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From our Directory of the most recommended golf courses
Wolfdancer Golf Club
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Rating: 3.2
Pace of Play
3
Greens
4
Service
4
Value
2
Design/Layout
5
Wolfdancer is in the Hyatt Resort at Lost Pines, east of Austin on 71 toward Bastrop. It's an Arthur Hills designed course of 7200 yards, 137 slope from the back tees, but with 4 other sets of tee boxes. Fairly new course, still growing in, but already one of the better courses in town, and the prices reflect it. The front side and a few holes on the back are typical hill country type of golf, hilly fairways, tree lined, while the last six are open, and more links style. Tall fescue or grasses native to the area line the fairways, which are fairly forgiving off the tee, if you're wide, your forecaddie will find it!. Very well conditioned, excellent service, fantastic greens!
Published by: Colin
Posted by: befowler
Dec 15th, 2011
Wolfdancer is located in a lovely spot just to the east of Hill Country on the banks of the Colorado River (the other one). It's a very good course that's best enjoyed a second time around because on your first trip, it's probable you'll ponder your best line off the tee or into the green and invariably get it wrong.
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Posted by: TonyK
Dec 16th, 2009
The front nine is a bit hillier than the back side, except the 12th, which is call the Top of the World, nice view over the valley and the Colorado River, and a 100 foot drop to the green. Fair golf course overall, excellent conditioning. You can score here if you miss the multitude of bunkers, negotiate the greens with false fronts, and have your short game on.
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Posted by: ericm
Sep 30th, 2009
It is a beautiful track with the first twelve holes being classic Texas hill country golf and the last six holes being more links style of golf. While mixing styles is usually a mistake this course flows perfectly with the terrain. There are no tricks to this golf course other than tough to read greens, it just plays very difficultly. Bring your A game! Hyatt has spent a lot of money to buy a beautiful piece of land and then build a quality golf course and resort on the property. It is well worth the fee which was $79.00 through golf512.com. They have tee times for as low as $49.50 posted as well
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Posted by: Colin
Jun 22nd, 2009
Nice recent review by Kevin Robbins at the Austin American: The entrance sets the tone, solitary and serene, of the experience at Wolfdancer Golf Club. Travelers turning from U.S. 290 onto Hyatt Lost Pines Road might expect to find a clubhouse or a parking lot or, at the very least, a glimpse of some rogue fairway caught between the pines and pecans. What they encounter is a lonely ribbon of asphalt, descending into the woods, pitching with the slopes of the Colorado River valley. The quiet and winding drive leads eventually to the 3-year-old Hyatt Regency Lost Pines Resort and Spa and its golf course. The No. 14 green at Wolfdancer appears on the right, followed by a quick view of the short 15th. The balance of the holes is somewhere over the ridge that hugs the property, horseshoelike. Construction of Wolfdancer took place so far from any road or highway that the course didn't so much evolve slowly as materialize suddenly, like a puddle after a rain. Embedded deep inside the undeveloped land between Austin and Bastrop, the 7,205-yard course was a mystery until it opened in 2006 as the centerpiece of the Hyatt resort. For first-time visitors, Wolfdancer remains hidden, even at the modest clubhouse. The journey to the first tee involves a long climb on a cart path around the practice range, where Americana music pumps through remote speakers clinging to tree trunks. A gap in the branches leads to No. 1. The act of getting to that imposing 420-yard par-4 is nearly as satisfying as the next four to five hours, in which players navigate 11 thrilling golf holes on Texas highland and six set below in a pecan grove - with a memorable par-3 that takes the course from the upper level to the bottoms. You might even find yourself admitting that you never knew Central Texas looked like that. Which is what gives Wolfdancer its most distinct quality. It seems so exotically far away, but it's not.The course, open to daily-fee as well as resort play, has seen about 24,000 rounds a year. That's a small number for a place that has so much to offer. Its allure - seclusion, immersion in nature - has its perils: Wolfdancer isn't a course you can see on your way from one place to the next and decide to play the next time you have a free afternoon. But that same quality makes it perfect for these times, when the price of gas and the whims of the economy make a quick getaway near to home a sensible alternative to hopping a plane or train to a place that not only seems far away but truly is. The two opening par-4s at Wolfdancer wrap around a treeline that defines the outer boundaries of the front-nine holes. At more than 400 yards apiece from the back tees, they introduce the sturdiness of the rigors ahead, and each bends a different compass point, one favoring a fade, the other a draw.The arrival at the tee of the par-5 third hole introduces the vastness of the views and the elevation of the land. Measuring 603 yards from the back tees, the hole is littered with large and aggressive sand bunkers - on the left, on the right, down the middle and all the way up to the hole. The green is set atop a gentle peak, in the foreground of a ridge beyond that looks so far away it might as well be in another county. In all probability, it is. Arthur Hills, the noted golf-course architect who, with associates Chris Wilczynski and Shawn Smith, designed Wolfdancer, moved very little earth to create the 18 holes. "It's on large acreage, maybe 240 acres, and therefore there are expanses of the area that weren't touched during the construction of the golf course," Hills said at the opening ceremonies in 2006. "We kind of wanted the golf course to relate and blend with the naturalness of all that was not disturbed." That explains the wide meadows of 12- to 18-inch-high native grasses and wildflowers that grow gloriously between the fairways. The meadows wave in the wind, lending the land a quiet but lively movement. But they also create a right-in-front-of-you danger for wayward shots. Maintenance crews have widened the shot corridors since the course opened. They learned that too many of the areas were pinched into the lines of play. As balls were lost and players were further dismayed by an already stern test of golf, the course's forecaddies (ball spotters - a blessing, you'll find) detected patterns to lost shots. The course now cuts the outer edges of the native areas to a more playable - and findable, in terms of golf balls - 4 inches to 6 inches."Mr. Hills said it best," explained Wolfdancer director of golf Eric Claxton. "We want people to be able to hit their balls, be able to find it and hit it again."The front ends with an excellent trio of par-4 holes that vary in length as well as character. The seventh is a mere 337 yards, but a pair of trees harasses shots on the right side of the fairway, and a deep and penal gorge protects the front of a heaving green.The eighth goes 483 yards, turning left around an expansive waste bunker on the inside of the dogleg. An approach to the ninth that sails too long demands a high and soft pitch to a green built up from the rear. From that side - the wrong side - the green (not that you can see it) looks like it sits atop a pedestal.The 10th hole looks like a softer version of the 10th at Fazio Canyons, Barton Creek's muscular fourth and newest course. The alley of the fairway tumbles to the right, leading to a small green surrounded by trouble. The curious 11th - a short and right-angled par-4 with bunkers scattered on the far side of a water hazard - represents the last golf you'll play on the higher ground.The par-3 12th descends halfway into the valley. The next six holes cut gracefully through the pecan grove like a century-old country club built when the trees were wee saplings. The most stunning piece of Hills' architecture awaits at the 15th, a 333-yard par-4 that rides the borders of the trees to a small, almost dainty, elevated green.Seductive, isn't it? Don't be naïve. The next hole, also a par-4, stretches 478 yards.Wolfdancer is brawn and finesse in equal parts, with a rhythm of long-versus-short that eliminates any chance of getting bored or restless for variety. Hills said he saw the opportunity to mix the length of holes as a way of giving Wolfdancer a balance of par-4 holes that see drivers and irons from the tee, wedges and hybrids from the fairway. "The goal, for us, is to have two or three long par-4s, and two or three short ones, and then a ladder of other par-4s to between that," Hill said. It's an interesting concept. It all ends at the 17th, a long par-3 along the river. The last hole, a par-5 with bunkers tacking along the middle of the fairway inside 150 yards, provides unfettered views of the river on the right. Like the end of a long fight through whitewater and Class 5 rapids, the slow-moving Colorado signals triumph and closure to the round.It also gives the experience one more natural element. Instead of homes and roads, you have water and wind. Instead of lawns and parks, you have native grass and flowers. Instead of noise - from cars, from construction, from civilization - you have silence, save the call of birds. You might allow yourself to believe that you're in a faraway place, remote and wild and difficult to find.
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