Austin Country Club

Austin Country Club occupies a striking site on the south bank of the Colorado River (Lake Austin), with Austin's iconic Pennybacker Bridge as its backdrop. Pete Dye routed the opening seven holes on flat terrain beside the water before climbing into the hills. The course hosted the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play from 2016 through 2023.

Austin Country Club is the oldest continuously operating country club in Texas, organized in 1899 when golf was still a novelty in the American Southwest. The club operated at two earlier sites in Austin over its first eight decades, including a property on Riverside Drive where it developed a deep connection to professional golf instruction and tournament play. That connection is inseparable from the story of Harvey Penick, the legendary teaching professional who began his association with Austin Country Club as a caddie in 1913 at age eight, became head professional in 1923, and held that position for nearly five decades. Under Penick's guidance, the club produced two Masters champions: Tom Kite, who won in 1992, and Ben Crenshaw, who won in 1984 and again in 1995. Both grew up learning the game from Penick at the Riverside Drive location.

Penick's patient, feel-based teaching philosophy -- distilled in his posthumously published "Little Red Book," which became one of the bestselling golf instruction books ever written -- was developed and refined on Austin Country Club's practice grounds over more than 50 years. The club moved to its third and current location in 1984, relocating to the Davenport Ranch development on the south bank of the Colorado River, just southeast of the Pennybacker Bridge and approximately seven miles west of downtown Austin. The new site offered terrain that the Riverside property could not: dramatic elevation changes, live oak groves, exposed limestone outcroppings, and unobstructed views of the Hill Country ridgeline across Lake Austin. Pete Dye, Alice Dye, and Dan Proctor designed the course, routing 18 holes that make full use of those topographic advantages. Pete Dye's design at Austin Country Club deploys many of the architectural elements he favored throughout his career: railroad ties as structural retaining features, pot bunkers with steep faces, green complexes with severe undulation, and forced carries that demand commitment from tee to green.

The course plays to a par of 71 and stretches over 6,700 yards, with the Colorado River serving as both visual backdrop and strategic hazard at several holes. Dye designed the finishing stretch to build toward a dramatic conclusion, with holes 15 through 18 each presenting distinct and memorable challenges along the river corridor. The course became a permanent fixture on the World Golf Championships calendar when the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play relocated to Austin Country Club in 2016. The match play format suits the course's character: the strategic variety Dye embedded in the design rewards aggressive play from the world's best professionals, while the club's intimate size and setting create an atmosphere unlike larger, more conventionally configured tour venues. The event draws the top 64 ranked players in the world annually, making Austin Country Club one of the few private courses in the country that hosts a World Golf Championships event every year.

Harvey Penick's legacy is woven into every corner of Austin Country Club. The practice area where he gave lessons to Crenshaw and Kite still functions as the training ground for members. The club's connection to Penick's philosophy of simplicity, patience, and feel-based instruction remains a defining part of its identity -- a reminder that the greatest golf teaching of the twentieth century happened at a club in Austin, Texas.