Golf Scrapbook Blog (The Other Ones)

TPC San Antonio (Oaks/Canyons and San Antonio golf)

October 2022 – Just got back from staging a conference for 900 peeps in San Antonio and played the Oaks course at TPC (home of the Valero Open). If you do event planning you already know about San Antonio and the River Walk If you only do it as a small part of your job like me or are suggesting locales to someone else doing it, San Antonio is great, The convention center (though it’s union and you have to pay some asswipe too much money to turn on a light switch but that’s a different story for a different blog) and major hotels are on the River Walk which is a Tex-Mex version of Venice. If you’ve never been, put it on the bucket list – though from the major Northeast cities, it’s a connection and a pain to get to.

But how about as a golf trip? I talk throughout the blog about the two types of golf trips: remote resorts or city trips. As a city trip destination (and if you’re not a group that likes to trudge through 36 holes a day for three days), San Antonio again is great. Stay on the River Walk. Grab walkers (walking drinks) at any bar or stand. It’s like New Orleans only a river instead of Bourbon Street. And no beggars. Nor piss smell. There are great restaurants: Boudro’s is a fave and Dorrego’s is a neat Argentinian restaurant also on the River Walk.

Honestly, you only need to drive for golf, everything else you could dream of is on the River Walk. Now I state elsewhere that city golf trips are fun because you can plan around a game or concert. While Denver I recommend a concert because of Red Rocks, here you have no choice because you only have the Spurs here and the NBA sucks. I hate the NBA. From the Sixers tanking for five years straight to that d-bag LeBron James and his flopping, crying and league-wrecking, ego-team-building crap, it is the least entertaining spectacle since paint drying was invented. I like college ball – though that is worse now due to the one-and-done’s. But NBA, fold the league and I’d be just as happy. But I digress.

Any good city golf trip requires, you know, golf. So how does San Antonio stack up? To start there is no top 100 course in or around San Antonio however you have some pretty good to better than pretty good public options so no need to be private connected to play the best of what’s available. I’ll go into the TPC courses in a few seconds. There’s La Cantera (which is now down to one course). The Quarry is a really neat course you should play (haven’t been in a while). Canyon Springs is nice (and you’re greeted by a bull at the first tee – no really). And if you’re flying in early or leaving late, Brackenridge is a shittily maintained little city muni (they were digging up the creek/river when I played there so it may be better than what I experienced) designed by A.W. Tillinghast that is super close to the River Walk that is good for a warm up or wind down scramble. Caution they let fivesomes play here and it is s-l-o-w.

In all, I’d say the San Antonio options are a hair behind in quality than the RTJ Trail but probably on par with the public options around Austin. They’re better than DFW and much better than the Houston area resort/public courses.

All that said, the TPC San Antonio courses are good but not great courses. The Oaks is the featured course because of the Valero Open but the Canyon course is on the better portion of the property (save the 17th and 18th on Oaks). They’re both designed by Greg Norman who is a generally mediocre designer and he does his mediocre best on these courses. The conditioning was good to very good but you pay a pretty steep freight to get on here and would expect better for the cost. You search online and they say the price range goes up to $149 but that is BS as we were non-hotel guests (and I recommend you don’t stay at the JW) and we paid over $200 and a little less for Canyons (though I don’t remember exactly). Also be careful because there are certain days you can’t book on Oaks so check when planning.

I’ll save the hole-by-hole descriptions for the photo captions but wasn’t religious taking out the camera so may miss some holes. I played like crap too so won’t amuse you with the crappy hole-by-hole scores. Love the 18th but it is a tough par five. The creek runs up the middle of the fairway on your approach shot and you don’t have much room left or right of it to place your second shot. I hit a great shot but it trickled into the creek. No hole stands out in particular for Canyons, but remember some nice elevation changes and pretty nice scenery throughout. I added photos below but won’t caption.