Mac Engel: After more than 20 years, Tiger Woods is finally heading back to Fort Worth. For golf.

FORT WORTH, Texas — Tiger Woods will soon be a frequent visitor to Fort Worth to “play” on a golf course.

Still the world’s most famous golfer, by a considerable distance, you may see Tiger a few more times around Fort Worth in the coming year. He is involved in the design and construction of a golf course in Aledo that should be open in early 2026. Should be. Weather permitting.

A plan that was in the inception phase for years is finally underway in west Fort Worth. The Bluejack Ranch in Aledo will be a high end community that features a Tiger Woods designed golf course.

Former TCU golfer and long time veteran PGA Tour pro J.J. Henry along with TCU alum, developer, Andy Mitchell and his wife, Kristin, also a TCU alum, are developing this entire community that will include homes, villas, an 18-hole golf course, a working dude ranch with horses and donkeys, a spa, tennis courts, pickleball courts, a 10-hole “short” golf course, a golf performance center, pools, etc.

It’s similar, but not a replica, of what Woods did with his Bluejack National course in Montgomery, a community 54 miles north of Houston.

The contractors have broken ground on a project that has changed hands a few times over the years, but now is on firm enough footing all parties involved were ready to announce it on Thursday morning.

Mitchell, who is the founder and CEO of Lantern Capital Partners, met Woods about 10 years ago and the two helped make Bluejack National a reality. He asked Woods to scout the Fort Worth property to see if there was interest to design a course.

“He spent the day with us and, when he is designing a course, he really is in a zone,” Mitchell said in a phone interview. “We are lucky in that this land really doesn’t need any help to be a golf course. It’s really a natural fit. Some places in DFW you have to move in dirt, or whatever, but here you don’t have to do anything.

“He really enjoys it. He’s climbing around, and looking through trees and asking, ‘Are we going to do this?’ He has been a great partner. He and I are the same age, and he was getting to a point where he wanted to expand his legacy to the game.”

While the target date of the completion of the course is set for early 2026, the rest of the development, which is considerable, will be a work in progress for a while. Henry said this will be seven to 10 years before the entire development is done.

The 914 acres of this development is located off U.S. 377 and Kelly Ranch Road, is in the Aledo Independent School District.

The slight irony to all of this is that Woods the golfer had effectively left DFW behind years ago. Tiger played the PGA Tour event at Colonial once, in 1997, when he was on his first year on the Tour. Golf legend and Fort Worth resident Ben Hogan died in July of that year, and Woods never returned to the event Hogan helped make famous.

Woods remained a regular participant at the Byron Nelson PGA Tour stop when it was held in Las Colinas. Woods famously missed the cut at the 2005 Byron Nelson to snap a streak of making the cut at seven years and 142 tournaments.

That was the year a flood of the PGA Tour’s top players made sure to play that tournament, mostly as a way to say “Thank you” to legend Nelson, who always attended the event that bears his name. Nelson died in September of 2006. The 2005 Byron Nelson was the last time Woods played an event in DFW.

Woods, 48, is making the same transition Jack Nicklaus did decades ago. “Nicklaus Design” has become one of the bigger names in course design the world over.

“Tiger and Jack are two of the best golfers to ever play, and how do you create a legacy that’s beyond just playing the game?” said Henry, who has known Tiger since the two played at the same time on the junior, college, and professional level. “Tiger’s first course in the U.S. was Bluejack National and this is a full circle moment.”

With a name that is known from the Sea of Japan to the Sea of Tranquility, expect “TGR Design” to become one of the top golf course design companies in the world. That his next course will be in Fort Worth is one of those “happy coincidences.”

Henry has been working on this for years, and has enlisted the services of a variety of professionals, including Texas alum and former PGA Tour pro Mark Brooks. Brooks, who now lives in Austin, comes up to Fort Worth frequently and is listed as a “senior advisor” for the project. With his own “golf experience” endeavor in Austin, Brooks is well experienced on these sorts of projects.

“This is a culmination of a lot of small parts of places that I have been fortunate enough to visit over the years of my career,” Henry said. “The plan is to incorporate all of them into one place.”

Mitchell, who graduated from Western Hills high school and once worked as a caddie at Colonial Country Club, is hopeful to recruit the TCU golf team to use this new course. Maybe not as a home course, which TCU currently does not have, but have some affiliation.

Henry’s hope is this new course will be similar, not the same, to what The Traditions Club in Bryan is to Texas A&M. The Aggies men’s and women’s golf teams call Traditions their home course.

TCU’s first preference would be to use Colonial as a home course, because of its close proximity to its campus, but that is a lengthy process. The two parties would like to do it, and there are plans to build a performance center at the club, but, as evidenced by Bluejack Ranch developments, these things can take while.