# AT&T Oaks Course vs. Brackenridge Park Golf Course: The San Antonio Choice Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/atandt-oaks-course-vs-brackenridge-park-golf-course/ [The Course Rankings](/) Course Comparisons / Texas A golf ball beside the hole on a green. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons San Antonio gives a visiting golfer two completely different answers, separated by about a century of golf history. One is a Greg Norman resort course that hosts the PGA Tour, playable if you stay at the JW Marriott. The other is a 1916 A.W. Tillinghast municipal course, the oldest public golf course in Texas, where the Texas Open was born. Tour modern against municipal original. The choice says a lot about what you think a golf trip is for. Both courses are placed in [our San Antonio town ranking](/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-san-antonio-tx/), the Oaks has a standalone treatment in [our AT&T Oaks course profile](/blog/atandt-oaks-course-profile/), and both appear in [the full Texas state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-texas/). ## AT&T Oaks: the tour test The Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio opened in 2010, designed by Greg Norman with Sergio Garcia as player consultant. It has hosted the Valero Texas Open since 2010, which means the tournament that started at Brackenridge Park in 1922 now lives here, a fact that should make any San Antonio golfer a little wistful. The course plays par 72 at 7,435 yards and was ranked No. 30 in the Dallas Morning News 2025 Texas Top 100. The signature detail is the 16th green, which has a bunker in its middle, copying Riviera's famous 6th hole. A bunker inside a green is a piece of theater, and theater is part of the product here. You are playing a course built to be watched as much as played, at a resort, with tour infrastructure around it. For a strong player who wants to measure his game against the layout the pros face in the Valero Texas Open, there is no substitute in San Antonio. Access runs through the resort: guests of the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort can play it, which prices the round as part of a resort stay rather than a green fee decision. Concede the cost of that production. Resort golf at tour venues carries resort pricing, and a 7,435 yard Norman design will punish a loose driver all afternoon. If your group plays for fun and keeps score loosely, the Oaks can turn an expensive day into a long one. ## Brackenridge Park: the original Brackenridge Park opened in 1916, designed by Tillinghast, and it is the oldest public course in Texas. The Texas Open was first held here in 1922. That tournament is the third oldest on the PGA Tour lineage, and it started on a municipal course in a public park, which tells you what Texas golf was before it became a resort business. The course is also the first inductee into the Texas Golf Hall of Fame, and the Hall of Fame is located at the course. John Colligan updated it in 2008, and Golf.com ranked it No. 16 on its list of the best municipal courses in the United States. No. 16 muni in America, Tillinghast bones, a Hall of Fame on site, and a public tee sheet. That combination is available in very few American cities. Brackenridge is not a shrine that happens to take green fees. It is a working municipal course that has been working since 1916, through every era of equipment and every fashion in design, and still earns national muni rankings after a 2008 update rather than a rebuild. Its limits are the honest municipal ones. It will not stretch to 7,435 yards, it will not present tour week conditioning, and a Tillinghast course from 1916 defends itself with greens and angles rather than length. A low handicap bomber may find it short. He may also find that Tillinghast greens have been embarrassing confident players for a hundred years. ## The verdict Take the Oaks if the trip is about testing yourself against a current PGA Tour course and the resort stay is already the plan. It is the bigger, harder, more produced round, and the 16th green alone gives the group something to argue about at dinner. Take Brackenridge if the trip is about golf itself. The oldest public course in Texas, a Tillinghast design, the birthplace of the Texas Open, for a municipal price. Our verdict, and it is not particularly close: Brackenridge is the San Antonio round we would book first, and the Oaks is the one we would add if the group wants a second, sterner day. History you can play for a muni fee beats production you rent for a weekend, most of the time. This is one of those times. **Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.