SAN MARCOS, Texas – There’s a true Texas Hill Country feel and playability at Kissing Tree Golf Club here in San Marcos from the minute you drive onto the property to the final putt on the 18th hole of the 6,572-yard Gary Stephenson-designed course – and that’s a very good thing.
A combination for long-reaching vistas on rolling topography combined with creeks and ponds and rough-rock walls give Kissing Tree Golf Club a truly unique – but also familiar – countenance. In the process, Kissing Tree Golf Club has raised the bar for golf in the burgeoning Austin-San Antonio corridor.
Will its competitors take notice?
Stephenson has taken a splendid piece of land and enhanced it with gentle nudging, assuring that this course, which was built to be the centerpiece of the age-restricted Kissing Tree community here just south of town and west of Interstate 35, can stand on its own right as a destination and must-play track.
“The Hill Country offers unique colors and textures with the limestone, oaks and scrub brush,” said Stephenson, a native Texan who lives in the Dallas suburb of McKinney. “It’s a great wildlife habitat, and the routing was done to try to preserve as many prominent natural features as possible, and to use them as strategy and aesthetics for the golf course.”
Kissing Tree Golf Club is the first new, semi-private 18-hole golf course to be built in Texas in the past six years. Each hole provides an avenue of play with varied angles that demand execution of shots and finding the right tier of the mostly large putting surfaces to find success.
The course and community is a tribute to Sam Houston’s gubernatorial speech in 1857 in front of a mighty oak tree in San Marcos, where he famously kissed several of the female attendees, creating a stir and a bit of a local legend.
And while the Kissing Tree community was developed for the baby-boomer generation, this is not just your grandfather’s golf course. While your grandfather or father may be playing here, a trip to the back set of four tee boxes will be plenty of golf course to keep even the scratch golfer challenged.
“Our goal with this course was to make it fun and playable for all golfers, to bring those to the game want to learn and understand that golf can be played for a lifetime, not just for guys that hit the ball like Tiger Woods or Dustin Johnson,” Stephenson said. “From driveable par 4s that incorporate risk-reward water hazards around the green to reachable par 5s, golfers will have plenty of chances to make birdies and eagles at Kissing Tree.”
A great mix of holes
Kissing Tree Golf Club is part of the Audubon International program which preserves and highlights the native environment. Tifway 419 Bermudagrass has been used on the tee boxes, fairways and rough, while greens are TifEagle Bermuda.
Kissing Tree has a nice variety of holes, with a scorecard that sports both long and short par 4s, a mix of par 3 ranging from the 207-yard third to the 131-yard sixth and a pair of reachable par 5 at the 500-yard eighth and 538-yard 12th hole.
A course doesn’t need super-long holes and punitive hazards to be a challenge, and Stephenson designed Kissing Tree Golf Club to be a straightforward but challenging course golfers will want to play over and over again and, hopefully, call home.For sure, there are a share dramatic shots and a handful of scoring choices on this course. The shortest here, the 131-yard sixth, plays over a dry creek bed to a putting surface guarded by a wrap-around sand bunker.
The second shot on the par 5 14th brings a walled-off (likely wet) native area into play short and right of the green complex and is both beguiling and dangerous, especially if the player chooses to try to get home in two shots.
“When golfers play Kissing Tree, with the exception of the forced carry at No. 6, they will have angles of play to get to the green on the ground,” Stephenson said. “The green complexes are surrounded by closely mown run-off areas that allow golfers to play lob wedge, sand wedge, pitching wedge, 9-iron, 7-iron or putter from to the putting surface. This shot variety allows golfers to use their imagination and play to their strengths.”
Kissing Tree Golf Club also has its share of get-out-your-phone-to-take-a-picture-of-this moments, as spectacular views abound, most notably on holes four and five, which are higher in the mountain, on the 12th tee overlooking the 11th green and to the north from the 14th fairway.
The closing holes on each side, drivable par 4s at 289 yards and 321 yard, respectively, are two of the favorites at Kissing Tree. Both holes have large greens but are each protected by a pond that can quickly turn delight into disaster.
The golf is just part of the appeal at Kissing Tree
In addition to 18 holes, the Kissing Tree Golf Course offers a long- and short-game practice facility, along with an 18-hole putting course. The state-of-the-art clubhouse and restaurant, Tarbox and Brown, are community gathering areas.
Kissing Tree has been developed by Brookfield Residential Properties, a land developer and homebuilder with operations in 12 North American markets. It’s a distinctly Texas community built for those 55 and better and will eventually have up to 3,200 homes. Custom-built with a Lone Star State attitude, the unique collection of indoor and outdoor amenities include eight pickle-ball courts, six bocce ball courts, putting greens, a social building, hiking trails and more.
The community also has a full calendar of activities for its residents, including regular groups for bicycling, writing, Bible study, birdwatching, Zumba, hiking, billiards, yoga, Tai Chi, Pilates, arts and crafts, mahjongg, horseshoes, Texas Hold’Em, and tennis. Then there are the occasional presentation and fun stuff, like a Piano bar, cooking demos, golf simulator contests, and tours to local wineries.
For our purposes, Kissing Tree is about the golf – and in that aspect, it’s really, really good.
