Improvements Heighten Your Golf Experience at Landa Park Golf Course

Make a Tee Time and Learn More about the Course

There is never a dull moment at Landa Park Golf Course, and that’s by design. Days are busy with a constantly full tee sheet and nights are for irrigation and recovery on the greens, fairways and native areas.

Early mornings are when the heavy lifting is done, with the course’s braintrust — namely director of golf Quintin Alexander and superintendent Brody Dillard and his crew identifying and addressing how to make the experience at Landa Park GC even better.

Landa Park Golf Course remains one of the most popular and well-reviewed facilities in Central Texas. There were more than 61,000 rounds of golf played at the course last year, and Alexander said the early numbers for this year indicate another slight uptick in play, even after an uber-challenging winter and spring because of the weather.

When you play at Landa Park GC, you understand the overall appeal and the reason why the facility gets so much return play. The course, which rests hard  by the cool Comal River in the heart of New Braunfels, is infinitely playable, carded at just 6,205 yards from its back tees and to a par of 71. It costs less than $60 to play, even with a cart, and there are discounts for seniors, juniors and military members and veterans as well as twilight rates.

The course, which plays to a 37-34 configuration with back-to-back par 5s and just one par 3 on the front side, will not beat up golfers who are just learning the game but there’s more than enough length and challenge to keep even the best players’ attention. On the back nine, golfers can watch tubers riding the rapids and hear plenty of whooping and hollering at nearby Schlitterbahn.

Part of the experience at Landa Park Golf Course is the fauna (ducks, egrets, and more) and all of the deer grazing in the rough and lying in the shade.

The course at Landa Park originally opened as a nine-hole facility in 1938 with a second nine designed by architects Dave Bennett and Leon Howard added in 1969.

That configuration was in place for more than 45 years and was worse for the wear before a renovation and full master plan for the site was fashioned by the noted Houston-based golf architecture firm Finger Dye Spann.

The was bankrolled by the City of New Braunfels. Houston-based contractor Heritage Links instituted the architects’ plan, which rerouted some of the holes, built new tees and putting surfaces, re-contoured the fairways, added bunkers and improved or replaced cart paths and installed a new irrigation system.  The design also employed the judicious use of native grasses in “out of play” areas as a nod to ecology and the sensitivity of the course in proximity to the river. There are a handful of bio swell areas that act to clean the waters that can run off the course before they end up in the Comal.

The fabulous new Landa Park Golf Course was reopened in October 2014 and has been on consistent footing ever since.

Given the task at keeping the machine rolling, it can be hard to track down Alexander and Dillard. But we did on June 1 — the only scheduled day of closure for the month at Landa Park GC.

Alexander instills pride, and ownership in his staff. He was affable and positive as always and was more than pleased to explain to us why Landa Park GC has been and continues to be a fun place to play golf.

“We take great pride in making the course an overall experience at our facility, a place where golfers can get away for a few hours, have fun with their friends and enjoy the game,” Alexander said. “We understand that there is a competition for the people’s disposable income and we make sure that they are getting the most bang for their buck.”

“The City of New Braunfels had the foresight to invest in the renovation of the course in 2014 and has done all it can to make sure we have all we need to provide the best golf experience for our players. We take ownership in what we do here and consider the popularity of Landa Park Golf Course a labor of love for all of us.”

Alexander said the staff’s attention to detail and its “let’s-make-everyone-feel-at-home” customer service policy helps enhance the experience.

“One of the things we have seen an increase over the past few years is in the number of people who stay around the facility after  their rounds,” Alexander added. “Folks love to hang around on our patio and have a burger or a brat and a beer and rehash their day on the course. To me, that means they had a great time, and that’s what we love to see.”

Regular players at Landa Park GC will be happy that the facility just opened an additional parking lot adjacent to the course that has room for 17 more vehicles. That addition eliminated the need to shuttle players from an overflow parking lot next to the park’s Aquatic Center, and took away a major inconvenience for golfers and a real staffing and logistics headache for Alexander and his staff.

“Having that lot now is a real game-changer,” said Alexander, who’s been Landa Park Golf Course’s golf manager since 2022. “That allows me to utilize a staff person in a better manner than shuttling folks back and forth from down the road.”

Dillard keeps the course green and so much more One of the often taken-for-granted constants at Landa Park Golf Course is the track’s peerless conditioning. From tee to green the playing surfaces are manicured where required, left native when desired and reflect the best of golf at a course on the edge of the Texas Hill Country. The upkeep of the course is overseen by Dillard and his crew.

Usually Dillard is an early morning man, rising before the sun to begin his 4 a.m. shift and beginning the daily battle to keep Landa Park GC in consistently great condition. With the course closed on June 1, Dillard got to sleep in a little bit that day but he still ended up at the course to help supervise the filming of a drone video shoot that will help promote a course that seemingly needs little help in that regard.

Dillard won’t stay at the course for long on this first Monday of the month; he has to finish packing for a long awaited cruise out of Miami to the Caribbean with his wife.

“Man, it’s been a while since we’ve been able to get away just the two of us,” Dillard said. “Once I get this drone stuff done and finish up on a checklist of stuff for the staff to handle while I’m gone, I’m out of here.”

Dillard was named the South Texas Golf Course Superintendent’s Association Superintendent of the Year in 2020 and is highly recognized for his ability to keep Landa Park GC in prime condition despite the challenges of the South Texas weather and the constant wear and tear taken on the course by upwards of 200 players each day.

Asked what his biggest challenges are at Landa Park GC, Dillard took a long time to answer.

“I look at our work on the golf course like making a schedule to pay bills,” Dillard explained. “You have to pay those bills by a certain date or there will be consequences. We have times scheduled and windows available and adhered to for everything we do on the course.”

It’s that consistency and matter-of-fact course management that allows Dillard to adapt when he and his staff are presented with variables — and those are a constant in the golf course maintenance world.

“One of the real advantages I have at Landa Park is that I have a knowledgeable and experienced crew,” Dillard said. “Our crew knows the schedule and understands what things need to be done and when they need to be tackled. That certainly makes my job a lot easier. The crew actually deserves all the credit. The work that our crew does day in and day out directly relates to the golf experience.”

Dillard said the City has approved the budget and plans to renovate and renew all the bunkers at Landa Park GC, with that project set to begin sometime this fall.

With the game of golf riding an all-time high in popularity, Landa Park Golf Course is a vibrant and pertinent course that’s both an asset to the New Braunfels golf community and the City as a whole. If you’ve played Landa Park Golf Course, you know. If you haven’t, what are you waiting for?