Irving, Texas The Nelson Golf & Sports Club West of Dallas
Rolling fairways, extensive bunkering, greens framed by grassy mounds — an early-1980s Jay Morrish design, drawn with player consultants Byron Nelson and Ben Crenshaw. For thirty-five consecutive years the PGA Tour’s Byron Nelson played its Sundays here. The club now carries his name — The Nelson Golf and Sports Club at The Ritz-Carlton Dallas, Las Colinas — and the record still reads like a box score. The anthem plays it back in tempo.
24 back · 8 down — 3:1 in time35 consecutive Sundays · 1983–2017
Course Anthem
Soul’s Honor leads; Course Anthem II plays behind it — both cut for this ground and streamed from the 24/8 master library. Build the rest of your round from the library behind them.
Playback across 32 units — the last 8 are the conversion00 / 32 units
The 24/8 Tempo System
Frame-by-frame video of tour professionals — from Hogan to Nicklaus to Woods — shows elite swings share an elapsed-time signature: the backswing takes about three times as long as the downswing. Measured on 30fps video, one of the canonical tour tempos is 24 frames back, 8 frames down. That’s where we live.
John Novosel, Tour Tempo (Doubleday, 2004). A Yale physics study (Grober & Cholewicki, 2006) found the same ~3:1 average with club sensors.
Peer-reviewed work found synchronized-metronome training improved golf shot accuracy — and decades of rhythmic-auditory-stimulation research show the motor system entrains to a beat.
Sommer & Rönnqvist, J. Sports Science & Medicine (2009); Thaut et al., rhythmic auditory stimulation research.
At 112 BPM, one beat lasts 0.536 seconds. A 24/8 swing sits on that grid almost perfectly: 1½ beats back, ½ beat down. Our anthems are engineered so the pocket of the song is the pocket of the swing.
That last part is arithmetic, not a lab result — 24 frames ÷ 30fps = 0.80s ≈ 1½ beats at 112 BPM.
Use This Anthem For
Play it on the drive west out of Dallas. Arrive with the swing already counted — Sunday tempo on a Tuesday morning.
One earbud between holes. When the wind leans on the flag, hold the grid instead of the guess.
Found a bunker? There are plenty. One bar of the groove, rake it, and walk to the next number.
Doubles happen on mounded greens. Breathe on the beat until the card stops shouting and starts reading.
Range work on the anthem: rehearse 3:1 until it isn’t counting anymore — it’s just how you move.
Play it out on the drive home. File the round the way this place files its years — one line, honestly scored.
Thirty-Five Sundays
Every year from 1983 through 2017, the PGA Tour’s Byron Nelson finished a tournament on this property — thirty-five consecutive editions. Below: the years as a river. Drag it, step it, or let it drift on the wind; four verified Sundays surface as they cross the line. When the anthem plays, the wind field behind it falls into laminar streams on the beat.
Drag to scrub · arrow keys step a year1983 · SUNDAY 01 / 35
1983
Ben Crenshaw — one of the course’s own player consultants — wins the inaugural Las Colinas edition at 273, one shot over Hal Sutton and Brad Bryant.
1997
In his first start after the ’97 Masters, Tiger Woods opens 64-64 and ties the tournament record of 263 — 17 under, set by Ernie Els in 1995. Ticket sales are cut off at 100,000 one-day badges and 50,000 weekly passes.
2010
Jason Day, 22, shoots 270 for his first PGA Tour victory, two clear of Brian Gay, Jeff Overton and Blake Adams. In the same field, 16-year-old Dallas amateur Jordan Spieth — in on a sponsor exemption he requested by letter — makes the cut and ties for 16th at 4-under in his Tour debut.
2017
Billy Horschel outlasts Jason Day in a playoff to win the last Byron Nelson played on this ground.
The record — fine print
Tournament record-keeping credits the first three editions to the Las Colinas Sports Club layout; the TPC course carries the Nelson from 1986 on.
Early-round play begins splitting with the adjacent Cottonwood Valley course — par 71, ~7,120 yards, a Robert Trent Jones Jr. design updated by Jay Morrish in 2006.
Complete tee-to-green redesign of all 18 holes by D.A. Weibring’s Golf Resources Group — lead architect Steve Wolfard, player consultants Harrison Frazar and J.J. Henry.
The tournament leaves — first to Trinity Forest Golf Club in Dallas, then, from 2021, to TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney.
Century Golf Partners and HKI America acquire the club (December 15, 2022). The former Four Seasons Golf & Sports Club is renamed The Nelson Golf and Sports Club in Byron Nelson’s tribute, managed under Arnold Palmer Golf Management.
After a $55 million renovation, the hotel is rebranded The Ritz-Carlton Dallas, Las Colinas (January 2024). The course keeps its name — and its Sundays.
Par 70 · 7,166 yards championship · Las Colinas development, Irving, Texas · Sister course — Cottonwood Valley