TPC San Antonio Is Good, Actually

The 2023 Valero Texas Open is not going to shatter any ratings records. The field is not particularly strong, and most golf fans’ minds are on the ANWA or the run-up to the Masters.

However, if you’re interested in understanding elite professional golf at a deeper level, I’d recommend watching some coverage of the tournament this week. The Greg Norman-designed TPC San Antonio is among my favorite tests on the PGA Tour.

Few golf courses on the PGA Tour separate accurate drives from errant drives like TPC San Antonio does.

When thinking about how a course tests golfers’ accuracy, most people focus solely on fairway width and rough length. In fairness, those are significant contributing factors to the importance of driving accuracy. But to fully understand how much a golf course rewards precision, you need to consider the penalties associated with different widths of misses.

The fairways at TPC San Antonio are only slightly narrower than PGA Tour average, and the rough is short. Yet accuracy is at a premium here. Desert lies and trees greet players who get too far off the playing corridors. Furthermore, many of the greens are perched with narrow necks leading into the putting surface. This combination of characteristics leads to a significant reward for finding the fairway. It’s difficult to punch a recovery shot through trees off a firm lie onto a narrow, perched green.

At TPC San Antonio, the difference between hitting a shot on line versus a little bit offline is worth ~0.4 strokes; the difference between hitting a shot on line versus way off line is worth ~0.7 strokes. For reference, at Torrey Pines, those numbers are ~0.35 and ~0.45, respectively.

In this way, TPC San Antonio is a far different test than, say, Torrey Pines or Bay Hill, where wide misses are not penalized as heavily. At courses like Torrey Pines and Bay Hill, players who miss the fairway launch shots out of the rough as high as possible, hoping to find the green. TPC San Antonio gives players this option much less often.

With trees lining both sides of the fairway on No. 1 at TPC San Antonio, errant drives frequently result in bogey or worse (ShotLink)

With a massive slope on the front right of the first green, approach shots are demanding, particularly when players have missed the fairway off the tee; the left green side bunker is a treacherous up-and-down, especially to short-sided pin locations (TPC San Antonio)

For those who appreciate centerline bunkers, TPC San Antonio has a hole for you. The par-4 11th plays just over 400 yards and tends to have a scoring average right around par. The green tilts at an angle that makes playing from the left side advantageous, but tee shots that miss the fairway left quickly trickle into trees and desert areas that impose a strong penalty.

Wind conditions and pin locations often dictate players’ strategies on No. 11. Check out how runner-up Matt Kuchar played this hole in two different rounds last year.

{{content-block-tpc-san-antonio-valero-texas-open-analysis-001}}

Corey Conners, one of the most accurate drivers on the PGA Tour, hoisted the trophy in 2019. Other accurate drivers like Matt Kuchar, Ryan Moore, and Kevin Streelman have also seen success on this course.

TPC San Antonio lacks the lush appearance of many PGA Tour courses, and the event does not have the field strength to command massive viewership numbers, but this golf course deserves credit for how it tests the best players in the world. Not every PGA Tour venue needs to claim playability for golfers of all skill levels. TPC San Antonio may not be fun to play for a 15 handicapper, but for elite players, it’s strategically intriguing and an excellent examination of ability.