PGA Frisco Has a Free Side. Most of Frisco Hasn't Found It Yet.

Ask a dozen Frisco residents what happens at PGA Frisco and you'll get some version of the same answer: it's where the PGA of America moved its headquarters, there are two championship golf courses, and the hotel looks expensive. All of that is true. None of it explains why a two-acre putting park on the same campus costs nothing to use, why Friday nights there already have a standing plan, or why the driving range you're picturing right now isn't actually the one open to you.

The 660-acre campus is a public/private partnership between the PGA of America, Omni Hotels & Resorts, the City of Frisco, and Frisco ISD, and that four-way ownership is exactly why it reads as one expensive destination when it's actually two very different ones stitched together. One side runs on tee times and green fees. The other side runs on a weekly calendar, and it's been open the whole time.

Two Campuses Wearing One Name

Fields Ranch is the paid half, and it earns the price. The East course, designed by Gil Hanse, is a walking-only experience that requires a caddy reservation for every player. The West course, from Beau Welling, allows carts on a seasonal basis. Both are the anchors for a run of major championships that includes the 2025 and 2031 KPMG Women's PGA Championship and the 2029 Senior PGA Championship, and the practice facilities that support that level of play, including the main driving range, are reserved for guests with a same-day tee time. They are not open for public walk-up use.

That last detail matters more than it sounds like it should, because it's the piece most people get backward. Locals who've heard "PGA Frisco has a free driving range" are thinking of the wrong facility. The range attached to Fields Ranch is tee-time only. The free one is somewhere else entirely, and it isn't for adults hitting buckets after work. It's a junior-only range tied to a completely separate part of the campus that has nothing to do with the championship courses at all.

The Part With No Green Fee

That separate part is the Ronny Golf Park, a two-acre, lighted, all-synthetic-turf facility at 16124 Championship Drive, on the Northern Texas PGA's homesite within the PGA Frisco campus. It's free and open to the public whenever junior programming isn't using it, and junior programming takes priority, so the honest way to think about it is a public park that occasionally closes for classes rather than a private facility that occasionally opens for the public.

What's actually there: two reduced-scale replica greens modeled on the 18th holes from the East and West courses, two chipping greens, a third practice putting green, and a full 18-hole putting course with a par of 45 that uses real elevation change to make even short putts genuinely hard. There's a flex field with a playground and obstacle course built for kids, and a feature called the Carpool Putting Green, funded through a donation from the Jordan Spieth Family Foundation. No membership, no green fee, no dress code beyond family-appropriate clothing. Pets, alcohol, and smoking aren't allowed, and only putters are permitted on the putting course, so it stays a short-game space rather than a full-swing one.

Public hours shift around the junior schedule and the weather, so the honest move is to check the park's own calendar before you drive over rather than assume a fixed window. But the shape of a typical week runs something like weekday mornings and early evenings, with a Saturday afternoon block and a Sunday split between morning and late afternoon. If you've been meaning to teach a kid to putt without booking anything or paying anything, this is the part of PGA Frisco built for exactly that.

The park carries the name of Ronny Glanton, who has been the head professional at Sherrill Park Golf Course in Richardson since 1985 and served two terms as president of the Northern Texas PGA Section, in 2006 to 2007 and again in 2018 to 2019, the only person in the section's history to hold the role twice. He was under that leadership in 2018 when the PGA of America announced its move to Frisco, and the PGA of America named him National Golf Professional of the Year in 2020 before his 2022 induction into the Texas Golf Hall of Fame. The park isn't just free. It's named for someone with a direct hand in why PGA Frisco exists here at all.

Friday Night Already Has a Home

The second free layer isn't golf at all. Movie Night in the PGA District runs Friday evenings at 7 p.m. right on the campus, at 3255 PGA Parkway. Bring a blanket to sit on. Outside food and drinks aren't part of the setup, since the point is to walk over to one of the district's restaurants beforehand, and lawn chairs aren't part of it either, just blankets on the grass. Titles get announced through the venue's weekly email rather than posted far in advance, which is a small detail but a telling one: this isn't a tourist attraction built for out-of-towners planning a trip. It's a rolling neighborhood habit that assumes you'll already be around next Friday too.

For evenings with a bigger budget, the campus also runs a ticketed live-music series called SAVOR, which has brought in acts like Midland and an intimate acoustic set from Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik at Fork & Fire, capped with a drone show over the restaurant. That's the paid, occasional version of the same instinct: turn part of the campus into a gathering the neighborhood didn't have to build itself.

If you want the short-game version of a night out without a full round, The Swing is a lighted 10-hole, par-3 course, and next to it, The Dance Floor is a two-acre natural-grass putting course, one of the largest of its kind in the country, also co-designed by Hanse and Welling. Neither is free like the Ronny, but both cost far less than a round at Fields Ranch, and both stay lit after dark.

What Changes Before 2027

None of this stays this quiet forever. The PGA Championship returns to PGA Frisco in 2027, marking the first time in more than sixty years that major championship golf has come back to North Texas, and it returns again in 2034. Championship-round tickets for Thursday through Sunday are already listed as sold out on PGA Frisco's own site, though practice-round tickets are still available there. A new venue called the Fields Ranch Pavilion is set to open in spring 2027, adding a rooftop space built for weddings and corporate events that overlooks both the driving range and the PGA of America headquarters building itself, which remains a private office not open to public tours.

That timeline is the actual reason to go now rather than later. A campus that's about to host a major championship for the first time in six decades is not going to feel more low-key in eighteen months. The free putting course, the Friday movie nights, the open-to-the-public Coaching Center where PGA of America professionals offer everything from private lessons to club fitting in a 12,000-square-foot, two-story facility with ten hitting bays, all of that exists right now, uncrowded, before the surrounding attention catches up to it.

The campus also already puts something back into the district's own schools. The Fore Frisco scholarship, a joint effort between the Northern Texas PGA Foundation and Omni Hotels and Resorts, is need-based and now in its second year, drawing from Panther Creek and Lone Star high schools. This year's recipients were Amara Okafor, Kayla Rochez, Rajdeep Singh, Lauryn Spraggs, and Nikki Zahed. It's a small program next to a 660-acre campus, but it's the clearest sign that PGA Frisco was built to be part of this community's daily life, not just a name attached to a championship broadcast twice a decade.

The next time someone tells you PGA Frisco is a golf resort you'd only visit for a special occasion, you'll know the more accurate version: it's two campuses sharing an address, one that runs on green fees and one that's already free on a Tuesday afternoon or a Friday night, and the second one has been waiting on you the whole time.

Frisco keeps adding places like this, and knowing which ones are genuinely part of daily life versus which ones only look that way from the outside is the same skill it takes to read the neighborhood itself. If you're weighing a move within Frisco or watching what a specific pocket of the city is becoming before you buy or sell in it, that's the conversation Asha Rani has every week. Let's connect and get your personalized home valuation.