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HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL
JULY 1-7, 2016
COVER STORY
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How Houston’s most luxurious family resorts
will revive the game of golf
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BY PAUL TAKAHASHI | [email protected] | 713-395-9635, @HBJPAUL
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olf is at a major crossroads.
The reasons for golf’s decline is varied: Younger players lack both the finances
A decade ago, the Scottish game of swings and strokes was a force and attention span to engage in an expensive, five-hour round of golf. Modern-day
to be reckoned with. Crowds packed PGA tournaments, eager to get fathers would rather spend their weekends at home with their families than with
a glimpse of Tiger Woods. Business professionals flocked to the links, their buddies at the local country club. Golf courses have gotten bigger, harder and
where deals were struck and relationships were solidified.
more frustrating to play. The list goes on.
Developers built a flurry of golf courses to lure families
Yet despite these challenges, a new crop of developers
and retirees alike to master-planned communities across
have embarked on new resorts and ranches around the
“I JUST THINK THAT
the country.
Houston area, each boasting a PGA championship-quality
THE GAME OF GOLF
However, the game of golf now finds itself in a conungolf course that seeks to make the game of golf fun again
NEEDS TO GET BACK
drum as interest in the sport has waned.
for players of all skill levels. These courses feature a wide
TO ITS ROOTS.”
The number of Americans who played at least one
range of tee boxes, from traditional championship men’s
TIGER WOODS,
round of golf in the past year has fallen from a high of
and ladies’ tees to junior tees for younger golfers; faster
professional golfer and
30.6 million in 2003 to about 25 million in 2015, according
and larger greens; shorter roughs and wider fairways that
founder of Tiger Woods
to the most recent data from the National Golf Foundation.
make it easier to locate lost golf balls.
Design
Other metrics, such as TV ratings and golf equipment
“I just think that the game of golf needs to get back to its
sales, have also recorded steep drop-offs in recent years.
roots,” Tiger Woods said at the March opening of Bluejack
In addition, more golf courses have closed than
National, his first U.S. golf resort located
COURTESY
opened each year since 2006. More than 700 U.S. golf
in Montgomery County, north of
courses — including about 10 golf courses in Houston — have shuttered over the Houston. “The game of golf has changed. Let’s try to change
past decade, according to NGF. Many have been replaced by single-family it back a little bit.”
homes or kid-friendly amenities such as water parks and splash pads. Pine
Here are three of Houston’s most luxurious
Crest in Spring Branch and Wedgewood in Conroe are some of the most resorts and ranches that are trying to revive the
recent Houston-area golf courses to close.
game of golf.
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HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL
JULY 1-7, 2016
15
COVER STORY
BLUEJACK NATIONAL
From left, developers of Bluejack National,
Casey Paulson and Michael Abbott of
Beacon Land Development, Tiger Woods of
Tiger Woods Design, and Andy Mitchell of
Lantern Asset Management
CONROE
Bluejack
National
Golf Club
THE
WOODLANDS
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When Tiger Woods was growing up in Southern California, he honed his golf skills at a park about a quarter-mile
from his childhood home.
It was practice, but it was also play, Woods said. At
night, Woods and his friends would practice hitting golf
balls over trees, around the jungle gym and through an
old tire.
“We found a place — a park — and created something
fun,” Woods said. “That’s what I grew up with.”
So when Woods decided to create his first golf course
in the U.S., the professional golfer and course designer knew he wanted to create a different kind of place.
Instead of the stodgy, rule-driven golf club of years past,
Woods wanted to design a high-end but casual resort
where people can relax with their families and enjoy the
game.
Enter Bluejack National, the first Tiger Woodsdesigned golf community to open in the country. Dallas-based developers Beacon Land Development and
Lantern Asset Management worked with Tiger Woods
Design for about a year before breaking ground on
the former Blaketree National Golf Club in July 2014.
They wanted to create a fun golf course that was forgiving for the average player but also challenging for
professionals.
“It’s really difficult to hit the ball straight up in the air
with a lot of spin,” Woods said. “We find that at all levels.”
Woods and a team of developers and designers
revamped most of Blaketree’s golf corridors, clearing
some trees and opening up the landscape. They went
old school in Bluejack National’s design, eschewing tall
grasses and roughs in favor of short Zoysia fairway greens
rimmed with mulch and thin trees. Players can now hit
through trees and putt through the fairway, ensuring that
fewer golf balls are lost.
“I think that golf should be played on the ground,”
Woods said. “My favorite place to play is the British
Open. I love being creative and hitting a bunch of different shots. That’s what I think the game of golf can get
back to.”
Players can also customize Bluejack National’s course
to fit their schedules, choosing between three-hole, fivehole and nine-hole routes. That speeds up the pace of
play, a pervasive problem in the game today. Bluejack
National allows busy corporate executives to spend as
much or as little time on the course as they want.
There will be comfort stations throughout the course
that allow players to take a break from the game. A fruit
stand will offer fresh yogurt, homemade jam and fruit on
the back of the fifth hole. An old barn-style shack with
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Bluejack National
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Address: 4430 S. FM 1486 in Montgomery County
Size: 755 acres
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Amenities: Golf course, restaurant, clubhouse,
Nike Performance Center, fitness center, The Fort,
a 3-acre amenity park with a burger joint, pool,
skate park, whiffle ball diamond, tennis courts, a
flag football field, zip lines, tree houses and a fish
camp.
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Homes: 386 single-family homes and member
suites
Members: 100
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PAUL TAKAHASHI/HBJ
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a tri-tip grill will serve up meat and Bluejack ale on the
back of the 12th and 17th holes.
Bluejack National will cater to the entire family.
Serious golfers can check out the Nike Performance
Golf Center — one of only three in the world — to analyze their swings and get fitted with the latest club
technology. Nongolfers can relax at their cottage or spa
and play at The Playgrounds, a shorter, 10-hole course
that will be lit up at night.
“I thought the game of golf was always fun and competitive because my dad allowed it to be that way. He
always stressed that the game should be fun,” Woods
said. “Let’s try to bring the enjoyment back into the
game of golf.”
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CONTINUED ON PAGE 16
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HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL
JULY 1-7, 2016
COVER STORY
HOUSTON OAKS
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“THIS IS A DIFFERENT KIND
OF CLUB. THIS IS A RETREAT,
NOT A GOLF CLUB. IT’S GOING
TO BE FAMILY-ORIENTED.”
CHUCK WATSON, founder of Houston-
based Dynegy (NYSE: DYN) and coowner of Houston Oaks
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Before there was a Chevron Houston Marathon, there
was a Houston-Tenneco Marathon.
Tenneco Oil and Gas Co. was once one of the most prominent energy companies in Houston from the 1950s to
late 1980s. In 1956, Cold War fears forced Tenneco to
move its global headquarters to Hockley, about 40 miles
northwest of downtown Houston.
Tenneco created Tennwood Country Club, a 36-hole golf course that
served as a corporate retreat for
employees and their families.
Chuck Watson, the founder of
what became Houston-based Dynegy Inc. (NYSE: DYN), remembers
his first time visiting Tennwood as
Chuck Watson
a customer.
“We duck hunted in the morning, then we fished
and then we golfed,” Watson said. “The accommodations were pretty bland, but it was a beautiful piece of
property with centuries-old oak trees.”
In the early 2000s, a group of 30 investors — including Watson and Steve Alvis, the founder and principal of Houston-bsaed NewQuest Properties — bought
Tennwood out of foreclosure. In 2007, the two partners brought in John Havens, the president of Seismic
Exchange and the second largest owner of the Houston
Astros, to buy out the other partners.
The three families had a vision for an idyllic retreat
called Houston Oaks. From the beginning, the Alvis,
Haven and Watson families didn’t want to create a traditional country club with stodgy rules and dress codes.
They wanted to build a different kind of retreat: a family-friendly destination where families and friends could
come up for the weekend to play golf, ride horses, play
tennis, shoot clay pigeons and relax on the lake.
A fire in December 2008 destroyed Tennwood’s former clubhouse, but gave the three families a clean slate
to rebuild Houston Oaks’ clubhouse. The families decided to rebuild the clubhouse into a grand 30,000-squarefoot amenity center with a resort-style swimming pool,
luxurious lounges, lockers and boardrooms and a farmto-table restaurant.
“After that fire, we had to regroup
and decide what we really wanted
to do with this place,” Marci Alvis,
the CEO of Houston Oaks, said.
“That’s when we decided we were
going to take it to a new level and
do a quality place that we could be
proud of.”
Marci Alvis
The three families each brought
something unique to Houston Oaks. The Alvises shipped
semi-truckloads of sustainably harvested pinion wood
from their ranch in New Mexico to use as firewood in
Houston Oaks’ many fireplaces and firepits. The Havens,
self-proclaimed Francophiles, shipped over more than
a dozen antique fireplaces and a 15th-century chapel
from France. The Watsons, who have several grandchildren, helped build a Swiss Family Robinson-style treehouse, complete with air conditioning and flush toilets.
Last year, the three prominent Houston families
hired golf architect Chet Williams, who designed the
Whispering Pines course in Trinity, Texas, to renovate
Tennwood’s golf course.
Houston Oaks had several goals for its new redesigned golf course, said Darren Howard, the resort’s
director of golf. The new course had to be modernized
with better drainage, but it also needed a better layout
that made the game of golf fun again for players of all
ages and skill levels.
Williams and Tennessee-based golf construction
firm Sanders Golf set about designing a golf course that
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ALL PHOTOS BY PAUL TAKAHASHI/HBJ, PHOTO #2 BY DANIEL ORTIZ/HBJ
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1. Houston Oaks’ wedding venue is a 15th century chapel imported from France.
2. Three-time Olympian Liezel Huber runs Houston Oaks’ tennis program.
3. Steve Alvis’ son, Andrew Alvis, runs an aquaponics farm at Houston Oaks for the retreat’s
farm-to-table restaurant.
4. A treehouse, complete with A/C, flush toilet and a shower, at Houston Oaks.
5. The fish camp at Houston Oaks.
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included a wide range of tee boxes, from the traditional
championship, men’s and ladies’ tees all the way to the
“wee tees” for younger golfers. Many resort golf courses
don’t have specified tee boxes for younger golfers.
Experienced players teeing off from the championship tees will have to navigate challenging bunkers and
water hazards, but beginners can often bypass these
obstacles from their tees. The golf course also will feature forgiving fairways — as wide as 60 yards — and lower-cut Celebration Bermuda grass roughs and mulch
trimming to make it easier for players to find their golf
balls.
There are even some fun features, such as two holes
that crisscross each other as well as a hole where players have to land their golf balls on an island. Comfort
stations stocked with cold beverages and stocked fish-
Read an extended interview with the
three co-owners of Houston Oaks at
HoustonBusinessJournal.com.
Q
ing ponds along the course allow for players to take a
break from the game.
Ultimately, Houston Oaks isn’t about the golf, said
Watson, the only true golfer among the six co-owners.
“Frankly, to get the culture right, we made a lot of
initial investments that had nothing to do with golf,”
Watson said. “When we first started out, having a world
class golf course wasn’t the driver behind this. I’m really
glad we didn’t because all the stuff that we did before
the golf course created the atmosphere we wanted for
our families.”
HOUSTON BUSINESS JOURNAL
JULY 1-7, 2016
17
COVER STORY
BIG EASY RANCH
Houston
Oaks
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Big Easy
Ranch
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Big Easy Ranch
Address: 2400 Brunes Mill Road in Columbus
Size: 1,300 acres
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Amenities: Nine-hole champsionship golf course,
acres of deer and bird hunting, a clay shooting
range, a 10,000-square-foot lodge and cabins,
lakes with rainbow trout, bass and striped bass.
Homes: None, but has a lodge for overnight stays.
Future amenities: A spa and swimming pool, a
second lodge with more cabins and more lakes for
fishing.
Unique features: The ranch has between 600
and 800 white-tailed and exotic deer. About 150
fawns are born on the ranch each year.
Members: 20, with a goal of 50
Staff: 20, including a gourmet chef.
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Members: 400
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Unique features: The families brought wood from
antique wood beams and boards from 80 barns
in the Midwest and fashioned them into wood
panels, doors and ceiling beams throughout the
property. They also imported more than a dozen
antique fireplaces from France to put into the
clubhouse.
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Future amenities: Plans for more lodging, a party
barn that can host musical acts, a maze, farmers
market, tea room, mountain bike trail, zipline and
ropes course.
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Homes: 42 homes built out of between 80
and 100 homes, a 12-room boutique hotel, four
cottages, four cabins and a 6,600-square-foot
lodge.
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Amenities: 18-hole championship golf course, a
gun shooting range, an equestrian center, a farm
and cattle ranch, a disc golf course, a petting zoo,
a Little League baseball diamond, a treehouse, a
fish camp and a lake for swimming and boating.
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Size: 950 acres
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Address: 22602 Hegar Road in Hockley
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Houston Oaks
Big Easy Ranch has long been a hunter’s paradise nestled
among the rolling hills of Columbus, Texas.
For years, Houstonians hunted deer on the 1,300-acre
property, located about 70 miles west of Houston.
In 2010, Billy Brown — the founder of Houston-based
Blackhawk Specialty Tools, a Houston-based oil and
gas service company — purchased the property, formerly known as Triple AAA and J Ranch, and began transforming the grounds into a hunting and golf destination.
Brown, who sold Blackhawk to Boston-based Bain Capital for $200 million in 2013, still owns 20 percent of the
energy tool company.
Brown wanted to create a wildlife ranch where he could
take his family and clients deer and bird hunting, clay
shooting and fly-fishing. The Houma, Louisiana, native
built a 10,000-square-foot lodge with a 14-seat conference room and cabins that can sleep 18 people comfortably.
“I’m a big hunter and golfer,” Brown said. “I wanted
everything I love to do outside in one location so I would
never get bored and also bring something unique to the
Houston market.”
However, Brown realized hunters had little to do on his
ranch during the off season. The hunting season is from
October to April.
“I wanted to have something to do in between hunts
and in other six months out of the year,” Brown said. “I
also wanted to make something so if you weren’t a hunter,
you could come out as well.”
Brown enlisted golf architect Chet Williams to create a
nine-hole, par-3 championship golf course on his ranch.
The golf course opened this past year.
“You can hunt early in the morning, get some lunch,
play nine holes of championship golf, and then go back
hunting again,” Brown said. “It’s the ultimate man cave.”
The golf course at Big Easy Ranch is designed for players of all abilities. There are four different tee boxes that
can make the course easier or more challenging, depending on skill level.
To make the course more visually appealing for golfers,
Brown also added rolling hills, stone bridges and 13 waterfalls, including one 20-foot waterfall.
“The biggest complaint in golf is the five-hour rounds,”
Brown said. “It takes too long to play.”
Brown also hired Hal Sutton, a 14-time PGA Tour title
winner, to teach golf at Big Easy Ranch’s new golf course.
Sutton — a Shreveport, Louisiana, native — runs the Hal
Sutton Golf Academy, which is geared for intermediateand advanced-level golfers, from college athletes to CEOs
and executives who want to improve their game.
“This is about corporate entertaining at its finest,”
Brown said. “We wanted to create a one-of-a-kind place
where you can bring your family and clients and have a
fun time.”
Staff: 125
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BILLY BROWN, founder of Blackhawk Specialty Tools
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“I’M A BIG HUNTER AND GOLFER, I WANTED
EVERYTHING I LOVE TO DO OUTSIDE IN
ONE LOCATION SO I WOULD NEVER GET
BORED AND ALSO BRING SOMETHING
UNIQUE TO THE HOUSTON MARKET.”
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PAUL TAKAHASHI/HBJ
6. The golf pro shop at Houston Oaks.
7. The conference and wine
room inside Houston Oaks’
30,000-square-foot clubhouse.
PHOTOS COURTESY
1. Hal Sutton, 14-time PGA championship winner and general manager of Big Easy Ranch’s
golf program and academy.
2. Hunters can hunt for white-tailed deer and birds at Big Easy Ranch.