HOUSTON —Memorial Park Golf Course is the new home of the Chevron Championship and while it’s fresh to the LPGA Tour, it’s not new to professional golf.
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The public course has been home to the PGA Tour’s Texas Children’s Open since 2020, and Gary Woodland scored an emotional victory here last month. But there will certainly be differences to how it plays for the women compared to the men, and the rainy weather that drenched the course early in the week will be a contributing factor, too.
World No. 5 Hannah Green, who has won four worldwide tournaments this season and won captured last week’s JM Eagle LA Championship, is getting some valuable help on her bag this week from from her caddie, David Buhai, who looped for Karl Vilips during the PGA Tour event.
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Moriya Jutanugarn plays a shot from the bunker on the 10th hole during the practice round of the Chevron Championship.
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Kenneth Richmond
“It’s playing tough. It’s playing quite long. Obviously, this rain is not really helping either, making things a little bit more difficult for us,” Green said. “I think it definitely feels like a major championship course. I hope fairways can at least firm up. I don’t know if that will happen, but it will be interesting to see how they put the tee positions because some of the holes, depending on pin locations, could be quite tough.”
The LPGA lists the course yardage for the week at 6,811 yards—or more than 660 yards shorter than it was maxed out for the men. But in neither case do they usually play the full yardage of the layout in any one round, and the LPGA also has the par set at 72, rather than the 70 for the PGA Tour. Two holes have been changed from par 4 to par 5—the 533-yard first and 529-yard 14th.
Minjee Lee is another player figuring to have some inside knowledge, considering that her brother, Min Woo Lee, won in Houston last year and tied for third last month.
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Some players, such as World No. 2 Nelly Korda, like to go with their own assessment of the course.
“No, I did not talk to any PGA Tour players. I didn’t watch too much of the (PGA Tour] event. We were playing that week, so it was quite hard to watch and also compete,” Korda said. “But I know that my caddie, Jason [McDede], did. I like to suss out a golf course myself and make my decision myself than relying on someone else’s input. Then I have too much information in my mind and I feel like then if I have their information versus what I scope out on the golf course, I start to doubt my information and then I’m not 100% confident in what I’m doing.”
She added, “That’s why I tend to not always ask for too much information about another golf course, especially from a male to a female, because they have different clubs coming in, the apex of the ball flight is a lot higher than ours. Just from what I was told though is that it is kind of like a bomber’s paradise. You’re trying to hit driver on every hole pretty much, get it as close to the green, because it is very sectional and it’s crucial to have probably shorter clubs into these greens when it is firm.”
Weather-wise, there’s good and bad news for the field when the tournament begins on Thursday. The current potential for rain is low, but temperatures are supposed to climb into the mid-80s, with Houston’s usual accompaniment of stifling humidity.
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“I grew up in Texas, so I feel like April showers, we just get them. It happens,” said amateur Farah O’Keefe, who is from Austin. “But I think like the weather and everything has kind of softened up the course a lot. We had a lot of mud balls [Wednesday], so I think that will probably be something to be expected for the tournament.”
O’Keefe is one of eight amateurs playing in the major and it’s her first start in the Chevron Championship. But because this is a new course for the LPGA, it’s a level playing field for everyone.
“It’s a very interesting course,” said Lindy Duncan, who was in the five-woman playoff at The Club at Carlton Woods last year, losing to eventual winner Mao Saigo. “There is a lot to the green complexes and if you hit your approach shots good you can have some good chances. But it’s going to be playing super long, so it’ll be tough.”
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