Course Profiles / Texas

The Tribute Golf Links: A Course Profile

The idea sounds like a theme park. Build a course in The Colony, Texas, on Lake Lewisville, where the holes pay homage to famous British links holes, St. Andrews, Royal Troon, Carnoustie, and let North Texas golfers play a version of the old country without the airfare. Theme park golf usually fails because the copies are shallow, all costume and no golf. The Tribute, designed by Tripp Davis and opened in 2000, mostly avoids that failure, and the reason is that Davis built real holes and let the references ride on top.

The record is specific about the ingredients. Deep pot bunkers. Double greens. Holes inspired by three of the most storied links in Scotland, adapted to Texas ground on a lake. Adaptation is the honest word in that list. Lake Lewisville is not the Firth of Tay, the wind is warmer, the grass is different, and a designer pretending otherwise would produce a diorama. Davis instead took the strategic ideas, the bunkering language, the shared greens, and let them play in Texas conditions. The Dallas Morning News ranked it No. 87 in its 2026 Texas Top 100, a few spots above its municipal neighbor in Euless, which suggests the local jury treats it as golf first and concept second.

Why the concept survives

British links golf is built on the ground game, on wind, and on hazards that punish the greedy line. Pot bunkers are the purest expression of that. A pot bunker does not care about your handicap. It is a small, deep, honest penalty: you went where you should not, and now you will spend a shot getting out, sideways or backwards if that is what the face demands. Scattering that discipline across a Texas layout changes how the whole round feels. Texas golf tends to be aerial, target to target. The Tribute keeps asking for the lower, running, thinking shot, and even when the turf will not fully cooperate, the question itself is a change of pace worth having in the metroplex.

Double greens do similar work. They are a St. Andrews signature, two holes sharing one enormous surface, and they create the long, strange putts and the near misses with other groups that make a round memorable. In Texas they are rare enough to be an event in themselves.

Public access completes the case. The Tribute is a public course. Anyone in the Dallas Fort Worth area can book the closest thing the region offers to a links education, which earns it its place in the Texas state ranking on access as much as architecture.

The honest concession

Let us concede the obvious. This is an homage, not the thing itself. There is no sea, no gorse covered dunes land shaped by centuries, no 40 mile an hour sideways rain to complete the portrait, and a golfer who has played the originals will feel the difference in the turf within two holes. If your standard is authenticity, The Tribute is a translation, and translations lose things.

It can also divide a foursome. Some golfers find replica concepts distracting, a round spent comparing instead of playing. That is a taste question and we will not argue anyone out of it.

But judged as a Texas public course rather than as a Scottish impersonation, the verdict firms up. Tripp Davis gave the metroplex deep bunkers, shared greens, and holes with famous ancestors, on a lake, open to anyone, good enough for No. 87 in a deep state. Who suits it: the golfer saving for a Scotland trip who wants a rehearsal, and the local who is bored of aerial target golf. Who it frustrates: the purist, and the driver of the ball who hates a pot bunker on principle. The Postage Stamp it honors is 123 yards of terror in Troon. Its Texas cousins cannot borrow the sea air, but they borrowed the fear, and the fear transferred fine.