The Texas Children’s Houston Open got underway this Thursday on the beautiful course at Memorial Park with two huge shocks. Not even the most enlightened of the enlightened would have backed a lead from Paul Waring (-7) and not even the boldest analyst could have imagined such a collapse from Brooks Koepka (+5).
Koepka’s plan has been shattered. On Wednesday he said his preparation for the Masters was going swimmingly and that he only had one piece left to fine‑tune. He was hoping to do that this week in Houston, but he will be left wanting. He wanted to finish honing his tune‑up for Augusta by fighting for a victory over the final nine holes on Sunday. He wasn’t even talking about the possibility of winning, he simply wanted to see how his swing and his body would respond in that stressful situation. Well, it will not be this week.
Short of a miracle, Koepka no longer has any chance of reaching Sunday competing for the win. In fact, he’ll need little short of a miracle on Friday just to make the cut in the tournament. He started with a 75 (+5) round, including no fewer than three double bogeys. His game leaked in every area, very inconsistent from tee to green, although the greyest aspect was again the putter, in this case because it didn’t bail him out of any trouble. We’ll see if he decides to play the Valero Texas Open next week to give himself that last chance or withdraws to his winter quarters to finish preparing for the Masters. Today he took a step back in the good progress he had been making. Tomorrow will show whether it is a regression or simply an accident.
Even more surprising than Koepka’s collapse is Waring’s lead. He shot 63, the best round of his career on the PGA Tour and his best result since the 61 he carded on the second day of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in 2024 that changed his life. That round paved the way for him to win that first DP World Tour playoff and allowed him to gain one of the American tour cards.
His arrival in the United States, however, was disastrous. A shoulder injury left him hampered throughout 2025. He played 12 tournaments and only made one cut. Things were not much better on the DP World Tour. “I was playing against the best in the world with one arm tied behind my back and that’s impossible,” he said this Thursday after signing off his card.
Waring says that today he felt like a golfer again, that he has finally managed to remember the player from late 2024, especially because of his wedges play and putting. He made a huge number of putts in this opening round. He was the best in that statistic with more than six and a half strokes gained over the average of the field. A display. No one saw this Waring round coming, just as no one saw that 61 coming. Who knows if today’s round isn’t another of those rounds that changes the life of the 41‑year‑old English veteran
Waring holds a one‑shot lead over Gary Woodland (-6) and two shots over Sam Burns (-5), Michael Brennan (-5) and Tom Hoge (-5), another player who had not produced a clean round for some time. The leaderboard is fairly tight, with nearly 30 players separated by only four shots. In that group there are big names such as Fowler, Theegala, Penge, Finau, Scott, Kitayama or Sungjae Im
