Love Letter To: Sugar Tree Golf Club

Look, we're gonna be totally honest, we wasn’t sold on Dallas yet. Sure, it has good golf, it was easy to get to, there was night golf out at Frisco, even a couple decent bars, but the character and charm we normally find on these trips felt missing. That was until we met J.J. Killeen at Sugar Tree Golf Club, in the small Texan town of Lipan.

And without sounding dramatic, this was one of the most fun rounds we’ve ever had. Easily our favorite day of filming Working Holiday so far.

So let’s give some background into who J.J. Killeen actually is.

A longtime Tour player, Killeen spent years grinding across the PGA Tour and Korn Ferry Tour ranks, eventually becoming the 2011 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year after winning twice in back-to-back weeks that season. He earned his PGA Tour card shortly after and even tee’d it up in the 2023 PGA Championship as one of the few PGA professionals to qualify for the field.

Now, instead of life on the road every week, he’s building a golf club and culture at Sugar Tree that honestly feels like one of the more refreshing experiences we’ve had in the golf industry.

He’s seemingly thrown the traditional golf-club playbook out the window and started making his own rules. Or, in his words, “We don’t have any rules."

We don’t want this to be an ad read for Sugar Tree, but also we kinda do, because it really was that good. So here’s the quick info you need to know if you’re looking to go.

Sugar Tree sits out in Lipan, Texas, about an hour-and-a-half west of Dallas, tucked away in proper ranch country. Spring and Fall are probably the sweet spot to visit weather wise before the full Texas summer heat arrives, although sunset golf out there would be hard to beat year round. Green fees seem to hover around the $90 mark with a cart included, which honestly feels like a steal for the experience. One of the cooler additions on property is a fun par-3 setup that perfectly fits the overall vibe of the place. Less serious golf, more beers in hand. The kind of spot where you finish your main round and immediately want to loop a few more holes before sunset.

One thing that deserves a mention is the accommodation.

Sugar Tree has a recently built lodge sitting right on property that can sleep up to 16 golfers across eight bedrooms, making it pretty much perfect for those buddy trips everyone talks about but never actually books. The pricing is refreshingly reasonable too. Depending on the season, lodge rates start around $500-$650 per night with unlimited golf packages available from roughly $60 per person per day. Weekend rates are naturally a little higher, but when you split the cost across a group, it becomes one of the better value golf trips you'll find in Texas.

What we think separates it from a lot of golf destinations though is that it doesn't feel transactional. J.J. and his team will work with your group before you arrive, whether that's stocking the fridge full of beers, organizing food for the weekend, or helping put together a schedule that suits your crew.

It feels less like booking a golf package and more like having a buddy on the inside making sure the weekend goes smoothly.

So… our experience. We really gotta dive into that because, as you all know by now, we like to enjoy ourselves on these trips. It’s never really about the scorecard, it’s always about the vibes.

Pulling up at 8am not really knowing what to expect, within about five minutes of meeting J.J. we had a Bloody Mary in one hand, a breakfast burrito in the other, and somehow not long after that, a margarita appeared too.

At that point we kinda looked at each other and thought, “Yeah, this place gets it.”

Throughout the day it basically felt like there was an open invite into our fourball. Whether it was staff members jumping in for a few holes, local club members rolling along with us, or people simply pulling up to hang around, the group constantly evolved throughout the day. We probably met countless people over 36 holes, and every single one of them seemed to genuinely thrive in the environment SugarTree has created.

There was no corporate feel, no overly polished country club energy, no pretending to be something it wasn’t. It just felt like a place for the common golfer. Good people, good food, drinks flowing, music on, and absolutely zero pressure to take the game too seriously, which honestly might be why the place is so addictive.

As always, we never really dive too deep into course architecture or get too caught up in that side of the game, but we have to give credit to J.J. and his business partner, they very clearly have golfer brains.

They’re making the right improvements in the right ways. New bunkering strategically placed where it actually matters, removing the right trees where needed, while somehow keeping the ones that give you absolute shivers standing on the tee box.

Look, we’re not going to sit here and pretend SugarTree is groomed like some ultra luxury destination resort, because that’s honestly not the point of the place. But the greens rolled great, the bunkers were raked, and everything that actually matters from a playing perspective was dialed in.