Lady Golfs Across Texas & the US: Cart Path Only

My last course for this trip to San Antonio was River Crossing with which I was completely unfamiliar. My golf partner had arrived and he suggested this course that he had played quite frequently in the past. So I had made a tee time and was warned that because of the drought and their conditions that the course was cart path only! Figured all the walking would be good for me. Unfortunately, the night before it rained!! I know, twice now when I am in San Antonio it has rained so maybe I am helping fight the drought. The problem for us golfers was that meant the next morning it was SUPER humid on the course and absolutely no wind for the front 9; so very very steamy conditions. We were dripping sweat just changing our shoes.

River Crossing was built as part of housing development that had not really taken off and so it was still open to the public. There were some houses on the course but many vacant areas and some remote areas with no development. The clubhouse was undergoing major renovations and so the pro shop was in a trailer. The folks took our money but were not real welcoming; they seem to mostly have members to whom they cater.

The course did appear fairly brown in the fairways but the trees were beautiful. Again like La Cantera the water features were pretty dried up or nonexistent. I did ask if the course crossed the river or ran alongside it, but was told no. So not sure why the name? [Of course I play a course near home called SugarTree and I have never seen a tree that grows sugar only a tree made of sugar in a candy shop!]

As I sweated my way around the course I worked on improving my 3 wood with helpful advice from my golf partner (swing czar). It worked to some degree and I vowed to return home to the range to work on what I had learned. Now we had a bet for lunch riding on the round (on these bets he usually gives me 10 strokes) and I was staying close after a few tough holes on the front nine.

At the turn we apparently lost all the groups behind us -- nobody else could stand this heat and humidity! But we plugged along. The course is pretty other than the brown areas and is tree lined but more wide-open than Silverhorn. Fun to play and challenging but not unfair. Forward tee boxes were pretty brown and dried up compared to the other tee boxes but the alignment was not too bad on most holes although I noted 3 that had a tree blocking about half of the aiming point. #1 Tee has a strange alignment from front tees with a split fairway.

As we came down to the last three holes I had a pretty good lead, and despite my partner's attempts to rattle me I managed to hang on at the end. I did hit my drive a little too far on 18 and ended up on the far side of the protecting bunker. I had to hit two shots to get out but managed to make a double bogey - just enough to win the bet. I had never really hit long sand shots onto the green so he went back and gave me some pointers that I can now use. So I learned some things with this round.

Now there was nothing out near the course, we were both quite drained and both had several hour drives to get home, so I settled for a small cheeseburger, fries and a large diet coke at the McDonalds across the street. I was just happy to have something else cold to drink. On my drive home I thought happily about all the great golf I had enjoyed over the three days and all that I had learned.