Featured Stop: Barton Creek, Texas

A short 25-minute drive from downtown Austin is where you’ll find Omni Barton Creek, a four-track resort that provides the Texas hill country scenery for a perfect little three-day getaway on the links.

A Coore and Crenshaw, an Arnold Palmer, and a pair of Tom Fazio designs await. The resort’s individual components have popped up on various best-of lists through the years—best in state, best resort golf, etc. And Fazio’s Canyons and Foothills courses are just a few years removed from inclusion on Golf Digest’s top 100 public courses in America. The Foothills layout “tumbles and undulates down the rolling hills and around and over creeks,” GD says.

But there’s certainly more to consider than rankings here. End-to-end, Barton Creek offers a very solid option for a contained golf resort experience without breaking the bank. It’s good, fun, hill-y, occasionally lakeside golf. It plays off its natural surroundings nicely. You will see wildlife. You will come upon vistas overlooking rolling terrain. And you will have a whole lot of easy fun with your buds, which is really what a trip to Barton Creek is all about.

Rounds can be pricey a la carte, but there’s good value in the resort’s stay-and-play packages, which start around $400 a night, including golf. That will give you access to all the trappings of resort life—among them here, a spa, a heated outdoor pool, and nine(!) restaurant options, some of which offer sprawling views of hill country. Factor in a trip or two into the city to explore Austin’s food and nightlife—its honky tonks, its dive bars, its patios, its barbecue—and you have landed on a winning recipe.

This piece originally ran in the GTG newsletter. Subscribe here and get the weekly featured stop—plus news on openings, redesigns, and more—in your inbox each Thursday afternoon.