Houston National Golf Club

There are two courses there. One is a private club with a pristine, beautiful course. The other is Houston National, which is more like a typical public course. Challenging layouts on several holes. Fairways were fair. There were children playing on one hole and a man fishing off one of the greens. No marshals around and no refreshment carts. At least there was water and ball washers.

After some very heavy rain the night before the course was still in great condition. Obviously cart path only, and the range being closed were detractors, but what a nice afternoon at the course. Greens were incredibly fast and the fairways were soft, but still very playable. Lunch and a drink included was a bonus.

The course was not in good condition and the bathrooms were in bad shape.

The only con to my round at HN was the pace of play. Flew through the front 9 in under 2 hours, then spent 3+ on the back after getting stuck behind multiple groups.

I liked the layout and the greens were in great shape. The fairways were a little sparse and there was no Marshall. That resulted in an eightsome being followed by a single being followed by us (a twosome). Needless to say, we waited around a lot.

I generally like this course but you can tell we’ve not had enough water this winter. This Sunday we were stuck behind a little kid tournament. I’m all for training the next generation but tell me in the pro shop ahead of my round. The pace of play was awful in the front nine.

Not bad but also not great. Fun course layout but the greens and fairways aren’t taken care of. The meal included was great I must say. Other than that I wouldn’t come back for the price.

Playing this course is not the same as hitting balls at the practice range. It will put your creativity to the test at navigating the undulating fairways and greens. You play this course once… it will keep you wanting to come back.

Booked a tee time through golf now for twilight rates, but when I showed up to the course they informed me that the twilight hours have since changed to start at 3:30pm and I now owed the full normal rate for my 3:20pm tee time.

Pace of play was horrendous and I couldn't even finish the round before the sun set.

On top of that, the course had obviously hosted a tournament earlier that day and it was in awful condition. I've played Houston national multiple times and this is by far the worse experience I have ever had there. It's slowly gone down hill and gotten more expensive since they upgraded carts. Better courses for the money in the area.

So this is my first time I was on a business trip and I thought hey let me try. This course looks great. Looks like it’s got great reviews. So the first big noticeable portion of the course that was pretty bad was the driving range, mats were worn down the entire driving range was nothing but sand. Range balls they only have one size apparently nine dollars gray small bucket of 25 maybe. The golf cart that I got in covered in Bird poop had to talk to one of the cart guys for them to hand me a tell to clean it off. One of the good things that did come from this was that I was paired up with a really nice guy by the name of Chuck. It was his first time playing the course both of us agreed amazing. I’m talking about fun amazing course Leo. Course conditions on the other hand fairways were horrible patchy dry the greens. Let me tell you something about the greens. The greens were fair fair condition. I did like them. They weren’t too bad bunkers you couldn’t play in the bunkers maybe one or bunker, but most of them weren’t. Look at the end of the day. I’ll just say this the layout was awesome and amazing when I come back yeah I’d come back. Fix the course conditions improve your driving range. Give me a different size of a bucket of range balls and you might want to lower the green fee definitely not worth 50 to 75. Houston national I know you can do better.

I generally don’t write bad reviews and at this price point there really shouldn’t be a lot to complain about, but it seems like they’ve given up on the course.

Before I get into the bad, I will say that the greens are decently maintained rolling fairly quickly for a public course and generally roll true around the pin placements they had today.

The bad:

The fairways were extremely dry and on most holes the grass was not maintained well at all. They have a serious poa annua problem so between the hardpan and the weeds you will get a lot of bad lies in the fairway.

The rough is also very poorly maintained. You are either in deep uncut rough or on a hill with no grass if you miss the fairway. This is my biggest complaint. there’s no attempt to rope off the areas on the many hills on this course that have absolutely no grass on them to allow the grass to grow back.

There has been zero effort to maintain the bunkers as well. It is clear that they have not been machine raked in weeks and there are weeds growing out of them.

Like I said at the start, I’m not generally picky at this price point about conditions, but when it is clear that there is no effort being put into the maintenance of this course it does not make for a fun round. The maintenance of this course also makes it play extremely harder than the rating with these green complexes.

I’m very expensive course that does not deliver for the price. The fairways full of weeds, uneven surface.

Course was in remarkably good condition for this time of year.