America's best courses on the water, ranked
As you drive north on I-95 and cross the border into Maine, a sign welcomes you and reads “The way life should be.” A golfer playing a course on the water—where holes blend with the coast to create both strategic and aesthetic beauty—may feel a similar sentiment: “The way golf should be.”
We've determined this list of America's best courses on the water based on panelists’ scores from our most recent 100 Greatest and Second 100 Greatest rankings. Of course, there is a hint of subjectivity involved; what qualifies as “on the water?” Do courses that play along lakes, harbors or sounds count?
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We settled on a two-part litmus test. First, the body of water must be substantial—oceans, large lakes, harbors or coastal estuaries count. A small river or stream doesn’t pass this test. Second, the water must be in play, meaning a poor shot is likely to find the trouble at some point during the round. With this litmus test, we achieve our goal: Identifying our nation’s best courses that combine the unique strategy and aesthetics of playing on the water.
Scroll on for the complete ranking of America's best courses on the water, and be sure to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography and reviews from our course panelists. We also encourage you to leave your own ratings on the courses you’ve played … so you can make your case for why a course should be higher or lower on our rankings.
America's best courses on the water
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Carlos Amoedo
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J.D. Cuban
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Carlos Amoedo
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J.D. Cuban
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Carlos Amoedo
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Stephen Szurlej
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.
Read our architecture editor's complete review
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
5 / 7
LC Lambrecht
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LC Lambrecht
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LC Lambrecht
Undoubtedly, Fishers Island Club is the most dazzling design by architect Seth Raynor, who died in early 1926 before the course had officially opened. His steeply banked bunkers and geometric greens harmonize perfectly with the linear panoramas of the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound. The quality of the holes is also superb, with all Raynor’s usual suspects, including not one but two Redan greens, one on a par-4. The setting on a private island accessible only by ferry adds to the mystique, and three holes (four, five and nine) appear on our ranking of America's 100 Greatest Holes.
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1 / 10
Stephen Szurlej
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Sherman Chu
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Evan Schiller
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Getty Images
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Photo by Joann Dost
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Keyur Khamar
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Stephen Szurlej
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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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
This was the second course constructed at Bandon Dunes Resort and the highest-ranked among the resort’s five 18s. To best utilize ocean frontage, Tom Doak came up with an unorthodox routing that includes four par 3s on the back nine. Holes seem to emerge from the landscape rather than being superimposed onto it with rolling greens and rumpled fairways framed by rugged sand dunes and marvelously grotesque bunkers. The secret is that Doak moved a lot of earth in some places to make it look like he moved very little, but the result is a course with sensual movements, like a tango that steps toward the coast and back again, dipping in and out of different playing arenas from the secluded sand blowouts to the exposed bluffs and all variations in between.
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Carlos Amoedo
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Carlos Amoedo
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Behind the third green at the Ocean Course.
Uzzell Lambert
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Photo by Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
The Ocean Course was designed on short notice for a specific event, the 1991 Ryder Cup, when the PGA of America decided to move the event from California to the more attractive Eastern time zone television time slot. This manufactured linksland-meets-lagoons layout might well be Pete Dye’s most diabolical creation. Every hole is edged by sawgrass, every green has tricky slopes and every bunker merges into bordering sand dunes. Strung along nearly three miles of ocean coast, Dye took his wife Alice's advice and perched fairways and greens so golfers can actually view the Atlantic surf over a ridge of beach dunes. That also exposes shots and putts to ever-present and sometimes fierce coastal winds. The Ocean Course will forever be linked with Phil Mickelson and his improbable victory at the 2021 PGA Championship, as well as Rory McIlroy's romp in 2012.
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Carlos Amoedo
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Stephen Szurlej
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Carlos Amoedo
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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 the 2021 Ryder Cup.
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Wood Sabold/Courtesy of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort
Chicago recycled-products mogul Mike Keiser took a gamble when he chose then-tenderfoot architect David McLay Kidd to design a destination daily fee on the remote southwestern coastline of Oregon. But the design Kidd produced, faithful to the links-golf tenets of his native Scotland, proved so popular that today Keiser has a multiple-course resort at Bandon Dunes that rivals Pinehurst and the Monterey Peninsula—or perhaps exceeds them, given that all five Bandon courses are ranked on our 200 Greatest, four in the top 100. None of that would have happened if McLay Kidd hadn’t produced a great first design that drew golfers into its orbit.
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Stephen Szurlej
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Sebonack Golf Club
Not since Augusta National, or maybe Peachtree, had the nation’s greatest golfer teamed with one of the most highly regarded course architects on a design project. But developer Michael Pascucci's joint venture by Jack Nicklaus with Tom Doak at Sebonack was complicated by the fact that golfer Nicklaus was also an esteemed course architect in his own right, and the project sat right beside two American icons, Shinnecock Hills and National Golf Links. Some pundits have reduced Sebonack to “Tom’s bunkers, Jack’s greens,” but in truth it’s just the opposite. Doak convinced Nicklaus to go with small greens of sweeping contours and little imperfections the likes of which Jack would never have considered on his own. Meanwhile, Jack insisted that Tom tone down his usual ragged, jagged bunker faces to make them palatable to high-handicap club members. The course is fundamentally representative of neither designer's tenets, yet is a remarkable piece of architecture for the way it blends sometimes conflicting artistic outlooks into an ambitious whole on a genuinely inspiring piece of land.
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Courtesy of the club
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Courtesy of the club
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LC Lambrecht
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LC Lambrecht
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LC Lambrecht
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LC Lambrecht
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Courtesy of Maidstone Club
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Courtesy of Maidstone Club
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Picasa
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Courtesy of the club
Not only one of America’s earliest links courses, Maidstone is also one of the country’s earliest golf residential communities. Legend has it that Bobby Jones felt that Maidstone’s final three holes made it one of the great match-play courses in America. If so, that’s because the 17th has one of the tightest greensites in America, the putting surface sitting just in front of a major street intersection, with roads right and left less than 12 paces off each collar. As befitting a seaside course, Coore and Crenshaw cleared out brush and restored many sand dune areas and removed turf in some of the roughs to expose the sand beneath, while shaper Jeff Bradley returned the jagged, windswept edges to the bunkers. The result: ensuring Maidstone Club remains one of the greatest courses in the U.S.—a standout even in golf-rich Long Island.
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JD Cuban
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The view from behind the 12th green at MPCC Shore.
LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of Monterey Peninsula CC
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The approach to the eighth green at MPCC Shore.
LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of Monterey Peninsula CC
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Behind the sixth green at the Monterey Peninsula Country Club Shore course.
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Approaching the 413-yard par-4 15th hole at Monterey Peninsula Country Club's Shore course.
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The par-3 third hole, before the layout opens up to 17 Mile Drive.
LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of Monterey Peninsula CC
Mike Strantz was battling cancer while transforming the bland, low-budget Shore Course into a scenic and strategic marvel that rivals next-door neighbor Cypress Point. Strantz reversed the direction of the fifth through 15th holes to provide a Pacific Ocean backdrop to most of them. He weaved fairways among trees so players could “dance among the cypress,” and added native grasses for a coastal prairie look. The stunning landscape would be Strantz’s last work of art. He died six months after completing the redesign. Former PGA Tour player Forrest Fezler, who was Strantz’s associate on the project, later served as a consulting architect to retain the Strantz vision, until he passed away, also from cancer, in 2018. Designer Dave Zinkand completed a renovation of the bunkers in 2025 to keep Strantz's artistry vivid.
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
The Dunes Course, long in the shadow of its big brother Shore Course (ranked 55th), was originally routed by Seth Raynor, who died before construction. It was completed by Robert Hunter, a partner to Alister MacKenzie (who did not participate in the work), and Raynor's ideas for the greens were altered before they were even built. In the 1990s, Rees Jones remodeled the course and reshaped holes to mimic the Raynor look, to mixed reviews. In 2016, Tom Fazio was brought in to make the Dunes as appealing to members as the gorgeous Shore Course, though it was former associates Tim Jackson and David Kahn who conceived of and carried out the details of the plan to give the Dunes a MacKenzie look. Sandscapes now frame most holes, fairways now zigzag around jagged bunkers and nearly all the greens are oriented diagonally to lines of play. The Dunes Course now lives up to its name—and its current ranking is the highest in the history of our list.
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LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of The Kittansett Club
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LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of The Kittansett Club
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LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of The Kittansett Club
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LC Lambrecht/Courtesy of The Kittansett Club
Only recently, with the discovery of some original blueprints, has it been conclusively established that the ocean-side, links-like Kittansett, long thought to be the product of an amateur architect, Frederic C. Hood, was actually the work of well-known course architect William Flynn, who also designed Shinnecock Hills and Cherry Hills. Credit that revelation to authors Wayne S. Morrison and Thomas E. Paul, who reveal that and much more in their massive 2,260-page biography of Flynn entitled The Nature Faker: William S. Flynn, Golf Architect. Credit Gil Hanse with restoring the bunkers without the aid of those Flynn plans. Instead, he used old aerial photographs. Kittansett has been ranked on Golf Digest's list of America's 100 Greatest Courses since 1971.
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Photographed by Dom Furore at Arcadia Bluffs in Michigan.
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Dom Furore
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Nile Young Photography/Courtesy of Arcadia Bluffs GC
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Nile Young Photography/Courtesy of Arcadia Bluffs GC
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Photo courtesy of Arcadia Bluffs
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Nile Young Photography/Courtesy of Arcadia Bluffs GC
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Nile Young Photography/Courtesy of Arcadia Bluffs GC
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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Laurence Lambrecht
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Laurence Lambrecht
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Laurence Lambrecht
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Laurence Lambrecht
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Laurence Lambrecht
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Laurence Lambrecht
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Derek Duncan
This is Herbert Fowler's most engaging 18-hole design. Routed on an isthmus in the Atlantic on Cape Cod, with each nine looping out and back along the ocean’s edge, the course’s rugged topography was splendidly used to pose challenges in stance, lie and depth perception. It’s golf’s equivalent of a spine-tingling, neck-twisting roller coaster ride along a waterfront. If you come upon a flat lie at Eastward Ho!, it’s likely a tee box, a fact that can put some golfers off who lack a sense of humor and appreciation for links golf. Keith Foster’s renovation in the early 2000s made giant strides in uncovering the spectacular landscape through serious tree removal, and in 2024 Kyle Franz took Eastward Ho! over the finish line by opening up the remaining sightlines, expanding fairways so the ball runs as much laterally as propels forward, reclaimed over 28,000 square feet of green surface, and introduced open sandscapes that hide cart paths and alleviate the search for balls in the fescue roughs. The most striking change is the expansion of the front of the green at the par-3 fourth hole to create a staggering Biarritz putting surface, one of the most majestic in the world.
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
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Dom Furore
Sheep Ranch began life as a different Sheep Ranch in the early 2000s, a rag-tag, cross-country, 13-hole course with no irrigation built by Tom Doak on a bluff just north of what would later become Old Macdonald. It was a little-used recreation that only insiders knew about. Mike Keiser tapped Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw to convert it into Bandon Dunes’ fifth regulation 18-hole course and Coore and Crenshaw’s second. Spread across an open, windswept plateau, using many of the same greensites, Coore managed to triangulate the holes in such a way that nine now touch the cliff edge along the Pacific Ocean. Extremely wide fairways, large putting surfaces and sandless bunkers allow the exposed course to be playable in extreme winds. Though it's slipped behind its Bandon brethren in the rankings, Sheep Ranch nevertheless accomplishes the most difficult of feats for resort courses—distinction among equals.
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Courtesy of Jon Cavalier
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Courtesy of the club
Prodded by his partner, Bruce Charlton, and their then-design associate Jay Blasi, veteran architect Robert Trent Jones Jr. agreed to a radically different, vertical-links style when building Chambers Bay in an abandoned sand quarry near Tacoma. By the time Golf Digest named it as America’s Best New Public Course of 2008, the course had already been awarded the 2010 U.S. Amateur and 2015 U.S. Open. In the Amateur, Chambers Bay proved to be hard, both in the firmness of its dry fescue turf (Jones called his fairways “hardwood floors”) and its difficulties around and on the windswept greens. For the U.S. Open, the firmness and surrounds were more manageable, but the greens were notoriously bumpy. That’s now been remedied, as the fescue turf on the putting surfaces has been replaced with pure Poa Annua. What's irreplaceable are the views of Puget Sound from nearly every hole, multi-level fairways that entice bold driving to gain second-shot advantages and two holes running parallel to a railway that invokes feelings of early Scottish and Irish links courses.
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Evan Schiller
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Evan Schiller
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Evan Schiller
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Evan Schiller
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Courtesy of Jon Cavalier
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Courtesy of Jon Cavalier
When it was conceived in the early 1920s, The Creek was considered “The Million Dollar Club” because of the wealth of its exclusive membership. The line that writer Royal Cortissoz wrote upon its 1923 opening remains true today: “The distinctive character of this course lies in its range.” It opens with holes framed by trees, mainly lindens that line the entry drive, then moves onto a bluff that overlooks Long Island Sound. At the turn, holes play adjacent to the shore, offering fresh takes on two of C.B. Macdonald’s most exciting template holes. The 10th, a dogleg along the sea, is his version of the Leven (of Lundin Links in Scotland), while the 11th is not just a Biarritz green, but an island Biarritz green. Other Macdonald favorites are also at The Creek, including the Eden, Redan and Short.
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Manele, previously called The Challenge at Manele, unseated Kapalua’s Plantation course as the highest-ranked public course in Hawaii several years ago. Now the course, located on the southern coast of Lanai, has the votes to make it eligible for the 100 Greatest and Second 100 Greatest rankings as well, buoyed by an Aesthetics score that regularly ranks among the top 30 in the U.S. The Nicklaus design is worthy of high praise. It has three ocean-cove holes, including the par-3 12th and dogleg-right par-4 17th. You might argue Manele has been perpetually underranked, starting with its finish on Golf Digest’s ranking of Best New Resort Courses in 1994, well behind World Woods’ Pine Barrens course (now known as the Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms), which is currently 50th on our 100 Greatest Public. It’s hard to argue it’s underranked now.
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
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Jon Cavalier
Pete Dye and his son P.B. did the early routing of Secession, but when they left in a dispute with the developer, Bruce Devlin, a PGA Tour veteran who’d previously designed courses with Robert von Hagge, stepped in and finished something much in keeping with the then-prevailing Dye philosophy of low-profile architecture. Greens were set at ground grade, protected by low humps and pot bunkers with vertical stacked-sod faces. True to his Australian (New South Wales) roots, Devlin also left open the front of the greens for running approach shots. The site itself is a peninsula in a marsh, with several holes on individual islands. Secession demands a complete game, both aerial and ground, particularly in steady ocean breezes.
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courtesy of Sea Island
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Ocean Forest occupies one of the premier oceanside settings on the East Coast. Originally designed by Rees Jones, the fairways laterally traverse the site’s interior pines, skirting marshes and breaking out in memorable moments to the shore of the broad Hampton River inlet before finishing along the Atlantic Ocean at 17 and 18. The course had been ranked among America’s 100 Greatest for 12 years, then a fixture among our top 200 courses nationally (and in the top six in Georgia). But by 2023, it was in need of updates and revisions, so the club opted to have Beau Welling initiate some major changes. The main order of business was to try to better connect the formerly perched-up green sites to the low, rambling terrain to be more accessible for members, enlarging them in the process. Welling also removed most of the Bermuda roughs and added open sandscapes along the holes to emulate the beach atmosphere, reconceived the par-3 17th on the water and elevated the 18th fairway so the ocean was visible above the dune line. The alterations combine to give the architecture a stronger seaside character that’s on par with the magical property.
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USGA/Russell Kirk
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Courtesy of Evan Schiller
Kiawah Island Club’s Cassique Course (pronounced kah-SEEK) was created by Hall of Famer Tom Watson and his crew from old farm fields along the tidal marshes of the Kiawah River. As a five-time Champion Golfer of the Year, Watson wanted his design to demand the “touch, feel and imagination” of links-style golf, so he framed most holes with choppy faux dunes, rumpled the fairways and installed some of his favorite links features: a burn a la Turnberry, Carnoustie-inspired Spectacles and a Hell Bunker from St. Andrews. With the front nine in open land and the back nine among trees, Cassique poses bump-and-run opportunities everywhere, and even has a couple of blind shots.
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Courtesy of Evan schiller
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Courtesy of Evan Schiller
Bayonne Golf Club and its neighbor Liberty National Golf Club were built at the same time, part of a massive transformation of the Jersey shoreline along the Hudson River and New York Harbor. Bayonne was built on an old sanitary landfill covered with seven million cubic yards of fill, much of it dredged from the harbor to make the channel deep enough for supertankers. The deposits were piled up to 10 stories high, which developer-designer Eric Bergstol then shaped into towering faux sand dunes. The course is an ode to Irish links, with no trees, cart paths or level lies. Fairways flow down narrow valleys, edged by steep slopes laden with tall, wavy fescues. Bunkers are deep and often fearsome. A few greens sit right above the harbor, and all putting surfaces have confounding humps, bumps and rolls. Tucked away down a bumpy, unpaved road past a strip mall in blue-collar Bayonne, N.J., is this private, walking-only enclave.
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Courtesy of Evan Schiller
Like Bayonne Golf Club to the south, Liberty National Golf Club was a reclamation project, a super-expensive Superfund clean-up of New York harbor, replacing a putrid assortment of oil refineries and storage tanks with an intriguing combination of green grass and golden rough. By spreading 2 million cubic yards of fresh soil over the capped toxic wastes, architect Bob Cupp and pro-consultant Tom Kite started building something meant to be a major tournament venue. It has narrow bent-grass fairways, just 25 to 27 yards wide, and tiny, flawless bent-grass greens, averaging just 3,400 square feet. With several hundred mature hardwoods transplanted along the fairways, a couple of rock-lined streams edging greens and winding cart paths fashioned from brick, Liberty National looks like what Central Park might be if it were a golf course Liberty National sits just three miles southwest of the tip of Manhattan, so the views of the NYC skyline, and the Statue of Liberty, are tremendous.
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Jon Cavalier
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Torrey Pines sits on one of the prettiest golf course sites in America, atop coastal bluffs north of San Diego with eye-dazzling views of the Pacific. Rees Jones’ remodeling of the South Course in the early 2000s not only made the course competitive for the 2008 U.S. Open (won by Tiger Woods in a playoff over Rocco Mediate), but it also brought several coastal canyons into play for everyday play, especially on the par-3 third and par-4 14th. An annual PGA Tour stop, Torrey Pines received another boost by Jones prior to hosting its second U.S. Open in 2021, this one won by Jon Rahm.
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Stephen Szurlej
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Photo by Stephen Szurlej
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The Sea Island resort continues to credit famed British golf architect H.S. Colt for its Seaside design, but in truth, it was never purely Colt's design. It was the work of Colt's partner, Charles Alison, who traveled to the U.S. and beyond in the 1920s and 30s while Colt remained in England. But the Seaside Course isn't even Alison's anymore—it is purely Tom Fazio, who incorporated Alison's original Seaside nine (today's 10-18) along with a nine (the Marshland Nine) designed in 1974 by Joe Lee, to create a totally new 18-hole course. But in keeping with the resort’s heritage, Fazio styled his new course in the design fashion of Alison, with big clamshell bunkers, smallish putting surfaces and exposed sand dunes off most of the windswept fairways. The Seaside Course has hosted numerous USGA championships and has been a mainstay on the PGA Tour schedule.
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Mauna Kea Resort
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Courtesy of Mauna Kea Beach Hotel
The immediate thrill at Mauna Kea is its iconic par-3 third, a daunting tee shot over an ocean cove that’s a great substitute for those unable to gain an invitation to tackle the 16th at Cypress Point. The remaining holes at Mauna Kea are thrilling, too, with constant views of the ocean, awkward lies on sloping fairways and roughs of crunchy lava rock. A decade ago, Rees Jones updated his father’s original work by relocating and redesigning all the bunkers. They now add to Mauna Kea’s beauty.
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Country Club of Fairfield has a topsy-turvy design history. Seth Raynor did the original design, but the clubhouse was never built where Raynor intended it, nor was an island par-4 shown on his original plan. In the mid-1920s, A.W. Tillinghast visited the course and sketched out a new fourth through sixth holes around a lagoon, which were subsequently built. Robert Trent Jones was hired in 1960 to install a practice range. To accommodate it, Trent sacrificed the old par-4 18th. He also rearranged several other holes, all of which were built under the supervision of Trent’s friend, architect Geoffrey Cornish. Cornish made further alterations in the 1980s. In the early 2000s, Tom Doak was hired to re-establish Raynor greens and bunkering style, turning most of the work over to his restoration expert, Bruce Hepner. Now on his own, Hepner is the club’s current consulting architect, and he has done a noble job instilling the Raynor look and feel to a routing that’s hardly Raynor anymore.
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Courtesy of the club
This is the definition of a great classic hidden gem with an original design by Donald Ross and later work done by Seth Raynor. The compact routing makes great use of land movement and boasts challenging green complexes. The fabulous inland holes include the tremendous 165-yard Volcano hole at the eighth. The back 9 plays in and around lowland marshy areas and has a flat but great collection of holes where you navigate in and around the marshlands.
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Though architecturally it might rank behind its neighbors on the Big Island, Nanea and Kuki'o, the experience at Kohanaiki is up there with any other in Hawaii. Built on a 450-acre site with opulent homes selling for as much as $30 million and as little as $3 million, this Rees Jones design features a thrilling stretch along the ocean from Nos. 12 to 16. Fairways are firm and fast and typically offer playable routes off the tee for a range of players, though challenging, fast greens with significant slopes offer a strategic test for the better player. Kohanaiki scores highly in the Fun category, and though comfort stations are not a part of our course rankings, having one of them after each nine—plus an on-site brewery, a wine-tasting room, personal wine lockers for members and a whiskey room—makes this a top-notch experience for guests and members.
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According to Ted Kennedy Jr., Hyannisport Club’s golf course was what convinced his grandfather, Joseph P. Kennedy, to establish his family’s summer getaway in the seaside town on the southern tip of Cape Cod. Less than a mile away from the Kennedy Compound, the course was originally designed by Alex Findlay and later redesigned by Donald Ross in 1936. Hyannisport has been the home course of the Kennedys, including President John F. Kennedy, who was photographed playing the course during his presidency. Tipping out at under 6,300 yards, Hyannisport is quite short by modern standards, but the coastal breeze can play a significant factor. Many holes play along the marshlands on the Nantucket Sound, presenting both scenic and strategic value. The club maintains a small membership by invite only, but if you’re fortunate enough to get a tee time, enjoy the charming stroll around JFK’s summer escape.
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