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FEATURES |
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Tee Off in Texas
by Karen Misuraca
With year-round weather averaging in the mid-70s and sunny days more than 300 days a year, golf is big in Texas. The deer and the antelope, and the longhorns, once roamed the ranchlands where these five resorts offer Texas-style hospitality and great golf.
Hill Country Haven
One of the largest executive conference resorts in the country, Barton Creek Resort and Spa near Austin is also a golf mecca, with four topnotch championship courses: Fazio's Foothills and Canyons, Crenshaw's Canyons, and Palmer's Lakes. You can walk all four, a pleasant experience when bluebonnets are in bloom; caddies and forecaddies are available, too. (http://www.bartoncreek.com)
Rolling across hilly terrain and hidden hollows like a seasick sailor, Fazio Foothills was named Best Resort Course in Texas. Look for your ball in rocky gullies or at the bottom of a bowl lined with high grass, and, bring your sidehill skills for the steep-sided fairways. Pampas grass and prickly pear cacti sprout under the Spanish oaks and scrub pines, where deer hide in the shade. Silvery willows bend over lakes, creeks and waterfalls. The third hole is a short stunner, dropping over a wide ravine onto a tabletop green between deep grass hollows and a sandy sink. Fazio declines to let up on eighteen, which is all uphill, ending in a crescendo of water cascading into a boulder-lined ravine below a high plateau where the green lies, unseen until you arrive. Mere mortals get a break with six tees.
Fazio Canyons meanders through a beautiful Spanish oak and madrone forest, with streams and creeks on eleven holes, limestone-bedded canyons and large greens that slope off, alarmingly so. No mega-mansions distract from vistas of the surrounding hill country. The Crenshaw Cliffside has wide, gently undulating fairways in semi-links style, where you can run the ball up to the green, instead of the high lofted approach shots required on the other Barton Creek courses. Bunkers have recently been renovated, re-grassed greens are zippier and tees were added.
 Arnold Palmer left his mark on the shores of nearby Lake Travis, where his Lakeside Course, a private country club open to resort guests, is all about carries over wild canyons and creeks. The Barton Creek Lakeside restaurant there is a great spot for Texas barbecue, and in the summer, the lake is alive with sailboats, jet skis and water skis.
KSl Resorts manages the 317-room, casually elegant resort. Guest rooms and public areas are understated, masculine and contemporary, in earth tones with leather upholstery and dark woods. A stroll throughout the labyrinthine hotel turns up a museum-like collection of historic photos, paintings and Remington-replica cowboy sculptures. An indoor lap pool, a new Cybex fitness center and European-style spa, and lighted tennis courts are on-site.
Texas-style TPC
Flying through Dallas? Stay a day to play TPC at Las Colinas at the Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas. The bad news: it's under the flight path of the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport. Good news! It's whopper, some say the finest track in the state. With help from Ben Crenshaw and Byron Nelson, Jay Morrish laid narrow fairways open to the steady north Texas winds. A major upgrade added lakes, tee boxes and oaks, elms and cypress trees, turning a very good course into one of the most varied and challenging on the PGA Tour--the EDS Byron Nelson Classic is played here (73./135 rating/slope). The excellent practice venue has bunkers and chipping greens. (http://www.fourseasons.com/dallas)
New owners are investing millions in improvements, including 40 new villas and a "Lord Byron" exhibition. The sports and fitness club is monumental, offering indoor/outdoor tennis, racquetball and squash, basketball, four indoor/outdoor swimming pools, indoor/outdoor jogging track, and childcare!
Stony San Antonio
On a wooded plateau overlooking San Antonio, the Westin La Cantera Resort aims to preserve the Hispanic and cowboy heritage of the original rancho on this rugged piece of the Texas hill country. Remnants of an old quarry, massive, ivory-colored limestone walls and boulders define the craggy landscape, creating a dramatic setting for two golf courses and the hotel, a dazzling "Texas Colonial-style" fortress and bell tower built of the pale, native stone. (http://www.westinlacantera.com)
 On the hottest summer day, breezes cool golfers on 7,001 yards of rocking and rolling terrain awash in bluebonnets and black-eyed Susans on the Troon-managed Resort Course at La Cantera, where the PGA Valero Texas Open is played. One of the last Jay Morrish-Tom Weiskopf designs, the track is gnarly with Mountain cedars, cacti and live oaks, rushing streams and wild ravines. The 7th drops eighty feet above a wall of quarry stone, a large lake, a warren of sand traps and close-up views of "The Rattler" rollercoaster at Fiesta Texas theme park. Described in the yardage booklet as "visually intimidating", the 12th sports a series of "church pew" bunkers, a serpentine stone wall, a ravine, two creeks and a wide waterfall . . .
Notorious for steep terrain and stony, ball-bouncing outcroppings, dry creeks and canyons, the Palmer Course is memorable for blind tee shots to large, fast, tiered greens with sloping sides (74.2/142 rating/slope). The signature fourth hole is nearly all carry over a lake to a 20-foot patch of green, fronted by a brace of waterfalls. Golfers walk to the putting surface by way of the Winnie Palmer Memorial Footbridge, dedicated by Arnie to his late wife. Bring your climbing gear for the 12th, high above the city. If you are over this green, you are in the sand or in a cactus. And, save your strength for the finishing hole, playing up, then plunging seriously downhill between a high, rocky parapet and cascades, running down to a lake then up to the huge, wavering green backed by an ocean of sand and more waterfalls.
Ironwork and heavy wooden doors, a huge fireplace and leather sofas recreate ranch life in the hotel's greatroom, lounges and bars. 508 spacious rooms and suites are Southwestern in style, with balconies, fully outfitted work spaces and large tubs. Waterfalls mask the sound of fun in six swimming pools. For guests desiring seclusion, the Casita Village in a wooded glen fills the bill with mini-kitchens, large living rooms, carved wood furnishings and rancho artwork, fireplaces, oversized tubs, garden patios with forest views and a swimming pool.
Cowboy Country
Wide fairways fringed with overhanging oaks and criss-crossed by narrow creeks, the golf course at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort and Spa lies easy on the low-rolling hills of a former ranch. Arthur Hills' design for the 27 holes incorporates hundreds of cacti, oaks and soft, high, wildflowery meadows. (http://www.hillcountry.hyatt.com)
 Imagine the country mansion of a multi-millionaire Texas cattleman. Amid lush gardens and grounds, the white limestone main building is pillared and balconied, with rocking chairs on the porch under the shade trees. At the 4-acre water park, kids play on a little beach and cruise around a lazy river on inner tubes, while parents hide away in the adult pool area, soothed by the rush of waterfalls. Two huge fireplaces are toasty warm in the wintertime, as guests lounge on leather sofas and cowhide armchairs in the Texas-sized lobby; Remington bronzes add to the Western ambiance. Each of the 500 recently renovated rooms has a private balcony or patio, country chic decor, and views of rolling hills or of one of the prettiest resort courses in the state.
And, across the road--SeaWorld® San Antonio!
Colorado River Rambler
A few miles from the Austin airport, adjacent to a vast nature preserve, Wolfdancer Golf Club at the Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa rambles along the Colorado River, over prairielands and into a valley liberally inhabited by mature pine, oak, elm and pecan trees. Not for the faint of heart, the breezy 7.205-yard layout is out of the Arthur Hill/Steve Forrest design firm. The forecaddies come in handy for the pot bunkers and tall native grasses, creeks and a serious downhill drop or two. GOLF Magazine called it one of the "Top 10 New Courses You Can Play" in 2006. (http://www.lostpines.hyatt.com)
The brand new 492-room Hyatt Regency is already a hit with guests who love the river kayaking, horseback riding and walking trails, fly fishing, and hot-air ballooning over the Loblolly pine forests in the hill country highlands. Sophisticated Spa Django has river views and private venues for scrubs, rubs and tubs. Kids are happy at the elaborate water park on the water slide and a moving river pool.
RTJ at LBJ
Clustered around Lake LBJ, northwest of Austin, are a private jet airport, a yacht marina and sandy beaches, and snazzy weekend homes and condos at Horseshoe Bay Resort. (http://www.hsbresort.com)
The newly opened, 349-room, 4-star Horseshoe Bay Resort Marriott Hotel is the first Marriott resort in Texas. (http://www.horseshoebaymarriott.com)
 Three championship Robert Trent Jones, Sr. golf courses and a spectacular 18-hole putting course make this a prime golfing destination. The Applerock track runs along the shores of the lake on high, rocky terrain to elevated greens surrounded by sand. Graceful impediments are the large boulders, oaks, elms and persimmon trees. A gorgeous display of trees on Slick Rock includes willows, pines, cedars, oaks and even bamboo, along with 71 sand traps and water on twelve holes. Ram Rock ups the ante with battalions of deep bunkers along narrow fairways, water on ten holes and natural dry creeks and waterfalls.
It's fun to play the super-elaborate Whitewater Putting Course under the lights in the evening, when the rose gardens and banks of other flowers are aromatic. Besides the Marriott, The Waters at Horseshoe Bay Resort offers 1- to 3-bedroom villas.
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