not, though, here is a summary of what Memorial Park has to offer in 2024:
- Overseeded ryegrass fairways and rough
- 1.25″ rough
- Tight lies around large and significantly contoured greens
- Driver heavy golf course that is fairly wide open in nature.
The setup is very much like Augusta National. And for those who have chosen to play the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open, it will be a great warmup to what they’ll face in 2 weeks at the Masters.
Past Champions
- 2023: Tony Finau (-16)
- 2022: Jason Kokrak (-10)
- 2021: Carlos Oritz (-13)
Carlos Ortiz fended off Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, and Hideki Matsuyama the week before the Masters. Jason Kokrak fired a final-round 65 to beat Scottie Scheffler. Tony Finau lapped the field and cruised to an easy victory.
Average Scoring
- 2023: +0.66
- 2022: +0.85
- 2021: +0.66
Memorial Park has shown some teeth. All three tournaments saw average scores over par. Of all golf courses played on the PGA Tour since 2015 (including major venues), Memorial Park is the 26th most difficult.
Despite a lack of hazards off the tee and around the green, the severe greens and difficult greenside surrounds have proven to be quite a tough test for the professional: that and some adverse weather conditions, which also have kept things very challenging.
Predictive Skillsets & In Tournament Success
Here is the relative skillset chart of the characteristics that are most predictive of success at the Memorial Park Golf Course (per DataGolf). This chart previews the types of players one would expect to do well at the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open.
Overall, one’s putting, around the green and approach skill is as correlated to success at Memorial Park as it is at other PGA Tour venues. The only area that sees a higher correlation to success at Memorial Park is driving.
There’s a higher correlation between success at Memorial Part and those who hit it long and straight. To put it another way, those who typically gain a lot of strokes off the tee will tend to do well at the golf course, even if it’s not a great way to separate oneself on the leaderboard (see within-event correlations below).
Given the lack of hazards off the tee and the relatively wide-open nature of each Par 4 and 5, great drivers can certainly give the ball a good rip. And with the rough now only 1.25″ deep, there won’t be much of a penalty for missing a fairway at Memorial Park. Not that there was much of one, anyway. Memorial Park ranks as the 17th least penal golf course to miss a fairway.
However, the challenge resides more with the approach and getting up and down from off the green. Memorial Park is the 32nd most difficult golf course for approach shots, and 13th most difficult around the green. Given how undulated the greens are, players are hitting into small targets and have trouble getting the ball close to the hole. And chipping from tight lies onto sometimes severely contoured greens is very difficult. So much so that Memorial Park is the 9th most difficult to scramble from the fairway since 2015.
As such, while the predictive skillset doesn’t suggest a stronger correlation to success in these two areas, the players who do the best in these areas in tournament are able to separate themselves more on the leaderboard. This is evident in the in-tournament correlations of the Houston Open (per DataGolf)
2022
2021
2020
Approach Shot Proximity
Here are the approach shot proximity buckets for the Memorial Park Golf Course (per DataGolf). This will preview what types of approach shots players are expected to hit at the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open.
The ranges in which players hit approach shots from have fluctuated over the past few years. However, about two-thirds of all approach shots will come from over 150 yards, with about one-third coming from over 200 yards. These are the ranges to focus on for proximity stat and strokes gained per shot analysis at the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open.
Follow the tips in this preview, and one should put together a solid DFS lineup or betting card for the 2024 Texas Children’s Houston Open.
