Spirit International amateur golf event on recently flooded course

TRINITY, Texas — Shea Morenz is not prone to hyperbole. A former University of Texas football quarterback and first-round pick of the New York Yankees, Morenz has seen his share of major sports stages and is largely unflappable on a golf course, where his smooth swing puts his athleticism clearly on display.

But during a recent round at Whispering Pines Golf Club, the top-rated private golf course in Texas and the host of the biennial Spirit International, even Morenz had to shake his head in awe.

A little more than six months ago, a 100-year flood rushed through the area, causing major damage to the Chet Williams-designed golf course and making this year’s edition of the Spirit International a long shot. The tournament, originally concocted by course founder Corby Robertson — Morenz’s father-in-law — welcomes two men and two women to represent their countries in a team event like no other.

Morenz, who witnessed the devastation first-hand, was amazed at how the pristine course shaped up after the onslaught of wet weather.

“It’s really incredible what has happened here,” Morenz said while playing the front nine of the course that takes up just a small segment of the 400-acre property about 90 minutes from Houston. “There was silt covering huge portions of this golf course. To see it in such amazing condition now is really incredible.”

Whispering Pines Golf Course in Texas suffered massive flooding in April 2024. (Photo courtesy Whispering Pines)

Originally, the course was born from a camp hosted on the property. and a game that Robertson called “olf, which is golf without the greens.” As part of the weekly routine, eager campers would hit shots off a tee to a wide-open “green” that was simply a pushed-up piece of turf with a washtub in the middle. The kids loved it.

Over time, Robertson and others realized this would be a prime piece of property for a golf course. By then, he’d become an energy magnate, first in oil, then in coal, and had the financial means to create the course. In the 1990s, when beetles started eating away some of the camp’s trees, he decided to make a go of it, starting with a series of three legit holes, then adding irrigation systems and creating the course that now tops Golfweek’s Best Private Courses in Texas list: Whispering Pines.

Soon after, in 2001, the Spirit International Amateur Golf Tournament was born, a biennial event with from each of 20 countries that span six continents.

The…