Review of Legacy Hills Golf Club

Legacy Hills Golf Club
Texas Outside Rating: 8.7
18 Holes - Golf - Public
Georgetown
(512) 948-7560
Website
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Date Played: October 30, 2011
Front Nine Rating: 9.3 Stars
Back Nine Rating: 8.5 Stars
Approximate Weekend Price Range: $30.00 to $65.00
Brief Description:

Del Webb's Sun City Retirement Community is home to three very good courses - Legacy Hills, Cowan Creek, and White Wing. Each of the 18s has it's own unique personality and characteristics, for example:

Legacy Hills is a parkland type course with narrower lawn like fairways, lots of trees, and plenty of bunkers and it's the longest and has the reputation of being the most playable
White Wing is the tightest and the toughest as it twists and turns through the trees
Cowan Creek has a resort course feel with wide forgiving fairways, not a lot of trouble, and expansive greens

Common to all three courses are good conditions, a fair value, good service, and a fun and interesting layout. Here is a link to our review of Cowan Creek Golf Club and we hope to review White Wing in the near future.

Legacy Hills Golf Club is a Billy Casper Signature Course covering 120 acres that winds through some gently sloping tree lined terrain in the Del Webb community. In 1997 Legacy Hills Golf Club was chosen sixth in the Dallas Morning New's list of "Top 10 New Courses." Del Lemon, a writer for the Austin American Statesman stated: "Legacy Hills Golf Club might be the best all around golf course in Central Texas, if not the entire State. This is a course any golfer can play, whether a scratch player or someone looking for the first par."

With five sets of tee boxes and yardages ranging from a very short 3936 to 7088 yards you should be able to find a yardage that suits your game - don't bite off more than you can chew because Legacy Hills Golf Club can get a little testy. You'll encounter some tight fairways, tough approach shots, water, lots of bunkers, elevation changes, and some contoured sloping fairways.

The front nine of Legacy Hills is fantastic with some scenic, challenging, and very fun holes. For example:

#2 has a carry over a lake to a split fairway that requires a decision off the tee box - the right side is safer but longer and still requires a good shot to avoid the large fairway bunker and position you for a shot at the green and the left side is shorter and offers a great risk reward shot to try and fly the trees to make the hole even shorter
#4 is a pretty 171 par 4 with a kidney shaped green with a lake lining the right side - beware of the prevailing winds that will push you right
#5 is a fun one - an uphill 427 yard par 4 with a dog leg right shelf fairway plus 5 fairway bunkers and a huge 3 tier challenging green
#9 is a beautiful hole with a cascading stream along the left side of the uphill fairway, 5 huge bunkers, and a stunning green complex with a big white sand bunker and a pond with two waterfalls on the left side of the green

The back nine seems a little more straightforward and not quite as interesting until you get to the last four holes which are fantastic:

#15 is a long par four with a hidden rock gully crossing the fairway about 120 yards out and you'll need a precise shot to nail the odd shaped green with two treacherous bunkers on the left side
#16 is a beautiful long (216 yards) par 3 with an expansive lake and a bunker bordering the right side of a two tiered green
#17 has a carry over a lake and after that it is a good opportunity for a birdie if you can thread the needle between two large oaks protecting the approach to the front of the green
#18 is an excellent finishing hole - a 520 yard par five dog leg left with a minefield of 18 small to medium pot bunkers and one huge monster about where your drive wants to land

Like most courses in Texas, the tough winter, severe drought, and lack of rain has impacted the fairways at Legacy Hills Golf Club. The fairways were a little dry with some rough spots but still in pretty good shape considering the harsh weather. The fairways are ample and if you miss them the rough is playable - after that you're under the trees or in the back yard of a Del Webb senior citizen. Most of the fairways have some contour, slope, and mounding and on the front nine several fairways head gently up or downhill.

The greens were near perfect and a real joy to putt - true, smooth, and a good speed of around 10. However, you'll need to putt through tiers, slope, and undulation. The fringe is around 4 feet and puttable which is good news for those of us who can't chip.

The bunkers were also in very good condition. The fairway bunkers were firm and the greenside bunkers were white soft thick sand - I felt like I was at the beach in Destin, Florida. The bunkers range in size from small oval pot bunkers to some huge monsters. The lips are manageable.

Bottom line - Legacy Hills Golf Club is a fair but demanding layout, a good value, great conditions, and fun to play.

Texas Outside Scorecard for Legacy Hills Golf Club
Beauty:
Difficulty:
Variety:
Fun Scale:
Value:
Condition:

Other Good Information:

Designer/Architect: Billy Casper
Beware of water on 7 holes and the 67 sand traps.
Service is ok, the pro shop is well stocked, and the practice facilities are ok. The restaurant has a wide range of food.
Condition of the greens is 9.5 and the green difficulty is 8.8 out of 10.
Condition of the fairways is 8.3. Condition of the bunkers is 9.5. Type of Greens: Mini Verde
Walkable: Fairly hard
GPS: No
Course Map
Scorecard

Course Yardage, Slope, and Rating:

Tee Box	Yardage	Rating	Slope	Par
Black	7,088	73.9	131	72
Gold	6,686	72.0	125	72
Blue	6,079	69.0	117	72
White	5,436	65.9	107	72
Red	3,936	60.5	96	72

Here's How Texas Outside Determines the Scorecard Rating

The Texas Outside rating scale ranges from 1 to 10 – a perfect 10 course would be something like this: links along a cliff overlooking the Pacific ocean and bordered by tall trees; lush fairways on rolling hills with lots of natural hazards; water (which is crystal clear) on most of the holes; immaculate greens (but they are undulating and tough); lots of variety and character (each hole is completely different and includes blind shots, elevation changes, doglegs, and significant challenges); perfectly manicured traps with the whitest and prettiest sand you’ve ever seen; a nice club house with great food and a 19th hole; a GPS; plenty of beverage carts or your own cooler and ice; and it only costs $40 bucks! What this means is that you probably won’t find any 10s in Texas – try Cabo San Lucas, Pebble Beach, or some of the Hawaii courses!
Texas Outside rates courses on the following:

Beauty – tall trees, rolling hills, beautiful houses, waterfalls, and similar stuff would score high; a 1 would be flat, bushes or cactus instead of trees, and some grass but mostly weeds
Difficulty – a straight, 300 yard par 4 with no traps or hazards, no out of bounds or water would probably get a 1; if it is a 460 yard par 4 over two ravines, with water along one side, natural hazards on the other, strategically placed traps or that dreaded tree right in the middle of the fairway, we are talking a 10.
Variety – what would you give a course where all the holes looked and played exactly the same (“I thought we just played that hole!”); were side-by-side, which is good for finding or dodging other people’s balls, but not much fun; and you can see the flag from every tee box? That’s right, it gets a 1.
Fun Scale – a 10 is where you walk off the course and say “now that was fun” and you can’t wait to get back, or you immediately turn around and play another 18 holes
Value – a 5 is $50 to $60, a 10 is $20 to $30, and 1 is $200 or so – of course all of this is dependent upon how you liked the course. For example, if a run down, boring municipal course, with six players on each hole was only $10; it would still get a value rating of 1.
Condition – this one’s pretty easy – what condition are the fairways. A 10 commands very lush perfectly manicured fairways, compared to a 1, which has fire ants, weeds, and more dirt than grass!
Condition of Greens and Difficulty – very hard to read greens with lots of undulation and tough pin placement, rate very high on the difficulty scale. Condition is self-explanatory.

All of the above determines the overall score for the golf course. In other words, we like courses that are pretty, fun, very challenging with a lot of variety, and fairways and greens in excellent condition – all for $40. We also tend to play the courses that are affordable for the masses, which means in the $30 to $80 range. We rate hard and we haven’t found a 10 in Texas yet – don’t worry we haven’t given up and we’re still looking.