Omni Barton Creek — Fazio Canyons

The Fazio Canyons at Omni Barton Creek is Tom Fazio's 1999 sequel to the Foothills, built thirteen years later with design contributions from Beau Welling, Roy Bechtol, and Dennis Wise. Where the Foothills plays along cliff edges and past cave openings, the Canyons plays through and across the ravines themselves, with Short Springs Branch Creek cutting through corridors of oak and sycamore. Golfweek named it the No. 1 course in Texas in 2002, and the routing earned the ranking.

You're playing 7,153 yards, par 72, slope 144. The longest and most difficult of the three Barton Creek courses. The creek and its tributaries come into play on more than half the holes, not as distant boundary hazards but as features that cross fairways and front greens. If you can't control trajectory and landing area, the course gets demanding fast.

The 3rd hole introduces the central question: can you commit to the carry? It recurs in various forms across the round, and rewards trusting your distances. The back nine intensifies as the canyon walls rise and the canopy tightens. The 15th, a par 3 across the deepest section of the canyon to a green on the opposite rim, is the most photographed hole on the course and the one that most clearly demonstrates Fazio's willingness to let the terrain dictate the design. Greens often sit into the natural grade, so reading them requires attention to the broader landscape, not just the surface itself. Wrong-tier approaches can leave 40-foot putts across ridges that effectively split the green into two targets.