MARCH 5, 2025 www.wintertexantimes.com 14 WINTER TEXAN TIMES Call today to schedule a free consultation and let us show you how professionally designed marketing materials with clear and consistent messaging can elevate your brand. You Only Get One Chance To Make A First Impression Make It Count With Promos & Prints On Your Side Sales@promosandprints.com (956) 580-7800 1217 N Conway Ave, Mission, TX A Division of Nexus Publishing LLC GOLF From pg. 13 plenty – but also the smallest of details. It is now the home of the UTRGV golf team, with their very own clubhouse. Nobody has been able to keep up with the Valley’s golf Joneses – Champion Lakes – in a long time. Espinosa is known for reaching out to Winter Texan golfers to see what the course could do to improve it in their eyes. The results have made this course among the nicest in South Texas and they continue to find ways to make it better. Houston Rockets center Willie Cauley-Stein, an NBA veteran of more than 700 career games, once said that Champion Lakes was one of the “nicest courses I’ve ever played and with, by far, the best greens ever. They were so true and at perfect speed. It was a lot of fun.” The course holds some of the premier tournaments in South Texas including the McAllen City Amateur and the VAMOS fundraiser. Yet, Winter Texan golfers just call it home. Tierra del Sol is not the same golf course you may remember, especially if you haven’t visited it recently. The course, run by the City of Pharr, spent $1 million in renovations several years ago, transforming the course from a rough, brown-heavy 18-hole facility to one of the greenest and nicest in the Rio Grande Valley. Among the many improvements were a new sprinkler system, tee to green cart paths, new grass, the leveling of tee boxes and a retaining box on No. 6, where golfers must carry water from a peninsula-style tee box. They have since continued to upgrade all areas. The course is a mixture of grip-it and rip it holes combined with placement-is-key holes. There are not a lot of trees to contend with, as is the case with most courses in the Rio Grande Valley, there’s plenty of wind to make it the primary hazard. The next biggest challenge here is water, which golfers will face on most holes. Golfers can catch a double whammy on the course’s signature hole, No. 5, a 400yard plus par-4 with water along the right and out of bounds on the left. Catching the wind on this hole could turn it into a bogey or worse score in no time at all. Playing from the back, black tees the course will carry 6,700 yards or more, Champion Lakes Golf Course. Photo by Henry Miller Tierra Del Sol Golf Course. Photo by Henry Miller
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