Historic Cobbs Creek Golf Club’s makeover has an all-star lineup in Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner leading the course renovation and Tiger Woods and Beau Welling designing a short course attached to the TGR Learning Center. But there’s another major-championship star involved in the project in West Philadelphia: three-time major winner Jordan Spieth.
The Texan’s Jordan Spieth Family Foundation announced last year that it would donate $250,000 to build a junior putting green at Cobbs Creek to help introduce more young people in that part of the city to golf. Cobbs Creek, which opened in 1916, is site of the first public golf course in the Greater Philadelphia area and is undergoing a multimillion-dollar redevelopment by the Cobbs Creek Foundation.
“Annie and I are thrilled to support a project of this caliber that uses golf as an on-ramp for expanding youth horizons,” Spieth said. “Cobbs Creek serves a diverse group, emphasizes family outreach and works to remove socio-economic barriers to both the game of golf as well as education and wider opportunities. These things are all the focus of our Junior Golf pillar for the Jordan Spieth Family Foundation.”
On Monday, Jordan and wife, Annie, who heads up the Foundation, visited the 30,000-square-foot TGR Learning Center, the second of its kind in the country, which opened for a soft launch on April 1, and conducted a clinic for some of the earliest participants in TGR’s programming at the putting green bearing their names. Why Spieth’s foundation picked the Cobbs Creek project to give one of upwards of 20 annual grants is a story in itself. \
“We get like 100-plus (requests for) grants every year and we try to balance it out between different areas. We’ve done a lot in Dallas-Fort Worth where we live (including a putting green in Frisco, Texas, tied to the PGA of America’s headquarters), but when we go out, there’s usually a reason for it. Philly, my parents are from there, so it made sense. Plus, with Tiger involved and hitting the junior golf side of things, it fit the mold of the foundation.”
Jordan’s father, Shawn, grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and his paternal grandfather, who has passed away, served as the longtime conductor of the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra. Shawn played baseball at Lehigh University, where he met and married Jordan’s mother, Chris, who played basketball at Moravian College. Jordan’s Uncle Stow is a current Philadelphia resident.
In 2014, Jordan founded the Jordan Spieth Family Foundation to raise awareness and provide financial support to nonprofit groups in four areas: junior golf, individuals with special needs, pediatric cancer and U.S. veterans and their families.
“What TGR Learning Center is doing checked a lot of boxes for us,” said Annie.
Spieth’s longtime agent, Jay Danzi, also has strong local ties. His father went to LaSalle University, his sister to Villanova, and his family moved to Philadelphia while he was in college and spent summers there. He called the Cobbs Creek project “one of the most important projects I’ve ever been involved in.”
“It’ll restore a golf gem here, but the biggest key will be what it does for the community,” Danzi said. “It’s going to revitalize a community that needs it and it’s great that golf is the mechanism to help do that.”
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