Butler Park Pitch & Putt

Thoroughly enjoyed it. The greens are a bit slow, but they have cold beer and allow you to smoke cigars on the course (as long as you’re courteous and do it away from the clubhouse). The establishment overall is pretty neat. The guy behind the counter during my visit was pleasant. I’d definitely go back.

A fun golf getaway in the middle of the city.
Living and working in city center can make scheduling a tee time and commuting to the course a chore. Butler is definitely solution. It’s a fun little 9 hole course that’s affordable and accessible to just about everyone. You can bring your own clubs and balls or just rent everything there. It’s a lot of fun for beginners as well as seasoned golfers.
A few friends, a couple beers, leave work a little bit early. You get the idea. Definitely worth checking out.

No dogs allowed anymore! This was my main reason for coming here, guess I’ll have to stick to Peter Pan now.

Great place to have a beer or 10, and swing a golf club into a ball. Just don’t shank it into the cars along the street. I promise, if that was your Silver Honda… «it wasn’t me» (shaggy voice) Also, you shouldn’t have parked in the path of my drunk golf ball, it’s not his fault.
Hopefully this little gem will never go away, at the rate Austin is growing, who knows… You can rent everything you need right in the main building. Great for fine tuning your short game, low cost 9 hole course. Grab a group of people and go have some fun, Y’all.

Love the place. Matt and Bob are awesome! If you’re looking for a place to play some casual golf with lots of cool regulars and people in general, this is your place! So grab a six pack and get down there!

The greens are little rough but still a great place to enjoy with a group of friends or to even take a date! Also, the byob is great! Bring a cooler with some brews and a few good buds and you’re definitely set for a good time!

Lot’s of fun times.
Sad to see it go.
But they should have bought it in ’56, or with the oil embargo in the ’70’s or the S&L in the ’80’s, or the tech stock bust when COA had nothing. But no, they didn’t and now all the hipsters will whine. You too ruin things when you came in the 1960’s and ’70’s. Did you have kids? How many? What’s your carbon footprint? What’s the SEER rating on your condenser on a day like today when it is 104 degrees? Ever wonder how obtuse it is to jump up and down like an idiot about plastic grocery bags and not all the plastic bags fruit and vegetables goes in or the trash bags you throw out all the other massive loads of plastic out with? Oh, Oh, you recycle. Bigger picture buddy; dat aint doing skibbly-​do.

This place rocks! BYOB. Good prices: for club rentals, round of golf and bag O balls for my girl and I it was $ 25. We drank a six pack on the 9 holes while enjoying the other friendly happy patrons. Old school cats and young chill crowd. Shady and breezy. Well maintained. An Austin gem.

Fun place. Watch out on the 1^st hole not to hit the Taco Bell drive-​thru or the oncoming north cars on Lee Barton while you golf. The park though is beautiful!

Solid place to go if you’re learning the game, are playing with kids, or just want to have a relaxed time. I just wish they had more of these around my area. 9 holes, all right around 100 to 135 yards and there was a nice variation with them as well. It’s all packed in a small area so be wary of other golfers. Dog friendly and byob friendly. I hope no one comes in expecting the smoothest greens but they are definitely playable.

One of my favorite things to do in Austin. Dog friendly, byo and cheap golf.
Don’t come expecting to play on 2 star greens, lower the bar… Ur looking at .5 on a good day. Out here, It’s not about holing putts, it’s about getting outside in the Austin weather and catching up with mates!

So my parents usually come to see me every Labor Day weekend and we usually play golf, but this year it was ridiculously hot and humid and none of us wanted to play a full 18-​holes, so we headed out to the Pitch & Putt.
The course is fun but unfortunately the greens are a bit rough. I think my chances of getting a hole-​in-​one were greater than actually making a putt. I would definitely play it again though because, well, if I’m ever going to make a hole in one, it’ll probably be here.

Man oh man, why have I waited so long to come here?! $ 8 for the first round, $ 7 for the second or $ 20 a day? This is the perfect place to go and have some fun on the ‘links’. Bring a sixer or two and kick it with a bud. I wouldn’t mind coming here every week and just practicing on my short game. Also, they have a vintage Star Trek pinball machine!

Simple fun and a good time. even for a guy like me who has not touched a club in 30 years!
Playing the course is fun and if you bring kids it does require adult supervision. Additionally, we brought our own balls, putter, and club so we did not have to rent any.
The course is a simple 9 hole course. I would encourage you to NOT park on the street running along the property line since you have the chance of errant balls crashing onto your vehicle.
The course is not manicured perfect, but you get a great time for a low cost and the memories will last much longer… maybe I won’y wait another 30 years before playing again!

Butler Park Pitch & Putt is one of my favorite places to go in Austin. While TRUE golfers may scoff at the idea of playing at Butler Park Pitch & Putt I say scoff away because I’m going golfing to have fun, not to play in the PGA.
Yes, it is a Par 3 course and I still hit in the high 30s (9 holes) everytime I go to Butler, but it is a lot of fun. You can bring your own cooler of beverages. Personally, I have a backpack cooler that I carry around full of adult beverages. I also tote around at least one cigar.
As Everett T., my accomplice, states, the course is fairly ratty. It’s not meant to be a perfectly groomed course. Some holes may be better suited as a water/​mud hazard. However, it is meant to be a great place to relax and have fun.
You can bring your dog, so if you’re really serious about golf, this may not be the place for you. However, if you’re up for having a good time with some buddies hacking away at a golf ball, then this course is a heck of a lot of fun.

Alright, so this is where the «hypocrite» part of me runs rampant. I’m becoming less and less enamored with Butler. Maybe it’s the heat, maybe it’s the drought and the brown golf course that comes with it.
Maybe it’s the gigantic group of 15 people that have never played golf before that always end up ahead of you. Or, as in today’s case, the group with two toddlers that were running amok on the course. Toddlers? At a golf course? Really?
Maybe it’s the fact that the course really is beginning to look like an $ 8 golf course. The mats are ratty beyond belief, and the owner doesn’t seem to know how to operate his sprinkler system. Tee 3 is consistently a mud pit, while large parts of hole 4 are dust bowls.
Oh, and you will absolutely get nickeled and dimed if you you show up unprepared, but that’s the way of the world, isn’t it?
But I love this place. I really do. It’s as Austin, nay, it’s as egalitarian as golf gets. I’ve played with derelicts, UT golf team members, octogenarians, and everyone in-​between. And I’ve never failed to have a good time. It’s $ 8, BYOB, and a hell of a good time.

One weekend, I went here both Saturday and Sunday, which I think may be testament to how much I enjoyed it.
This is a perfect hybrid between Peter Pan Mini Golf and a real golf course. You get more legitimate holes but you can still BYOB and it’s under 10 bucks!
Tip: When you buy your beer/​adult beverages, get out cash because Pitch and Putt charges extra for a credit/​debit card. Also, you can bring your own clubs and even share with a friend, which is what I did.
Warning: park as close to the clubhouse as you can because people WILL hit cars with golf balls and you don’t want to be that car with a hole in the windshield.
Because this is Satan’s Summer in Texas and will be for the foreseeable future, BRING SUNSCREEN because a lot of the holes are in the direct sunlight and though it may be more incentive to get a hole in one, it can be uncomfortable and something no number of Lone Stars can make you ignore.
I was not the member of my party that hit their ball onto the green of a different hole twice, but I was the member that shot their ball into the water hazard and had to shotgun a beer. I learned I didn’t really care about winning golf, which probably made me better in the long run.

I am not a golfer (unless Wii counts) and I really enjoy this place. You get to be outdoors, drink beer, walk around and hit some stuff. It is so beautiful out there. I can’t wait to go back.
It can get quite crowded on the weekend, we had a good 30+ minute wait before we got out on the tee. It was more expensive than I would have liked, 2 dollar club rental fee, 1 dollar to buy the ball and 7 dollars to play the course. It is easy to lose the ball (at least for me) so you might end up having to purchase an extra one. Carrying around a cooler with beer (no glass bottles) can get sucky by the fifth hole. We actually brought some rum and made mojitos along the way.
Its just a wonderful experience for someone who doesn’t know much about golf. It definitely makes me want to go back and beat my score.

WILD. BALLS.
.
.
.
I have never written a two word review… but if I were to be forced to write a two word, two syllable review, I would be done right now. If you are a busy person and like bullet notes and easy to remember chorus lines, read no further.
However, listen up, even if you consider yourself a craycrazy motherfucker who routinely burns off your own eyelashes and likes to stand on your head while sipping beer out of a straw… do NOT sit on the bench while waiting to tee off for the 5^th hole under ANY circumstances.
My friend and I nearly had our faces ripped off by an errant golf ball that whizzed a foot away and hit the metal shed next to us. I will NEVER sit on this bench … EVER, everever again. The people who teed up for the 7^th seemed to appear out of nowhere, drunk as skunks, and numbly recalcitrant in every way.
Shaken but in denial that one of us could be lying in a coma on the ground without any teeth, we both –calmly– stand up from the bench and walk to the opposite side of a large oak tree as perpetrator’s ladyfriend tees up. My friend screws his tee into the hard earth and lofts the most beautiful shot about 9 feet from the 5^th hole and it backspins to within 4′… we both credit this with his calm joy of still having all of his teeth.
I have golfed at this sweet little course about 15 times in the past 10 years and like to rank it in riskiness somewhere between hitchhiking through Chile by myself and climbing the exterior scaffolding to the rooftop garden of a building in Rome –out of our minds at midnight — only to find Embassy guards with machine guns visible on the rooftops of no less than 4 neighboring palaces. Though, «Butler Pitch and Putt» sounds innocent and almost kid-​like in every way… do not be misled.
So, if you are a crazy motherfucker who likes to golf in a casual, laid– back, close-​to-​downtown location sandwiched between cocktails at Paggi House and the roar of the train, please take a moment to read my short synopsis of getting your needs met here…

1. Bring your own putter and pitching wedge or 9 iron. (Only bring an entire set of golf clubs if you want to look like you don’t know what you are doing trying to look like you know what you are doing.)
2. Bring your own balls. (In the past, my friend has always had balls, but on this trip he didn’t so we had to procure a couple extra at the giftshop. It is easy — very easy– to lose balls here with all that you have to pay attention to… So, if you bring your own, bring at least 2 per person. DUH!)
3. Many MANY people who golf here have either never golfed, have not golfed in years, or are drunk. My bet is that the better golfers and potentially sober people golf before noon… so if you are sober or good, you may consider an earlier tee time at this beautiful location.* Paggi House cocktails start at 5 pm fyi.
4. Pay attention… Be aware of when you are in the line of any tee. The course map looks like a Merce Cunningham choreography sketch. Be aware of the fall-​down-​drunk people. If you are in clear view of more than one tee, discuss with your golf compatriots to each be aware/​beware of wild balls coming from a multitude of directions. Be aware of your own crappy shots and try to yell FORE promptly. Forgive quickly if this doesn’t happen as it undoubtedly will happen and often. If you are really drunk, maybe just putt and let your designated driver tee off for you. (yes, that was a play on the word «driver»… you are sharp!)
5. No need to keep score. Just agree to a 3 or a 4 on every hole at the beginning, a tie game at the end, bygones becoming large-​mouth-​bass-​war-​stories later, and you will be fine.
*The Butler family has taken great care of this land over the years and through their stewardship of this recreational gem, Austin has completely benefited.
Oh, and never, EVER under any circumstances sit on the bench for the 5^th hole for any reason. «Never» does not mean «sometimes».
Oh, and yelling FORE! has nothing to do with foreplay unless, of course, you consider that a raised heartbeat, creamed panties, and shortness of breath juxtaposes pre-​sex excitement with nearly losing all of your teeth.

If you have a 9 iron up your Calaway arse or fancy yourself the albino Tiger, this SO isn’t for you. But this is for you if:
1. You can laugh at yourself and want to have fun.
2. You want a fun date activity.
3. You are Allison P. and intend to have a faith healing for one-​legged grackles. (note to Allison, they’re waiting for you on the 2^nd green)