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    March Madness

    Where’s the best golf in the U.S.? Our scientific ranking of the top areas

    By Drew Powell and Stephen Hennessey
    March 17, 2023

    It’s one of golf’s great debates: Where is the best golf in the United States? Like any great debate, there’s subjectivity involved. If you’re talking states, New York and California are the clear leaders. Twenty percent of the nation’s top-200 courses are from either state. What makes it interesting is when you break New York and California down into smaller regions. Isolate courses in Long Island and Westchester County, N.Y., for example, and pit them against courses in a metro area like Philadelphia or Chicago, and now the results get tight.

    With March Madness upon us, all the bracket chatter made us want to formulate a definitive ranking of the nation’s best golf regions. Using the scores from our most recent 100 Greatest and Second 100 Greatest rankings, we have determined the Sweet 16 of golf regions.

    Of course, there’s also some debate to be had over what constitutes a region. We figure a golfer must be able to reasonably travel to all the courses in a region on a trip. We then averaged the panelists’ scores of the 10 best courses in each region to create the ranking. (We’ve included the course listings of the top-three courses in each region.) A great golf region is more than just one or two highly ranked courses, and having impressive depth is rewarded on this list.

    Scroll on to see the complete ranking and be sure to click to learn more about each course and read reviews from our course-ranking panelists and readers. Have you played one of these courses? We encourage you to leave your review and star rating as part of Places to Play, where we’re building a hub of courses content, complete with course reviews, experts’ opinions and star ratings.

    1. Long Island

    Private
    Shinnecock Hills Golf Club
    Southampton, NY
    5
    11 Panelists
    Generally considered to be the earliest links in America, heavily remodeled by C.B. Macdonald, then replaced (except for three holes) by William S. Flynn in the early 1930s, it’s so sublime that its architecture hasn’t really been altered for nearly 60 years. Stands of trees that once framed many holes have been removed, and in 2012, the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw did make a few changes, mostly greens and fairways expansions and new mowing patterns, though those were modified in preparation for the 2018 U.S. Open, won by Brooks Koepka. Shinnecock will again host the U.S. Open in 2026.
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    Private
    National Golf Links of America
    Southampton, NY
    4.9
    21 Panelists
    This is where golf architect Seth Raynor got his start. A civil engineer by training, he surveyed holes for architect C.B. Macdonald, who scientifically designed National Golf Links as a fusion of his favorite features from grand old British golf holes. National Golf Links is a true links containing a marvelous collection of holes. As the 2013 Walker Cup reminded us, Macdonald’s versions are actually superior in strategy to the originals, which is why National’s design is still studied by golf architects today, its holes now replicated elsewhere. Hard to fathom that National Golf Links of America was not ranked among America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses from 1969 until 1985. Theories involve possible hazy, rough around the edges conditions during the 1970s that dulled the architcture (something that didn't impact over-the-fence Shinnecock Hills), the course's relatively short length that didn't meet the era's "championship course" standards, or simply that the unique Macdonald shapes and concepts were too quirky for the prevailing tastes of the era. No matter now. National is rightly positioned as one of America's most original and influential expressions of golf course architecture.
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    Private
    Friar's Head Golf Club
    Riverhead, NY
    4.9
    19 Panelists
    The challenge for architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw at Friar’s Head was to design some holes in breathtaking sand dunes perched 200 feet above Long Island Sound, and other holes on an ordinary potato field to the south. Said Crenshaw, “Our job was to marry the two distinct elements. We didn’t want one nine up in the dunes and the other down on the flat.” The solution was to move the routing back and forth and to artfully reshape the farm fields into gentle linkslike land. They pulled it off so impressively that Friar’s Head has moved up the rankings each survey period since its debut at 34th in 2011 to 14th this year.
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    4. Sebonack G.C., Southampton

    5. Bethpage State Park (Black), Farmingdale

    6. Garden City G.C.

    7. Maidstone Club (West), East Hampton

    8. Piping Rock Club, Locust Valley

    9. The Creek, Locust Valley

    10. Atlantic G.C., Water Mill

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    2. New Jersey

    Editor's note: Given Pine Valley's proximity to Philadelphia, we've included it in the "Greater Philadelphia" region on this list.

    Private
    Baltusrol Golf Club: Lower
    Springfield, NJ
    4.7
    29 Panelists
    Jack Nicklaus won two U.S. Opens on Baltusrol's Lower Course, setting a tournament record each time. Phil Mickelson and Jimmy Walker won PGAs on it. But the Lower’s most historic event was the ace by architect Robert Trent Jones in 1954 on the par-3 fourth, instantly squelching complaints of critical club members who felt Trent’s redesign made it too hard. Trent’s younger son, Rees, an avowed A.W. Tillinghast fan, lightly retouched the Lower’s design for the 2016 PGA Championship. But there has been another changing of the guard at Baltusrol, as architect Gil Hanse and his team took over as the club’s new consulting architects, and re-opened the restored Lower course—after carefully examining Tilly's old plans and reclaiming green sizes and rebuilding bunkers—in May 2021. Hanse's team performed a similar restoration on Baltusrol's Upper course, which reopened in May 2025.
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    Private
    Somerset Hills Country Club
    Bernardsville, NJ
    4.8
    12 Panelists
    Somerset Hills is another marvelous A.W. Tillinghast design, one of the few that has remained virtually unchanged since it opened in 1918. So it may be the most authentic Tillinghast course on the 100 Greatest. It’s a charming, laid-back design that works through seemingly undisturbed rolling terrain, past rock outcroppings and around small-but-distinctive water hazards. Tilly designed this with a spoonful of whimsy, with “dolomite” mounds edging one green and startling knobs within another putting surface. Like Baltusrol Upper, Somerset Hills has a Tillinghast version of a Redan par 3, the second hole, which Golf Digest panelists ranked higher than any of the many splendid versions created by C.B. Macdonald or Seth Raynor, the pioneers of the template in the United States.
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    Private
    Baltusrol Golf Club: Upper
    Springfield, NJ
    4.5
    18 Panelists
    It’s believed that when A.W. Tillinghast began constructing the Upper and Lower Courses at Baltusrol in 1919 (replacing Baltusrol’s existing 18 holes), it was the first contiguous 36 holes built at the same time in America. Because of the Lower’s tremendous major championship record, most consider the slightly shorter Upper to be a secondary course at the club. But between the two, it was the Upper, not the Lower, that hosted the first U.S. Open (and third in the club’s history) in 1936, won by Tony Manero. The Lower didn’t get its first Open until 1954, won by Ed Furgol. Baltusrol Mountain, just 200 feet high, looms above the right flank of the Upper, complicating drives and putts with a landscape that tilts more than appears to the eye. Just like he did at the Lower, Gil Hanse and his team finished a complete restoration of the Upper in 2024, the fruits of which won't appear in this ranking until 2027.
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    4. Plainfield C.C., Edison

    5. Galloway National G.C., Absecon

    6. Ridgewood C.C., Paramus

    7. Bayonne G.C.

    8. Trump National G.C. Bedminster (Old)

    9. The Ridge at Back Brook, Ringoes

    10. Mountain Ridge C.C., West Caldwell

    3. Greater Chicago

    Private
    Chicago Golf Club
    Wheaton, IL
    4.8
    18 Panelists
    Chicago Golf Club opened the country’s first 18-hole course in 1893, built by C.B. Macdonald, the preeminent golf expert in the U.S. at the time. Two years later, Macdonald built the club a different course after the membership moved to a new location in Wheaton, Ill.: “a really first-class 18-hole course of 6,200 yards,” he wrote. Members played that course until 1923 when Seth Raynor, who began his architectural career as Macdonald’s surveyor and engineer, redesigned it using the “ideal hole” concepts his old boss had developed 15 years earlier (he kept Macdonald’s routing, which placed all the O.B. on the left—C.B. sliced the ball). For reasons of history and practicality, no major remodels have occurred since then, allowing the club to merely burnish the architecture by occasionally upgrading worn parts, adjusting grassing lines, and recently, reestablishing a number of lost bunkers that had been filled in over time.
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    Private
    Butler National Golf Club
    Oak Brook, IL
    4.4
    29 Panelists
    Butler National was former tour player George Fazio’s ideal of a championship course, with 10 forced carries over water in 18 holes. Even before it opened, it was signed to eventually serve as a permanent site of the Western Open. The problem was, when it opened, it was the last cool-weather venue on the PGA Tour to utilize bluegrass rather than bentgrass for its fairways, and several prominent golfers declined to play Butler National because of potential flyer-lies from those fairways. Eventually, the turf was converted, but then the Shoal Creek scandal occurred. Rather than change its restricted men-only policy, the club relinquished its role of Western Open host after the 1990 event. So why include a club on America’s 100 Greatest that won’t allow female panelists a chance to evaluate it? Because we rank golf courses, not club policies.
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    Private
    Shoreacres
    Lake Bluff, IL
    4.6
    35 Panelists
    Shoreacres possesses perhaps the most fascinating topography upon which Seth Raynor ever created a golf course, a remarkable assertion given that most of the playing surfaces are dead flat, though the in-between spaces are cut through by winding depressions and several deep ravines. Raynor infused the design with his usual collection of suspects, including No. 3 (Leven), No. 6 (Biarritz), No. 7 (Double Plateau), No. 8 (Eden), No. 10 (one of the best Road Hole interpretations in the U.S.) and No. 14 (Redan) all playing along the plateaus that edge the gulleys and ravines that feed into Lake Michigan. The stretch of 11, 12 and 13, playing across a ravine, down into it, and back out of it with a blind tee shot, are as unique a stretch of holes as can be found anywhere on a 100 Greatest course. The tight turf, rivaling the firmest conditions of any parkland course, add to the challenge, and when playing as fiery as usual, shots played into the sensuously bubbled greens often have to be landed 10 or 15 yards short to be played onto the putting surfaces.
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    4. Medinah C.C. (No. 3)

    5. Olympia Fields C.C. (North)

    6. Rich Harvest Farms, Sugar Grove

    7. Old Elm Club, Highland Park

    8. Skokie C.C., Glencoe

    9. Olympia Fields C.C. (South)

    10. Conway Farms G.C., Lake Forest

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    4. Monterey Peninsula

    Private
    Cypress Point Club
    Pebble Beach, CA
    5
    27 Panelists

    From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: Cypress Point, the sublime Monterey Peninsula work of sandbox sculpture, whittled Cypress and chiseled coastline, has become Exhibit A in the argument that classic architecture has been rendered ineffectual by modern technology. I'm not buying that argument. Those who think teeny old Cypress Point is defenseless miss the point of Alister MacKenzie’s marvelous design. MacKenzie relished the idea that Cypress Point would offer all sorts of ways to play every hole. That philosophy still thrives, particularly in the past decade, after the faithful restoration of MacKenzie’s original bunkers by veteran course superintendent Jeff Markow. Certainly one way to play Cypress is the full-bore, take-dead-aim, grip-it-and-rip-it, bomb-and-gouge approach. But it’s also a course where finesse still matters, where course management is still rewarded. Yes, long bombers can go low at Cypress Point these days, but so can short-hitting, thoughtful players, who much like sailors in a storm tack their way around bunkers, trees, dunes and ocean coves. And when the winds come up, as they often do at Cypress, it’s the latter approach that’s likely to be more successful.

     

    Read our architecture editor's complete review.

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    Public
    Pebble Beach Golf Links
    Pebble Beach, CA
    4.7
    44 Panelists
    Not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched immediately above the crashing Pacific surf—the fourth through 10th plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble’s sixth through eighth are golf’s real Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys thrown in over an ocean cove on the eighth from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble hosted a successful U.S. Amateur in 2018 and a sixth U.S. Open in 2019. Recent improvements include the redesign of the once-treacherous 14th green and reshaping the par-3 17th green, both planned by Arnold Palmer’s Design Company a few years back, and modifications to the green at the famous eighth hole, which we deemed the second Greatest Hole in America. Green modifications have continued, and Pebble re-enters our top 10 after a brief time out the last two years.
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    Public
    Spyglass Hill Golf Course
    Pebble Beach, CA
    4.4
    39 Panelists
    Given the task of designing a course just up the 17 Mile Drive from Pebble Beach and Cypress Point, Robert Trent Jones responded with a combination of Pine Valley and Augusta National. The five opening holes, in Pine Valley-like sand dunes, are an all-too-brief encounter with the Pacific seacoast. The remaining holes are a stern hike through hills covered with majestic Monterey pines (which, sad to say, may someday disappear to pitch canker, but are being replaced in some areas with cypress trees). Add several water hazards that hearken back to the 16th at Augusta (a hole which Trent Jones designed, by the way), and you have what some panelists consider to be Trent’s finest work. Others say it’s the best course never to have hosted a major event (though it was conceived to do so). After all, even Pine Valley and Cypress Point have hosted Walker Cups.
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    4. Monterey Peninsula C.C.  (Shore), Pebble Beach

    5. Monterey Peninsula C.C. (Dunes), Pebble Beach

    6. The Preserve G.C., Carmel

    7. The Links at Spanish Bay, Pebble Beach

    8. Poppy Hills G. Cse., Pebble Beach

    9. Bayonet & Black Horse (Bayonet), Seaside

    10. The Club at Pasadera, Monterey

    5. Boston/Cape Cod

    Private
    The Country Club: The Main Course
    Brookline, MA
    The Country Club’s 18-hole course, which was the scene of the 1963 and 1988 U.S. Opens, is not the 18-hole course ranked by Golf Digest. Those events were played on a composite course that utilizes several holes from the club’s third nine, Primrose, designed by William Flynn. We rank the combination of the Main Course (the Clyde and Squirrel nines), clearly good enough to be one of the top courses in the world. Gil Hanse performed some course restoration prior to the 2013 U.S. Amateur at The Country Club and again before the 2022 U.S. Open, won by Matthew Fitzpatrick. The USGA used a new configuration of 18 holes for that championship, eliminating the par-4 fourth and adding the tiny, downhill par-3 11th to the mix, the first time the hole was used since the 1913 Open won by Francis Ouimet.
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    Private
    Old Sandwich Golf Club
    Plymouth, MA
    4.7
    14 Panelists
    Old Sandwich Golf Club may be the craftiest Coore-Crenshaw design yet built. Amidst its pines, scrub oaks, gnarly bunkers, chocolate drop mounds, wavy fescue and briar bushes are hints of Baltusrol, National Golf Links, Pine Valley, Pinehurst #2 and Chicago Golf Club in its cross-bunkering, hazard placement and sandy waste areas. The greens are some of the most rolling of any Coore & Crenshaw design, seeded with a half-dozen bent varieties to give them an old-fashioned mottled appearance. Nobody does old-fashioned better than Coore & Crenshaw.
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    Private
    Myopia Hunt Club
    South Hamilton, MA
    4.6
    19 Panelists
    Few realize Myopia Hunt Club, a funky, quirky lark where greens look like bathmats and bunkers look like bathtubs, hosted four U.S. Opens by 1908 (two of them when the club had only nine holes). Although the Open hasn’t been back in over 110 years, Myopia has always retained a reputation of being a tough little rascal with tiny greens, treacherous hazards and several cross-bunkers. Thanks to a Gil Hanse restoration, Myopia looks like it did in its U.S. Open heyday, but with much better turf conditions.
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    4. The Kittansett Club, Marion

    5. Essex County Club, Manchester

    6. Boston G.C., Hingham

    7. Eastward Ho!, Chatham

    8. Hyannisport Club

    9. Salem C.C., Peabody

    10. TPC Boston, Norton

    6. Greater Philadelphia

    Private
    Pine Valley Golf Club
    Pine Valley, NJ
    4.7
    19 Panelists
    A genuine original, its unique character is forged from the sandy pine barrens of southwest Jersey. Founder George Crump had help from now-legendary architects H.S. Colt, A.W. Tillinghast, George C. Thomas Jr. and Walter Travis. Hugh Wilson (of Merion fame) and his brother Alan finished the job, and William Flynn and Perry Maxwell made revisions. Throughout the course, Pine Valley blends all three schools of golf design—penal, heroic and strategic—often times on a single hole. Recent tree removal at selected spots have revealed some gorgeous views of the sandy landscape upon which the course is routed, and Tom Fazio has put his own touch on the design with bunker remodels that have given the barrens a more intricate and ornate look.
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    Private
    Merion Golf Club: East
    Ardmore, PA
    4.9
    27 Panelists
    Merion East has long been considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, and when it hosted the U.S. Open in 2013, its first since 1981, the present generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer this clever little course. They couldn’t consistently hit its twisting fairways, which are edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough and OB stakes and couldn’t consistently hold its canted greens, edged by bunkers that stare back. Justin Rose won with a 72-hole total of one-over-par, two ahead of Jason Day and Phil Mickelson. With Gil Hanse's extensive two-year renovation after that tournament making even more improvements at Merion's East Course, the design should be even more polished and pristine when the U.S. Amateur returns in 2026 and the U.S. Open returns again in 2030.
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    Private
    Aronimink Golf Club
    Newtown Square, PA
    4.5
    33 Panelists
    Aronimink is an object lesson in architectural evolution. After Donald Ross completed his design in 1928, he proclaimed, “I intended to make this my masterpiece.” That didn’t keep club members from bringing in William Gordon in the 1950s to eliminate out-of-play fairway bunkers and move other bunkers closer to greens. The course was later revamped by Dick Wilson, George Fazio and Robert Trent Jones. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Ron Prichard, one of the profession’s original restoration specialists, began returning Aronimink back to Ross’ conception based on the architect’s drawings and field diagrams. But there was always a discrepancy between what Ross drew in plans and what was actually built in 1928. A more recent renovation by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, who live nearby, has put the course’s architecture more in line with what aerial photographs depict of the early design, particularly the bunkering that might have been imagined as larger in scale but built in smaller, more scatter-shot formations.
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    4. The Philadelphia Cricket Club (Wissahickon), Flourtown

    5. Stonewall (Old), Elverson

    6. Wilmington C.C. (South), Del.

    7. Applebrook G.C., Malvern

    8. Philadelphia C.C. (Spring Mill), Gladwyne

    9. Rolling Green G.C., Springfield

    10. Lookaway G.C., Buckingham

    7. Westchester County, N.Y.

    Private
    Winged Foot Golf Club: West
    Mamaroneck, NY
    4.8
    22 Panelists
    Gone are all the Norway Spruce that once squeezed every fairway of Winged Foot West. It’s now gloriously open and playable, at least until one reaches the putting surfaces, perhaps the finest set of green contours the versatile architect A.W. Tillinghast ever did, now restored to original parameters by architect Gil Hanse. The greens look like giant mushrooms, curled and slumped around the edges, proving that as a course architect, Tillinghast was not a fun guy. Winged Foot West was tamed, somewhat, by Bryson DeChambeau in winning the 2020 U.S. Open that was played in September, but he was the only competitor to finish under-par in his six-shot victory.
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    Private
    Winged Foot Golf Club: East
    Mamaroneck, NY
    4.6
    17 Panelists
    Winged Foot’s two-course complex is the product of A.W. Tillinghast’s fertile imagination. Every characteristic of the more famous West Course also exists on the Winged Foot East (which, incredibly, was used as a parking lot during recent U.S. Opens). A decade ago, architect Gil Hanse re-established Tillinghast’s bunkering and reclaimed the original sizes and shapes of the greens, bringing “corner-pocket” hole locations back into play. Many members believe the East Course is just as strong a design—if not better—than the West.
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    Private
    Sleepy Hollow Country Club
    Scarborough, NY
    4.8
    27 Panelists
    In the mid 2000s, the late George Bahto, who had extensively researched the works of legendary architect C.B. Macdonald, partnered with Gil Hanse and partner Jim Wagner to remodel Sleepy Hollow Country Club, which consisted of 11 Macdonald-designed holes and seven added in 1927 by A.W. Tillinghast. The pair persuaded the club to allow them to rebuild the entire 18 in Macdonald’s style, reasoning that Tillinghast was well represented elsewhere in Westchester County (Winged Foot, Quaker Ridge and others), but Macdonald was not. The construction was done in stages, completed well after Bahto’s death in 2014. Thanks to Hanse, Sleepy Hollow now features some of Macdonald's “ideal holes" like the Eden, Knoll, Leven and Road holes that weren’t even part of his original design. And it has steadily climbed in our rankings the past few editions. Sleepy Hollow hosted the 2023 U.S. Mid-Amateur.
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    4. Quaker Ridge G.C., Scarsdale

    5. Hudson National G.C., Croton on Hudson

    6. Wykagyl C.C., New Rochelle

    7. Westchester C.C. (West), Rye

    8. Fenway G.C. Scarsdale

    9. Whippoorwill Club, Armonk

    10. Century C.C., Purchase

    8. Wisconsin

    Public
    Whistling Straits: Straits Course
    Sheboygan, WI
    4.7
    54 Panelists
    Pete Dye transformed a dead flat abandoned army air base along a two-mile stretch of Lake Michigan into an imitation Ballybunion at Whistling Straits, peppering his rugged fairways and windswept greens with 1,012 (at last count) bunkers. There are no rakes at Whistling Straits, in keeping with the notion that this is a transplanted Irish links. It has too much rub-of-the-green for the comfort levels of many tour pros, which is what makes it a stern test for top events, such as three PGA Championships, the 2007 U.S. Senior Open and 2021 Ryder Cup.
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    Public
    Erin Hills Golf Course
    Hartford, WI
    4.6
    43 Panelists
    Despite the rumor, Erin Hills wasn’t designed specifically to host a U.S. Open. Its original concept was to be a simple, affordable, lay-of-the-land layout, to prove Mother Nature is indeed the best golf architect. The concept changed—some greens moved, one blind par 3 eliminated—as the quest for a U.S. Open grew. That dream came true: after trial runs hosting the 2008 U.S. Women’s Public Links and the 2011 U.S. Amateur, Erin Hills hosted the U.S. Open in 2017, the first time the event had ever been in Wisconsin. Brooks Koepka won with a 72-hole score of 16-under, leading some to conclude Erin Hills was too wide and defenseless. In truth, what it lacked that week was the usual gusty winds that would have effectively narrowed the slanted, canted fairways. Had the par been adjusted to 70 instead of 72 as is usual for most Opens, the score would likely have been closer to 8-under.
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    Private
    Milwaukee Country Club
    River Hills, WI
    4.5
    17 Panelists
    With much of the course hard against the Milwaukee River and several holes subject to flooding (the green of the 12th and the entire 13th are located across the river), one might think Milwaukee Country Club is a flat layout. But many of its holes are surprisingly hilly. Its classic design is still tree-lined, but one of the crucial improvements recently made by consulting architect Tom Doak and his associate Don Placek was to remove many trees to open up views of the river on the upland holes.
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    4. Blackwolf Run (River), Kohler 

    5. Sand Valley, Nekoosa

    6. Mammoth Dunes, Nekoosa

    7. Whistling Straits (Irish), Haven

    8. Sentryworld G. Cse., Stevens Point

    9. Blue Mound G. & C.C., Wauwatosa

    10. The G. Courses at Lawsonia (Links), Green Lake

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    9. Northern Michigan

    Private
    Crystal Downs Country Club
    Frankfort, MI
    4.7
    23 Panelists
    Perry Maxwell, the Midwest associate of architect Alister MacKenzie, lived on site while constructing the course to MacKenzie’s plans, but there’s evidence Maxwell exercised considerable artistic license on some holes. Whomever did it, Crystal Downs has fairways that zigzag and rumble over the glacial landscape and greens that have doglegs in them. One drawback is that the putting surfaces are so old-fashioned that they’re too steep for today’s green speeds. But that’s part of Crystal Downs' appeal. It’s short but has considerable bite.
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    Public
    Arcadia Bluffs Golf Club (Bluffs)
    Arcadia, MI
    4.5
    44 Panelists
    Can a course ranked this high be a sleeper? The Bluffs Course at Arcadia Bluffs has been overshadowed by Pacific Dunes ever since it finished second to it in the Best New Upscale Public Course race of 2001. And likewise, it’s been second-fiddle to Crystal Downs, a northern Michigan neighbor that every visitor wants to play, even though it’s private, and Arcadia is public. And even by Whistling Straits, the imitation links on the opposite side of Lake Michigan that Arcadia Bluffs resembles, although the sand dunes at Arcadia are natural, not manmade. More recently, the Bluffs faces competition from within, the newly opened sister layout, the South Course at Arcadia Bluffs, designed by Dana Fry in the style of C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor.
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    Private
    Kingsley Club
    Kingsley, MI
    4.6
    18 Panelists
    Expertly routed across glacial domes and over kettle holes, Kingsley Club opens with a split fairway, a high-right avenue separated from a low-left one by a cluster of sod-face bunkers. It’s an attention grabber that is repeated in various fashions throughout the round. For instance, the hilltop green on the short par-3 second seems tiny in comparison to the deep, shaggy bunkers surrounding it. The long par-3 fifth plays over a valley with a tongue of fairway ready to repel any shot that comes up short. The par-4 sixth seems to slant in one direction, then can't in the other direction once past a lateral ridge that runs down the fairway. Every hole has its own character. With roughs of tall fescue and occasional white pines and hardwoods, Kingsley is all natural and all absorbing, a thoughtful design by Mike DeVries, who grew up in the area playing Crystal Downs.
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    4. Forest Dunes G.C., Roscommon

    5. True North G.C., Harbor Springs

    6. Arcadia Bluffs G.C. (South)

    7. The Loop at Forest Dunes G.C. (Black), Roscommon

    8. Bay Harbor G.C. (Links/Quarry)

    9. Marquette G.C. (Greywalls)

    10. Lochenheath G.C., Williamsburg

    10. Jupiter/West Palm Beach

    Private
    Seminole Golf Club
    Juno Beach, FL
    4.8
    22 Panelists
    A majestic Donald Ross design with a clever routing on a rectangular site, each hole at Seminole encounters a new wind direction. The routing is perhaps the only thing that remains of Ross' vision. The greens are no longer his, replaced 60 years ago in a regrassing effort that showed little appreciation for the original rolling contours. The bunkers aren’t Ross either. Dick Wilson replaced them in 1947, his own version meant to imitate crests of waves on the adjacent Atlantic. A few years back, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw redesigned the bunkers again, set lower, closer to the way Ross had them, along with exposing sandy expanses in the rough. The club is about to embark on another major remodel by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner intended to finally recreate Ross’ internal green movements based on his blueprints and elevate sections of the course to remediate drainage concerns. Seminole has long been one of America’s most exclusive clubs, which is why it was thrilling to see it on TV for a first time during the TaylorMade Driving Relief match, and then again for the 2021 Walker Cup.
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    Private
    Jupiter Hills Club: Hills
    Tequesta, FL
    4.3
    8 Panelists
    As an old pro from Pine Valley who lost an Open at Merion, George Fazio blended features of both of those great courses into his design at Jupiter Hills, the high point of his second career as a golf course architect. Built from a distinct sand ridge that runs laterally along the Atlantic seacoast north of West Palm Beach, Jupiter Hills was inexpensive to construct. The terrain was so good, only 87,000 cubic yards of earth were moved. A decade after it opened, George Fazio retired near the property and couldn’t resist constantly tinkering with it. He ultimately removed many of its most unique, Pine Valley-like aspects. His nephew Tom Fazio, who had assisted on the original, has renovated the design several times, most recently in 2020 with new bunkering strategies. The open sandscapes of the original design remain but they're cleaned up, and the effect is one more of polish than rugged terror.
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    Private
    The Bear's Club
    Jupiter, FL
    4.3
    6 Panelists

    From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten: It was a comfortable round with Jack, in part because The Bear's Club is impressively comfortable. It's not your typical condo-covered, lake-laden Florida course. It's old Florida, with lots of pines and palmettos, and slightly scruffy around the edges. There's a natural 12-foot-high sand ridge running across the site. Jack enhanced it and added a couple of others that look equally natural. He integrated the design into its environment by retaining native brush wherever possible, separated from playing areas by transition areas of sand and pine straw. I loved the bunkering. It was big, high-banked, sweeping stuff, a very un-Florida-like in look and feel, using an imported grade of sand from Ohio that won't wash out with every rain shower. The back sides of most bunkers are merged into native sand and pine straw, so they look like blowouts emerging from sand dunes.

     

    Read our architecture editor's complete review.

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    4. McArthur G.C., Hobe Sound

    5. Trump International G.C. (Championship), West Palm Beach

    6. Medalist G.C., Hobe Sound

    7. Loblolly, Hobe Sound

    8. Pine Tree G.C., Boynton Beach

    9. Floridian National G.C., Palm City

    10. Trump National Jupiter G.C.

    11. Palm Springs

    Private
    The Quarry at La Quinta
    La Quinta, CA
    4.7
    22 Panelists
    The developers of The Quarry hired Tom Fazio in the early 1990s with instructions that he top his design of Shadow Creek (ranked No. 24 on this year’s list). Fazio was savvy enough to ignore those instructions because he recognized The Quarry's site was a much better piece of topography than what he’d been provided in Las Vegas. Thus, The Quarry has more variety, starting and ending in a gravel quarry now lavishly landscaped. In between, holes play on high desert overlooking the Palm Springs Valley and in a valley, with four holes tucked in an isolated notch of the Santa Rosa Mountains. The course regularly receives some of the highest Conditioning scores in the country.
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    Private
    The Madison Club
    La Quinta, CA
    4.7
    11 Panelists
    When developer Michael Meldman first showed Tom Fazio the land for the proposed Madison Club, an arid, barren desert outside Palm Springs, he told Fazio, “Let’s do a modern-day Shadow Creek.” By “modern-day,” he meant one that would feature homesites along the holes. So Fazio did what he’d done in Las Vegas at Shadow Creek. He had crews dig into the desert and pile up dirt on the sides. But this time, the cuts became channels wide enough for fairways, with pads for home sites perched above holes on surrounding ridgelines. After trucking in and planting mature trees and sodding everything, Fazio was satisfied The Madison Club looked nothing like a typical Palm Springs residential layout. Said Fazio, “If you’re given a free hand in the Coachella Valley, what do you do? You do everything. You move the earth, plant the trees and carve out the streams. You create the entire space. There’s so much here.”
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    Private
    Stone Eagle Golf Club
    Palm Desert, CA
    4.4
    29 Panelists
    Stone Eagle is one of the most remarkable courses in the golf-heavy Palm Springs market. It sits atop a rocky plateau, 1,000 feet above the Coachella Valley but still thousands of feet below the peaks of the adjacent Santa Rosa Mountains. When Tom Doak first walked the site, he said, “I thought this must be what the surface of Mars looks like: rocky, rugged and red.” Given the luxury of routing an 18 without any homesites, Doak did his lay-of-the-land best to create a faux links high above the desert floor by tucking fairways into creases of the land and positioning shots to play over low ridges into bold greens that mimic the rugged topography. At Stone Eagle, Doak used hillsides of rocks and boulders the way Old Country architects used sand dunes. The only difference: sand is soft, rock is not.
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    4. Tradition G.C., La Quinta

    5. Bighorn G.C. (Mountains), Palm Desert

    6. The Vintage Club (Mountain), Indian Wells

    7. Bighorn G.C. (Canyons), Palm Desert

    8. PGA West (Stadium), La Quinta

    9. Eldorado C.C., Indian Wells

    10. Toscana C.C. (North), Indian Wells

    12. Greater Los Angeles

    Private
    Los Angeles Country Club: North
    Los Angeles, CA
    4.8
    21 Panelists
    It’s on the edge of Tinsel Town, but the architecture of the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club has been solid gold ever since its 2010 restoration by architect Gil Hanse and partner Jim Wagner. It matters not that Hanse’s team didn’t replicate the bunkering style of original architect George C. Thomas, but rather the more visually exciting style of Thomas’ associate, William P. Bell. The first nine plays rustically up and down a shallow canyon with holes switching back and forth across a dry barranca, and the second nine loops across a more spacious upland section with one par 3 (the 11th) that can stretch to nearly 300 yards and another (the 15th) that often plays just 90 yards. The hole strategies reinstituted by Hanse provided an intriguing examination when LACC's North course hosted the 2023 U.S. Open as Wyndham Clark beat Rory McIlroy by a stroke.
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    Private
    Riviera Country Club
    Pacific Palisades, CA
    4.8
    26 Panelists
    A compact and shrewd design by George C. Thomas Jr. and associate William P. Bell, Riviera features everything from a long Redan par-3 to a bunker in the middle of a green to an alternate-fairway par-4. With its 18th green at the base of a natural amphitheater, and its primary rough consisting of club-grabbing Kikuyu, Riviera seems tailor-made as a tournament venue. It hosted a PGA Championship in 1995, a U.S. Senior Open in 1998 and a U.S. Amateur in 2017, but no U.S. Open since 1948. Riviera was recently awarded the 2031 U.S. Open, and it will also host the 2028 Olympics. But it’s the site of an annual PGA Tour event, which is even better exposure to the golf world.
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    Private
    Bel-Air Country Club
    Los Angeles, CA
    4.4
    17 Panelists
    Completing a George C. Thomas hat trick of designs—the others being Los Angeles Country Club (North) and (Riviera)—is Bel-Air Country Club. It's a charming throwback design that winds through mansion-dotted canyons of Los Angeles, the topography so steep that golfers are guided from hole to hole via a tunnel, an elevator and the city’s most famous suspension bridge, which spans a gulch on the par-3 10th and serves as a dramatic backdrop for the 18th green. Bel-Air’s design had been altered over decades by, among others, Dick Wilson, George Fazio, Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Tom Fazio. But in 2018, Tom Doak erased every bit of their work, removing most of the phony water hazards and faithfully recapturing Thomas’s splashy signature bunkering. To complete a round amidst these Hollywood hills, you’ll definitely encounter a Hollywood star. Her name is Bel-Air.
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    4. Sherwood C.C., Thousand Oaks

    5. Shady Canyon G.C., Irvine

    6. Lakeside G.C., Burbank

    7. Los Angeles C.C. (South)

    8. Wilshire C.C., Los Angeles 

    9. Pelican Hill G.C. (Ocean North), Newport Coast

    10. Pelican Hill G.C. (Ocean South), Newport Coast

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    13. San Francisco Bay Area

    Private
    The Olympic Club: Lake
    San Francisco, CA
    4.7
    30 Panelists
    It seems fitting that, in a town where every house is a cliffhanger, every U.S. Open played at Olympic has been one, too. For decades, the Lake was a severe test of golf. Once, it was a heavily forested course with canted fairways hampered by just a single fairway bunker. By 2009, the forest had been considerably cleared away, leaving only the occasional bowlegged cypress with knobby knees. The seventh and 18th greens were redesigned, and a new par-3 eighth added. Despite those changes, the 2012 U.S. Open stuck to the usual script: a ball got stuck in a tree, slow-play warnings were given, a leader snap-hooked a drive on 16 in the final round and a guy named Simpson won. If the past was predictable, the future of the Lake Course might be more mysterious after Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner completed a remodeling in 2023 in preparation for the 2028 PGA Championship. The holes are even more breathable than before, with additional tree decluttering, the greens have been expanded for more hole locations and the bunkers don't seem so deep and disconnected with the greens as they did. That old seventh hole was also scrapped in favor of a new drivable par-4 playing to a new greensite closer to the eighth tee. What hasn't changed is the Lake Course's secret ingredient, the mysterious hillside atmosphere that makes balls fall out of the air and the holes play much longer than their yardage.
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    Private
    San Francisco Golf Club
    San Francisco, CA
    4.7
    19 Panelists
    San Francisco Golf Club’s original routing was done mostly by a trio of club members, who first staked out the course in 1918. A.W. Tillinghast remodeled the course in 1923, establishing its signature greens and bunkering. He also added the par-3 seventh, called the “Duel Hole,” because its location marks the spot of the last legal duel in America. Three holes were replaced in 1950 in anticipation of a street widening project that never happened. In 2006, the original holes were re-established by Tom Doak and his then-associate Jim Urbina.
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    Public
    Pasatiempo Golf Club
    Santa Cruz, CA
    4.6
    26 Panelists
    Pasatiempo is arguably Alister MacKenzie's favorite design. He lived along its sixth fairway during his last years. With its elaborate greens and spectacular bunkering fully restored by Jim Urbina, it’s a prime example of MacKenzie's art. The five par-3s are daunting yet delightful, culminating with the 181-yard over-a-canyon 18th. The back nine is chock full of other great holes: 10, 11, 12 and 16 all play over barrancas. The storied course has hosted two USGA championships: the 1986 U.S. Women's Amateur and the 2004 U.S. Senior Women's Amateur. In 2014, Pasatiempo received a Golf Digest Green Star environmental award for its measures in dealing with drought. Today, water worries are in the past, in part because of a new storage tank that allows the club to capture and store recycled water. Urbina's last greens restoration, completed in late 2024, has resurrected lost hole locations throughout the course, and the club will maintain them at slightly slower speeds to embrace the brilliant contours MacKenzie designed.
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    4. The California G.C. of San Francisco

    5.  Meadow Club, Fairfax

    6. The Olympic Club (Ocean), San Francisco

    7. Menlo C.C., Redwood City

    8. TPC Harding Park, San Francisco

    9. Lake Merced G.C., Daly City

    10. Stanford (Calif.) G. Cse.

    14. Atlanta

    Private
    Peachtree Golf Club
    Atlanta, GA
    4.9
    30 Panelists
    The design collaboration by amateur star Bobby Jones and golf architect Robert Trent Jones (no relation) was meant to recapture the magic that the Grand Slam winner had experienced when he teamed with Alister Mackenzie in the design of Augusta National. But Trent was an even more forceful personality than the flamboyant MacKenzie, so Peachtree reflects far more of Trent’s notions of golf than Bobby’s, particularly in designing for future equipment advances. When it opened, Peachtree measured in excess of 7,200 yards, extremely long for that era. It boasted the longest set of tees in America (to provide flexibility on holes) and the country’s most enormous greens (to spread out wear and tear). As it turns out, Trent was a visionary, and decades later, other designers followed his lead to address advances in club and ball technology.
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    Private
    East Lake Golf Club
    Atlanta, GA
    4.3
    33 Panelists
    Tom Bendelow actually laid out the original course at East Lake, back when it was known as Atlanta Athletic Club, and that was the layout upon which Stewart Maiden taught the game to the now-legendary Bobby Jones. Donald Ross basically built a new course on the same spot in 1915, which remained untouched until changes were made before the 1963 Ryder Cup. When Atlanta Athletic moved to the suburbs in the late 1960s, the intown East Lake location (many of the members stayed behind) fell on hard financial times until being rescued in the 1990s by businessman Tom Cousins, who made it a sterling fusion of corporate and inner-city involvement. Rees Jones redesigned most holes beginning in the mid-90s, making the course more reflective of his views of championship golf. After the PGA Tour reversed the nines for the 2016 Tour Championship (flipping the unpopular par-3 finish into the ninth hole), the club made the new routing permanent for regular play. East Lake underwent another major restoration following the 2023 Tour Championship, this time by Andrew Green, that focuses on bringing back the course's Donald Ross heritage. Green used a 1949 aerial to inform the replacement of bunkers and the shape of greens, which are much larger and possess a wider variety of hole locations and slopes than before. Almost every hole was dramatically revamped, creating a course that poses driving options and requires the careful calibration of each shot rather than a mere test of straight hitting. The result is a massive jump in our rankings.
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    Private
    Atlanta Athletic Club: Highlands
    Johns Creek, GA
    4.4
    17 Panelists
    No course on our rankings has highlighted the value of new turfgrasses better than the Highlands Course at Atlanta Athletic Club. It sets the standard for quality everyday conditions as well as for major championships at Southern venues. Its tees and fairways are Zorro Zoysia, which can withstand Atlanta’s coldest winter days. Greens are state-of-the-art TifEagle Bermuda, smooth and pure. Approaches and surrounds of greens are TifGrand Bermuda, which allows them to be mowed very tight for additional bounce. The rough is Tifway 419 Bermuda, a great old standby. The club also recently upgraded its irrigation system. Because each turf has different water demands, a precise individual-head system was installed, each head controlled by the superintendent with a smartphone app, applying moisture only where needed and thus saving water and money. No longer will an errant shot at Atlanta Athletic Club land behind an irrigation box. There are none anymore. The club recently announced the current Rees Jones-developed architecture will also be given a refresh when Andrew Green begins a major remodel in 2028.
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    4. Atlanta Country Club, Marietta

    5. Hawks Ridge G.C., Ball Ground

    6. Ansley G.C. (Settindown Creek), Roswell

    7. Atlanta Athletic Club (Riverside), Johns Creek

    8. Capital City Club (Crabapple), Alpharetta

    9. Cherokee Town & C.C. (North), Atlanta

    10. G.C. of Georgia (Lakeside), Alpharetta

    15. Phoenix/Scottsdale

    Private
    The Estancia Club
    Scottsdale, AZ
    4.7
    11 Panelists
    Estancia, our Best New Private Course of 1996, was Tom Fazio’s initial entry into the Scottsdale scene. Positioned beneath the north slopes of Pinnacle Peak and routed to provide a variety of uphill and downhill shots and a change of direction on almost every hole, Estancia is an easterner’s version of rock-and-cactus architecture, with wide turf corridors, few desert carries and greens wilder than most. Former Fazio design associate Kevin Sutherland (no relation to the PGA Tour player of the same name) has made slight design adjustments in recent years.
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    Private
    Whisper Rock Golf Club: Upper Course
    Scottsdale, AZ
    3.9
    7 Panelists
    Whisper Rock’s Upper Course was intended, as the club’s second 18, to specifically test its low-handicap and PGA Tour pro membership. However, Tom Fazio couldn’t resist being a crowd-pleaser, so although he designed 18 holes with demanding angles to diagonal fairways from the back tees, his landing areas for average golfers are generous and most greens are cradled with ample chipping areas. All players enjoy the scenic beauty of this patch of Sonoran Desert, with the front nine holes framed by dry washes and a four-hole stretch on the back woven through astonishing towers of balanced granite boulders. “That’s a beautiful, beautiful stretch, going up into those boulders and back down towards Pinnacle Peak,” said Fazio at the grand opening. “But I’m proud of the entire course, as it’s got a whole bag of different looks.” Whisper Rock’s other 18, the older Lower Course, is ranked #176.
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    Private
    Whisper Rock Golf Club: Lower Course
    Scottsdale, AZ
    4.5
    11 Panelists
    Phil Mickelson wanted his course design debut to be something different than the typical Scottsdale desert layout, so he had some fairways recessed into the landscape to create elevation change, kept tee boxes flush with the ground and built mostly long, narrow greens edged by chipping hollows. Mickelson calls them “Pinehurst greens.” Bunkers are surprisingly shallow and fairways are uniformly wide, because he dislikes holes that bottleneck down for big hitters. There’s plenty of grass in which to play, and a surprising number of trees on the layout, including palo verde, juniper and mesquite. Phil considers his design to be a second-shot course, “and we don’t have the same second shot two times in a row,” he says. One second shot, on the par-5 third, must contend with a “ha ha wall,” a three-foot-high ledge of stacked rock that edges the putting surface. That’s definitely different than anything in Scottsdale.
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    4. Desert Forest Golf Club, Scottsdale

    5. Desert Highlands, Scottsdale

    6. Desert Mountain Club (Renegade), Scottsdale

    7. Desert Mountain Club (Chiricahua), Scottsdale

    8. Desert Mountain Club (Geronimo), Scottsdale

    9. Silverleaf Club, Scottsdale

    10. Quintero G.C., Peoria

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    16. Pinehurst, NC

    Public
    Pinehurst #2
    Pinehurst, NC
    4.7
    51 Panelists
    In 2010, a team lead by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw killed and ripped out all the Bermudagrass rough on Pinehurst #2 that had been foolishly planted in the 1970s. Between fairways and tree lines, they established vast bands of native hardpan sand dotted with clumps of wiregrass and scattered pine needles. They reduced the irrigation to mere single rows in fairways to prevent grass from ever returning to the new sandy wastelands. Playing firm and fast, it was wildly successful as the site of the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens, played on consecutive weeks, and produced an even more exciting Open in 2024 when Bryson DeChambeau beat Rory McIlroy on the final hole. It's the rare course that a wide variety of resort players can enjoy and play quickly one day, and be a test for tour pros the next by essentially just quickening the greens. A new favorite of the USGA with a headquarters in town, Pinehurst #2 will host Opens again in 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047.
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    Public
    Pinehurst #4
    Pinehurst, NC
    4.4
    44 Panelists
    Like a football team searching for the right coach, the resort could never settle on the right identity for the #4 course despite a series of major alterations by different architects. It was first laid out by Pinehurst doyen Richard Tufts in 1952, then remodeld by Tufts and son Peter a decade later. Rees Jones reinvented it in the '80s, and Tom Fazio took it apart and put it back together as a stylized botanical garden in the late '90s. It finally found its match when it hired Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to carry out a full-scale blow-up and rebuild in 2018 that infused it with the sweeping sand-and-pine character we identify with Pinehurst, while initiating a style of shaping in the greens and bunkers that’s confident and distinctly its own.
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    Private
    Forest Creek Golf Club: North Course
    Pinehurst, NC
    4.2
    23 Panelists
    Tom Fazio did the first 18 at Pinehurst’s ultra-private Forest Creek Golf Club, the South Course, in 1996, carving it from a rolling pine forest, with most tee shots playing downhill and most greens amenable to low, running shots. When he returned nearly a decade later to add the North Course, he and his team decided on a different approach, a more organic, lay-of-the-land 18. So the North has more uphill holes and semi-blind tee shots. The sandy base of the pine forest is exposed on many holes, incorporated not just to frame holes but also as carry hazards on certain shots. Formal bunkers are edged with clumps of bushy wiregrass or dwarf pampas. The only water hazard is encountered late in the round—a long lake around which the 15th, 16th and 17th play. This course wasn’t inspired by sand-scarred neighboring courses like Pinehurst #2, Mid Pines and Dormie Club.
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    4. Tobacco Road, Sanford

    5. Dormie Club, West End

    6. C.C. of North Carolina (Dogwood), Pinehurst

    7. Forest Creek (South), Pinehurst

    8. Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club, Southern Pines

    9. Pinehurst (N.C.) Resort (No. 8)

    10. Mid Pines Inn & Golf Club, Southern Pines

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