Memorial Park Golf Course
Houston, Texas
Date Played: February 28, 2021
Greens Fee: $38 to walk 18 (winter)
America’s Next
Great Super-Muni
The first time I played Bethpage Black was like watching “Star Wars” on opening night. I’d never seen anything like it: the sheer size of the place, the gargantuan bunkers, and the thoughtfulness of how they fit into dramatic greens complexes. It immediately found a home near the top of my list of favorite golf courses.
The truth is, though, that “Star Wars” is an imperfect film. Its magic is in the awe it inspires in newcomers. Once you’ve watched it enough times, flaws become clearer: the dialogue is campy, the plot is formulaic and predictable, and some of the characters are downright unnecessary. The same imperfections started appearing during my second time around Bethpage Black: why are these fairways so stupidly narrow, and why are these greens so boring? The setting’s grandeur is impossible to deny — but set against that backdrop, the cartoonishly small fairways lack any proportion.
Tree clearing was a hallmark of Memorial Park’s renovation, and the layout now features fewer than 20 bunkers. But on the dogleg-left third hole, the two are used in rare combination to defend the shortest route to the green.
Maybe Memorial Park in Houston will never host U.S. Opens and Ryder Cups. But it’s far closer than Bethpage Black to balancing exceptional design and a sense of place with playability for the average players who make up the vast majority of its rounds. At its best, municipal golf is the closest thing that America has to the game’s Scottish tradition: a low-cost gathering place for the entire community, without the pretension of private clubs. In a few rare instances, municipal courses have ventured into something different: locally owned venues designed to attract high-profile professional events. If there is another publicly owned golf course in America that does both so well as Memorial Park, then I haven’t seen it. Outside Pebble Beach alone, it’s the only PGA Tour venue I’ve ever visited that I would happily play every day; unlike Pebble Beach, though, you might actually be able to afford that at Memorial Park.
. . .
After a late-night arrival at a freeway-adjacent Holiday Inn Express and an early-morning jaunt to Taco Cabana, I arrived at Memorial Park fully caffeinated. I could have skipped the coffee. Even by 8 a.m., the place was already jumping: the two-story driving range was alive with the sounds of duffs and thwacks; the two practice putting greens were already populated; and the patio behind the clubhouse was alive as groups waited their turns to check in with the starter. It was more block party than country club.
First, though, I had work to do. In the tradition of true Cajun gumbo, my round the day before at Webb Memorial in Baton Rouge had included a little bit of everything: shanks, flubs, pulls, slices, prayer, profanity, and a 54-degree wedge that I’d bladed over a four-lane street. I had to figure something out, fast. My daily drills at home had been focused on footwork, and my support base definitely felt more stable — but still, something was going horribly wrong. And when my range session began with a quick shank and a thinned 6-iron, I knew something was fundamentally wrong.
In a panic, a question flashed in my mind: are you sure you’re keeping your head still? And actually, no, I was elated to realize that I was not in fact doing the very first thing that people tell you to do during a golf swing. Had I just stumbled across a fix for my horrible golf swing less than an hour before teeing off? I ushered another range ball onto the mat, eyed it, pulled back my 6-iron (“don’t move your head, DON’T MOVE YOUR HEAD,” I thought), and WHACK — the ball went soaring high into the Houston morning, straight toward its target. I was shocked. I tried another; same thing. I tried a new club; same thing. I couldn’t chase the smile off my face; after only four decades, I had mastered a skill taught to 7-year-old junior golfers on their first day of summer camp.
Contouring, both within and without the greens, is Memorial Park’s principal defense.
While I swept through my bucket of range balls like a kid with a new toy on Christmas morning, time got away from me — until I heard my name over the loudspeaker. Oh Hell, I thought. I forgot to check in with the starter. I threw my bag over my shoulder and hustled over to the table next to the pro shop, afraid that I’d missed some arbitrary, unspoken deadline. Even at the best municipal golf courses, getting from the parking lot to the first tee sometimes feels like trying to renew your driver’s license at the DMV: stand here, then get in this line, then hold your breath for three minutes while a cashier screams at you, then recite the Lord’s Prayer in Pig Latin, and do it in that order or go to the back of the line (I’m looking at you, Bethpage and Torrey Pines). I approach the starter meekly, but my fears couldn’t have been more misplaced. “You Bardwell?” he asked. “You want to tee off early?” Yet another smile. I headed for the first tee.
In truth, this was not my first time on Memorial Park’s first tee. I’d visited Houston for a conference about five years prior, and I’d snuck away one afternoon with golf clubs in tow for a quick round at Memorial Park. It had made a good impression, but it wasn’t the sort of place you daydreamed about: solid and fun, but flat with unremarkable greens. Tom Doak’s renovation of the place changed all that: careful but thorough tree clearing had opened up the course’s panorama, and heavy-duty shaping had turned Memorial Park’s flattish greens into bold, dramatic features that stood at the end of fairways like exclamation marks at the end of sentences. The tree elimination had widened the playing corridors, and the once-nondescript fairways bustled with rolls and ripples. This was not your father’s Oldsmobile. This wasn’t even Torrey Pines or Bethpage Black. This was better. This was real.
About 60,000 rounds of golf get played at Memorial Park every year (in contrast, Bethpage Black — notorious for its difficulty in securing tee times — gets about 45,000 rounds per year), which is to say that Memorial Park draws all manner of golfers — most of whom, inevitably, are average players at best. So it was with my group, I quickly discovered, when I carried over my driving range revelation and piped my tee shot into the first fairway, while my three partners missed wide right of the leftward-turning dogleg. For a golfer with my low ceiling, there’s a lot of pressure with being the best player in the group. For once, though, I didn’t mind, because my partners scouring the landscape for their balls gave me time to gawk at the renovation. When I squinted, I could still see the brush strokes of the original first hole; but the scene is broader and grander now, like a college campus whose growth shocks you after years of absence.
As dramatic as Memorial Park’s changes look, though, the design nails the setting’s scale. The wide open panoramas, the impressive bunkering, the bold contouring throughout the greens complexes — it all fits together just right. And the boldness of the bunkering keeps your eye, but hazards make up little of the course’s challenge (the design features fewer than 20 bunkers). Even the scorecard yardage (7,432 yards from the tips, and 6,553 yards from the white tees) overstates the task; the fairways aren’t gratuitous, but they’re more than wide enough to contain nearly anything a 15-handicap can throw at them.
Length isn’t a problem at Memorial Park’s par-3 second hole, which plays 147 yards from its white tees. But for anyone coming up short, the two bunkers and false front certainly are a problem.
Memorial Park’s real defense lies on and around its greens. After the handshake opener, the par-3 second hole (167 yards from the back tees, 147 yards from the white tees) introduces that defense like a slap in the face: two sand traps and a false front guard the green’s entrance, with runoff areas to the right and in back. With so many ways to hit the green without holding it, the putting surface’s size is deceptive; more importantly, the myriad ways a shot can go wrong forces a choice — decide where you’re willing to miss — but at a length manageable for players of any skill level.
Of course, Doak’s renovation didn’t only anticipate that Memorial Park would be home for players of all skill levels — it also had to make a home for the PGA Tour’s Houston Open and manage to challenge the best players in the world. The design nails that balance, as the third hole exemplifies. The long par-5 (587 yards from the back tees, 566 yards from the white tees) requires three shots from high-handicappers; but in a rare, two-shot span of great ball-striking, a textbook drive and a smashed 4-wood left me just over the green — the worst place I could’ve been, short-sided at the bottom of a steep contour three or four feet tall. My putt rolled up the slope, hopped up in the air, and landed softly enough to finish within six feet of the hole — but given 10 chances from the same spot, I might finish with a realistic birdie chance twice. Even for pros, short is better than long — a reality that should make any player think twice about going for it.
That said, Memorial Park is a public golf course first and a PGA Tour venue second — not the other way around. The overwhelming majority of its players are there to have fun, and the design lets them. At the long par-4 fourth hole (490 yards from the back tees, 457 yards from the whites), for example — where most players will be hitting a long, low-trajectory shot into the green — a huge contour swells up on the left side of the green complex, allowing the ball to trundle down to a front-right pin. And at the par-4 fifth hole (440 yards from the back tees, 376 yards from the whites), a long bunker with huge, flowing edges on the fairway’s right side appears to guard the green; but it actually sits well in front of the green and is out of reach off the tee for nearly everyone — so short hitters are free to attack it off the tee and fly it on an approach, because it’s not in play off the tee, and coming up short of the green brings no penalty. Like most of the rest of Memorial Park, it probably favors long hitters (name a course that doesn’t), but it does so without punishing short hitters.
. . .
Around the time the player makes the turn, Memorial Park turns, too: the three-hole stretch beginning the back nine is the most difficult on the course. The 10th and 12th holes both are par-4s in excess of 420 yards, even from the white tees. And the 11th hole (237 yards from the back tees, 223 yards from the whites) is by far the longest par-3 on the course: into a 15 mile-per-hour wind, I put my 3-hybrid back in my bag and reached for my 4-wood — and hit the low cut of my life, slinging the ball beneath the wind and along the fringe between the green and the front-right sand trap. Still, somehow the ball rolled back and found the bunker. For some reason, it didn’t bother me. A ball is not safe on these greens until it stops rolling, but there’s something lovable about it.
A tree defending the right side of the 12th hole’s fairway doesn’t altogether block the approach from a wayward drive, but it certainly makes things interesting.
And occasionally, the contours giveth. At the long par-4 12th hole (496 yards from the tips, 422 yards from the white tees), one of the only trees truly in play on the entire course stands between the fairway’s rightward landing area and the green — counseling a tee shot to the left, if the player can manage it. I couldn’t. Stuck between a 6-iron and a 5-hybrid, I chose the longer, springier club and cleared the tree, but also went just long of the green. This time, though, Doak’s contours saved me: the mounding on the rear-right side funneled my ball back to the pin on the green’s right side. Regardless of whether your shot finds the helpful or treacherous side of hummock, Memorial Park plays nothing like a typical PGA Tour venue.
The course’s closing stretch certainly is worthy of its PGA Tour chops, though. Water is in play on both the 16th and 17th holes, but mostly as a risk-reward hazard rather than as a simple penalty to be avoided. A solid drive on the par-5 16th (576 yards from the back tees, 501 yards from the white tees) makes the hole’s island green conceivably reachable, albeit much easier to hold with an iron on the third shot than with a fairway wood on the second. And the par-4 17th (382 yards from the back tees, 336 yards from the whites) is a Cape bending from left to right, at the shortest yardage of any par-4 on the course, making it a prime opportunity to pick up a late birdie (or, in my case, narrowly clear the water with your second shot, then get up and down for an improbable par).
. . .
There is a temptation to point to Memorial Park as a model for what municipal golf can be in the Twenty-First Century. Realistically, of course, most cities can’t lean on a Major League Baseball owner to come up with $18 million and hire one of the world’s best golf architects.
The overwhelming majority of Memorial Park’s greens invite a running shot. The par-5 16th is a notable exception.
That presupposes, though, that Doak’s remarkable redesign is the foundation of Memorial Park’s vibrance. And I’m not sure that’s true. There’s something bigger than just a great golf course happening at Memorial Park. It’s what architect Andy Staples calls “community golf” — a gathering place first, and a golf course second. The driving range, the patio scene, and the practice putting greens all contribute to the inclusiveness that drips off the place. Doak’s design is a huge part of that, but it’s not a prerequisite to recreating that atmosphere in other communities. What makes Memorial Park remarkable is how special it feels — how alive it feels. The renovated golf course shares that spirit, but it’s not the spirit’s only source.
Anyone hoping for municipal golf’s revitalization in the Twenty-First Century must first acknowledge two things. First, golf’s reputation among the non-golfing public is that it is an elitist, predominantly white sport that requires too many resources to support (land and money among them). Second, for better or worse, the American public is less eager to fund public services today than it was when municipal golf exploded in the early and mid-Twentieth Century.
If municipal golf is to remain a going concern for the next hundred years, then it must be more than “just” golf. There has to be something in it for everyone. Memorial Park’s focus on community and accessibility isn’t just a model for what municipal golf can be; if municipal golf is to endure, then that’s what it must be.
. . .
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