This Dallas-Area Private Club And Its Energy Baron Owner Have Become Champions For Amateur Golf

Over the past five years, a private golf club outside Dallas and its energy baron owner have steadily built a reputation as champions of amateur golf.

Maridoe Golf Club in Carrolton, Texas, is the host of the 2022 East-West Matches, a Ryder Cup-style competition between 18-player teams comprised of many of the nation’s top senior amateurs (age 55+) and mid-ams (age 25+). The event is the latest amateur tournament to be held at Maridoe, following up on last year’s USGA Women’s Amateur Four-Ball Championship. Other recent events have included the Maridoe Amateur Championship, Maridoe Collegiate Invitational and Southern Amateur Championship – all in 2020 – and the TGA Texas Mid-Amateur Championship and Trans-Mississippi Amateur Championship in 2019.

The club, and staunch support for the amateur game, are a credit to Albert Huddleston, the founder of Aethon Energy Management who in the 1970s married into the Hunt Oil family. His course, Maridoe, is a tribute on several levels. The club’s name stems from a nickname his wife, Mary, had bestowed upon her as an infant. And the club itself is modeled after The Honors Course in East Tennessee, the area in which Huddleston grew up and where his father won a number of amateur tournaments and played alongside Sam Snead in an exhibition event.

In its short lifespan – having opened in 2017 – Huddleston’s Maridoe has emerged as bastion of the amateur game.

The relationship with the East-West Matches came several years ago, when event founder Scott Harvey was playing in the 2019 Trans-Misssissippi Amateur.

“I mentioned to Albert that I was trying to get the East-West across the finish line and he was immediately intrigued,” Harvey said. “To make a long story short, we had a few serious conversations about it and it was an easy, natural partnership. We both care deeply about the amateur game and this event made sense to have at Maridoe for many different reasons. Albert did stuff for amateur golf at a time when not many others would step up to the plate, it just comes natural to him. His support for the event is unparalleled.”

In some ways when it comes to the amateur game, Huddleston is in a similar vein to Mike Keiser, though without the public golf destinations (like Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley) for regular Joes to visit.

The East-West Matches are unique in that the event brings together top amateurs that span the age spectrum. Ten of the players on each team are 55-or-older, six are in the mid-am range, while the final two players on each squad are under 25. The dividing line for the teams is the Mississippi River, with the two sides squaring off in three days of competition – fourball, foursomes and, on the last day, singles matches.

“I can’t speak enough great things about Mr. Huddleston. His support of the amateur game is so impressive. For him to host us for the East-West means the world,” said Jeronimo Esteve, the 2012 Mid-Amateur Four-Ball Champion and a Windemere, Florida, resident who’s a member of the East team. “Maridoe is a real test of golf where you have to drive it well, the iron game is really important and you better have confidence in your putter. It’s a treat to play that golf course and he really goes first class with everything.”

Huddleston, like some other eager founders of elite private clubs, at one point expressed interest in bringing the game’s national championship – the U.S. Open – to Maridoe. But for now, the club’s aim is focused on opportunities within the amateur game and, this week, the second annual East-West Matches.

Says Harvey of Huddleston, “His willingness to get behind the event with a great club like Maridoe is something special.”