Houston, We Have a New Public Course, With a New Premium Grass

Highland Pines Golf Club, the first new public course in greater Houston in over a decade, features a new Zoysia strain created to handle Texas heat.

PORTER, Texas — More than 25 years ago, Texas golf dreamers Dennis Wilkerson and Barron Jacobson set the public golf market on a new level with the first-18 hole replica courses, Tour 18.

Now the twosome believes they have done it again with their new public course, Highland Pines Golf Club.

Not only is it the first new public course in the Houston area in 15 years, but the first with Zeon Zoysia fairways and rough, usually only seen at the best private courses, and the first in the nation with Lazar Zoysia greens.

Highland Pines Golf Club is the first in the nation with Lazar Zoysia greens / Courtesy Highland Pines Golf Club

Like the widely copied replica golf concept, which the Texas twosome battled a U.S. District Court lawsuit to maintain, Wilkerson feels the new premium grass for public course golfers will take off as well.

“I feel like we’ve taken the lessons learned at Tour 18 to produce another first, premium Lazar Zoysia grass greens to give public golfers a new experience they have likely never seen before,” Wilkerson says.

“I didn’t want what everybody else had on their (public) courses. I wanted the Lazar Zoysia. We rolled the dice on this new grass and came out a winner. People will come out for the sizzle and that’s what we have here.”

Since selling his Tour 18 courses in Dallas and Houston to Arnold Palmer Golf in 1999, Wilkerson and Jacobson, who serves as director of marketing, have owned and operated Augusta Pines Golf course in the Houston area, which hosted a Champions Tour event from 2004 to 2007.

But for his latest course he wanted something different that would help change the golf market like Tour 18 did, but still be available for the general public.

“I had played of some of the best courses anywhere and knew they had the Zoysia grass where the balls sit up in the fairway and is great to putt on” Wilkerson says. “With the first new public course in Houston in almost 20 years, we had to have something different, something the public did not have.”

He found the new Lazar Zoysia grass strain in the huge Texas turf company, Bladerunner Farms, Inc., outside San Antonio and run by David Doguet. It grew and distributed the grass developed by the Texas A&M horticulture program headquartered in Dallas.

Once Wilkerson and Jacobson traveled to San Antonio to see the turf, they were sold.

The new grass putts like the smooth, quick-running surfaces at some elite private courses but is hearty enough to survive the southeast Texas summer heat and humidity.

To design the par-72 championship layout, which is part of The Highlands home community, Wilkerson called on former Arthur Hills associate Dave Relford of Tour 18 Design Group, who also designed Augusta Pines.

The Highland Pines layout combines elevation changes not often seen in the Houston area with heavily wooded fairways and lakes around much of the course, which can play 7,307 yards from the championship tees and sits near the banks of the San Jacinto River northeast of Houston.

Wilkerson spent several million dollars on the project, which officially opened in March, but has already drawn a full tee sheet and rave reviews from those who have played it.

“We’re just glad we could do something to aid the growth and enjoyment of golf, like Tour 18,” Jacobson says. “It’s been a fun ride.”

Wilkerson, a lifelong Houston resident whose parents attended grade school only a few miles from Highland Pines, said the biggest reaction from golfers who have played here is if they could slow down the green speeds.

“It’s not a matter of speed, I’m sure we can make them faster or slower, but there is not any grain to the grass and everything rolls true. Unless you been on a top private course, you may not be used to that.

“We’re selling something different. Our niche in the game, like we did at Tour 18. So far everybody is loving it. Probably other (public) courses around here or elsewhere will start to copy it, but once again, Tour 18, Inc., has raised the bar.”

In Texas, the saying is, "it’s not bragging if you can back it up." The Lone Star State duo feels like that have done just that and has new premium grass greens to back them up.