Austin Beach Club

Austin Beach Club is a 12-hole par-3 course under development on a 63-acre site along the Colorado River just east of downtown Austin, designed by hometown architect Roy Bechtol in collaboration with Jim Fazio. The project envisions a lakeside members-only experience combining golf with water activities including kayaking and paddleboarding, positioned as a boutique alternative to traditional private golf clubs for Austin's growing community of golf enthusiasts. Construction is underway on the former riverfront industrial site with the course designed to maximize the natural Colorado River setting.

Austin Beach Club represents a standout distinctive new golf developments in Texas, bringing a boutique members-only golf concept to a 63-acre site on the banks of the Colorado River just east of Austin's downtown core. The site sits approximately two miles from Austin-Bergstrom International Airport on land that historically served as part of the Colorado River's industrial corridor. The project is the collaborative work of Roy Bechtol, a longtime Austin-based golf course architect and land planner, and Jim Fazio, whose family name has been synonymous with golf design for decades. Bechtol's familiarity with Austin's landscape and development environment and Fazio's design experience combined to produce a concept tailored specifically to the Austin market and its unique blend of outdoor culture, technology industry membership, and growing golf participation. The design calls for a 12-hole par-3 layout configured to take maximum advantage of the Colorado River setting.

Unlike traditional executive or par-3 courses, the Austin Beach Club concept integrates golf with a broader outdoor recreation program that includes kayaking, paddleboarding, canoeing, and wellness programming. Dining facilities, walking trails along the riverfront, and social amenities complete a package intended to appeal to members who may not define themselves primarily as traditional golfers but who embrace golf as part of a broader active lifestyle. The club began selling memberships in 2023 as the project advanced through Austin's planning and permitting process. The city approval process for the site — which required navigating floodplain regulations, environmental review, and urban development standards in one of the country's fastest-growing cities — extended the project timeline beyond initial projections. As of early 2026, the course is in active development phases.

Austin's golf market has grown significantly alongside the city's broader population and economic expansion. The influx of technology industry professionals from California and elsewhere, many of whom are accustomed to boutique club experiences, created a receptive market for an alternative golf concept like Austin Beach Club. The Colorado River site also benefits from Austin's established culture of riverfront recreation, giving the club a natural connection to one of the city's most beloved geographic features. The Austin Beach Club's identity as a par-3 course belies the genuine strategic complexity that Bechtol and Fazio embedded in the design. Par-3 courses at their best demand precision that longer-format golf sometimes obscures — there is no recovery from an errant iron with a safe layup, no opportunity to make up for a poor tee shot with a recovery approach.

Every hole at Austin Beach Club forces a complete commitment to the target, and the Colorado River's proximity means that many of those targets are framed by a visually dramatic natural feature in the Austin metropolitan area. The boutique design model that defines Austin Beach Club's operational philosophy — a small membership, a carefully maintained experience, an emphasis on quality over volume — reflects the same values that have driven the most celebrated short courses in American golf, from The Cradle at Pinehurst to Punchbowl at Old Head. For the Austin golfer who has played every championship layout in the area, Austin Beach Club offers a different kind of challenge and a different relationship with the course — one defined by intimacy rather than scale, and by the precision demands of short-iron and wedge play rather than the power requirements of longer formats. The 63-acre riverside setting is irreplaceable, and the combination of Bechtol's design instincts and the Colorado River's visual presence makes Austin Beach Club a genuinely distinctive experience in the Central Texas market.