Marvin Leonard, a Fort Worth department-store owner and passionate golfer, had fallen for bentgrass greens on a trip north and decided Texas deserved them too — never mind that no architect he consulted believed the grass could survive a Texas summer. He bought land along a bend of the Trinity River near TCU and brought in two Southwestern golf men, John Bredemus and Perry Maxwell, to route a course there. Maxwell's plan became the routing that was built; Bredemus, who had already laid out much of Texas golf, oversaw its construction. When Colonial opened in 1936, it carried the first bentgrass greens in the state — Leonard's stubbornness, made into turf.

The USGA rewarded the young club fast: in 1939 it awarded Colonial the 1941 U.S. Open, the first ever played in Texas. Leonard brought Maxwell back to sharpen the course for a championship test, and Maxwell obliged with 56 new bunkers and a trio of holes — the long dogleg 3rd, the punishing long-iron par-3 4th, and the sharply doglegged 5th — that still turns major-championship-caliber players inside out. Craig Wood won that 1941 Open by three, capping a run that made him the first golfer to win the Masters and the U.S. Open in the same year — with Fort Worth's own Ben Hogan finishing five shots back.

Leonard wasn't finished. In 1946 he launched the Colonial National Invitation, a PGA Tour stop built around his home course and, as it happened, around the greatest player Fort Worth ever produced. Ben Hogan won the first two editions, then added titles in 1952, 1953, and 1959 — five wins in all, twice in a row twice, a feat no one else has matched here. The course became known simply as Hogan's Alley, and the Horrible Horseshoe — Maxwell's 3rd-4th-5th stretch — became the proving ground where every Colonial champion since has had to survive Hogan's own back yard.

The tournament has worn a half-dozen sponsor names since — Southwestern Bell, Bank of America, Crowne Plaza, Dean & DeLuca, and since 2019 the Charles Schwab Challenge — but it has never left Colonial, making it the longest-running PGA Tour event played at a single non-major venue. Eight decades on, the Horrible Horseshoe still decides the tournament most years, and Hogan's name is inseparable from the course he made his own.

Museum-quality Colonial Country Club map art, traced from real course data — every bunker, green, and fairway of Hogan's Alley. Ben Hogan's five titles and the Horrible Horseshoe included. Four designs, six sizes, or personalized with your own round photo.

Course data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL)