Course Comparisons / Texas
AT&T Oaks Course vs. San Antonio Country Club: The San Antonio Choice
San Antonio's choice is a study in what a golf course is built for. The AT&T Oaks Course at TPC San Antonio was built for television, a Greg Norman design that has hosted the PGA Tour's Valero Texas Open since 2010. San Antonio Country Club was built in 1907 for the city's members, an Alex Findlay course from the first generation of American golf. One course wants to separate the best players in the world over four days in the Texas wind. The other has been separating San Antonio's members from their money in weekend matches for more than a century. Both succeed at their jobs.
The Oaks: Norman's tour test
Norman designed the Oaks with Sergio Garcia as player consultant, and it opened in 2010 as part of the TPC San Antonio complex beside the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort. It plays par 72 at 7,435 yards, a full championship length, and it ranked No. 30 in the Dallas Morning News 2025 Texas Top 100. The detail everyone remembers is the 16th green, which has a bunker in its middle, copying the famous 6th hole at Riviera. It is a bold piece of borrowing, and it works because the hole forces the same decision Riviera's does. Play to the correct side of the green for the day's pin, or putt around a bunker and explain yourself to your group.
Access is the Oaks Course's quiet advantage. It is a resort course, playable by guests of the JW Marriott, which means a visiting golfer can actually get on a current PGA Tour venue without knowing a member. That is rare. Most tour stops are private clubs or courses that price the public out entirely.
The concession is atmosphere. A tour course built in 2010 beside a large resort plays big and modern, and some golfers find the scale of it impersonal compared with an old club. It was designed to test professionals and host crowds. Casual warmth was never the brief.
San Antonio Country Club: 1907 and still ranked
Alex Findlay laid out San Antonio Country Club in 1907, when Texas golf was barely a rumor, and the club has held its standing ever since. It ranked No. 48 in the same Dallas Morning News 2025 Texas Top 100, eighteen spots behind the Oaks, which for a course more than a century older is a remarkable piece of staying power. Lists change their tastes every generation. A 1907 course still sitting inside the state's top 50 has survived every fashion in design, equipment, and conditioning.
The catch is the door. It is private, fully private, and the ranking is all most golfers will ever experience of it. Findlay's course belongs to its members, and its place in this comparison is as the standard the city's golf grew from.
The rankings deserve one more moment, because the gap between them is the story of this comparison in miniature. No. 30 against No. 48 in the same statewide list means the modern tour course rates ahead, but not by the chasm the age difference might predict. The Oaks had every advantage money and modern design can buy, a tour contract, a resort behind it, a famous consultant walking the fairways during construction. San Antonio Country Club had a 1907 layout and a membership. Eighteen spots is what a century of head start costs you against that kind of investment, and plenty of old clubs would take that trade happily. Most of Findlay's contemporaries are not on the list at all anymore.
The verdict
On the published evidence, the Oaks wins the head to head. It is longer, higher ranked, tour proven, and, decisively, you can play it. Book the resort, walk the 16th, putt around the bunker in the green if you choose the wrong side, and know you are playing the same test the Valero Texas Open uses every spring. Choose San Antonio Country Club if you ever get the invitation, because a Findlay course from 1907 that still ranks in Texas is a piece of American golf history you cannot buy a tee time on.
The fuller local picture sits in our San Antonio town ranking and the Texas state ranking.
San Antonio golf started in 1907 at the country club and reached its modern form at the Oaks. A century apart, both courses are still doing the job they were built for, and neither one apologizes for it.