Omni Vision

With La Costa, PGA Frisco and more, a major hospitality company has upped its golf game
Desperate to catch Steve Stricker on the first playoff hole at the 2023KitchenAid Senior PGA Championship, Padraig Harrington clobbered a5-wood from 272 yards and stopped it 14 feet from the cup. Alas, his par putt slid by, and Stricker prevailed. The drama provided an incredible debut for the three-week-old Fields Ranch East course at Texas’s Omni PGA Frisco Resort & Spa.
Exactly one year later, Omni La Costa Resort & Spa opened its reimagined North course by hosting the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Championships. Stanford captured the women’s event and Auburn the men’s, but for some observers, the real winner was Omni Hotels & Resorts. In practically an eye blink, Omni had become a major force in tournament golf.
Privately owned, Dallas-based Omni gave big-name brands such as Marriott, Fairmont and Four Seasons a sizable head start in the elite golf resort game, but its actions since 2013 have catapulted it to top-tier status. Most notably, its golf-related investments over the past five years have positioned Omni as a giant in the industry. The commitment to superior golf facilities starts at the top.
AN EXPERIENCES BUSINESS
“Omni’s in the experiences business, and our owners, the Rowling family, are very passionate golfers themselves,” says Spencer Cody, corporate director of club & golf operations for Omni. “They really see how golf is able to foster those experiences.”
Omni crashed the golf party in 2010, when it acquired Amelia Island Plantation in northeast Florida, which featured designs by Pete Dye and Tom Fazio. The company cemented its status in golf circles in 2013,when it purchased a fistful of acclaimed golf properties from KSL Capital Partners, including Carlsbad’s La Costa and another Southern California favorite, Las Palmas Resort & Spa in Rancho Mirage.
Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin, Tex., the Grove Park Inn in Asheville, N.C. and the venerable Homestead in Hot Springs, Va. —where Sam Snead grew up — completed the winning poker hand. However, the buying spree was far from finished.
“Omni saw this as an opportunity to pull in the PGA of America and then bring championship-level golf back to North Texas.”
Omni now owns 13 golf-centric resorts in 10 states, encompassing 498 golf holes. Impressively, Omni is the Official Hotel and Resort of the PGA Tour and PGA Tour Champions through 2028 and the enterprise that created the entire campus where the new home of the PGA of America sits. What they’ve done in the past two years alone is remarkable.
OMNI PGA FRISCO
For every Southern Californian who has contemplated a golf trip to Texas and then dismissed the idea, Omni PGA Frisco will change your mind. Its draw for serious sticks — home to the 2027 PGA Championship — is compelling. Its draw for families — pool complex, lighted short course, two-acre putting green, all-ages attractions — is equally strong. It is the rarest of golf properties that appeals across the swing-speed spectrum.
Located 30 miles north of Dallas, Omni PGA Frisco sprawls atop 600acres of prairie ranchland where cattle once grazed. The abbreviated backstory concludes with the PGA of America relocating here from Florida in 2022, wooed by a private-public partnership that involved Omni, the City of Frisco and other entities. A shared vision for a massive campus came to fruition when Omni committed in full, investing half a billion dollars to create a legacy project.
“Omni saw this as an opportunity to pull in the PGA of America and then bring championship-level golf back to North Texas,” says Cody. “Once the idea took root, Omni introduced the notion of a resort hotel, an entertainment district and expanded golf offerings. They just kept pushing and pushing.”
What emerged was the Fields Ranch East course, designed by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner; Fields Ranch West, a Beau Welling creation; the 10-hole Swing short course, a collaboration between the Hanse and Welling teams; and a two-acre, 200-yard-long putting course called the Dance Floor.
Alongside is a 510-room resort hotel with four on-site swimming pools and 13 dining options (Trick Rider is worth the splurge), plus walkways that lead to the unparalleled, nearly 30-acre, indoor/outdoor practice facility and to the Monument Reality PGA District, which rolls out a half dozen retail, food and gaming experiences.
Northern Ireland’s Darren Clarke, the 2011 Open Championship winner, called Fields Ranch East “a big boy’s golf course … but it’s awesome, absolutely brilliant,” which is why bucket listers must make the trip to Frisco.
Granted, Fields Ranch East isn’t for everybody. It stretches a spirit-crushing 7,863 yards, par 72 from the PGA Championship tips and sports elevated greens of varying sizes that generally fall away at the sides. It also delivers a profusion of Texas-size bunkers with visually intimidating lips, the presence of Panther Creek on several holes and Lone Star State breezes throughout.
Did I mention that it’s walking-only, with caddies, except for the heatstroke months of July and August? Buckle up — this is a big-time, big-challenge, major championship-worthy track. It was built to test the best, just as it did in the aforementioned 2023 Senior PGA and will again when the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship arrives in June 2025. The men get their turn when the PGA Championship touches down in 2027 and 2034, and it’s inevitable that Fields Ranch East will host a Ryder Cup Match or two in the coming years.
I could go on, and on, and on, urging you to sample the home-cooked smoked barbecue at the Ice House, the golf, food and beverage fare at the Lounge by Topgolf and custom club fitting at the PGA Coaching Center, adjacent to the mammoth practice facility. Yes, everything’s bigger in Texas — and in this case, better.
OMNI LA COSTA
FORE has documented Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner’s inspired transformation of Omni La Costa’s North course on several occasions over the past year, but the short version is this: To accommodate members, resort guests and the top collegiate players competing in the NCAAs, Hanse and Wagner added length, moving the back tees out to 7,500 yards, and reworked holes to inject a plethora of risk/reward decision-making into the process.
The reaction by the NCAA coaches and competitors was unanimously positive. Vanderbilt’s Gordon Sargent, the world’s top-ranked amateur and the NCAA Individual champion in 2022, spoke for the field when he summed up the layout’s virtues: “This is what you have to do at a national championship. You have to be on your toes every hole. It’s challenging, tough and plays firm and fast. It tests every part of your game.”
News arrived in late October that the NCAA had extended its agreement with Omni La Costa to hold its Men’s and Women’s Division I Championships at the resort’s North course through 2028. Omni was elated with the announcement.
“Our ownership group has a great partnership and deep ties with the University of Texas and [men’s golf] Coach John Fields,” says Cody. “He’s a bit of a visionary in his own right. He was really excited about the project and loved the idea of having a kind of neutral site, like the NCAA does in Omaha with baseball. The vision is: Let’s make Omni La Costa the forever home of those championships. We’re cruising down that path.”
Omni’s tentacles reach far and wide. Cody is particularly proud of Welling’s much-awarded short course at Omni Amelia Island, called Little Sandy, and for the recent enhancements to the four courses at Omni Barton Creek in Austin, especially the improvements made at the Palmer Lakeside course.
There’s much to commend, too, when it comes to Omni’s family and community programs, including the Omni Generation Cup, which provides competitions for grandparent/grandchild and aunt/uncle/nephew/niece teams. In addition, since 2018, Omni has donated more than 1.28 million meals to families in need through its “Say Goodnight to Hunger Program,” which provides four meals for every birdie-or-better made during each PGA Tour event.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a fan of those other major golf resort hotel chains, too. However, a tip of the cap and a golf clap to the gifts Omni has delivered in the past two years to traveling golfers.
For more information: OmniHotels.com/destinations/golf