The 20 Best Golf Courses in Texas

The consensus No. 1 course in Texas. Golf Digest's panel has ranked Whispering Pines first in the state since 2013 and keeps it on the America's 100 Greatest list (No. 66 in 2025-26); Golfweek has it first in Texas too. Chet Williams, a former Nicklaus Design associate, routed the course through towering East Texas pines along the coves at the headwaters of Lake Livingston - no houses, no highways, just corridor after corridor of demanding, tree-lined golf. Three panels look at Texas, and two of them stop right here.

Fazio found the most dramatic golf land in North Texas - a rugged former quarry property in southwest Dallas with elevation change most Texas courses can only dream of - and built the state's consensus No. 2. Golf Digest has ranked it second in Texas every year since 2005 and holds it inside America's 100 Greatest (No. 96 in 2025-26). The membership is invitation-only, the conditioning is immaculate, and the closing stretch is as stern a finish as Texas offers.

Hogan's Alley. Ben Hogan won here five times, the 1941 U.S. Open put Colonial on the championship map, and the PGA Tour has stopped here every year since 1946 for what is now the Charles Schwab Challenge - one of the longest-running events at a single course on Tour. John Bredemus laid it out in 1936, Perry Maxwell sharpened it, and Gil Hanse's 2023 restoration put the teeth back in, starting with the Horrible Horseshoe: holes 3 through 5, bending along the Trinity River.

The first American course designed by Tiger Woods, opened in 2016 in the piney woods northwest of Houston. Woods built a playable, strategy-first layout - generous off the tee, exacting around the greens - with a famously relaxed club culture and a 10-hole par-3 course, The Playground, on the side. Golf Digest and Golfweek both put it in the Texas top five; the only live debate is whether it belongs even higher.

The splitter on the panel ballots: GOLF Magazine ranked Trinity Forest No. 1 in Texas outright. Coore and Crenshaw took a former landfill south of downtown Dallas and shaped a firm, fast, links-style test on sandy soil - skyline on the horizon, barely a tree-lined corridor in sight. It hosted the PGA Tour's AT&T Byron Nelson in 2018 and 2019 and serves as home to SMU's golf programs. On architecture alone, it has a real claim to the top spot.

The design duo's home club - Austin native Ben Crenshaw is a member - and the purest expression of their minimalist philosophy. On Hill Country land west of Austin near Spicewood, Coore and Crenshaw barely moved the earth: holes rest on the ground as if they were always there, the bunkers look centuries old, and the whole round runs at a walker's pace. Both national panels place it in the Texas top 10; it is the insiders' pick for the state's most enjoyable round.

Bobby Weed's Hill Country statement, opened in 2001 in Bee Cave, just west of Austin. Weed routed the course through live oak savanna and limestone creek beds in the Barton Creek watershed, and the design keeps asking the same question in new ways: challenge the creek, or lay back and take the longer road home. Golf Digest ranks it seventh in the state, and Golfweek's panel agrees it belongs in this company.

The Nicklaus course at Carlton Woods has become a championship stage: since 2023 it has hosted The Chevron Championship, the LPGA's first major of the year. Nicklaus opened it in 2001 in the forests of The Woodlands, north of Houston - big, bold, tournament-grade golf with water guarding the finish. It leads a deep Houston-area private bench that puts three clubs in this top 20.

The highest-ranked Texas course most golfers can actually play - if they book the right hotel. Greg Norman, with Sergio Garcia consulting, carved the Oaks Course through the Hill Country canyons north of San Antonio in 2010, and it has hosted the PGA Tour's Valero Texas Open ever since. The fairways run narrow between unforgiving live oaks, and access is limited to club members and guests of the JW Marriott San Antonio.

Golfweek ranks Black Jack's Crossing the No. 1 public-access course in Texas, and the setting does half the arguing: Lanny Wadkins threaded emerald fairways through the desert along the Rio Grande at Lajitas, with mesas for backdrops and Big Bend country in every direction. It is a long way from anywhere, and that is the point - stay at Lajitas Golf Resort, play the round, then watch the light change on the river bluffs.