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The field includes 52 of the top 100 and 18 of the top 50 in the latest Official World Golf Rankings. Those in the top 50 include Chris Gotterup (#10), Ben Griffin (#16), Harris English (#20), Ryan Gerard (#27), Min Woo Lee (#31), Shane Lowry (#32), Sam Burns (#33), Kurt Kitayama (#35), Marco Penge (#36), Nico Echavarria (#38), Aaron Rai (#39), Jason Day (#41), Jake Knapp (#42), Michael Brennan (#43), Ryan Fox (#45), Nicolai Hojgaard (#47), Kristoffer Reitan (#48), and Sam Stevens (#50), among others. That compares favorably to last year's field, which featured 20 top-50 players and 51 top-100 players.

The field includes eight of the top 25 on the 2026 FedEx Cup points standings: Chris Gotterup (7th), Min Woo Lee (8th), Jake Knapp (13th), Nico Echavarria (14th), Ryan Gerard (15th), Sahith Theegala (22nd), Adam Scott (23rd), and Kurt Kitayama (24th).

Four past champions are in the field: defending champion Min Woo Lee (2025), Stephan Jaeger (2024), Tony Finau (2023), and Adam Scott (2007). Notably absent is world number one Scottie Scheffler, who withdrew as he awaits the birth of his second child.

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This is the 78th edition of the Houston Open and the sixth year it has called Memorial Park home — a homecoming that almost never happened. When Shell Oil walked away as title sponsor in 2017, the event was genuinely on life support. Houston Astros owner Jim Crane stepped in with the financial backing to save it, but with one non-negotiable condition: the tournament had to go back to its roots at Memorial Park, the public course just outside downtown Houston that hosted the event as far back as 1947.

The course itself had fallen into serious disrepair over the decades. The Astros Golf Foundation committed $34 million to a full redesign, bringing in architect Tom Doak — with Brooks Koepka serving as a playing consultant — to build something that would work for a Saturday morning municipal golfer and a PGA Tour field alike. The course opened in November 2019, and by every measure it has been a success. Players talk it up to their peers, and the field quality has improved each year since.

With the Valero Texas Open the following week and the Masters right after that, players heading to Houston have made a deliberate choice. This course suits a certain kind of game, and the ones who show up know it.

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The Texas Children's Houston Open is played at Memorial Park Golf Course in Houston, Texas — a par 70 layout stretching 7,475 yards. What immediately stands out about the design is its restraint: there are only 17 bunkers on the entire course, an unusually lean number for a PGA Tour stop. Tom Doak's philosophy was to let the natural contours and the firm, tight Bermuda grass do the work instead.

The greens are large — roughly 7,000 square feet — and notably flat, as you'd expect from a course with municipal roots. That characteristic has an interesting ripple effect on the leaderboard: players who tend to struggle on the greens elsewhere often find Memorial Park to be something of a refuge. If a player is elite from tee-to-green but has a checkered putting history, this is a week to pay close attention.

Accuracy off the tee matters more than raw distance here. The rough is among the most demanding on Tour, and the slopes and contours around the fairways make recovery work genuinely difficult. At the same time, several driveable par-4s and two reachable par-5s reward aggressive, well-placed tee shots. It's a course that punishes careless play but generously rewards precision.

Weather for the week looks close to ideal. Expect mid-70s on Thursday and Friday with the possibility of some thunderstorms early in the week, clearing out by the weekend for conditions in the mid-80s with very low humidity and minimal wind.

The course's scoring history tells an interesting story. In the 2021 debut, Carlos Ortiz won at just 13 under par, and fewer than half the field finished under par for the week — wind gusts up to 25 mph over the weekend made conditions brutal. In 2022, it played even harder: Jason Kokrak won at 10 under and only 28 of 67 players who made the cut finished in red figures.

Conditions eased in subsequent years. Tony Finau won in 2023 at 16 under, and Stephan Jaeger took the 2024 title with a closing 66-67 weekend, edging out Finau, Scheffler, and a cluster of others by one shot. Last year's edition was the most benign yet. In our Key Fantasy stat guide we wrote the loss of nearly 300 trees from two major Houston storms in the summer of 2024 opened the course up considerably, and Min Woo Lee ran away with it at 20 under, four shots better than any previous winning score at Memorial Park.

The takeaway is that scoring here is highly sensitive to conditions, particularly wind. When it blows out of the north or northeast, Memorial Park becomes a different animal entirely. This week's calm, warm forecast suggests the winning number could be aggressive — but as the history here shows, this course has a habit of surprising people.

Greens in Regulation / Approach Play: Hitting greens is the single most important skill at Memorial Park. The course rewards those who can consistently find the putting surface from the fairway, and with large, flat greens, the player who hits more GIR simply gives himself more birdie looks. Wedge spin control matters too — a mishit approach still leaves a long putt or a difficult chip.

Driving Accuracy / Tee-to-Green: The rough at Memorial Park is among the toughest on Tour, making accuracy off the tee essential. Long hitters need to be disciplined — an extra 20 yards into the rough is rarely worth it here. That said, the driveable par-4s reward players who can take calculated risks with the driver when the hole sets up for it.

Scrambling / Around the Greens: With only 17 bunkers, most missed greens end up in the thick Bermuda grass surrounding the putting surfaces. The ability to get up and down from those lies — chipping cleanly out of tight, firm grass — can be the difference between a bogey and a par, and over 72 holes that adds up fast.

Putting: The flat greens at Memorial Park are a great equalizer. Players who rank poorly in strokes gained putting during the rest of the season often find their form here. When building your roster, don't automatically discount a player because of a below-average putting track record — Memorial Park has a way of making that problem disappear for a week.

Finally, don't overlook our Composite Rankings tool, which lets you rank the entire field using four key PGA Tour stats. It's one of the most powerful ways to cut through the noise and identify the players best suited to succeed at Memorial Park this week.

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