Glen Garden Golf & Country Club

Few courses in American golf carry the biographical weight that Glen Garden does. This is the place where both Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson caddied as boys in the 1920s, learned the game on the same fairways, and — in a story that has since become legend — tied in a caddie championship on Christmas Day 1927. That a single modest Fort Worth club produced 2 of the sport's all-time greats is a fact that no ranking system can adequately measure.

The course sits in the south side of Fort Worth, a city with a genuine and unpretentious golf culture that runs deeper than its more famous neighbor Dallas typically gets credit for. The terrain is classic north-central Texas — rolling, open, with that blend of bermudagrass fairways and firm, sun-baked conditions that rewards a ground game and punishes carelessness with the driver.

For any serious student of the game's history, a round at Glen Garden is less a round of golf and more a kind of pilgrimage. The scorecard is almost beside the point.