Amarillo's Comanche Trail |
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AMARILLO, Texas - Previous to my current golf trek, I'd passed through Amarillo several times. Perhaps I stopped to get some gas, perhaps not. I certainly never made its acquaintance. This time through, I figured I'd stop and take inventory of the Amarillo golf courses for the benefit of our GolfTexas.com site, and I'm glad I did.
Comanche Trail Municipal Golf Course turned out to be a pleasant surprise and a supreme bargain. If you are planning to travel to Amarillo or even just passing through, you will do yourself a disservice by not dallying long enough to play this course.
With gas prices what they are, a fill-up can easily cost upwards of $20 these days. The daily fee at Comanche Trail is $11 on weekdays and $13 on weekends. Even if you just played the original 18 holes at Comanche, now dubbed the Tomahawk course, you would be paying under a dollar per hole to walk.
Add $10 per nine to ride - this isn't Fantasyland. But if you've read any of my previous columns, you know I'll ride a golf cart only at gunpoint, after I've been sitting in a car for eight or so hours each day.
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| Lake at No. 11 on Arrowhead |
If you still are not satisfied, you can stretch that $11 even farther into the evening. Ross Rogers Golf Course across town is also owned by the city, and your Comanche Trail daily fee is honored there. That's 36 more holes to take advantage of, with the light of day and maybe some slow play being the only things between you and the cheapest 72 holes you can ever play.
When I arrived at Comanche Trail, there was a tournament running on the newer Arrowhead course, so I went off the Tomahawk course with a young, local car salesman that used to work at the course. What luck! Brad was a fountain of knowledge and a fine guide. He told me about the history of the course and its latest addition, the intricacies of the Tomahawk layout and the quality of the other courses in town. He didn't seem to mind as a low-handicapper that my play was bringing him down.
The old course was hardly pristine, but it had character. Ground crews were busy filling in the last of the rickety old bunkers with fresh sod. Hard Bluegrass fairways led to hard bent grass greens. The land was flat and marshy with a few hills and trees to navigate, making the links-style course play more like a traditional layout.
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A glance at the scorecard will give you the impression that there is a lot of water in along Tomahawk's rolling fields, but that is misleading. Much of the blue stuff represents marshland, some of which you can play out of if you find your ball in it.
No. 5 is probably the most fun hole on the Charles Howard design. A tee shot must carry a large, tree-filled ravine almost perpendicularly to a wide-open fairway that slants back toward the hazard. Testing the ravine will give you an easy approach to the huge green at the end of this 420-yard par-4.
Both nines on the Tomahawk course have a standard mix of par-3s and par-5s for a final par of 72.
After a round of bogey golf and a barbecue sandwich from the clubhouse, which I highly recommend, I was ready to test the Arrowhead course.
Arrowhead is really the payoff of Comanche Trail. Back in Phoenix, a course like Tomahawk would have run in the $20-$30 range. Arrowhead, on the other hand, compares favorably with courses that charge upwards of $50 in the Valley. There is nothing spectacular about the land Arrowhead is built on - no views or perks or fancy attractions. But the golf is simply great. The course has legitimate length at 6,940 yards from the black tees (71.9/121 rating) and is more challenging than its sister course.
Steady wind gusts up to 30 mph can make Arrowhead play much harder, though. There is not much water to navigate here, but several doglegs and rolling elevation changes compounded by mounded fairways and deep bunkers along the way. The grass and irrigation system on Arrowhead is first-class. The bent-grass greens and tee boxes are soft and mature.
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| No. 9 flag and clubhouse |
If after 36 holes you've had enough, you can head back across the highway to La Frontera for some authentic Tex-Mex cuisine or simply stop in at Hooters for some jumbo wings. Remember, everything is bigger in Texas.
If you are just passing through, Amarillo is a great place to spend a night, as nightclubs and hotels abound along Route 40 in Amarillo for the convenience of golf travelers. There are plenty of the cheesy, standard Historic Route 66 attractions as well, including the Cadillac Graveyard - a campy must-see.
All in all, what I envisioned as a dusty pit-stop on my golf holiday turned out to be a quality golf destination in an up-and-coming Western town. Comanche Trail deserves four stars for its golf course and five stars for its price.
Next stop: Branson, Missouri.
For more information on Comanche Trail, contact:
Comanche Trail Municipal Golf Course
4200 South Grand Ave.
Amarillo, TX 79103
(806) 378-4281
Talking Stick Golf Club - North Course