Bentwater Yacht & Country Club: Grand Pines Course

Grand Pines is the third of three 18-hole courses at Bentwater Yacht & Country Club on Lake Conroe, about an hour north of Houston. Laid out in 2005 by Texas A&M-trained architect Jeff Blume on a 182-acre site, the par-72 routing runs through rolling terrain framed by pine and hardwood. Bentwater's master plan reserved the corridor around Grand Pines from residential development, so the course plays without homes lining the fairways.

Bentwater Yacht & Country Club sits on a 1,400-acre master-planned community along 12.5 miles of Lake Conroe shoreline, set between the lake and the 160,000-acre Sam Houston National Forest in Montgomery, Texas. The club was built around a 54-hole golf program developed in three chapters, each tied to a different architect. The Miller Course, designed by Arthur Hills and associate Mike Dasher, opened first and set the template for Bentwater's lakeside golf. The Weiskopf Course, a Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish collaboration, followed in 1989 and added a more muscular second layout across the property. By the early 2000s the developer wanted a third course that would complete the facility with something distinct from the first two. Texas architect Jeff Blume, a Texas A&M graduate who had worked for Jeffrey D. Brauer's GolfScapes and for Robert von Hagge before launching his own firm, was selected for the project. Blume laid out Grand Pines in 2005 on a 182-acre parcel close to Lake Conroe. A key element of the master plan was that no real estate lots would be sold along Grand Pines, preserving the pine-and-hardwood corridors uninterrupted by homes. The resulting course plays to a par of 72. Grand Pines uses the natural rise and fall of the property to create a mix of uphill, downhill, and sidehill shots framed by the forest canopy. Short grass and closely mown runoffs around the greens invite a variety of recovery options. Bentwater's members and the club's 44-villa guest program share access to all three courses, making Grand Pines part of one of the larger private 54-hole golf environments in the Houston area, and Blume has gone on to serve as president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.