Dallas

PGA Frisco changed the math on a Dallas golf trip, and the biggest surprise for first-timers is that Fields Ranch East isn't a cart course you can rent your way around. It's walking-only, and it requires a caddie every single round, no exceptions, no cart override even in August heat. Budget for that before you book anything else, because it changes both the cost and the pace of the day.

East is the Gil Hanse design, and it plays like one: small greens that punish a soft landing, blended-in bunkering that hides depth until you're standing in one, and North Texas wind that turns a two-hundred-yard second shot into a math problem. Our caddie called the ninth green "the tuition hole" before we'd even hit our approach shots, and by the time our group three-putted its way off it, the nickname made sense. West is a different course entirely, designed separately by Beau Welling rather than Hanse's team, and it leans into more visual drama in the greens with more forgiveness off the tee. Play both and your group will spend the ride home arguing about which one was better, which is the correct outcome for two courses built to be compared.

Old American gets skipped by groups chasing the two Fields Ranch tee times, and that's the trip's most common regret. Tripp Davis and Justin Leonard built it on Lake Lewisville a decade before PGA Frisco existed, and it holds up against both Hanse and Welling's newer work: more intimate scale, water on almost every back-nine hole, and a price tag that feels like relief after two rounds at the new campus.

Tribute Golf Links, next door on the same lake, is Tripp Davis again, this time recreating specific holes from Troon, Carnoustie, and the rest of the Scottish rota, including a version of the Postage Stamp that plays to a green bigger than the original ever needed to be. It doesn't pretend to be actual links golf in North Texas, and it doesn't need to. It's the fun round, the one you put on the schedule when the group wants a break from taking itself seriously.

Nobody eats badly on this trip. Jeff's Burgers is the move right off the Fields Ranch campus when you're starving and don't want a production out of lunch. Hutchins BBQ handles the group lunch that actually needs to feed everyone, brisket and ribs with zero reservation stress. Save the one real dinner for Del Frisco's on the last night, book it when you book your tee times, because Friday and Saturday nights fill up fast and nobody wants to negotiate a table for eight at eight o'clock. Our waiter there talked our group out of the ribeye special and into the bone-in strip instead, and he was right, which is the kind of small win that makes a last night feel like it was planned by someone who knew what they were doing.

Book Fields Ranch East the moment your window opens; it sells out first and it's the round the rest of the trip gets built around. Bring more gloves than you think you need. The wind here isn't a mood, it's a design element at all four courses, and it will eat through your grip faster than a normal weekend at home.

Two or three days is the right length. Any longer and you're padding the schedule with a fifth round that doesn't add much; any shorter and you miss either Old American or Tribute, and missing either one is exactly the mistake groups regret most.