I had Thursday and Friday off from work and originally had plans to head to Florida. However, because of the gas shortage out that way I decided to postpone my trip. I am still hoping to make it to a couple fun Florida courses this summer, but for now those will have to wait. Anyway, at the last minute I decided on a trip to the Houston area for a couple days of golf.

I’m not a big fan of getting up early (even for golf!) so I booked an 11:30am tee time at Meadowbrook Farms Golf Club. I left Dallas around 7am and got to the course about 11am. From the looks of the tee sheet the night before I hoped to be able to zip around quickly. Sadly, that wasn’t the case and things were very busy. I joined with three other golfers and we finished in about four hours, with me trying to hurry us along.

Meadowbrook Farms is on the west side of Houston and as an out-of-towner I’ve never really heard much about the course. Maybe its location, 45 minutes from downtown, has something to do with that. The course is a bit spendy – $75 during the week and $105 on weekends – so I’m sure that limits non-membership play. To me, it felt like Meadowbrook Farms was designed as a private course and just never took off. I’ve seen comments about it going private so who knows, maybe in the future.

Anyway, Meadowbrook Farms is a Greg Norman design that opened in 1999. Overall, I was impressed with the course’s design, routing and conditioning. If you look at a satellite image of the course it doesn’t look all that interesting. You’ll see that a large drainage ditch cuts through the course and that homes are off to one side of many holes – think a very urban environment. Yet somehow, the relaxed setting at Meadowbrook was my favorite thing about it.

There is adequate separation between the course and the homes and many holes have a wooded/parkland look to them, similar to what you’d find up in North Texas. Other holes have the wetlands/bayou vibe that is more common down here in the Houston area. So, there is some nice variety.

We played the championship tees which are 71.6/127/6600 and there is also a variety of challenges (undulation, smaller greens, water, bunkers). The opening three holes are tough par-4’s and ones where you just hope to avoid disaster early in the round. However, once you get to the par-5 4th then the fairways open up and there are more scoring opportunities – especially on the back nine. The back nine was my favorite thanks to all the strategy and thought needed to play most of the holes there.

The par-3’s and par-5’s were my favorite holes at Meadowbrook Farms. The par-5 4th and 7th on the front are risk/reward holes where you can try any number of options after a good drive and still recover after a poor one. The 4th has water to the right of the green and the 7th has a creek which cuts across the front of the green. The 14th (175 yards) and 17th (130 yards) are fun tree-lined par-3’s on the back nine with trouble lurking.

The conditioning here was good and the only issue were some edges of the greens that were struggling. I golfed with a member and he said the course is in the best shape it has been in a while. The fairways were mint, lush and full. The greens were smooth for the most part and faster than they looked.

I walked away impressed with Meadowbrook Farms and in some ways the course reminded me of a more friendly version of Greg Norman’s International Course at ChampionsGate Golf Club in Florida. I’m not sure a round here is worth paying more than $100, but if you can find a tee time for $75 or less then I’d certainly recommend a round here. The course likely won’t “wow” you, but it is an above average design and one I found both fair and interesting to play.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):