Heading to West Texas to play golf? Then you better learn to play the way the West Texans play. You need to learn to hit in 50 mile per hour winds and learn to deal with dust storms, rain storms, hailstorms, snow storms, lightning, and tornados, because they can show up quickly. Droughts will cause course characteristics to change dramatically as in "didn't there used to be a water hazard here?" The terrain is mostly flat and the winds always howling - add rock hard, dry fairways and you get "Wow, I just hit a 410 yard drive!"
The people are also different and remote areas will have the ranchers/farmers showing up to play, just off their tractors, in their overalls. Sometimes there is just not much else in the way of recreation other than the local courses. The majority of these courses are flat but who wants to walk when it gets to 110 degrees or so cold you can't feel your fingers. Also some of the views are magnificent and some areas are just damn ugly! This is big country and sometimes distance to the next course can "be awhile." Amarillo, Odessa, Lubbock, Midland, El Paso, and most of the larger cities are just like any where else, with okay to outstanding courses. There are also some West Texas gems that make a West Texas golfing excursion worth the trip - Butterfield Trails Golf Course in El Paso is an example. Check out some pictures of this gem.
I think West Texas is also where the honor system of paying (lock boxes) must have been invented because there is a bunch of them. You can pretend you own some West Texas courses because you might be the only person there! "Tee time" - what the heck is that? Oh, let's talk about the varmints - snakes, lizards spiders, ants, skunks opossums, cottontails, jackrabbits, squirrels, gophers, prairie dogs, ground squirrels, wasp, bees, hornets, mosquitoes, cicadas, biting flies, bugs, deer, antelope, feral hogs, coyotes, foxes, cows, crows, hawks, quail, dove, geese, ducks, owls, worms, and more - all of which you might encounter at any time while on the course.
Cost is usually not one of your problems in this area as they haven’t raised prices in years. Tree problems are also not the norm - they haven't raised them in years either! Cart girls, huh, not in West Texas but you will pass quite a few tumbling tumble weeds as they try to find the next hole. Traps - miss the fairway and you'll get plenty of practice in the sand. In fact you may encounter some of the trap sand in your eyes during the frequent dust storms. Water holes - you won't find many in West Texas.
