Old American Golf Club

News Flash: A Golf Course Opens Near Dallas

Filed under: Sports, Real Estate Developments

Now that the Tiger scandal is, for the moment at least, losing its roar, here's an only slightly less shocking bulletin from the world of golf. At a time when course construction projects have stalled and country clubs are opening their gates to the hoi polloi, The Tribute, a lakefront golf community a half-hour north of Dallas, is completing work on what by early accounts is an impressive new eighteen.

The layout is called the Old American Golf Club, because it pays homage to the country's golden age of golf architecture (roughly 1910 to the mid-1930s). In those days, without the ready use of bulldozers, course designers such as Donald Ross and A. W. Tillinghast relied largely on the natural contours of the land. Their example inspired Old American's designers, Tripp Davis and the PGA Tour pro and Dallas native Justin Leonard. The course, which hosted preview rounds this fall and will open officially next spring or summer, sports a low-slung, old-style appearance.

In what is surely a nod to the economic times, Old American--like its celebrated British-inflected sister course, The Tribute--will be open to the public as well as to residents of the development. (A boutique or mid-sized hotel is also planned.) Whether the new golf course will help sell the faux English cottages and French provincials in the 1,200-acre community remains to be seen.

Gallery: Old American Golf Club