As a boy, Mitchell Andry visited a tropical paradise in the middle of San Antonio. Banana plants towered over the oasis’ 18-hole golf courses, as ’50s Hawaiian music provided the soundtrack as players putted from hole to hole. Andry and his three brothers—James, Phillip, and Albert—regularly cycled in and out of Cool Crest Miniature Golf, growing from little boys gulping the tooth-achingly sweet Delaware Punch, to young men on their first dates. Like generations of San Antonians, the Andry boys were raised on Cool Crest golf.
“It was kind of like a daycare center for us,” Andry says. “It was a neat place to just go and hang out.”
Cool Crest Miniature golf
1402 Fredericksburg Rd., San Antonio.
210-732-0222; coolcrestgolf.com
Andry’s childhood on Cool Crest’s courses isn’t an outlier. Opened in 1929, Cool Crest Miniature Golf is the backdrop for a myriad of stories: first dates that led to weddings, family reunions, and 90-year-old players revisiting their childhood stomping grounds. The course has been welcoming putt-putters for close to a century and is one of the oldest mini golf courses in the U.S. Today, visitors can play on the original 1929 course or opt for the comparatively new 1959 course.
“It’s true miniature golf. You’re not going to get clowns that come out and eat your ball or windmills or anything like that,” Andry says. “It is truly for putting skill and geometric skill.”
Many of the pieces that are integral to Cool Crest—its art deco style, lush vegetation, and 1959 course—were added by its longtime owners Harold and Maria Metzger. The Metzgers took over Cool Crest in 1937, and their additions helped shape it into a San Antonio landmark. For more than 60 years, the pair ran the mini golf stop and became as integral to the history of Cool Crest as the course itself.
In 2007, Maria Metzger was forced to close Cool Crest for health reasons. For six years, the mini golf course sat dormant. Its designation as a historically significant site saved it from demolition, but the course needed new owners to usher it into a new era. In 2013, Cool Crest reopened under new management: the Andry brothers.
“[James] wrangled all of us, and we all took it over as a family,” Andry says. “We knew we had to keep the story going. Cool Crest is more than just a property, as far as we’re concerned.”
Restoring Cool Crest to its former glory wasn’t an easy task. The site of the Andrys’ boyhood romps had fallen into disrepair. Half of the vegetation was overgrown, while the other half was dead. The golf course needed new carpeting and the water systems needed to be redone. After months of work, Cool Crest Mini Golf reopened with the Andrys at the helm.
The Metzger Biergarten, a 2020 addition, expanded Cool Crest beyond mini golf. Now, visitors can enjoy live music and sip drinks at the outdoor patio area. After 13 years running Cool Crest, the Andry brothers decided it was time to pass the reins to someone with a fresh energy who could shepherd the course into the future. The Los Leones group, a family-run group behind two of San Antonio’s oldest restaurants, took over in February.
“It’s quite the honor, and quite the responsibility,” Elizabeth Lyons Houston, vice president of Los Leones, says. “It’s the difference of realizing that you’re impacting people’s experiences and memories in a really powerful way that has a lasting impression.”
Houston says Los Leones’ goal is to preserve Cool Crest while helping it evolve. So far, this has meant adding a Schilo’s food truck and continuing live music performances in the Metzger Biergarten.
“Cool Crest to me is like the River Walk and Mi Tierra, and it’s up there with the classic San Antonio institutions,” Houston says. “It’s not just a place to come golf once, but really a place that’s on repeat for friends and family to enjoy on a regular basis.”
With Cool Crest’s centennial on the horizon, the new owners are building on the legacy that turned a simple outdoor game into a San Antonio icon.
