The new par 3 No. 6 hole at Willow Brook Country Club has been shortened to 150 yards.Photo by Pat Wheeler

Stroll along the main hallway of the clubhouse at Willow Brook Country Club and at once you are captivated by a sense of Tyler history.

Gracing the walls on one side are portraits of past presidents of the club, dating back to its founding in 1922. Along the other side are pictures of past Texas Rose Festival queens adorned in their beautiful gowns, representing an East Texas tradition begun in 1935.

Eventually the lengthy hallway leads to the back of the building and out onto the putting green near the first tee of a well-manicured golf course that members and guests have enjoyed for close to a hundred years.

Atop the first tee on a cloudy Thursday afternoon of Rose Festival week are two of Willow Brook’s best-liked and most-respected members — John Deibel and Bob Herd. Given the honor of hitting ceremonial tee shots to commemorate the opening of the front nine after its recent renovation, Deibel and Herd joyfully hit at the same time.

A sizable gathering of members vigorously applaud the shots, signaling that the final piece of an extensive million-dollar course improvement project is now in place. Always the flagship of East Texas courses, Willow Brook thus begins a new era of golf with a course that is sure to be enjoyable for its members while challenging enough to host important amateur competitions.

Willow Brook began with a nine-hole course that was expanded to 18 holes after World War II. That first 18-hole layout hosted the 1964 Texas Amateur Championship won by Marty Fleckman. The course was first tweaked in 1978 with the addition of three new holes to make room for the practice range now adjacent to the golf shop. The course was then modified again with redesigned green complexes in the early 2000s by the late Mark Hayes of Oklahoma.

The membership looked again to Oklahoma in December 2014 when architect Tripp Davis of Norman presented a proposal to design a short course where an unused fairway lay on the west side of the entrance road to the club. The short course was approved and built in 2015 before opening in early 2016. Highlighted by showcase green complexes, the four-hole layout, ideal for junior golfers taking up the game, was so well received that Davis was commissioned to redesign all 18 holes.

A decision was made to do nine holes at a time so that there would always be nine available for membership play. Davis cited a need for more variety on the back nine that started out with five consecutive par 4s of similar length before the picturesque downhill par-3 15th, one of the original nine holes from 1922. Davis proposed the 11th and 12th holes be redesigned to what is now an intriguing par 5 followed by a short and devilish par 3.

The back nine was completed and reopened in October of last year so that members enjoyed 18 holes until the front nine went under the knife this past January.

“If the back nine was about variety, then you could say the new front nine is all about creating memorable holes,” Willow Brook head professional Chris Hudson said. “A great example is our eighth hole that was always a good hole but never really stood out. Now it has been remodeled with new tee boxes and new bunkering to where it is one of the most memorable holes on the course. It can be a drivable par 4 and yet has an expanded fairway to make playing it safely a more reasonable approach.”

Davis spoke of Willow Brook during an interview earlier this year when another of his renovation projects, Northwood Club of Dallas, reopened to the media.

“Though we did not do as many changes to the routing on the front nine as we did on the back, I am actually more excited about the changes because we have created some really outstanding golf holes,” Davis said. “The first five holes were already strong holes so we just tweaked them but we moved the green on the sixth and changed the green on the seventh to make them better and more fun to play.”

Davis reiterated Hudson’s assertion that the new front nine will have more memorable holes.

“Willow Brook was already a very good golf course so a lot of what we did was tweak the holes on the front nine to make them more interesting and memorable. Today’s architect has the benefit of modern construction equipment and so we can build more intricate and interesting green complexes. That allows for smaller margins of error and thus a more creative and inventive short game is required.”

A student of the game and the history of golf architecture, Davis quoted another Oklahoman who is revered by all serious golfers — the late Perry Maxwell, who designed courses like Prairie Dunes and Southern Hills while having a hand in the redesign of Colonial and Augusta National.

“Maxwell said, ‘the green is where you defend par,’” Davis said.

Though not rerouted too much, the par 5 ninth is the most changed hole of the front nine with a large and intimidating oak removed from the middle of the fairway and the lake to the left of the fairway near the green made smaller.

“By taking out the big tree and lessening the pond, we created a better defined area for your lay-up shot on the ninth,” Davis said.

Perhaps the best example of the subtle changes creating a more memorable hole is the par 3 sixth that was shortened to make it more tantalizing.

“The old sixth hole was certainly an OK hole,” Hudson said. “But it just didn’t make much of an impression on you one way or the other. The new hole is shorter and downhill and is more fun. I think our members will really like it.”

Another modern feature of the revitalized Willow Brook is the implementation of the best available grasses for the East Texas climate. The greens are pure with Tif-eagle bermuda and the fairways feature Latitude bermuda, very close to Zoysia so the ball sits up nicely.

“It’s hard to improve your lie in these fairways,” Hudson said.

After Thursday’s opening ceremony, some of the members took to the remodeled front nine for a first-hand look. Later in the 19th hole, the chatter was almost deafening with smiles all around.

The long and challenging renovation project was complete. It was a memorable day at Willow Brook.