Waterwood National

Few courses in Texas carry quite the melancholy weight of Waterwood National. Built in the 1970s on the shores of Lake Livingston — one of Texas's largest reservoirs — the course was designed by Pete Dye, whose fingerprints show in the punishing bunkering, railroad-tie bulkheads, and narrow landing zones that once made Waterwood one of the most talked-about layouts in the state. At its peak it drew serious golfers from Houston and beyond, and its reputation as a genuine test carried well outside Texas borders.

The intervening decades were less kind. The property fell into decline, and for years the course sat largely dormant, its fate uncertain. Efforts to restore it have been the subject of ongoing conversation among Texas golf devotees who remember what it was — or who have simply heard the legend.

Huntsville itself sits in the Piney Woods, about 70 miles north of Houston, where the humid East Texas forest gives the landscape a character distinct from the open ranch country most people picture when they think of Texas golf.