Briggs Ranch Golf Club

Briggs Ranch Golf Club is a Tom Fazio design set on 260 acres of Texas Hill Country terrain south of San Antonio, featuring Zoysia fairways, TifEagle Bermuda greens, and a distinctive bunker scheme that frames each hole without overwhelming the natural landscape. Now part of the Dormie Network, the course rewards thoughtful strategy with generous landing areas off the tee and demanding approach shots to well-defended greens.

Briggs Ranch Golf Club emerged from a partnership between businessman Gil Hodges and Texas Golf Hall of Famers Bill Rogers and Buddy Cook. The three joined forces in 1999 with the goal of creating a private club in the Texas Hill Country, enlisting Tom Fazio to design the championship layout. Rogers, the 1981 Open Championship winner, brought a player's perspective to the project, later praising the result by stating that there is not a weak or bad hole at Briggs Ranch. The course opened in 2001 on 260 acres approximately 30 minutes south of downtown San Antonio. Fazio's design stretches 7,247 yards from the championship tees and plays to a par of 72, with Zoysia tees, fairways, and rough complementing the Hill Country terrain.

The layout earned immediate recognition, with Golf Digest naming it the #4 Best New Course in America in 2002. In 2007, a distinctly Texan clubhouse was completed, featuring Spanish-style tile, a terra-cotta roof, and a range of dining and meeting spaces designed for gatherings of up to 300 guests. The clubhouse anchored the social side of the club and provided views overlooking the 18th green. The club changed hands in 2014, and in 2017 the Dormie Network acquired Briggs Ranch to fulfill the founders' original vision of pairing championship golf with on-site lodging. The acquisition brought investment in infrastructure including six new casitas, clubhouse modifications, a new golf cart fleet, maintenance equipment replacement, and installation of a full perimeter fence.

The property now offers 60 beds across Dormie Casitas, Executive Casitas, and the Ranch House. In 2022, the green complexes were renovated with TifEagle Bermuda grass, replacing the original bentgrass surfaces to improve putting conditions in the South Texas climate. The conversion provided more consistent year-round playing surfaces suited to the region's heat and humidity. Golf Digest ranked Briggs Ranch #32 among the best courses in Texas in 2025, continuing a track record of recognition that has followed the course since its opening. Tom Fazio's design at Briggs Ranch uses the Hill Country terrain south of San Antonio to create a course that differs significantly in character from his other Texas work.

The 260-acre site provides enough topographic variation to support genuine elevation changes between tees and greens, and the limestone outcroppings that characterize this part of the Edwards Plateau appear throughout the routing as natural hazards and visual features that no amount of earthwork could replicate. The Dormie Network acquisition in 2017 transformed the club's business model in ways that have enhanced rather than diminished the golf experience: the addition of on-site lodging allows members and guests to extend their stay and play multiple rounds, creating the kind of extended immersive golf experience that single-day visits to daily-fee courses cannot produce. The 2022 green renovation from bentgrass to TifEagle Bermuda addressed a practical challenge common to Hill Country courses -- maintaining cool-season greens through the intense heat of South Texas summers -- and the improved consistency of the new surfaces has been well-received by the membership. Golf Digest's 2025 ranking of Briggs Ranch at number 32 in Texas, combined with its earlier recognition as the fourth-best new course in America, establishes it as among the consistently evaluated Tom Fazio designs in the state.