Texas City's Bayou Golf Course - Offers Fun, Playability, Great Course Conditions and History.

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Texas City's Bayou Golf Course

Texas City's Bayou Golf Course - Offers Fun, Playability, Great Course Conditions and History.

If your goal is to find a great public golf course and play as often as you can, we suggest Bayou Golf Course here in northern Galveston County, which more than fits the bill as a facility where fun, playability, course conditions and history combine to produce a memorable round of golf.

Owned by the city of Texas City, Bayou Golf Course’s routing was originally designed by legendary Texas golf architect Joe Finger and opened in 1974. Finger fashioned a mix of holes at the hybrid links/parkland-style facility that were raised from about 200 acres of marshland along Moses Bayou as it flows its toward Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico.

Bayou Golf Course is the facility where Butch Harmon, one of the game’s most noted and in-demand instructors, got his first job in the golf business.

“There are people who want to play this course just because Butch used to teach here,” said Mike Skiba, Bayou Golf Course’s head professional and director of golf. “I’m no Butch Harmon, but if you want to improve your golf game, I can get you on the right track.”

The course has been a Gulf Coast staple for more than 50 years. In the five decades that have passed there have been plenty of changes and improvements, all centered on improving the experience for players.

In 2014, Houston-based golf course architect Mike Nuzzo restored and enhanced the course, accentuating the track address drainage issues and to bring water into play on 12 of the holes. Subsequent improvements and tweaks have been undertaken as needed; the latest was a resurfacing of the course’s cart paths and a total bunker revitalization.

Bayou Golf Course plays at 6,596 windswept yards from the back tees and to a par of 72. It checks a lot of boxes for most golfers with challenging greens complexes and demanding putting surfaces that ask for the best from players’ short game.

From the back tees four of the par 4s are carded at over 400 yards and three of the par 5s play at more than 500 yards. Add in the wind, which is always blowing here, and those seven holes alone clearly indicate the need for prowess with the driver. There are also 18 sand bunkers strategically situated throughout the routing to form a formidable combination with the course’s slightly elevated tees and greens.

“As everyone who plays here regularly can tell you, we can put the hole location in places where precise approach shots are the only way they can be attacked and play close to par,” Skiba said. “We can clamp down this golf course to make it more difficult, but the layout and the winds usually make that unnecessary.”

After two relatively easy holes to start the round, the 414-yard par 4 third is a real test, playing into the prevailing wind with water along the left on the approach and trees on the right near the preferred landing area. More water awaits behind the smallish and undulating putting surface at the back left. It’s one of the toughest pars on the Gulf Coast.

The 414-yard par 4 sixth is all about strategy, with a tee shot that’s played short of the bayou that begins at 225 yards out and then asks for an approach to another wind-affected, tiny green.

The 481-yard par-5 10th is one of the most “gettable” holes on the course because of its risk/reward options. There is a lake in play off the tee and on the approach as well as out of bounds on the left, but birdie or better is within reach with two, or three, well-executed shots.

Bayou Golf Club is renowned for its four-hole closing stretch. The 573-yard par 5 15th is the longest hole here and has a double dogleg. Next up is the deadly and long 191-yard par 3 16th, which always seems to need one more club than you think to reach the putting surface.

The 457-yard 17th is the longest two-shotter on the course. It’s a dogleg-left with a stout carry across the turn to the fairway with trees guarding the left side. Most of the Bayou Golf Course’s regular players consider a par here to be like a birdie, especially on those days when the wind comes in from the north.

The round wraps up with a 393-yard par 4 that teases water along the left side and a deep bunker that guards the tournament hole placement at the back-left. It’s well-thought of as one of the best finishing holes in the Bay Area.

The sense of community and fellowship one gets from playing golf is on ready display at the Bayou Golf Course. There’s nothing better than a great golf course that can be played at an affordable price and that’s what you get here.

“We’ve made this course a haven of sorts for golfers who want to have fun, be treated like family and enjoy a consistent level of great golf for under $40,” said Skiba, who been at Bayou GC for nine years. “If you come play our course we think you will want to play it again and again. That’s the best complement a golfer can give a course.”

The facility also offers the community a five-and-a-half acre walking family pitch-and-putt course with holes that play from 60 to 90 yards. It’s a place where you can find both the skilled golfer looking to hone his or her skills around the greens (and who isn’t) as well as beginners just learning about how great golf can be.

Bayou Golf Course is the home to the area’s First Tee program.