Texas Outside review of Barton Creek -- Canyons Course

Barton Creek -- Canyons Course

Texas Outside Rating: 9.0

18 Holes - Golf - Resort
Austin
512-329-4001
Website
Stay & Play

Date Played: August 21, 2008
Front Nine Rating: 9.0 Stars
Back Nine Rating: 9.5 Stars
Approximate Weekend Price Range: $80.00 to $295.00
Brief Description:
Barton Creek sets the standard for excellence in resort amenities, service, and golf courses in Texas with four excellent golf courses. The two Fazio designed courses - Fazio Canyons and Fazio Foothills - are consistently rated as two of the best courses in Texas and the Dallas Morning News rates them as #1 and #2 top Texas resort courses. Fazio Canyons is rated 21st on Golfweek magazine's America's Best Top 100 Resort Courses list. You can read our review of the Fazio Foothills course by clicking here.

Both courses are a tribute to the game of golf and to the rugged beauty of the Austin Hill Country. The Canyons course in particular leverages the scenic beauty of the Hill Country as it winds through the canyon and up and down the hills. The rugged terrain provides some elevated tee boxes and greens, plenty of natural hazards, and scenic beauty. The limestone-rock hillsides feature prickly-pear cacti, aged pink-skinned Madrone trees, Spanish oaks, red oaks, junipers and sycamore trees on the 210 acres.

The Canyons course is one of the lushest and best maintained and manicured courses in Texas. The greens were in perfect condition as were the fairways and tee boxes (few if any divots and no broken tees). The rough was trimmed perfectly and the areas under the trees were well maintained. The green were huge, fast, undulating, and a little hard to read.

What makes this course very fun and enjoyable is the scenic beauty and serenity; variety with no two holes playing or looking the same as the last hole; immaculate condition; limited amount of play; and the challenge - all-in-all a near perfect place to play golf. The Canyons offers a very intriguing layout with lots of character and personality. You'll start to feel lonely as you get into your round - its quiet and peaceful. No holes are side-by-side and no homes line the fairways - there are some huge, and I mean huge, homes on some of the hillsides.

You do need to play with a member or be a guest of the resort to play the course. It's pricey, but who cares, you only live once so add The Fazio Canyons to your list of must plays. Barton Creek has an excellent stay and play package which is the best way to enjoy the resort and some excellent golf - check it out and call and make a reservation.

Here's How Texas Outside Determines the Scorecard Rating

The Texas Outside rating scale ranges from 1 to 10 – a perfect 10 course would be something like this: links along a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean and bordered by tall trees; lush fairways on rolling hills with lots of natural hazards; water (which is crystal clear) on most of the holes; immaculate greens (but they are undulating and tough); lots of variety and character (each hole is completely different and includes blind shots, elevation changes, doglegs, and significant challenges); perfectly manicured traps with the whitest and prettiest sand you’ve ever seen; a nice club house with great food and a 19th hole; a GPS; plenty of beverage carts or your own cooler and ice; and it only costs $40 bucks! What this means is that you probably won’t find any 10s in Texas – try Cabo San Lucas, Pebble Beach, or some of the Hawaii courses!
Texas Outside rates courses on the following:

Beauty – tall trees, rolling hills, beautiful houses, waterfalls, and similar stuff would score high; a 1 would be flat, bushes or cactus instead of trees, and some grass but mostly weeds

Difficulty – a straight, 300 yard par 4 with no traps or hazards, no out of bounds or water would probably get a 1; if it is a 460 yard par 4 over two ravines, with water along one side, natural hazards on the other, strategically placed traps or that dreaded tree right in the middle of the fairway, we are talking a 10.

Variety – what would you give a course where all the holes looked and played exactly the same (“I thought we just played that hole!”); were side-by-side, which is good for finding or dodging other people’s balls, but not much fun; and you can see the flag from every tee box? That’s right, it gets a 1.

Fun Scale – a 10 is where you walk off the course and say “now that was fun” and you can’t wait to get back, or you immediately turn around and play another 18 holes

Value – a 5 is $50 to $60, a 10 is $20 to $30, and 1 is $200 or so – of course all of this is dependent upon how you liked the course. For example, if a run down, boring municipal course, with six players on each hole was only $10; it would still get a value rating of 1.

Condition – this one’s pretty easy – what condition are the fairways. A 10 commands very lush perfectly manicured fairways, compared to a 1, which has fire ants, weeds, and more dirt than grass!

Condition of Greens and Difficulty – very hard to read greens with lots of undulation and tough pin placement, rate very high on the difficulty scale. Condition is self-explanatory.

All of the above determines the overall score for the golf course. In other words, we like courses that are pretty, fun, very challenging with a lot of variety, and fairways and greens in excellent condition – all for $40. We also tend to play the courses that are affordable for the masses, which means in the $30 to $80 range. We rate hard and we haven’t found a 10 in Texas yet – don’t worry we haven’t given up and we’re still looking.