Town Rankings / Texas

The Best Golf Courses in Fredericksburg

Fredericksburg sells wine, peaches and a German main street, and golf has always been the side trip rather than the reason for the drive. Two courses make up the whole bench here. That is the honest starting point, and this ranking will not dress it up as a deep scene.

Boot Ranch is Hal Sutton's Hill Country private, the destination course attached to a luxury community west of town. Lady Bird is the city course named for the former first lady from this county. Between them they cover the two ways golf works in the Hill Country now: private and expensive behind a gate, or public and local and priced for the people who live here. We rank the golf first, and the golf is not a tie.

1Boot Ranch Golf Club

Boot Ranch takes No. 1 because it is the only course in Fredericksburg that people plan a trip around. Hal Sutton's name on a Hill Country layout signals the intent: a big, serious test using the rises and the rock of the country around Fredericksburg rather than flattening them into a subdivision backdrop. In a region where a lot of courses are amenities with tee markers, Boot Ranch was built to be the main event for its members.

The concession is the obvious one, and it is large. Private, residential, and aimed at second home money, it is closed to almost everyone reading this list. A No. 1 course you cannot play is a frustrating No. 1. It also carries the risk that comes with community golf everywhere: the real estate is the business, and the course has to serve lots and views as well as golfers.

Even with both counts against it, there is no serious argument for anything else at the top. The gap in ambition between Boot Ranch and the public option in town is the widest on this list relative to the size of the town, and rankings should say so.

2Lady Bird Johnson Golf Course

Lady Bird Johnson Golf Course is the Fredericksburg round a visitor can actually book, and that counts for more here than it would in a bigger town. Named for the former first lady from this county, it is the city's course, which sets expectations correctly: playable, friendly to a mixed group, and suited to a morning round before an afternoon on Main Street rather than a round you build a weekend around.

The knock is equally plain. It is not in Boot Ranch's league as a test, and a good player will finish the round having enjoyed the Hill Country air more than any single hole. The course does not pretend otherwise, which is part of its charm, but charm does not move a course up a ranking that scores the golf first.

There is a wider point worth making about towns like this one. Hill Country golf is full of two course towns where the private course belongs to a development and the public course belongs to the city, and the visitor's real choice is not which is better. Everybody knows which is better. The choice is whether to plan the trip around trying to see the private course through a member, a real estate tour or a lucky invitation, or to accept the public round for what it is and spend the saved hours and money on the town itself. Fredericksburg rewards the second plan more than most places, because the town outside the gates is the actual attraction.

So Fredericksburg resolves into a simple truth. One private course worth coveting, one public course worth playing while you are in town anyway. Come for the wine country, play Lady Bird in the cool of the morning, and if a Boot Ranch invitation ever lands, clear the whole day for it.