As Querbes Park Golf Course turns 100 years old, she beats stronger than ever as the heart of Broadmoor and in the hearts of thousands who grew both their golf games and their friendships at a place many have known as a second home.
Dependable.
Charming.
Legendary.
At 100 years old, Querbes Golf Course has been called a lot of names, some affectionate and some, through no fault of her own, unfit to print.
She’s been cussed and coddled, abused and nurtured. She’d been the victim of unintended divots and dragging spikes, the object of affection for players who, at whatever age, suddenly became afflicted with “golf fever,” the cradle for lifelong golfers who’ve won at every level, and the siren song for lifelong golfers who couldn’t break par with an ax and a sledgehammer.
Querbes.
She’s been down; she’s been up. She’s weathered storms, bad etiquette, hail (golf-ball-sized, of course), and lighting. But by and large, she’s kept generations of squirrels — and golfers — happy.
Not every golfer. Such is the nature of the game. It’s a tough game to master, and the ornery golfer can always find plenty to gripe about. (You don’t want to be paired with one of those.)
But the golf disciple understands that the game is about more than scores. Such is the overwhelming majority of satisfied customers drawn back time and again to Querbes, the knowing majority who can’t help but smile at the mention of a Shreveport treasure who’s proved herself over time.
Querbes.
As she turns 100, even her harshest critic would have to say this:
She’s never looked better.
Shoot, at 100, “The Q” is just getting broken in, just making the turn. Querbes Park Golf Course has never aimed higher, been stronger, or shone brighter. This beloved and trusty tract, the birthplace for hundreds of thousands of stories, just keeps on making golfers, making friends, and making memories.
If you don’t know Querbes, this can be your introduction. There’s a story on featuring Jimbo West and the Querbes Foundation and a team effort that, along with other visions for the course that began 20 years ago, have rocketed the park into a new and promising reality. (Plate lunch, anyone? Pickle ball? Sundown Scramble?)
Then on the final page, there’s what’s basically a love letter to Our Favorite Public Course.
There is also this: some pictures, some drives, a few putts, a punch-out or two, stories that hopefully sound for Querbes faithful like a song, the ballad of a place, even an attitude, something much more than “just” a public course.
“Just a public course?” Maybe to the great unwashed. But to those in the know, Querbes is just a public course like Everest is just a hill and Palmer was just a hacker.
“Querbes raised me,” Rob Akins, a Captain Shreve High golf veteran now nearing 60 and consistently voted one of the Top 50 Golf Instructors in America, said.
Akins grew up at 3882 Greenway Place, a ditch the only thing separating his backyard from 16 tee box. He played in that ditch for years until the day he was 6 or 7 and was given a 4-wood, an Irving King persimmon. He finally climbed out of the ditch, onto the tee box, and started whacking a golf ball. Hasn’t stopped since.
“Played 14 and 15 a million times,” he said.
At age 11, he made the short trip to the clubhouse on his bike and actually played the front 9 for the first time.
“That was it,” he said. “Second home. Daylight ’til dark.”
“We all share universal things, things kids do when they’re growing up,” Akins said from Weatherford, Texas, where he’s helping develop a community and golf property (sound familiar?) for Discovery Land Company. “But in Shreveport, with Querbes being in the center of Broadmoor, you had a lot of kids there all the time, hunting for golf balls, playing, doing different things, all over or around the course. At the time when I got to The Q (in the early 1970s), it was wide open for kids.”
Weekdays, kids played the front for free in the summer, 8 ’til noon. The grownups started on the back. It worked. Kids and clubs and bikes descended on Querbes from Leo and Carrollton and Arthur Avenues, from Ockley Drive and Slattery Boulevard, all roads leading to the clubhouse (or “pro shop”) at 3500 Beverly Place.
Think about it: Querbes was built to anchor a new neighborhood, Broadmoor, in 1924. Broadmoor and its families and Querbes grew up together. The course is easily accessible for anyone in Shreveport-Bossier, but if you live in Broadmoor, what was true then remains true now: Querbes is your back yard.
The youngest of nine brothers, Ken Shaw grew up in the ’50s and ’60s on East Elmwood, no more than a hard wedge from the clubhouse.
“I wasn’t big enough for football, played a little basketball,” said Shaw, now retired and living at Southern Trace. “I started going to Querbes to play at 9 or 10, and once I did, my whole life was golf. I knew every grain of grass on the greens, everything about the place.”
He worked there, shagging balls, watering greens (riding a scooter and using hoses in the hot, dry pre-sprinkler-system days), delivering 50-pound blocks of ice to tin water coolers before sunrise.
“It was a great, great place for me,” said Shaw, who in time graduated from ball-shagger to “big boy golf” involving folding money, and lots of it. (More on that in a minute…)
Querbes has also been a great place for Meredith Duncan, and not just because it was where she learned a game that would earn her all sorts of notoriety and hardware, later on the LPGA Tour but initially as a First Team All-American at LSU and U.S. Curtis Cup member in 2002 and as U.S. Women’s Amateur Champion in 2001.
Querbes was where her grandfather, Oree Marsalis, played in the course’s first tournament, July of 1925. Those who knew him say he never stopped giving back to the game and to the course.
“If he’d have been a race car driver, I’d have been a race car driver,” Duncan said. “He just happened to be a golfer. My favorite junior golf tournaments were any that I got to go with my granddad.”
The father of three daughters, all champion amateur golfers, Marsalis started a Querbes family tradition that continues — and has grown.
“I can’t remember my first time (at Querbes),” Duncan said. “I just remember being there; I don’t remember ever not knowing about Querbes. I mean, my family has pictures of me hitting in my diapers.
“Even today I’ll be eating there and mom (three-time state am golf champ Debbie) will call and ask me to bring her something home,” Duncan said. “So yeah, it’s hard to imagine my family without Querbes; it’s kind of a big part of our lives.”
Though not by his choosing, Freddie Burns, now 72 and caddie for Tom Pernice Jr. on the Champions Tour, was a bit late to the Querbes party. He first stuck a tee in the ground at the Q at age 14, thanks to his boyhood friend Johnson Ramsey, who’d later develop Southern Trace.
“That meant the world to me,” said Burns, who advised and carried clubs for Hal Sutton on the PGA Tour for years and was inducted into the Ark-La-Tex Museum of Champions in 2016. “It was one of the first places blacks could play in Shreveport, besides Lakeside.”
That memorable day, Ramsey picked Burns up in his new 1965 Mustang. “I got my little sticks and got in the car,” Burns said. “I lived in the ’hood, and nobody had ever seen a car like that go to my house.”
Two things:
One is that Mooretown, the boyhood neighborhood of Burns, now has a street called Freddie C. Burns, Sr., a part of Long Street dedicated in 2024; and,
Two, that round with Ramsey was the first of many at Querbes for “Freddie Charles.”
He was in the middle of a heyday of sorts, when a cast of characters began showing up for Saturday, Sunday, and Monday “games” at The Q.
Maxie Waites. Steve Fields. Bob Getters. Jim Belton. John Bolt. Charlie Higgs. Robert “Blew” Blewett. Hobbs Shaw and little brother Ken. Bobby Moore. Matthew Martin. Al Montana. The Netherton brothers, Mickey and Pat. Al LeGrand. Randy Simmons. Just to name a few.
Barbara Faye Boddie was in that group. The daughter of former local pro Ned White and then wife of Querbes pro Ted Boddie, Barbara Fay was not only undefeated in Curtis Cup play and, at that time, a future Louisiana Sports Hall of Famer (Class of 2008), she was by far the best scorekeeper in those weekend games, no small feat when you consider there might be 50 bets going at a time.
The Monday game was the most intriguing. On Mondays all the other courses in town, the country clubs, were closed, so the pros came to the mothership.
They came to Querbes. They flocked to Querbes.
Before he was the publisher of SB Magazine, Byron May was a champion amateur golfer and, before that, a teen who grew up on and later worked at Querbes. Called “Robot” and “Long Hair” by Burns because of his consistency and mane to his shoulders, May remembers the Monday game being a bit stronger than the weekend game, but only in the caliber of talent.
Otherwise, the competition was just as fierce and the bets — dollar front, two on the back, dollar for 18 — were the same.
“And you’d always have group bets,” May said. “So, me and Freddie are playing these guys and me, and Matthew are playing these other guys and … you might have 20 of those (side bets). What I remember most was the quality of golf was staggering … and sometimes the quantity of bets was staggering too. It was a lot to deal with for a 16-year-old kid.”
“It was just a thrill to be out there in that competition,” Burns said. “I couldn’t wait to do it. You’d wake up and … ‘Now I’m going to play.’ Bets were EVERYwhere.”
“HUGE game,” Ken Shaw said. “Same players all the time. So many bets going, I never knew if I was winning or if I was losing.”
For that era, golf was just the half of it. There was The Cub afterward. Maybe the Sandpiper Lounge or the Quality Inn in Bossier. Card games. Pool. For a little while, a whole little world around a big little game.
“The Q,” May said, “was the nucleus.”
And so, it still is.
Those games ended. People go to college, retire, go to work, move, quit the game, get hurt, get lazy.
But other games go on. Like water filling a vacuum. New faces. New bets. New swings. New ideas. New traditions.
The nucleus remains The Q.
On a particular recent weekday, Nathan Barrow, the current director of golf for Querbes, is hosting Ladies Day, preparing for the Thursday night scramble, doing a TV interview, leading a clinic, and squeezing in four private lessons.
“We’ve created a monster out here,” he said, “and we’re loving it.”
This year, Querbes expects to welcome 50,000 rounds of golf. Ten years ago, it was half that. Plus, that Monday game from 40 years ago? It’s more or less back. Sign up at the clubhouse, establish a handicap, and come getcha some.
“This is the biggest resurgence in golf we’ve seen in a long, long time,” Barrow said.
At its heart is the 100-year-old gem tucked in between Kings Highway and Youree Drive. Visionary partnerships have given her a facelift, whipped her into what might well be her prime. Good deal, because a healthy Querbes means better property values, a giant playground for children, a giant playground for grownups, a place to enjoy being outdoors. What we’re witnessing is the makeover of a jewel that’s been serving citizens for a century.
Querbes.
A few first dates happened here. A few last dates. She’s probably responsible for a few divorces but probably responsible for keeping a few marriages together, too.
She’s witnessed clubs thrown into Gilbert Drive and into trees, windmilled off innocent fairways and into adjacent properties.
She’s seen people learn the game and people swear off the game. She’s seen carts run into fences and get stuck in ditches.
She’s seen spilled beers and spilled bourbon and spilled tears.
She’s heard laughter and more laughter and has maintained a depth at both squirrel and charm, even at her lowest point when the fairways were dry as desert and the color of oatmeal.
There’s always been plenty to love about The Q. Now there’s even more.
Just a public course? Please. Please hush. Querbes has the respect of the tens of thousands who learned to love golf here, who learned how to be a friend, who learned how alive it feels to be hugged by invisible arms, by a place you are “part of.”
Familiarity breeds contempt? Not always. Not at “The Bees.”
At Querbes, familiarity breeds comfort. It breeds gratitude. Tranquility.
That’s one of the many priceless things The Bees offers. A feeling of acceptance. Of belonging.
A peace.
A second home.
