THE WOODLANDS, TEXAS | The first major tournament of the 2024 LPGA season begins Thursday with the Chevron Championship at the Jack Nicklaus-designed Club at Carlton Woods course, with the true major of the Texas women’s golf scene, Robin Burke, scheduled to make an appearance.
While American Nelly Korda will grab many of the pre-tournament headlines as she goes for her fifth straight LPGA victory, Burke, who has accomplished so much in Texas golf, is certainly part of the Lone Star links focus, as well.
Stacy Dennis, the Texas Golf Association’s executive director, said golf fans watching on TV or in person should recognize Burke for her role in Texas golf.
“There is not an accomplishment in Texas female golf she has not achieved,” Dennis said. “She sets the standard of golf in Texas, and it would be highly inappropriate to see a world-class ladies tournament in Texas, especially in Houston, without considering the impact of Robin Burke and her part of these events.”
Though Burke doesn’t have an active role in the Chevron Championship this week, she said she will be on site to see the many players whom she has coached and mentored.
“I want to see the girls who were on my Curtis Cup team and the many great girls in Texas,” Burke said. “I’m looking forward to it. It’s going to be a great week.”
The widow of golf legend Jack Burke Jr., who died in January at age 100, Burke has made far-flung golfing contributions statewide, nationally and even internationally.
She is a two-time Texas Women’s Amateur champion who also won two Southern Women’s Amateur titles and eight Greater Houston Women’s City Amateurs. She was runner-up in the 1997 U.S. Women’s Amateur and has won 38 matches in the U.S. Women’s Mid-Amateur, making it as far as the semifinals on three occasions. She captained the 2016 Curtis Cup team.
Burke and her late husband are the only husband-wife duo in the Texas Golf Hall of Fame.
Both Burkes served as co-chairs of the 2020 U.S. Women’s Open at nearby Champions Golf Club, which Jack Burke, the 1956 Masters and PGA champion, co-founded in 1957 with another former Masters champion, the late Jimmy Demaret.
“It got to be if you were going to a big-time tournament in Texas, you knew Robin would be there and you knew she would be playing well,” the TGA’s Dennis said.
Stacy Lewis, who grew up in The Woodlands and has played the tournament course possibly more than anybody in the field, said every player coming to the Houston area this week owes a debt to Burke, no matter whether they know it or not.
“Robin put us over the top for having the tournament here, and everyone knows what Mr. Burke has meant to the game,” Lewis said.
Seeing the world’s best female golfers competing in her hometown is something which still excites her, Burke said.
“I just love it, the tournament being here,” said Burke, a veteran of women’s majors herself, having competed in three U.S. Women’s Opens. “As a player, I just loved to compete in events, and when you can’t compete, the next best thing is seeing those who can.”
“Robin is a model to all of us who play golf in Texas for her consistently good play over three decades, her work as a teacher, a mentor, a club leader and tournament organizer.” — Stacy Dennis, Texas Golf Association executive director
These days, her connection with Champions, which she helped oversee in 36 years of marriage to Jack Burke, is a bit more complicated.
In October 2021, Jack Burke announced that he had sold the club to Mike Burke, a son by his first wife, Ielene, who died before he married Robin, and that Mike’s grandson Dean was taking on the role as club president. Since Burke’s death three months ago, Robin has no official connection to Champions and rarely visits or plays there.
But the TGA’s Dennis said Robin Burke’s legacy at Champions and all of Texas golf remains secure.
“Robin is a model to all of us who play golf in Texas for her consistently good play over three decades, her work as a teacher, a mentor, a club leader and tournament organizer,” Dennis said. “She can do it all and now has golf and a grandchild [Robin and Jack had one daughter together] and plenty of things to keep her busy.”
Burke said the lessons of her legendary husband, a two-time major champion and World Golf Hall of Fame member, have guided her in her career, which began when her father sent her to take a putting lesson from her future husband in 1984, and in her Lone Star golf life.
“Jack was a winner as a player, a club owner, a teacher, a PGA and Ryder Cup champion, a mentor and leader,” she said. “He would always say, ‘Don’t walk past people but try to help them.’ He would take himself out of the equation to try to help others. I think he transcended both eras of golf, when PGA pros first started and the modern era of today.”
So, fans on site this week easily could walk past Robin Burke and see just another golf-savvy spectator, but to know her impact on the game truly amplifies the saying – everything really that is bigger in Texas, including women’s golf.