Texas is booming with some of golf’s most exciting course projects

The bulldozers have been blazing in Florida and South Carolina. Georgia and Tennessee are warming up, and in 2023 Alabama debuted its first new course in nearly 20 years. It was only a matter of time before Texas jumped into the fire.

For a state of its geographic and demographic heft, Texas lags its peers when it comes to great architecture. Currently only three courses reside in America’s 100 Greatest and Second 100 Greatest Courses—Whispering Pines (#51), Dallas National (83) and Bluejack National (139)—and the average score of the top 10 courses in the state is just 59.02 compared to New York (64.73), California (63.76) and Florida (60.74).

A starburst of new courses and developments is likely to close the gap as some of the profession’s top designers have been getting to work here. Several projects that have recently opened could be a harbinger of the quality on tap, including the Fields Ranch courses at Omni PGA Frisco (the Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner-designed East Course will host the 2027 and 2034 PGA Championships), and The Covey at Big Easy Ranch between Houston and San Antonio, named our 2024 Best New Private Course winner.

VAQUERO: A NEW BEGINNING

Vaquero Club’s original Tom Fazio course opened in 2001 in Westlake, 15 minutes from the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. The design played in pods of holes that spoked out through an upscale development, and when it was time to upgrade the infrastructure, the club asked architect Andrew Green to take the concept in a new direction. Green’s remodel is a rebirth with entirely new greens, several new holes including the reversed first and ninth and the elimination of the cramped par-3 17th, replaced by a short, uphill par-3 16th. Long sandy washes that bordered fairways and lowland areas were removed, and Green added smaller, more strategically engaging bunkers and centerline hazards to the more spacious playing corridors. Coupled with agronomic improvements like the installation of Precision Aire and hydronics systems to regulate the new bentgrass greens, Vaquero is an entirely new golf course.

THE DARMOR CLUB: MACDONALD AND RAYNOR COME TO SOUTH TEXAS

Hal Sutton is one of Texas’ favorite sons and has quietly put together a second act as a course designer and developer (he’s the architect of record for Boot Ranch in Fredericksburg). Sutton has now debuted The Darmor Club, near Columbus, with course builder Doug Wright. The property is not far from Big Easy Ranch, but the concept of The Darmor Club is radically different as Sutton and Wright have taken inspiration from both the wild south Texas scrub elements of the site and also from the early 20th century templates of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor, so players will find a Biarritz green, a Road Hole, a reverse Redan par 3, a Cape hole, an Alps and the like. Darmor opened for play in December.

LORALOMA: GOLF ON THE RIVER BLUFFS

Loraloma is part of a large master-planned community northwest of Austin from the Areté Collective, founded by former Discovery Land Company executives. At the heart of the luxury development is an 18-hole course from David McLay Kidd, architect of the original course at Bandon Dunes, as well as Gamble Sands in Washington State and Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley, each ranked on Golf Digest's lists of America’s 100 Greatest or Second 100 Greatest Courses. As at Gamble Sands, Kidd is back working atop bluffs, in this case on the palisades 30 to 40 feet above a bend in the Pedernales River. The site makes for dramatic golf with several holes running the length of the river similar to how four, five, six and 16 at Bandon Dunes border the oceanside cliffs (though in this case members will hit shots over coves), and nearly half the remaining holes edge along interior ravines like Bandon’s 17th. Loraloma will open this fall.

CHILDRESS HALL: THE SAND HILLS OF TEXAS

Childress Hall is modeled after the country’s great fly-in destination clubs like Sand Hills, Ballyneal and Ohoopee Match Club. The location, on the former Rocking Chair Ranch, is every bit as remote, tucked into a surprisingly abrupt range of sand dunes in the panhandle overlooking the Prairie Dog Town Fork Red River, 250 miles northwest of Dallas. The Upper Course, complete and opened to members December 2024, is designed by Tom Doak and begins in the gentler natural terrain of the eastern section of the site before powering into the larger upper sandhills at the seventh hole where it remains for the remainder of the second nine. As expected given the wind and weather extremes, the fairways will be fast and racy, and as expected given the designer, the greens are full of shoulders, dips and swales. The Lower Course, currently being built, sits to the north where Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner have designed three six-hole loops that return to a high focal point. The topography is much more Irish in character, with large, choppy, intimate dunes, and the task is to tame it down for golf. Their course is looking toward a fall 2025 opening.

LULING: BATTLING THE BARRANCAS

When Kyle Franz opened his first solo design last year, the Karoo Course at Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida, he showed he’s not shy about pushing golf design to extremes with cavernous waste bunkers, multi-route fairways and greens that swing wildly from high to low. At Luling, located roughly between Austin and San Antonio, the ground he’s working with gives the course its flamboyance with native Texas meadows intersected by natural barrancas and arroyos that range from three to 30 feet deep. Franz’s holes remain bold but in a more familiar sense as he uses the hazards to split fairways and rub greens in ways that recall the barrancas at Los Angeles Country Club. The course will host play as early as this summer, and a second 18, designed by the Australian firm of Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead (OCM), takes its cues from British links and looks toward a 2026 opening.

WILD SPRING DUNES: EXPANDING A PUBLIC GOLF LEGACY

Mike Keiser’s legacy is the pioneering of a new kind of links-style public golf in beautiful settings like Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley—for this achievement, the United States Golf Association is presenting the coveted Bob Jones Award to him in June. Keiser’s sons, Michael and Chris, are continuing that legacy with the development of several off-the-beaten-path public golf destinations including Wild Spring Dunes in east Texas. The soon-to-be 36-hole facility set across 2,400 acres is located near Nacogdoches, 160 miles from Dallas (southeast) and Houston (northeast). Tom Doak is designing the first course (construction started this spring), and the environment couldn’t be more different than the land at Childress Hall, with holes moving through pine and hardwood forests and nudging up to and over ravines and creeks. The course could open in fall of 2026. The second course, scheduled to be built by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, is an out-and-back routing that appears to work across even more dramatic terrain. Construction of the second course has not yet begun.

BLUEJACK RANCH: TIGER RETURNS TO TEXAS

This project southwest of Fort Worth has gone through three iterations in the last half decade but is now moving ahead on solid footing with Tiger Woods’ TGR Design signed on as course architect. Now named Bluejack Ranch, it is being developed by the team behind Bluejack National outside Houston, the first course Woods designed in 2016. Situated on over 900 acres along Bear Creek, the club will include a working dude ranch, a lighted short course and a television and film production studio. If past designs at Bluejack National and Payne’s Valley are predictive, Woods will give players room to hit off the tee and then tighten the approaches into greens that offer creative ways to get up and down. The projected opening is late 2026.

TRAVIS CLUB: FROM THE HIGHLANDS TO THE SHORE

Located a scant six miles from Loraloma northwest of Austin, Travis Club is a 1,500-acre community on Lake Travis with over 10,000 feet of waterfront. The course from Beau Welling (who is Tiger Woods’ lead architect at TGR Design and designed the West Course at Fields Ranch) is pure Texas Hill country with rugged, rumpled upland holes and a detour down toward the shore on the first nine, highlighted by a heart-pounding all-or-nothing par 3 across the lake. As advertised the site is quite hilly with numerous elevated tee shots, and while most of the real estate sits on the higher ground, the holes dip into lower sections cut by natural drainage gulches and play through rock outcroppings. Most of the course is shaped with an expected opening summer or fall 2026.

FREESTONE: THE BEST OF LAND AND LAKE

Beau Welling has spent so much time in Texas the last several years he’d be paying taxes if the state had them. In addition to the previously mentioned courses where he’s working, as well as three major private club renovations upcoming in the Dallas and Houston markets, he and his team have largely completed shaping at Freestone Lake & Golf Club, a low-density luxury real estate development 70 miles east of Waco. Located on the largest privately owned lake in the state, Welling says it’s one of the most unique sites he seen with 14 holes routed on an island separated from the mainland by a long canal originally constructed as a cooling trough for a nearby power plant. The significant topography, much of it provided by old spoils from the plant, provides views of the water from nearly every hole, and 13 of them play along either the canal or on the shore of the lake (as do four holes of an additional short course). A mid-to-late 2026 opening is likely.