Golfweek’s Best 2022: Top public and private courses in Texas

“If you’ve never been to this part of Texas, you’re not gonna believe it,” Lanny Wadkins said of the No. 1 course.

Texas has an incredibly diverse mix of landscapes, and its best golf courses likewise serve up a great variety from its desert borders in the west to the farmland in the east.

Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with that of top public-access courses in each state among the most popular. All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Also popular are the Golfweek’s Best rankings of top private courses in each state, and that list for Texas’ private offerings is likewise included below.

MORE: Best Modern | Best Classic | Top 200 Resort | Top 200 Residential | Top 100 Best You Can Play

(m): Modern course, built in or after 1960
(c): Classic course, built before 1960

Note: If there is a number in the parenthesis with the m or c, that indicates where that course ranks among Golfweek’s Best top 200 modern or classic courses. 

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James Piot, Rose Zhang pace Team USA at Spirit International; Team Canada leads by 2

James Piot, Rose Zhang pace Team USA during the first day of the Spirit International Amateur Championship.

TRINITY, Texas – During a practice round for the Spirit International Amateur Championship, U.S. Amateur champion James Piot sidled up to his American teammates Rose Zhang and Rachel Heck and let them know his plan for victory.

“You guys are carrying us this week,” said Piot of the four-person American side that also included Texas A&M’s Sam Bennett. “You girls are the heart and soul of the team this week.”

That’s a pretty sound strategy given the immense talent of the two Stanford teammates: Zhang, the reigning World No. 1 women’s amateur and Heck the reigning NCAA women’s individual champion. The two also teamed up to help Team USA win the Walker Cup. On Thursday at Whispering Pines Golf Club, Piot did his part making six birdies en route to an opening-round 4-under 68. That propelled Team U.S. to shoot a total of 6-under 210, and trail Team Canada by two strokes in the Team Championship.

“We really got off to a pretty bad start,” said Team USA captain Stacy Lewis, of what at one time was as many as a six-stroke deficit, “but James and Rose really rallied and kind of saved the day for us.”

The Spirit features a unique format with some new wrinkles this year. The 80 competitors from 20 countries are competing for gold, silver and bronze medals over 54 holes of stroke play competition. Each country is represented by two women and two men amateur golfers. There are five concurrent competitions in play at The Spirit: Team Championship, Men’s Team, Women’s Team, Men’s Individual and Women’s Individual.

In a change for this year’s championship, the Team Championship format uses the best three scores from each four-person team. The Men’s and Women’s Team format combines both players’ individual scores. The Men’s and Women’s Individual format simply is each player’s gross score over the 54 holes.

Piot rebounded from a double bogey at the seventh hole after he tugged his drive left and into the thick stuff. Due to wet conditions, players were allowed to move their ball the length of a scorecard and Piot attempted a hero’s shot that went wrong.

“It was a college-kid mistake, I’d call it, thinking I could DeChambeau it out of there,” he said. “It turned my club over and my ball went into the trees 40 yards left. Making a six was a pretty fortunate break because it could’ve been really bad. I learned my lesson. I’ll just chip out next time.”

Zhang matched Piot’s six birdies, but also matched him with a double bogey on the card as she recorded a 3-under 69. At No. 4, Zhang pushed her drive way right and it led to a double bogey. “I think Rose hit the worst drive I’ve ever seen her hit,” said Lewis. “On days like this when it’s hard that’s when you find out how good someone is.”

Zhang showed her mettle, playing her final 14 holes in 5 under, and grabbed a one-stroke lead in the women’s individual competition over her fellow Stanford teammate, Switzerland’s Caroline Sturdza. Zhang credited her birdie at No. 10 with turning the tide.

“I rolled in a 25-footer,” she said. “I was able to bounce back from a couple of shaky holes when I started out. That hole really helped me turn it around.”

Bennett blamed a balky putter for four three-putt greens as he shot 1-over 73. Heck wasn’t making excuses but said she was feeling under the weather and had been sucking on cough drops all day as she shot an uncharacteristic 5-over 77. (Her score didn’t count in the competition.)

“I was proud of the fight,” Lewis said of her team. “James birdied the last two which was huge and Rose had a good finish, too. We’re still in it.”

Everyone is chasing Team Canada, which may have benefited from its experience in cold weather. Temperatures were hovering in the mid 40s in the morning but it didn’t seem to bother Team Canada, which combined for an 8-under 208 total in the Team Championship competition. The team was paced by Johnny Travale’s bogey-free, 5-under 67.

Travale, a senior at UCF, said four years in Orlando has thinned his blood. He wore four layers on the front nine, including a hoodie for the first time while playing golf that he kept over his head.

“It really helped because when the back of the neck starts getting cold that’s when it is over,” he said.

On 18, he stuck an 8-iron from 165 yards to 6 feet to cap off his round, which also secured a one-stroke lead over Piot in the men’s individual competition.

Travale’s teammate Henry Lee fired a 2-under 70 that included four birdies. Lee currently is tied for fourth place in the Men’s Individual competition. Savannah Grewal’s 1-under 71 was the third score that counted for Team Canada in the Team Championship competition. Grewal birdied the par-4 11th and 13th holes and logged her only bogey on the par-5 12th. She’s tied for third place in the Women’s Individual competition.

Team France, the defending champions from 2019, holds third place in the Team Championship at 2-under 214.

Canada leads the Men’s Team competition at 7-under 137. Team USA is in second place at 3-under 141. Belgium holds third place at 2-under 142.

Switzerland sits atop of the Women’s Team competition at 2-under 142. Colombia and France share second place at 1-under 143.

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How a former Texas football star and energy magnate has built the perfect amateur golf event

How a stunning piece of East Texas property became one of the country’s best golf venues has more to do with camaraderie than course design.

TRINITY, Texas — Corby Robertson knew a thing or two about routing golf courses. Yes, the sport Robertson was most closely associated with was football — he was highly recruited by University of Texas coaching legend Darrell Royal then twice named All-American while captaining the Longhorns to the 1969 Cotton Bowl — but golf had always been in the Houston native’s blood.

When Robertson and his sister, Beth, made a land swap that effectively moved Austin Country Club to its current location, he worked with famed architect Pete Dye on the development of the course that now hosts the WGC-Dell Match Play, even taking a trip to see the Oklahoma masterpiece Oak Tree to better understand Dye’s genius.

“Pete once made a statement to me and said there’s nothing in the rules of golf that said it had to be fair,” Robertson told the Austin American-Statesman’s Kirk Bohls back in 2016.

But how Robertson turned a stunning piece of East Texas property into one of the country’s best (and most secluded) golf venues has more to do with camaraderie than course design.

Robertson — who didn’t declare for the NFL draft after an impressive college career because “those guys all made about $25,000 and I thought I could do much better” — had built Camp Olympia with UT roommate Chris Gilbert on a stunning site less than an hour from Huntsville. The idea behind the camp was to get teens to bond and to grow three essential pieces that Robertson holds dear — body, mind and spirit.

And originally, the course hosted what Robertson called “olf, which is golf without the greens.” As part of the camp’s weekly routine, eager campers would hit shots off a tee to a wide-open “green” that was simply a pushed-up piece of turf with a washtub in the middle. The kids loved it. Robertson jokes that the game could have been revolutionary.

“It would have been a more popular game,” he told Golfweek in September. “You make more holes-in-one and you don’t ever miss three-foot putts.”

But over time, Robertson and others realized this would be a prime piece of property for a golf course. By then, he’d become an energy magnate, first in oil, then in coal, and had the financial means to create the course. In the 1990s, when beetles started eating away some of the camp’s trees, he decided to make a go of it, starting with a series of three legit holes, then adding irrigation systems and creating the course that now tops Golfweek’s Best private courses in Texas list: Whispering Pines.

“We liked it. But if we were really going to do this we said, ‘What is golf missing?’ At the time, golf was missing the Olympics,” Robertson said.

So he decided to mix two of his passions — Camp Olympia and a new golf course. Soon after, in 2001, the Spirit International Amateur Golf Tournament was born, a biennial event with teams featuring two men and two women from each of 20 countries that span six continents.

After they built it — Robertson’s team worked with the Jack Nicklaus design team on the course — the world’s top ams started showing up in droves. When this year’s teams arrive for the 10th playing of the event (the 2017 event was canceled due to Hurricane Harvey), they’ll add to an impressive roster of amateur golfers who’ve made the journey to Whispering Pines. Among those who have won a title at the event are Lorena Ochoa, Brandt Snedeker, Jordan Spieth, Lexi Thompson, Scottie Scheffler, Austin Ernst and Will Zalatoris.

This year, a power-packed lineup that includes the Nos. 1 and 2 female amateurs in the world will lead the way for Team USA. Stanford teammates Rose Zhang and Rachel Heck will lead the American contingent while Texas A&M’s Sam Bennett and Michigan State’s James Piot round out the squad. Piot won the U.S. Amateur in August.

The tournament is known for having five concurrent competition categories: international team, men’s team and women’s team, and men’s and women’s individual stroke play competitions. It will be played Nov. 4-6 and broadcast on Golf Channel as well as the Spirit’s website.

A series of flags line a lake at Whispering Pines, ranked as Golfweek’s Best top private golf course in the state of Texas. (Contributed photo)

Players stay at Camp Olympia and partake in a number of club traditions, like line dancing and karaoke. While golf has returned to the Olympics with professionals, Robertson thinks his event has somehow maintained the amateur flavor the Olympics was originally intended to foster.

“I feel like maybe we inspired the Olympics to have golf. I hope we’ve been part of the inspiration. There are 200 other sports, why not golf?” he said. “But this wasn’t designed for pros. For stadium golf, we would have had to clear every tree on this property. There’s room to do that, but the beauty and the ambiance of this place, it would just be a shame.

“Listen, good amateurs are going to a great tournament every week. None of them have a camp attached. They live together in camp cabins and we turn these players into friends. Camp makes lifelong friends and it builds character. The mission of Camp Olympia is to have fun together but make people grow in body, mind and spirit. To do that with a bunch of very accomplished golfers? Well, that is just a plus.”

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