Town Rankings / Texas
The Best Golf Courses in Laredo
Laredo sits on the Rio Grande at the far end of the interstate, closer in spirit to the border than to the rest of Texas golf, and almost nobody drives there for golf. That is a shame with a specific name: The Max, the Max A. Mandel Municipal Golf Course, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. muni on the Rio Grande and one of Texas's best city courses and least visited.
Three courses make the whole scene. A private club, a county course and the muni. This ranking puts the muni first, which will annoy exactly the people it should annoy, and the reason is simple: it is the best course in town and the only one with a national level design name attached to it.
1Max A. Mandel Municipal Golf Course
The Max should not exist in a city this size, at municipal prices, on riverfront land. Robert Trent Jones Jr. designing a city course on the Rio Grande gave Laredo a layout with genuine strategic interest, river views that no inland muni can copy, and a finishing stretch that plays with the border itself as the backdrop. Visiting writers who make the trip use the same puzzled tone every time: why is this here, and why is nobody here?
The concession is the trip itself. Laredo is far from every Texas population center, the summer heat on the river is severe even by South Texas standards, and a municipal budget will never produce country club conditioning in August. A golfer has to want this round.
Wanting it is the point. The Max is the best argument in Texas that municipal golf, given land and a real architect, can beat private golf an hour in every direction. It is No. 1 here and it would rank well in towns with five times the population.
2Laredo Country Club
Laredo Country Club is the private center of golf in a border city where the club has long been one of the main social institutions in town. Its members get the best maintained golf in Laredo week in and week out, a full club life, and a course that serves a wide range of games without embarrassing any of them.
It ranks second because the design bar across town is unusually high for a muni, and consistency of conditioning does not outscore a Robert Trent Jones Jr. layout on the river. The club's honest counter is that golf life is 52 weeks, not one visiting round, and on that measure its members may have the better deal. For a ranking of courses, the river course wins.
3Casa Blanca Golf Course
Casa Blanca is the county option by the lake of the same name, the everyday public round for Laredo golfers who are not club members and not making an occasion of The Max. It does the unglamorous work of local golf: leagues, beginners, high school practice, cheap afternoon nine holes.
Third place in a three course town with a famous muni needs no elaborate defense and gets none. Casa Blanca exists so that Laredo has golf for everybody every day, while The Max exists so that Laredo has golf worth driving for. Those are different jobs. Only one of them tops a ranking, but a town that lost its Casa Blanca would feel it faster than a town that lost a ranking.
On the river at the end of the road, Laredo keeps one of the great municipal surprises in America. The drive is long. The Max is the reason to make it anyway.