When the city of Arlington hired John Colligan to create a new golf course on the property that had previously been the site of Chester Ditto Golf Course, he was given three objectives:
A 7,000-yard golf course
A large practice facility
One par-5 hole over 600 yards.
Check. Check. And check.
One bonus item that wasn’t on the city’s list: Texas Rangers Golf Club was voted the best new golf course in Texas by Dallas Morning News panel members.
Colligan and design associate Trey Kemp used every inch they could find to stretch the course to 7,010 yards. Little did Colligan know at the time, but the Korn Ferry Tour was so impressed with the work that it scheduled a tournament at Texas Rangers Golf Club after it had been open just over a year. The Veritex Bank Championship was planned for April 16-19 but was canceled over health concerns caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
“They talked about enticing tournaments,” Colligan said, “but nothing like a Korn Ferry Tour event.”
Colligan mentioned one of the user-friendly design features that is also spectator friendly.
“The fairways are collection fairways rather than rejection fairways,” he said. With the fairways lower than the area bordering them, it helps keep balls in play and allows better viewing when there are crowds.
Colligan and Kemp turned a claustrophobic layout on 164 acres into a spacious but still challenging design.
“The golf course has girth,” Colligan said. “It’s got a lot of space to it. It’s Texas-sized. It’s Texas golf.”
Tempest Golf Club
“It was the worst course on the best site when we got there.” That’s how Jeff Brauer describes what became Tempest Golf Club, an East Texas gem that was voted the No. 2 new course in Texas by Dallas Morning News panel members. It debuted at No. 24 among the courses you can play.
The only reason it does not appear in the list of top 100 courses in the state is that not enough panel members made the trip to Gladewater, 12 miles northwest of Longview, 25 miles northwest of Tyler and about two hours east of Dallas on Interstate 20. (It needed a minimum of 12 panel members to rate it to qualify for the top 100. It needed just seven to qualify for the public course lists.)
The course opened Sept. 30, 2018. Brauer, the Arlington-based architect, routed the course on the site of the former Southern Hills Golf Club with six holes built over the footprint of the old course.
The holes he created after walking the property with owner Joseph Bruno take advantage of the Piney Woods feel. It features sandy soil, tall pines, lakes, a stream and topography that is unusual for East Texas with almost 200 feet of elevation change. The par-72 course plays to 7,229 yards from the tips.
Horseshoe Bay Resort
Horseshoe Bay Resort has completed a four-year, $100 million renovation project of its property that included updates on all three of the resort’s Robert Trent Jones Sr. courses.
Apple Rock and Slick Rock have new, enlarged bentgrass greens, smaller renovated bunkers and improved tee boxes and irrigation. Ram Rock was restored to match Jones’ original vision with enlarged greens, recontoured and smaller bunkers to make the course more playable.
The members-only Summit Rock, a Jack Nicklaus Signature Course, also received some freshening with improvements to its bunkers with new liners and a 50/50 blend of sand from California and San Antonio.
The resort said it also upgraded guest rooms, increased conference space, updated the spa and introduced new restaurant concepts in the hotel tower, yacht club and Whitewater entertainment complex. The redesigned Cap Rock clubhouse, which serves Apple Rock and Ram Rock, is scheduled to open this summer.
Wildhorse Golf Club at Robson Ranch
Wildhorse Golf Club at Robson Ranch has grown to 27 holes with the addition of the North nine that opened in October 2019. Gary Stephenson, architect of the original 18 holes, the South and West, which opened in 2001, also designed the North course.
Craig Pullen, the director of golf, said the North course has more of a links feel to it and plays more open than the South and West. At the moment, there are no houses lining the course and the trees will need time to mature. No. 1 on the North course is about 500 yards from the clubhouse, with the ninth finishing at the clubhouse.
“The greens are phenomenal,” Pullen said. “They’re big and undulating.”
Pullen said an additional 18 holes with another clubhouse are in the long-range plan for the growing over-50 community in Denton.
Iron Horse Golf Course
Sodding is underway for the project in North Richland Hills that Brauer calls 70% infrastructure renovation and 30% design. Brauer said in addition to work on the bunkers the course will see significant improvements in drainage and irrigation. It is scheduled to reopen in the fall.
Heath Golf and Yacht Club
Roy Bechtol likes to joke that if you need rain, hire him to design a golf course. That seems to be the case with the Heath Golf and Yacht Club, the course he designed on the eastern shores of Lake Ray Hubbard. After a decade of planning, three years of construction and enough rain to drown a frog, Bechtol can see the tunnel. The light at the end of it is still a little ways off.
The shaping is done. The greens are designed. Twenty-four acres of sod has been laid. All that’s left is for the rest of the course to grow in.
That’s all.
That said, the optimistic Bechtol said the course could be open for play in late September or early October if excessive rain doesn’t throw off the grassing plans again. He admitted that early 2021 might be more realistic.
“It’s going to be an amazing course once it’s all grown in,” he said.
Memorial Park
The Houston Open had a tradition of being played the week before the Masters and preparing players for the major with slick greens. Part of that tradition continues this year after the PGA Tour adjusted its schedule because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Houston Open will be played Nov. 5-8, the week before the rescheduled Masters. The tournament, which had been played at the Golf Club of Houston, is returning to Memorial Park where it was played in 1947 and from 1951-63. The Houston Open is part of the fall portion of the PGA Tour’s wraparound 2020-21 schedule.
Architect Tom Doak, with player consultant Brooks Koepka, renovated the course, originally designed by John Bredemus that opened in 1936. The renovated course reopened in November 2019.
In his year-in-review newsletter, Doak said that he and Koepka agreed that the focus should be on “providing an exciting atmosphere for the Tour instead of trying to keep the winning score from going too low.” With that in mind, Doak said they built just 19 bunkers and included plenty of chipping areas around the green.
The $15 million project was funded by private donations through the Astros Golf Foundation, which has taken over operation of the Houston Open.
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