In this, its Centennial year, Willow Brook Country Club will host the Texas State Amateur June 16-19 and showcase a modern golf course sure to challenge the best amateurs in Texas.
Always the “Gold Standard” for golf courses in East Texas, Willow Brook will be in excellent condition when the players arrive. Greens Superintendent Ken Bowman and his team have been preparing the course for months and in some cases, such as the rough on the hillsides, close to a year.
Willow Brook has consistently improved its course through the years but took a big leap forward in 2014 by engaging the services of Tripp Davis to modernize its 18-hole layout with creative green complexes framed by cavernous bunkers. The end result being a challenging, championship course that will test the young guns coming to town with their 300-yard drives and 170 yard 8 iron shots.
The Texas Golf Association, founded in 1906, will be hosting its 113th amateur championship with Austin Reily of Pottsboro and the University of Houston the defending champion. Reily won the tournament last year at Midland Country Club.
Marty Fleckman of Houston was the winner of the state am the only other time it was played at Willow Brook. That was in 1964 when Fleckman was at UH and part of a national championship team.
During 1964 and 1965, Fleckman also won the Briarwood Invitational in Tyler. His amateur career reached a zenith a few years later when he played on the US Walker Cup team and led the 1967 US Open after three rounds before giving way to winner Jack Nicklaus. Later Fleckman would win his first PGA Tour event but never won again. He is expected to be on hand for the tournament next week.
Others to have won the top prize offered by the Texas Golf Association are Ben Crenshaw, Scott Verplank, the late Bruce Lietzke, and Mark Brooks. Strangely, Jordan Spieth and Scottie Scheffler seldom played in the event before turning pro.
In 1964 when Fleckman won the state am at Willow Brook, the course was pretty and accommodating with wide fairways and well manicured greens. Designed by Ralph Plummer of Dallas, the course suited the power game of Fleckman whose only weakness was a tendency to occasionally spray his tee shot.
It was during the early 1950s when Willow Brook hired Plummer to design an expansion of the course from nine to 18 holes. This was early in Plummer’s career but his routing was superb and much of it remains today. Later he would design the Cypress Creek course at Champions in Houston, working in concert with owners Jackie Burke and Jimmy Demaret. Plummer also worked with Byron Nelson on the design of Preston Trail in Dallas and was voted into the Texas Golf Hall of Fame posthumously in 2012.
Willow Brook expanded again in 1979 when the club acquired property for the construction of three new holes and enlisted architect Joe Finger of Houston. The new holes allowed for one hole to be converted into the practice area still used today.
Finger was prominent at the time, redesigning the eighth green at Augusta National. His designed holes are now the heart of the first nine holes, numbers four through six, and quite challenging. They have been tweaked by Davis and the most intriguing is the par 3 sixth that requires pinpoint accuracy on a downhill iron shot to a “shoebox” green guarded on each side by huge bunkers.
In the early 2000s, Willow Brook hired Mark Hayes of Oklahoma to renovate its green complexes to allow for more hole locations, an important consideration for hosting top level amateur events. Hayes passed away in 2019 but was an accomplished player who once shot a 63 at Turnberry during the 1977 British Open and won on tour at the Byron Nelson and most notably the 1977 Players Championship. Locally, Hayes won the 1967 Briarwood Invitational.
Hayes also did the redesign of The Cascades during this same time period. His work at Willow Brook was well received and endured until the club hired Davis.
A native of Georgia who played collegiate golf at the University of Oklahoma and is based in Norman, Davis was already well known in North Texas with his collaborative design of Old American with Justin Leonard and renovations of Brook Hollow and Preston Trail. When Davis was commissioned to give his ideas for how to reshape the course, he displayed his skill with the design and construction of a four-hole short course on land that had laid dormant for some 40 years.
The short course was a brilliant stroke because it introduced Davis’ modern green complexes and bunkering to members wanting an area for practice and provided a perfect setting for introducing the game to junior golfers.
Willow Brook decided to take two years for the renovation of its 18-hole course, working on the second nine and then the first nine. This allowed the membership to have nine holes to play during the process that began in 2016 and concluded at the end of 2017.
“You design a course with the membership in mind because you want them to have fun,” Davis said. “But at the same time, offer flexibility for the course to be set up for meaningful competitions like the state amateur. You want the golf course to identify the best player and I am confident Willow Brook will do that.”
That is similar to a statement made by Golf Channel expert Brandel Chamblee on the eve of the recent PGA Championship, saying Southern Hills would divine its champion early on.
Those remarks were echoed by Willow Brook head pro Chris Hudson.
“I think that ultimately the winner will be the golfer who makes the best decisions at key moments,” Hudson said. “There are places where it doesn’t pay to try and overpower our course.”
The set up of the course will be handled by the Texas Golf Association officials with most of the hole locations already determined. Willow Brook will measure just over 6,700 yards from its championship tees, rather short by modern standards, but as the late A.J. Triggs always said, “it’s the longest short course anyone will play because of the hilly terrain.”
The hills of Willow Brook will also provide some unlevel lies and stances that have to be negotiated for a good shot. Such concerns will probably not slow down the younger players with their penchant for power but Davis thinks they would be wise to reconsider.
“It will be a complete test,” Davis said. “The course will require the winner to excel in all areas of the game and there may be times when a hybrid or iron off the tee is the best play.”
The state amateur week promises to be an exciting event for Willow Brook as it celebrates its 100th year. It all began in 1922 when the original nine holes were built by members in their spare time. That layout played to a par 37 and current member Harry Leatherwood said the legendary Slick Brooks once took him on a tour of the original holes, citing where the holes once were but noting that the long par 3 from an elevated tee, now the 15th hole, is still being used.
Fifteen years later, in 1937, the course was visited by golf architect A.W. Tillinghast at the behest of the PGA of America. The PGA hired Tillinghast to examine courses for possible improvements.
Tillinghast, of Philadelphia nobility, also designed publicly accessible Brackenridge Park in San Antonio and Cedar Crest in Dallas. He was not impressed with Willow Brook and “recommended many changes.”
Perhaps a bit harsh, but Tillinghast had impeccable credibility in the golfing world at that time. So, as the 113th Texas State Amateur begins Thursday, it can be said that the membership of Willow Brook took Tilly’s remarks to heart.
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