After our morning round at The Quarry my friend and I started to make the drive back to Dallas. We stopped in Blanco to play Vaaler Creek Golf Club before our final round of the trip at Delaware Springs Golf Course. In case you are looking for the review of Delaware Springs next, I am going to leave the 2019 one active and not re-review it.
Monday was our first visit to Vaaler Creek which I’ll call a San Antonio course, although it really isn’t. Vaaler Creek is about an hour north of San Antonio and an hour west of Austin. The area is pretty rural, so I guess the course is best associated with the Texas Hill Country rather than one of the nearby metros.
Our tee time was at 2:40 PM and it wasn’t busy when we arrived. We paid the $75 rack rate – too much for that late on a weekday – and tried to find the first tee. The proshop provided adequate directions, but we still got lost and spent a good fifteen minutes driving around in the cart looking for the first hole.
Eventually I sorted out my driving (the cart, never my driver though) and we rolled around the course in exactly three hours. For the most part I enjoyed the round here. The landscape in this part of Texas is very interesting and seems to change every few miles. The land at Vaaler Creek reminded me of California’s Sierra Nevada foothills and the course looked like one that could be found out that way. Many beautiful oak trees dot the property, giving the course a lot of charm.
Vaaler Creek was designed by Michael Lowry and J.R. Newman, both designers I haven’t heard of before. The course opened in 2009, so it is a newer golf course. I thought the layout and the playability were good, except for the funky 18th hole which is the weakest hole on the course. The tee shot there requires a snap hook to find the fairway and then it is a long carry over water to the green.
We played the gold tees (74.1/139/6801) and there is a good mix of design features. There are shorter and longer holes, interesting green complexes, wide driving areas and a split-fairway par-5. Maybe the thing I enjoyed the most about the round here was the minimal bunkering, at least compared to other modern designs.
When it comes to signature holes, someone really can take their pick. The 9th hole is a 163 yard par-3 with one of the course’s many severe green complexes. The green rises steeply up to a small back tier and falls off on each side. Even though it was only a short iron since it was playing downwind, it looked tough!
The back nine has the risk/reward par-5 10th – the hole with the split fairway, the par-3 12th with its semi-island green and then the par-4 17th which is probably the best looking hole at Vaaler Creek. The 17th is slightly downhill with a fairway that runs out into a hazard.
Overall, I’ll call the conditions just “okay”. It looks like the course was overseeded with ryegrass and while it had that deep green color to it, the overseed was very patchy. It was almost like some areas never grew in last fall. That didn’t affect play and the ball sat up most of the time in the fairways. The greens were a medium pace but wobbled and bumped thanks to plenty of poa.
For an out-of-towner Vaaler Creek didn’t impress me as much as I thought it would. Still, for the San Antonio or Austin golfer I think it is worth the drive. The course has a great look to it and allows for recovery in the Texas wind. Like so many courses these days, it is overpriced but probably not by much.
Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):