Maridoe Golf Club owner Albert Huddleston (left) is shown with pro golfer Bryson DeChambeau. Between the two is the U.S. Open trophy that DeChambeau won in June. The course is hosting a LIV golf event this week. (Pat Wheeler/Tyler Morning Telegraph)

CARROLLTON — Tucked away behind modest housing and light industrial businesses is perhaps the most difficult golf course in North Texas. Someone once likened playing Maridoe Golf Club to a trip to the dentist for a root canal. It’s not a lot of fun.

The course is difficult in so many ways, playing to almost 8,000 yards from the back tees with a course rating of 79.6 and a slope of 155. The landscape, however, is intriguing.

Driving onto the property on a toasty August morning, the course has a natural and rustic feel. Native vegetation covers a hillside that serves as a backdrop for strips of green grass of varying length and angles being mowed this day by an army of small tractors. But lurking near those mowed fairways and greens is an assortment of peril — water, sand and knee high grass — just waiting to swallow an errant golf ball.

That such a landscape of grand proportion could exist just off a local boulevard, with the entrance near a middle school and tiny football stadium, is hard to fathom. But this urban prairie is a haven of native beauty and akin to another American linksland gem — Prairie Dunes in rural Kansas. Gazing at the course on the twisting drive to the clubhouse might beckon the golfer to optimistic dreams of grandeur but those are soon to be dashed by such a large and intimidating course.

That is, unless you are a world class major championship winner like Bryson DeChambeau or Dustin Johnson or Brooks Koepka or Cameron Smith. Those are just a few of the big names now about to test their skills at Maridoe when the club hosts the LIV Golf League Team Championship Sept. 20-22.

Testing the golfer in every facet of the game was the intent of owner Albert Huddleston, who brought in architect Steve Smyers to create a stern championship examination from the bones of a layout once played as Columbia Club, a vintage Ralph Plummer design from the mid 1950s. Later it became Honors Club before Huddleston bought the course in 2014 and then blew it up to create the new course that created its hillside backdrop from some 600,000 cubic feet of mud dredged from a 33-acre lake in the middle of the property.

Having previously hosted several large amateur competitions, Maridoe welcomes the Saudi Arabian backed LIV Golf League and its group of well-known players in a season-ending team event that should be entertaining. And entertainment is the operative word that best describes the LIV golf tour.

LIV advertises itself as golf, but louder. It is golf at the highest level but with a shotgun start and loud music in the background. The scope of the upcoming event is readily apparent by the beehive of activity near the clubhouse as grandstands and corporate hospitality areas are being erected to accommodate the large turnout anticipated.

The media program organized for this preview of the tournament featured Huddleston, DeChambeau and LIV announcer and golf personality David Feherty. Hosting the reception was Jane MacNeille of LIV who prefaced two video presentations of what to expect when 13 teams of four golfers begin a match play format for two days before a medal play final round. The videos highlighted the excitement of LIV competition while explaining the details of the format used for the team championship.

Feherty began his interview with a question for Huddleston — “how did all of this (the tournament) come about?”

“It’s been my dream and passion and why Maridoe exists,” Huddleston said, “to periodically have some of the best players anywhere come to Maridoe and show their skills and create a tremendous opportunity to honor golf, to expand golf, and to do something that’s not only local (but) national and international.”

Huddleston is a successful businessman in Dallas who loves golf and married the daughter of the late Bunker Hunt, Mary, for whom the club is named. Previously Huddleston explained that his wife has beautiful brown eyes like those of a doe and hence the name Maridoe.

The Hunt family is well known in the world of sports with Bunker’s brother Lamar the architect of the American Football League which eventually merged with the National Football League and thus created the Super Bowl and pro football as we know it today. Before moving to Dallas, the Hunt brothers once lived in Tyler on Charnwood Street and were the original benefactors of the East Texas Oil Museum in Kilgore.

Many observers of pro golf foresee a similar merger of LIV and the PGA Tour and DeChambeau, perhaps the most compelling golfer in the game today other than another Dallas pro named Scottie Scheffler, is one of those optimistic about a future unification. While Scheffler was winning seven times on the PGA Tour this year and an Olympic gold medal, DeChambeau came close at the Masters and PGA before breaking through with a stunning win of the US Open at Pinehurst.

A former SMU golfer, DeChambeau’s win at Pinehurst came on the 25th anniversary of fellow Mustang Payne Stewart’s dramatic win there in 1999. Stewart would perish in a plane crash only months later but his presence is still felt in the sandhills of North Carolina where DeChambeau made a spectacular par on the final hole to win.

DeChambeau’s US Open trophy was placed next to him on the dais and he once again reminded the audience to feel free to touch it and have a picture made with it, just to be part of the history. The trophy did not escape Feherty’s attention.

“It was really important for you to have pretty much everyone in the western hemisphere touch that US Open trophy,” Feherty said to spontaneous laughter.

“That’s right, absolutely,” DeChambeau said. “Obviously this was a pretty special moment, winning at Pinehurst, having a connection to SMU and to Dallas and to Payne Stewart and what this community means to me.”

DeChambeau also cited the support he received from Huddleston from his college days and thanked him for it. Then Huddleston told a story to enhance DeChambeau’s image as “the mad scientist.”

“I wanted to host the SMU team on a winter trip to the Floridian where I was a member,” Huddleston said. “So we were there and I was on the putting green and I looked down and see this blue chalk line, it’s an azimuth, and I’m sitting there going, who put an azimuth on the putting green and this young fella goes, ‘you know what that is?’ And I said well, of course, I know what that is. It was Bryson, of course, so all of a sudden we hit it off. Bryson is very genuine.”

To much laughter, Feherty said he would google azimuth just as soon as he got home.

As the media group dispersed outside into the Texas heat, the thought occurred that there will be some good golf and loud music on this scenic urban prairie come September. Huddleston calls Maridoe Golf Club his “sandbox of fellowship” and everyone is invited to attend and have some fun.