Advertisement
Courses
Guides
SIGN UP
Guides

The best golf courses in Maryland

By Stephen Hennessey and Derek Duncan
May 29, 2025
Save for later

You don't have to travel far to get to the very best golf in Maryland. Eleven of the top 12 courses are in the 35-mile corridor between Baltimore and Washington D.C., including No. 1 Congressional Blue. The Blue has long been the state's top-ranked course but its lead has increased following a major redesign by Andrew Green in 2020 (it won the Golf Digest Best Transformation award in 2021), and since then has jumped in the America’s 100 Greatest Courses from No. 91 to No. 67.

The four courses not located in the corridor are worth the drive for their distinctive designs. Bulle Rock in Havre de Grace east of Baltimore is one of Pete Dye's best non-resort affiliated public courses with a lovely core design. Four Streams, in the countryside northeast of Bethesda, is a stout player's course from Steve Smyers and Nick Price with sweeping cape and bay bunkers. The Links at Perry Cabin is a late-career Dye design that roams through a community near the banks of the state's eastern bay, and the U.S. Naval Academy course in Annapolis makes a debut after a 2019 renovation by Andrew Green and currently sits at No. 13 in the state.

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
America's 100 Greatest Golf Courses

Below you'll find our 2025-'26 ranking of the Best Golf Courses in Maryland.

Scroll on for the complete list of the best courses in Maryland. 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 … so you can make your case for (or against) any course that you've played.

false Public
15. Whiskey Creek Golf Club
Ijamsville, MD
3.9
11 Panelists
Previous rank: 15
Whiskey Creek Golf Club in Ijamsville is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Maryland. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
View Course
false Public
14. Links At Perry Cabin
Saint Michaels, MD
3.8
6 Panelists
Previous rank: 14

From Golf Digest Architecture Emeritus Ron Whitten:

In 2015, when Pete Dye started work on Links at Perry Cabin, he had no idea that soon after his approval of the contours of its last green, he’d be forced into involuntary retirement by the cruelest aspect of the aging process, the dissipation of one’s memory. His fans should know that the 93-year-old Hall of Famer remains creative to the end.

Though he has routed 18s in northern Florida and Indiana that others are now building, this is his final full design, from start to finish. It opened last year and is accessible to guests of The Inn at Perry Cabin in St. Michaels, Md., about an hour outside Annapolis.

Assisted by his younger son, P.B., Pete transformed a low-profile 1971 collaboration with brother Roy, replacing it with a far more dynamic creation.

Though it’s not meant to be the “best of Dye,” there’s no mistaking its inspirations. The diagonal fourth green—with its right half racing downhill and to the right—brings to mind Pete’s 13th at Crooked Stick.

Explore our complete review here—including bonus photography and ratings from our expert panelists.

View Course
false Private
13. U.S. Naval Academy Golf Club
Annapolis, MD
3.9
7 Panelists
Previous rank: 13
Located across the Severn River from the Naval Academy in Annapolis, the U.S. Naval Academy course received a significant boost in variety and complexity following a 2019 renovation from Andrew Green. The course has a rich heritage, designed by William Flynn in the 1920s, but the holes had become worn down and simplified, with lackluster bunkers and small, tilted greens. Green rebunkered the course as Flynn might have, adding over 20 of them in enlarged, more shapely forms. He also removed unnecessary trees and expanded fairways and greens to capture more playing angles and hole locations. A major improvement.
View Course
false Private
12. Four Streams
Beallsville, MD
4
8 Panelists
Previous rank: 10
Four Streams in Beallsville is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Maryland. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
View Course
false Private
11. TPC Potomac At Avenel Farm
Potomac, MD
3.7
6 Panelists
Previous rank: 12
TPC Potomac At Avenel Farm is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Maryland. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
View Course
false Private
10. Woodmont Country Club: South
Rockville, MD
4.1
11 Panelists
Previous rank: NR
Since it first opened as a nine-hole amenity in the early 1950s, Woodmont South (it was expanded to 18 a few years later) has been the club's shorter, sportier course compared to the more robust North, ranked fifth in Maryland. That all changed following a 2023 remodel by architect Joel Weiman, who transformed the course into a Melbourne Sand Belt/American prairie hybrid by recontouring every green and surrrounding them with expanses of tight turf, building Australian-style bunkers with sharp lips that cut toward the edges of putting surfaces and introducing native grass buffers throughout the course. He also found additional length, taking the championship tees to over 7,000 yards. No longer the "other" course, the South more than holds its own in distinctiveness, not just against the North, but against most other designs in the region.
View Course
false Public
9. Bulle Rock Golf Course
Havre de Grace, MD
4.2
12 Panelists
Previous rank: 9
This great course is built on the old Blenheim Farm, which had been the home of many thoroughbred race horses. Indeed, Bulle Rock is named for a direct descendant of the very first thoroughbred stud brought to America. Pete Dye's bold design spreads over 275 acres, with no homesites or amenities other than golf. Besides being named America's Best New Upscale Public Course of 1998, Bulle Rock hosted the LPGA Championship from 2005 through 2009.
View Course

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
America's 100 Greatest Public Courses
false Private
8. Columbia Country Club
Chevy Chase, MD
4.3
12 Panelists
Previous rank: 8
Columbia Country Club in Chevy Chase is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Maryland. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
View Course
false Private
7. Congressional Country Club: Gold
Bethesda, MD
3.7
6 Panelists
Previous rank: 6
Congressional Country Club's Gold Course in Bethesda is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Maryland. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
View Course
false Private
6. Chevy Chase Club
Chevy Chase, MD
4.2
11 Panelists
Previous rank: 7
The original nine holes laid out at Chevy Chase Club outside Washington D.C. by Willie Davis in 1896 were expanded to 18 two years later, most likely by club professional Willie Tucker. Donald Ross, quite early in his career, remodeled those holes in 1910. This course existed until 1921 when British architect C.H. Alison, longtime partner of Harry Colt, redesigned the course once again, with the construction overseen by another esteemed architect, William Flynn, and his partner, Howard Toomey. Robert Trent Jones made alterations in 1947, and Arthur Hills executed another full renovation in 1997. When Andrew Green was hired to restore the course, the question was: to what iteration? Ultimately Green and the club focused on the Alison presentation of Chevy Chase using early 1930s aerial photography as the touchstone for reconstruction. But the team was also intrigued by elements from other eras, including linear mounding and raised grassy berms from the turn of the century identifiable from other photographs. The $18-million revamped design opened in 2025 with Alison-inspired bunkers, larger and more contoured greens, wider playing spaces and a new par 3, the 15th, created as an homage to the no-longer-in-existence par-3 10th that was sacrificed in the 1990s to make room for tennis facilities. Chevy Chase stands out as one of the middle Atlantic’s best iterations of early 1920s architecture.
View Course
false Private
5. Woodmont Country Club: North
Rockville, MD
4
7 Panelists
Previous rank: 5
Woodmont Country Club's North Course in Rockville is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Maryland. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
View Course
false Private
4. Burning Tree Club
Bethesda, MD
4
5 Panelists
Previous rank: 4
Burning Tree is one of golf’s most exclusive jaunts. The club remains all-male—the story goes that a foursome of golfers fed up with slow play by a female group at Chevy Chase founded their own men’s-only club, and it’s remained that way. It’s an enclave of politicians past and present—with a former member list that includes presidents such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, Richard Nixon and George H.W. Bush. There are no tables in the grill room—just long benches where you sit next to other members and their guests, regardless of political affiliation. The golf course is unique, too, boasting a C.H. Alison routing that includes some fun variety, despite all but one hole doglegging left to right. Alison produced a variety in the form of bunker and green complexes, which have been renovated in recent years by Gil Hanse.
View Course

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
America's Second 100 Greatest Golf Courses
false Private
3. Caves Valley Golf Club
Owings Mills, MD
4.2
11 Panelists
Previous rank: 3
To compare the present Caves Valley against that which was originally built in the early 1990s is to recognize how much Tom Fazio has felt obligated to adjust his courses to today’s club and ball technology. Back in 1991, the opening hole was a dogleg-left with a trap at the turn. Today, it has four bunkers framing the landing area. The par-5 third had just two “buffer bunkers” along a lake to the right to stop high-handicap slices from landing in the drink. Those buffers are still there, but so too are three enormous bunkers down the left, stretching over 300 yards from the back tee. And so it is all the way around Caves Valley. There are now target bunkers mainly in play for big hitters and frontal bunkers at several greens to force pin-seekers to throw it in the air. Caves Valley is a players’ club, and one remains a player only by being constantly challenged during a round.
View Course
false Private
2. Baltimore Country Club: East
Lutherville Timonium, MD
4.5
26 Panelists
Previous rank: 2
The East Course at Baltimore Country Club, also known as the Five Farms Course, was one of many outstanding A.W. Tillinghast designs nationally ranked for decades by Golf Digest. Still, even jewels need polishing now and then. The club brought in Keith Foster, perhaps the most modest of modern-day course architects. He chooses to work solely on restorations, no more than two at a time, and declines to self-promote. At Baltimore Country Club, Foster removed trees (which nearly everyone is doing these days), rebuilt greens to make them manageable with today’s green speeds, re-established Tillinghast’s bunkering, regrassed everything and brought back sparkle to the East Course. The par-3s here rank among the best Tillinghast built, as does the stretch run from the par-5 14th to the strong par-3 17th.
View Course
false Private
1. Congressional Country Club: Blue
Bethesda, MD
4.6
30 Panelists
Previous rank: 1
Congressional's Blue Course has been an icon of traditional American parkland golf since the 1964 U.S. Open. Prior to that event, Robert Trent Jones combined nine remodeled Devereux Emmet holes with nine new ones of his own to create the modern Blue, and those holes were remodeled and reshaped several times by his son Rees for the 1997 and 2011 Opens. All the while, the trees around them matured, creating dense, shadowy corridors of wood. Drainage issues and declining course conditions motivated the membership to considier a major overhaul in 2020, and that's what they received when architect Andrew Green reimagined the course as something that Emmet might have originally designed. This denudes the property of its forests and creates broad, rollicking fairways that tumble through meadows of long fescue punctuated by fearsome bunkers and bold, segmented greens. Parkland Golf Congressional is no more, and the remodel, which included a new, drop-shot par-3 10th hole, earned the course our Best Transformation award for 2021 and a jump of 18 spots in that year's ranking of America's 100 Greatest Courses. Congressional's Blue course then climbed another five spots in this year's ranking, emphatically reversing a trend of the course nearly slipping out of our 100 Greatest.
View Course

More From Golf Digest

Golf Digest Logo
Our Complete Ranking of the Best Golf Courses in Every State

• • •

Explore Golf Digest's new Course Reviews section where you can submit a star rating and evaluation on all the courses you’ve played. We've collected tens of thousands of reviews from our course-ranking panelists to deliver a premium experience, which includes course rankings, experts' opinions, bonus course photography, videos and much more. Check it out here!

Share story

Trending Now