Around the Green

Texas Father-Son Set for July 9-11

The 41st Texas Father-Son will be played July 9-11 at Crown Colony Country Club in Lufkin.

This will be the fourth Texas Father-Son and 14th TGA championship overall to be hosted by Crown Colony. The 2020 Women’s Stroke Play, won by Serena Shah, was the most recent TGA championship held at the storied East Texas club.

Opened in 1978, Crown Colony was designed by Bruce Devlin and Robert von Hagge and has consistently been rated as one of the top courses in Texas. The architectural duo took full advantage of the site’s natural beauty – towering pine trees, elevation changes and numerous water features – to create a spectacular course, one that provides a memorable challenge for players of all skill levels.

First played in 1981, the Texas Father-Son is one of the most popular events on the TGA’s annual schedule and is a longstanding summer tradition for many families. To make this unique tournament more accessible to a wider range of players, the 80 teams in the starting field are pre-assigned to one of six flights based on combined Low Handicap Indexes over a one-year period ending on July 1.

The Championship Flight consists of 40 teams with the lowest combined handicap indexes and will play four-ball stroke play the first two rounds. After 36 holes, the low 20 teams (and ties) continue on in the Championship Flight and will play combined score (individual stroke play using both players scores) in the final round. The three-day total is the team’s score for the championship.

Teams not making the 36-hole cut in the Championship Flight will compete in the President’s Flight and play another round of four-ball stroke play. The format for all other flights is 54-hole net four-ball stroke play.

At last year’s Texas Father-Son, held on the Fazio Foothills Course at the Omni Barton Creek Resort and Spa in Austin, defending champions Matt and Will Griffin of San Antonio and Kyle and Derick Kelting of Amarillo finished tied atop the leaderboard at the end of regulation play. Both teams carded matching 12-under-par 276 totals for 54 holes to finish 12 shots clear of the rest of the field. As no playoffs were conducted in 2020 under the health and safety guidelines established by the TGA during the COVID-19 pandemic, the two teams were declared co-champions. The Griffins also won the 2011 championship and have now joined a short list of father-son duos to have three titles to their name.

Live scoring updates and daily recaps, as well as tee-times and pairings, will be available once the action gets underway from Crown Colony Country Club.