George Hannon, who was the head golf professional at Lions Municipal Golf Course when he first came to Austin, celebrated his 88th birthday this week. A gathering of Texas Longhorn golfers who played for Coach Hannon during his tenure at the University of Texas took place at the University of Texas Golf Club on Friday and Saturday. There were two rounds of golf and a dinner in Coach Hannon's honor. The players fully enjoyed the comraderie and made sure Coach Hannon, and his wife Jo, felt appreciated and loved.
What many people don't know about George Hannon is that he was a very good player in his younger days. Shown below is the scorecard from when Hannon shot a course record 63 at Lion's Municipal Golf Course. You can click on the image to enlarge it and then return to this post by using the back arrow.
The course had a different layout at the time than it currently does. Diagrams of the course layout are available at Muny.
Note the signatures of Reese Alexander and George McCall on the card. Both were long time prominent golfers in Austin and won championships. You can read about those players and more in the Austin Golf History and Player Profiles section under the "About" tab at the top of the page.
In subsequent years, when the nines were reversed and the course remodeled, Randy Petri and Ben Crenshaw would shoot 61 to establish a new course record. It is believed that Coach Hannon held the course record until the layout was changed. According to the City, the current course record for Muny is 60, which was recorded by Tom Davis in 2007.
It would be interesting if the readers of this posting would comment about when the layout for Muny changed and we could establish the sequence of the course modifications. Feel free to use the comment box at the end of this post.