Course of the Week: BraeBurn Country Club

Photo: Long Drive Agency

BraeBurn Country Club in Houston, Texas, recently underwent redesign work done by Tripp Davis and Associates. The redesign finished in April and the club held a reopening event over the weekend of April 23.

While keeping the same basic routing of the original course, Davis and his team rebuilt and reshaped all greens, rebuilt and shifted tee locations and rebuilt bunkers in a more classic style.  NorthBridge Bermudagrass was installed along with a new irrigation system and upgraded drainage.

Photo: Long Drive Agency

“BraeBurn has been an exciting project for us in taking a piece of ground with so much potential, and then realizing that potential,” said Davis. “We rebuilt almost every part of the course to try to give it a feel of being from that early American era – the Golden Age of architecture. Working with the entire club, superintendents Terry Gill and Aaron Engelhard, golf course builder Greenscape Methods and irrigation contractor Heritage Links has been a great experience and everyone was very focused on long term quality through all the challenges this year has presented.”

“Tripp has created a timeless design built on a vision that will sustain interest, character and challenging yet friendly golf for all levels of play. In addition, Tripp aided the club in assembling world class construction teams to execute these plans. We could not be more excited about the final product and what this means to this property, our membership and the next chapter in the beautiful story of BraeBurn Country Club,” Dan Olson, club general manager at BraeBurn Country Club, said.

The course was originally designed by John Bredemus in 1931 and was extensively reworked in 1991 to address flooding issues.  It was the 1991 project that was able to add some significant elevation changes to the course, which is a unique feature in the Houston area.  The Hall of Fame golfer and three-time Masters Champion Jimmy Demaret was one of the club’s early professionals.

Timothy Connolly, CGCS, is the director of golf course maintenance operations at TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm.

Photo: Long Drive Agency