Lakewood Country Club - Texas

Lakewood Country Club was originally fashioned by Tom Bendelow in 1912 and so it remained until Texan Ralph Plummer redesigned the course in 1948. Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore have since twice revitalized the layout.

Located very close to downtown Dallas, the club hosted the Texas Victory Open in 1944, a PGA Tour event that became the Dallas Open before morphing into the Byron Nelson Golf Classic in 1968. The competition still bears his name, which is fitting for the man who won the first edition more than seventy-five years ago, beating his closest rival by 10 strokes.

Ralph Plummer’s post World War II changes significantly improved the layout and they remained in place until the mid-1990s, when Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw reinvigorated the layout by repositioning tees, improving the bunkers, and changing the playing surfaces to Bermuda fairways and bent greens.

Further renovation work took place in the new millennium, so that Lakewood is now more of a Coore and Crenshaw track than a Bendelow and Plummer layout. Bill and Ben recreated the driving range in 2011 then returned three years for a further $6 million facelift which saw the installation of a new irrigation system, the removal of trees and the redesign of bunkers.