Best Golf Courses In Texas

Best Golf Courses In Texas

Our round up of the best golf courses in Texas includes the first US course that Tiger Woods has designed. The prime influence on Tiger’s debut design is obvious, but he is hardly the only top tournament pro-turned-architect to have been influenced by his playing days when laying down a design. After all, what is perhaps the most talked about hole in Texas was designed by Greg Norman based on one had played on tour... 

Austin Country Club

• Location: Austin
• Designed by: Pete and Alice Dye
• Par: 72
• Yardage: 7,062 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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The club was founded in 1899, but has moved twice, and has been at its present home since 1984. Since 2016 it has been the home of the WGC Match Play Championship. The forced carries, whether over canyons or water, help make this a dramatic and demanding layout.

Barton Creek Country Club (Fazio Canyons)

• Location: Austin
• Designed by: Tom Fazio
• Par: 72
• Yardage: 7,153 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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Framed by red oaks and sycamores, the holes feature elevation changes and large sloping greens. Streams and canyons weave an attractive way throughout the landscape. The first four holes ease you into the round as they are probably the easiest on the course.

Bluejack National

• Location: Montgomery
• Designed by: Tiger Woods & Beau Welling
• Par: 72
• Yardage: 7,552 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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Tiger Woods’ first course design in the US opened in 2016 and has a definite feel of Augusta about it. The winner of five Green Jackets has crafted a fresh design over the former site of the short-lived Blaketree National Golf Club with wide fairways, striking bunkers and no rough.

Colonial Country Club

• Location: Fort Worth
• Designed by: John Bredemus & Perry Maxwell
• Par: 70
• Yardage: 7,209 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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Golf fanatic Marvin Leonard was convinced that the smoothest greens were sown with bentgrass not, as in Texas, of Bermudagrass. Constantly told that bentgrass would not grow well in Texas, and unable to persuade his own course to trial three bentrgass greens which he had offered to pay for, Mr Leonard built his own course in his hometown with bentgrass greens. Thus Colonial came into being. It opened in 1936. In 1941 the US Open came here. Point proved, Mr Leonard then sold the club to its members, at cost price.

Dallas National

• Location: Dallas
• Designed by: Tom Fazio
• Par: 72
• Yardage: 7,372 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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This track’s reputation has been built on the excellence of the Tom Fazio design making use of the elevation changes and ravines, the course conditioning and the views. That the club provides caddies is welcome as the greens can be tricky to read. Another feature of the design is in what it lacks – real estate, bunkering fronting the greens, water hazards.

TPC San Antonio (The Oaks)

• Location: San Antonio
• Designed by: Greg Norman with consultant Sergio Garcia
• Par: 72
• Yardage: 7,435 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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Copying the Riveria Country Club’s 6th hole, Norman designed the 16th hole (above) with a bunker in its middle. Host of the Texas Open, the predominantly flat layout is designed to provide the golfers with strategic options with only two forced carries. TPC San Antonio can be played by guests at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort and Spa.

Trinity Forest

• Location: Dallas
• Designed by: Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw
• Par: 72
• Yardage: 7,450 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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The course was built on a landfill site with the aim of bringing Tour events to Texas and the design reflects this, with large spaces for galleries. It was laid out over open, undulating land – the forest in the name encircles the course – with, in words of Bill Coore, ‘natural ripples, humps and hollows’ which the architects utilised to incorporate aspects of early links courses, including blind holes and a double green which, at 35,000 sq ft and 110 yards across, the club boasts is the largest green in North America.

Whispering Pines

• Location: Trinity
• Designed by: Chet Williams
• Par: 72
• Yardage: 7,468 Yards
• Green Fee: Private
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The final six holes, playing along and across Caney Creek and Lake Livingston, are the most talked about. They include back-to-back watery par 3s at 15 and 16, which are followed by the par-5 17th (above). The closing hole, a par 4 and stroke index 2, requires a carry over water from the tee, and then another carry over water to reach the green.