Austin Golf Club

When looking at Austin Golf Club on Google Earth, it feels unassuming: no flashy white-sand bunkering, houses, or ocean views. It’s just 18 golf holes built into a piece of oak-filled, Texas wilderness 30 miles northwest of downtown Austin. Designed by Coore & Crenshaw in 2001, the course finds strength in its simplicity (its location wasn’t even well-known until satellite photography became more prevalent). The property is fairly modest but well-scaled for golf. The clubhouse sits on a high point, and the land falls away toward the Pedernales River in the distance. With shades of Southern Hills, tees and greens play off of and back onto this high point, with holes constantly shifting directions and taking full advantage of the site’s natural features and the near-constant Texas wind. 

It’s clear that although the course is a collaboration of the Coore & Crenshaw team, the influence of Austin-native Ben Crenshaw is impossible to ignore. Many of the customary templates that the team often employs or riffs on are nowhere to be seen, and the course’s unique characteristics are most apparent on the greens. While many of the duo’s courses tend to lean toward larger surfaces with rolling, sectional, internal contouring reminiscent of Perry Maxwell, these smaller, often angled surfaces have steep falloffs that require precision. They also force players to consider strategy all the way back to the tees, where correct fairway positioning is crucial to gaining access to pins on the pitched greens. This is most apparent during the winter months when the dormant zoysia is playing fast and fiery. 

Austin Golf Club is a player’s club: there are no tennis courts, no pool, and most certainly no sign.

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