As the PGA Tour season winds down this week, the NFL’s 2025-26 campaign is getting ready to kick off. The staggered timing is no surprise. The Tour understands that it can’t win a ratings battle with professional football. Better that pro golf does not collide with the gridiron. From Ponte Vedra’s point of view, the two sports are best left in separate lanes. (With the notable exception, of course, of new PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp, who came from the NFL.)
There is one place, though, where they overlap.
The Cowboys Golf Club, in Grapevine, Texas, just outside Dallas, is the country’s only NFL-themed golf course. As its name suggests, it is owned and operated by Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones and maintained as a kind of grassy shrine to America’s Team and its five Super Bowl titles. Its clubhouse is a museum of Cowboys memorabilia. The par-4 4th hole has the Cowboys blue star logo painted in the center of its fairway.
It’s also public access. Show up to play on any given day, and you might just bump into a former or current Cowboys player. On my one visit, some years ago, I wound up paired with former defensive lineman Tony Casillas, who — despite a bum shoulder and a funky grip resulting from fingers he had broken more times than he could count — bombed it 60 yards past me and putted the eyes out.
But I digress.
The real point of this dispatch is a property update. The club, which opened in 2001, is undergoing a multimillion-dollar overhaul. The work includes course improvements but also fully reimagined practice areas, including a new range with Toptracer technology, turf repurposed from the Cowboys field and an 18-hole putting course with what the club describes as “beer garden vibes.” These upgrades and additions, which began in June, are nearing completion and the club is scheduled to fully reopen in mid-October.
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3 Things I’m Thinking:
Cabot’s new Scotland course: I can’t prove this, but, in my experience, “preview play” was not always part of golf-course marketing. Courses simply opened with a ribbon cutting, without much in the way of “sneak peeks.” In more recent years, though, “preview play” is trending — a way to tease out information about a new course that’s close to complete while whetting the public appetite in advance of the official unveiling. Interest builds. Reservations book out. It’s a smart strategy. I mention it because early next month, I’m off to Scotland, where preview play began in August for Old Petty, the second 18-holer at Cabot Highlands — a Tom Doak design to complement Castle Stuart, the original Gil Hanse-Jim Wagner course. The preview window lasts through September if you’re interested in getting there yourself.
Old Petty is coming to life.
courtesy cabot
The world’s longest course, reimagined: For decades, the Pines Course at the International in Bolton, Mass. — an 8,400-yard Geoffrey Cornish design — was known as the longest golf course in the world (technically, it wasn’t; the Nullarbor Links, which stretches across the Australian Outback, is some 848 miles, but why quibble?). Now, the course has a new claim to fame, as the original Pines has been blown up and replaced by a fresh build by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The layout now tips out at just over 7,000 yards, which seems like plenty. The Pines is a private club, but I’m sure we’ll be seeing and hearing more about it in the coming weeks, as the club is hosting a media outing next week.
