DESTINATION GUIDE

Lajitas, Painted Dunes help make West Texas a place to remember

As the old saying goes, the harder you have to work for something, the more you appreciate it. This is applicable to West Texas' golf scene. Although miles outside of many of Texas' metropolitan areas, West Texas offers some incredibly attractive courses that many casual visitors may overlook.

A good example is Lajitas Resort and Golf Club. While not for everyone, Austin entrepreneur developer Steve Smith took a chance and it seems to have paid off. People call it the "Ultimate Hideout" and if you ever come to play golf at The Ambush at Lajitas you will know why. It's a place where Gen. John "Blackjack" Pershing commanded a U.S. Cavalry Post when Pancho Villa and his revolutionaries threatened settlers in far West Texas. Comanches camped out here, staging raids into Mexico along the Rio Grande River for horses and silver. It became part of the pony path named The Great Comanche War Trail.

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There is a distinct vision of this place that comes into the mind's eye of any Yankee who has never visited Texas. He sees Lajitas' desert landscape surrounded by mountains and cowboys of the Old West chasing Comanches. He sees a dusty and hot barren land, dotted with cacti and agave, basically treeless and pure desolation. This vision makes for some great golf and excitement surrounding Lajitas has been enough to warrant another course, The Outlaw at Lajitas, which should come in 2005.

Another example of West Texas golf is Painted Dunes, a true desert golf course. Certainly unique in the landscape of Texas golf, views of the Franklin Mountains highlight this challenging course in El Paso. Far away from the traditional parkland layouts of the early Texas inner cities, all you have to know is some geography to discover why this affordable, but upscale city municipal, is kin more to Arizona than to Dallas.

First of all, El Paso is closer to Phoenix than to Houston. It is also closer to four state capitals than it is to its own capital of Austin.

But don't think of this far West Texas city as a lonesome boondocks nowhere, either. As part of the greater Juárez, Mexico and Las Cruces, N.M. population center, it's the largest international metroplex in the world, with 2.3 million inhabitants.

Not to be forgotten in the complex world of Texas golf, West Texas and courses like Lajitas and Painted Dunes are a quiet version of everything Texas golf has come to represent.

West Texas Destination Guide

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