When my wife suggested I fly out to meet her at her work conference at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa, it didn’t take me long to decide. Not only would we be able to celebrate our 5th wedding anniversary together without the kids, I would be able to cross another PGA Tour venue off my list!
TPC San Antonio, which is on property, has hosted the Valero Texas Open since 2010, and it’s already widely regarded as the toughest track on the Tour. It’s the same course where on the 9th hole back in 2011, Kevin Na recorded a 16. Not his finest moment:
The only thing I forgot to do was check the overseeding schedule. It never even occurred to me that this would be an issue. At La Paloma Country Club, we started our overseeding process in the second week of September, and the new ryegrass had already been growing for several weeks. In fact, the first of the three nines we overseeded came off cart path only on November 6th. I thought for sure the course would be open even if it was still cart path only.
While each golf course has its own special eco system, with a climate similar to that of Tucson, it never even occurred to me that overseeding would be an issue. But who am I to question their methods?
The AT&T Oaks Course, which was designed by Greg Norman and hosts the Valero, would be closed until mid-November. I would miss-out on playing it by just a few days. They go cart path only for one month after they re-open and then back to cart path only about a month before the tournament, which is played the week before the Masters. Timing is everything in life right? The consolation prize was that TPC San Antonio has two courses, and the AT&T Canyons Course was still open for business.
The Canyons Course was designed by Pete Dye and opened for play in 2010. TPC.com describes Canyon as being “very different from the traditional, tree-lined Oaks Course” that “stands on its own as a tournament venue in terms of design, strategy, and beauty.”
Dye designed the course with Bruce Lietzke “true to the flow of the land,” and while certain views of the 700-acre nature preserve through which the course meanders are nice, let’s be honest. There’s not much to see other than treetops, rooftops, and the occasional water tower. That’s Texas!
If you’re unfamiliar with the Texas Hill Country, it’s an interesting combination of oak trees, native grasses, cream-colored limestone rock, and more than the occasional prickly pear cactus. The JW Marriott is located in the affluent Cibolo Canyon community and sits on what is essentially the foothills of the Texas Hill Country that runs as far north as Austin some 80 miles away to the north.
Canyons hosted the PGA Tour Champions’ San Antonio Championship from 2011-2015, is 329 yards shorter than Oaks, and is geared more towards resort players. The course plays 7,106 yards from the Cibolo Tees to a Par of 72, a course rating of 74.5, and a slope of 139. Here are some of the highlights of the round:
Holes Worth Writing Home About
Whenever I play a course for the first time, I always go through the mental rolodex of, “this course reminds me of.” Was I back in South Carolina? Was this a links-style course? It was hard to say for sure. But as we walked off the 4th hole, I made a note that I had yet to see a single railroad tie, a signature feature in every single Pete Dye course I’ve ever played ranging from ASU’s Karsten Golf Course to TPC Sawgrass. It is the first and only one I’ve ever played sans railroad ties, and I loved it!
My favorite hole on the front nine is the 435-yard 9th. It’s a little downhill dogleg left Par 4, and off to the left side of the fairway, you’re greeted by two long fairway bunkers running away from you with grassy Bermuda knolls like those in the church pew bunkers at Oakmont or even TPC Scottsdale.
If you hit your ball in the correct speed slot, you can get some nice roll down the hill leaving yourself with only a short iron or even a wedge into the green. Beware of the greenside bunkers short and left, but with the Bermudagrass already going dormant, the fairways are firm, fast, and allow for plenty of roll-out.
In my opinion, the back nine is prettier than the front, and the best hole is the long Par 4 finishing hole. At 482 yards, it’s the one you’ve probably seen in all the pictures, including danbubanygolf.com. The sharp dogleg right curls along the hotel off in the distance to the left. Off the tee, there are seven bunkers visible, but when you get into the fairway and look back, they’ve disappeared. Talk about camouflage! The bunkers you could see now just appear as soft grass moguls. You’d never know how many there are.
The green itself is elevated, and bunkers abound short right and long left to catch any approach shot that comes up a little short or goes a little long. There are plenty of false fronts on the greens out here, and your ball has to find the proper tier at times if you want your ball to stay on the putting surface.
Quiet Please…
As we approached the starter on our way to the driving range, he offered more than a few tips for us, mainly related to the greens.
“You’ve got to hit it firm to keep it on line,” he told us.
Then he told us about the graininess of the Bermudagrass greens, how the grass tends to grow in the direction of the sun, and how there were times we would face downhill putts into the grain. The greens were good, but I didn’t find them to be grainy at all. Hit it too firmly, and your ball is gone!
What I did experience was the slickness of Bermudagrass getting ready to go dormant for the winter and some cups that were sharply cut. Canyons never closes for overseeding. Instead, they elect to paint the 419 Bermudagrass fairways and Champion Bermuda greens. It’s not ideal, but it’s more than adequate.
The green speeds were inconsistent, and whether it was the grain or the length of the grass, there were more than a few tricky breaks that left us shaking our heads as we walked to the next tee.
While the general consensus is that Canyons is a lot more forgiving than Oaks, the greens on Canyons are small enough to present a formidable defense mechanism. They feature some subtle undulations, and just about every green feels elevated. There are way more elevation changes than Oaks, which means you should plan on hitting at least one additional club into the green. When the wind kicks up, this course really shows its grit.
The driving range at TPC San Antonio is divided into two hitting areas: Member and Guest. The range is as flat as a pancake, and the Bermudagrass is good enough that you can hit as many of the TPC Titliest logo balls out of the nearby crates as you would like. One of the practice putting greens and the short game area were closed for overseeding, but there is also a practice putting green located by the 1st tee of Canyons.
Problem is, it’s just not in very good shape. The green appeared to have been reconstructed over the summer, and in spots still looked like a patchwork quilt, exposing the seams of the different sections of sod yet to really take hold.
Bring your camera! We saw a pair of six-point bucks dart across the fairways in front of us like they owned the place. That’s something you don’t see every day.
Fore!
The shot of the day came on the 532-yard par 5 12th. My 3rd shot found a small grove of oak trees off to the left of the green. I was pin high, and the lie was good. But with the overhanging tree limbs, I only had a small window to go through.
I made really clean contact, the ball flew threw the air just how I had envisioned, and thanks to my new Callaway JAWS MD5 wedge, the thing spun like a mother to five feet. The bad new is that my club caught a rock under the ball that I couldn’t see. The good news is that I was able to make the putt to save par.
While We’re Young
The pace of play that’s posted is four hours and 30 minutes, and they’re not messing around. On the day we played, there were more than 160 rounds on the books. We played in around 4:20, but when we fell behind by a few minutes on the front side, I thought the ranger did a really classy thing.
Instead of barking at us to “move it along,” he gently asked us in his slow Texas drawl, “Do you think y’all could help me out with something? Do you think you could all play ready golf until you catch up with the group in front of you?”
I thought that was a really nice way of saying “pick up the pace,” and we were happy to oblige without incident.