# Memorial Park Golf Course vs. Cypress Creek Course: The Houston Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/memorial-park-golf-course-vs-cypress-creek-course/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Course Comparisons / Texas


A golf ball beside the hole on a green. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Houston's choice is the best municipal story in American golf against a private club ranked 39 spots ahead of it in the state. Memorial Park is a city course in a public park that hosts a PGA Tour event. Cypress Creek, at Champions Golf Club, is a private Ralph Plummer design from 1959 that the Dallas Morning News ranked No. 13 in Texas. The municipal course is ranked No. 52 in the same list. On paper the private club wins walking away. In Houston, the argument is better than the paper.

## Memorial Park Golf Course

Memorial Park began as a nine hole course with sand greens near the Camp Logan hospital in 1912, grew into a John Bredemus design opened in 1936, and hosted the PGA Tour Houston Open from 1951 to 1963. Then came the second act, the one that makes this a national story instead of a local one. Tom Doak renovated the course in 2019 for 18.5 million dollars, funded by the Astros Golf Foundation, with Brooks Koepka as player consultant, and the Houston Open came home in 2020 and stayed. A municipal golf course, renovated by one of the most admired architects alive, paid for by a baseball foundation, consulting with a major champion, hosting the tour in a public park. Golf.com ranked it No. 7 on its list of the best municipal courses in the United States, and that number undersells the novelty. There is barely a category for what Memorial Park is.

The access is the argument and the glory of it. This is a city course. Houston residents book it the way residents book any muni, at muni terms, and then walk the same ground the tour field walks. Doak's renovation gave the course strategies and green complexes worthy of the event without closing the door on the public golfer the park exists for. Our [Houston ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-houston-tx/) starts here, not because we grade municipals on a curve, but because no other course in the city matters to as many golfers.

## Cypress Creek Course

Cypress Creek's case is quieter and, on ranking evidence, stronger. Ralph Plummer designed it, it opened in 1959 at Champions Golf Club, and the Dallas Morning News placed it No. 13 in its 2025 Texas Top 100, in the company of the state's great private clubs and 39 places ahead of Memorial Park. Plummer was Texas golf's own architect, and a late 1950s Plummer championship course in Houston is exactly the kind of golf the panels reward: substantial, private, maintained to a member standard, and proven over six decades of serious play.

Concede Cypress Creek's best point cleanly. For a strong player playing weekly golf, the private course is the more consistent examination. Member conditioning, member pace, a Plummer test that has been sorting Houston's best amateurs since 1959, and none of the public course congestion that a tour famous muni attracts. The No. 13 ranking is not an accident or a courtesy. It is panels of Texas golfers saying, year after year, that the golf itself is elite.

The counterweight is what Cypress Creek cannot do. It cannot be Houston's course. Its gates keep it a rumor for most of the city's golfers, while Memorial Park's story, Bredemus bones, Doak renovation, Astros money, tour field, belongs to anyone with a tee time.

## The verdict

On the golf alone, judged hole by hole at championship standard, Cypress Creek wins, and the state ranking says so by 39 places. If a Champions member offers you a game, take it and play a top 15 Texas course in its prime.

But our verdict for Houston goes to Memorial Park, and here is the honest reason. Rankings measure courses. Choices are made by golfers. The [Texas state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-texas/) can hold both truths at once: Cypress Creek is the finer private test, and Memorial Park, No. 7 muni in America, a Doak in a public park hosting the tour, is the round a Houston golfer can actually have, this week, on ground that has been public since the sand greens of 1912. Greatness you can book beats greatness you can only hear about.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.