They come looking for golf that can’t be played in places where the wind bites at skin and the ground is covered in snow and ice. Mostly over the age of 50, they invade Texas towns, assuring their hosts a huge economic benefit and a full tee sheet on days thin-blooded natives would rather stay indoors.

Some towns have staked out huge RV parks for these visitors, with some right next to golf courses offering season-long stay-and-play packages. Others have special hotel, motel or condo rates specifically for snowbirds, many of whom return to the same Texas towns year after year.

While there are many Texas towns that offer these benefits, we wanted to give late-comers a bit of a primer for those areas with the best of the golf offerings.

The courses listed below are located in small towns – the largest of which is about 10,500 in population – west of Austin and north and west of San Antonio in Central Texas, a region that is varied in topography and not as far a journey as some of those in the southern part of the state. They are listed in a north-to-south configuration, just as a snowbird would find them on a drive away from the bad weather.

Delaware Springs takes Back Seat to no Course
Known for almost two decades as a friendly yet challenging course that boasts low prices, friendly service and a picturesque setting, Delaware Springs Golf Club in Burnet (pronounced “BURNit”) can take its place among the best municipal courses in Texas.

Set in the seat of Burnet County in the heart of Texas and the famed Highland Lakes region, Delaware Springs opened in 1992. Architects Dave Axland and Dan Proctor fashioned a natural course that fits the terrain perfectly and plays 6,829 yards from tips. The course is nestled into rolling hills. Its oak-lined holes are frequently festooned with bunkers, large greens that slope severely and numerous chances to bump and run shots into the putting surfaces. 

The designers added a few original touches, such as the descriptive Scottish names for each hole (the 18th is called “Hame” for the home hole). Partly as a reaction to the over-shaped courses of the 1980s, partly because of the underlying rock that prevented much digging and a modest budget, Axland and Proctor (who have worked with Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore) built a low-profile course whose strength would rely on interesting greens that dictate the strategy off the tee. 

Eight of the holes have no bunkers, but because of the use of the existing contours as well as some key trees, a player is not aware of this while playing the course for the first time.

However, where bunkers are utilized, they are used to great effect, both artistically and strategically. On the 475-yard fourth hole there is a bunker smack in the middle of the fairway some 20 yards short of the green, a distance that grabs the player’s attention when he has a wood or long-iron in his hands. 

The real beauty of the bunker, though, is that it distracts from the large greenside bunker to the left. A player focusing on just carrying the central bunker will often wind up in this left trap.

On two holes at Delaware Springs, the second (a 365-yard par-four) and sixth (a 490-yard par-five) the player is asked to play over a solitary tree in the fairway on his approach. At No. 2, the player has just a short-iron in, but it must be precise to hold the shallow green, and on the sixth, the greenside bunkering scheme on the front-right and left requires that a long second shot must be brought in from left to right, up the axis of the green between the bunkers. However, holding a 3-iron, the player will often just ‘see’ the tree in the fairway he must clear.

Another interesting design twist involves placing the signature hole as the opener. Playing 504 yards to a par-5, No. 1 is best attacked with an iron into the left side of a sloping, tree-lined fairway. The creek cuts into the landing area, making it a testy tee shot. The second shot must bend around the dogleg to the left and over the creek, and the approach is into a green shaded by large trees on the right.

Legends Golf Course Meshes with Hill Country Topography
Playing a round of golf at this course is akin to teeing it up at a high-end, daily-fee track in Austin, Dallas and San Antonio, with a lot of the things that makes the Highland Lakes-area so special thrown in for good measure.

This jewel was designed by Champions Tour pro Tom Kite in conjunction with Austin-based architects Roy Bechtol and Randy Russell, and it shows the touches each man brought to the process. There is the pinpoint accuracy Kite is known for in his play and designs, and Bechtol and Russell added their moxie with the combination of lengthy and short holes, risk-reward opportunities and attention to detail both on and around the course.

Located in the Llano County burg of Kingsland and nestled in a bend of the Colorado River arm of Lake LBJ, Legends offers solitude and elegance along with a suitable challenge for scratch golfers. It stretches to 7,159 yards from the tips yet is forgiving enough for beginners. The Legends, because of its circular layout, offers both links-style and Hill Country golf at its finest.

The final three holes on the front side offers the best the Legends has to offer. No. 7 is one of two signature holes, and at 430 yards from the back tees is one of the longest par 4s in the area. Next up is the par-3 eighth at 130 yards The front nine ends with a tree-lined 452-yard par-4 with a tight fairway and some of the most punitive rough on the course. The slight right-dogleg favors a right-to-left shot off the tee to open the green to a relatively easy approach. 

Then there is No. 15 is a devilishly long (253-yard!) par 3 guarded by sand on its entire left side. The yardage guide says the hole plays longer than its yardage – how can that be? – with a green that slopes from back to front.

The round ends at a 548-yard par-5 18th, where trouble lurks along the entire right side of this narrow dogleg-right hole, and second shots should stay left to avoid fairway bunkers right. The triangle-shaped green is bordered by another bunker short and right and slopes back to front.

Fredericksburg’s Lady Bird Johnson Golf Course a Revitalized Gem

Sometimes a golf course’s challenge is in its length while at other times the test is a track’s series of hazards or in its demands on accuracy. The best courses are a combination of those three features, which, taken together, requires the golfer to be both skilled and savvy.

Lady Bird Johnson Golf Course in the small Texas town of Fredericksburg, about an hour and a half from Austin and an hour from San Antonio, brings those course challenges and that required talent level to the forefront. It is rare that you find much variety in a municipal golf course, much less a track nestled in such a serene location in the Texas Hill Country.

The surroundings at Lady Bird Johnson GC can, at times, be very distracting. With fairways lined by huge oaks, water in the form of a winding creek through the front nine and three lakes that are played around on the back, the course demands that the golfer hunker down and concentrate to play his or her best game. The routing offers a challenge to all levels of players.

Benefitting from an almost $2 million renovation from Houston-based architect Jeff Blume, as paid for by the city and facilitated by the needs of the nearby Gillespie County Airport, Lady Bird Johnson GC reopened in September 2012 with new Bermuda 419 turf in the contoured fairways, Champions Ultra Dwarf grass on the putting surfaces, a re-routing of holes and a makeover of the clubhouse.

Additional tee boxes were added to offer the superintendent some distance options for the course, which gained 238 yards (from 6,448 to 6,686 yards) but reduced par from 72 to 71 with the redo.

All the outlay and work were part of an initiative to make golf a bigger aspect of the enticement for this Hill Country destination that attracts more than 1.5 million visitors a year.

Laid out over an undulating, tree-lined 125 acres, dissected by Live Oak Creek, Lady Bird Johnson GC has, in past years, attracted roughly 34,000 rounds per year. The improvements promise to drive even more golfers to the course and the happening, bustling town. Through its 44 years, the course has persisted as an accessible, compact layout for locals and visitors.

Overall, the renovated layout now includes 48 bunkers and water in play on 10 holes. Native areas have been allowed to grow on several plots on the course, now a par 71 stretching more than 6,600 yards from the back tees.