Most golf courses, but not all, have signature holes, a hole where challenging meets aesthetic beauty. Most of these lean more toward scenery and difficulty, but they can certainly have a mixture of both.

Today, we have the second part in our three-part series looking at some of the amazing signature holes across the Rio Grande Valley

River Bend Golf Club, Brownsville

River Bend is the real-life version of “don’t judge a book by its cover.”

When you first look at the course, it looks nice. When you play it, however, its looks, layout and play will make you scratch your head during several holes.
It is scenic, it is pleasant, and it can easily lull you into a false sense of security by its uniqueness.

It has plenty of challenging holes, including the 397-yard par 4, where the different sets of tees put golfers at different angles heading to the hole. The fairway also inclines, and you almost feel like you’re teeing off from a bowl.

No. 17 is the signature hole – a 220-yard par 3 that sits along a distracting levy. Your tee selection will decide how you play it – and the wind, from whatever direction it might be coming in from – will also play a factor. And the scenery along the levy will just add to your distraction. But, like so many holes on this course, the architecture, the views and the wildlife you may come across make this one of the more unique and pleasant courses, not just in the Lower Valley, by across the entire region.

South Padre Island Golf Club, Laguna Vista

The crème de la crème.

Just the name South Padre Island Golf Course implies beauty. This course, which should be without doubt the gem of the Valley, started falling behind the rest of the courses. New ownership came in and now it has returned to a destination hot spot.

Maybe it rested on the laurels of the enchanting views it provides of the Laguna Madre and South Padre Island across the water.

While No. 3 is considered the signature hole, it’s numbers 4 and 5 that golfers will remember because of those breathtaking views.

No. 4 is a par five hole. Don’t get distracted by the beauty of this 525-yard hole that drifts slightly toward the right. Don’t hit it too far that way because your ball will find a resting home in the native foliage area, and you’ll have to take a drop. You won’t find your ball and won't want to find anything else that area calls its home.

No. 5 is a short par 4 of 296 yards. Don’t be tricked though, it’s the perfect illusion. That same refreshing breeze coming across the Laguna that makes one feel great is the same blustery wind that can make this short hole unreachable to even the strongest of hitters. You need to hit a long ball, and its result could certainly make you change your mind about the view.

Rancho Viejo Golf Club, Rancho Viejo

When people describe a hole as picturesque, they might be accurate. However, most of the time they are forgetting a phrase that should tag along somewhere in the conversation – “It’s a beast of a hole.”

The 315-yard par-4 No. 15 is one such beast. The hole used to be a straight shot, but now is a dogleg.

It is both a mental and physical challenge. The course moved more than a dozen palm trees from one side of the fairway to the other, added a bunker in the fairway and placed a large berm out there to keep balls from running out of bounds.

Golfers can be safe and play the hole along the dogleg or be macho and try to carry the lake and get close – or possibly on – to the green, if the golf gods decide to favor you.
Following the dogleg isn’t the easiest choice either. The fairway is narrow, but it has been widened in some areas – and thinned down in others.

Big hitters will try to carry the water; others will try to play it safe. Either option, however, makes this hole a big-time risk and reward gem.

Long Island Village Golf Course, Port Isabel

“Speak softly but carry a big stick.”

There may be 100 clichés that come to mind when you take your first look – or even your second or third look at little Long Island Village golf course.

It’s little – an 18-hole par-3 course where most holes are less than 100 yards – but its big stick is a blustery wind that seems to be attacking you from every angle on the course (except behind you of course) – and many holes play to 150 or 175 due to that voracious wind.

It’s definitely an underdog in your mind when you compare it to the SPIs or Tierra Santas or Palm View courses in the Rio Grande Valley. Then you play a round. Suddenly, you start thinking that this may be the toughest course you’ve ever played in your life. You try to shrug the thought off, but you can’t.

Every hole is short but plays at a variety of distances. They are all, in one way or another, signature holes. By the time you’re done here you’ll realize that while the infamous wind blows all across the South Texas landscape, it has a personal vendetta on the Long Island Village course.

Brownsville Golf Center, Brownsville

What makes this course so special is the City of Brownsville’s vision for who their course is for – and that’s everyone. If you’re a single handicap golfer, the tee placements make the wide, open fairways a lot more difficult, thanks to well-placed (or deviously placed, depending on your point of view) trees, water and, maybe, some wildlife running across the course (always kicking your ball farther from the hole and never closer).

For the beginners, it’s perfect, designed to be player friendly – but don’t ever think this course is a pushover. Those wider fairways aren’t always better. A golfer – new or old – can think it’s a hole to grip and rip on and, while you may stay on the fairway, you can still be 100s of yards away due to your banana slice or your captain hook – hook.

Still, those fairways and large – yet quick – greens give golfers an opportunity to improve their game without being beaten up by courses that are sometimes way too challenging for those looking at the simpler things in life.

But there’s something about this course that is stress-free. Brownsville Golf Center is exactly what a municipal course should be, inviting and available to all levels of golfers. Sure, water comes into play on most holes. Also, you still must carry that water at times and be strategic on several holes, deciding how much you want to cut a corner or to “go for it.”

Just because a green is large does not always mean you want to be putting the length of it to get close to the pin.

That’s the brilliance of this course and a reminder that looks can be deceiving.

Valley International Country Club, Brownsville

Golf has a long history in the Rio Grande Valley and very few courses have had the impact than that of Valley International Country Club in Brownsville. Great names blazed a path on this course and not just the best from the Valley, which include Al Escalante and Tony Butler, but also Jimmy Demaret and Hall-of-Famer Ben Hogan.

In the 1930s, the city and VICC hosted a driving contest. “It was an era when Brownsville was coming up in the golfing world. The game was so popular that the city had its own practice driving range located across the street from ‘The Terrace,’ a miniature golf course on the main street of the city, West Elizabeth,” wrote Rene Torres in the Port Isabel Press

The championship course is demanding but tries to offset that with four sets of tees to ensure beginners can enjoy their round. The short course allows golfers to work on their short game and have a quicker round.

Its signature – and No. 1 handicap hole – is a 421-yard par-4 dogleg right. The fairway is tight so you can make or break your score right from the tee box. You also have to hit it far enough to make sure the pine tree forest is cut off from being in the way for your approach shot. Anything but perfection and you might need a calculator to keep track of your score – or an eraser on the end of your pencil.