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The best golf courses in Massachusetts

By Derek Duncan and Stephen Hennessey
May 29, 2025
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The two states that Donald Ross colored the most deeply with his architecture, and particularly with top-ranked courses, are North Carolina and Massachusetts, both serving as his home at different and overlapping portions of his career. In the case of Massachusetts, he is the architect for over one-third of the list, including three in the top 10: Essex County Club and Salem, both north of Boston, and Worcester.

Most of the state’s ranked courses are located in the eastern half around Boston, on the Cape, and on Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner are the architects of record for three ranked courses, Boston Golf Club, TPC Boston and Vineyard Golf Club (they're the consulting architects at six others, including Worcester, reopened in 2024 and moving up one spot to No. 9). Brian Silva has designed two (GreatHorse and Cape Cod National) and Rees Jones also has two (Sacconnesset and Nantucket). Only one course is from Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, No. 3 Old Sandwich (ranked 73rd nationally), though they stand to add another with the summer 2025 opening of the Pines Course at The International in Bolton, a complete reimagining of that club’s long, tough Geoff Cornish design from the 1960s.

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

Scroll on for the complete list of the best courses in Massachusetts. 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.

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30. The International: Oaks Course
Bolton, MA
Previous rank: NR
Architect Tripp Davis says this property outside of Boston, with its forested ambiance and rocky, rollercoaster terrain, demanded a more rugged look. That’s what he and shaper Jason Gold gave it, creating expanses of exposed sand and native grasses and bunker edges that look chewed upon. They also added width to the holes, expanded greens and moved tees to make for more meaningful shot options. The Oaks hosted a LIV Golf Invitational Series in 2022.
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29. Belmont Country Club
Belmont, MA
3.9
5 Panelists
Previous rank: 28
Belmont Country Club is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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28. Renaissance
Haverhill, MA
3.7
6 Panelists
Previous rank: NR
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27. Miacomet Golf Course
Nantucket, MA
4
5 Panelists
Previous rank: 26
Miacomet Golf Course on Nantucket is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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26. Sacconnesset Golf Club: Cape Cod
East Falmouth, MA
4.4
2 Panelists
Previous rank: 27
Sacconnesset Golf Club: Cape Cod in Falmouth is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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25. Cape Cod National Golf Club
Brewster, MA
4.3
7 Panelists
Previous rank: 20
Cape Cod National Golf Club in Brewster is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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24. Longmeadow Country Club
Longmeadow, MA
4.2
11 Panelists
Previous rank: 23
Longmeadow Country Club is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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23. Brae Burn Country Club: Main
West Newton, MA
3.8
10 Panelists
Previous rank: 21
Brae Burn Country Club's Main Course in West Newton is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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22. Vesper Country Club
Tyngsboro, MA
4.4
3 Panelists
Previous rank: 25
Vesper Country Club in Tyngsboro is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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21. Dedham Country and Polo Club
Dedham, MA
3.6
13 Panelists
Previous rank: 24
Dedham Country and Polo Club is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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20. GreatHorse
Hampden, MA
4.1
4 Panelists
Previous rank: 17
GreatHorse in Hampden is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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19. Vineyard Golf Club
Edgartown, MA
4.4
5 Panelists
Previous rank: 22
Vineyard Golf Club in Edgarton is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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18. Hyannisport Club
Hyannisport, MA
4.4
15 Panelists
Previous rank: 13
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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17. Nantucket Golf Club
Nantucket, MA
4.1
3 Panelists
Previous rank: 18
Nantucket Golf Club is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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16. Oyster Harbors Club
Osterville, MA
4.2
8 Panelists
Previous rank: 14
Oyster Harbors Club in Osterville is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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15. Charles River Country Club
Newton, MA
4.1
10 Panelists
Previous rank: 19
Charles River Country Club in Newton Centre is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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14. TPC Boston
Norton, MA
4
7 Panelists
Previous rank: 11
Gil Hanse's team completed renovation on the 12th and 13th holes at TPC Boston in 2017, completing a 10-plus-year project in which Hanse's team attempted to reestablish a New England-type style to the course. The course, which sits about 45 minutes from downtown Boston, was the longtime host of a FedEx Cup Playoff event on the PGA Tour.
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13. Taconic Golf Club
Williamstown, MA
Previous rank: 15
Taconic dates back to 1896 and is the home course of the Williams College men’s and women’s golf teams. Routinely ranked inside the top 15 on our Best in State rankings, Taconic, located in a quiet village in the northwest corner of Massachusetts, closer to Albany than Boston, is a challenging parkland layout with beautiful views of the surrounding mountains. It was designed and built in the 1920s by the architecture team of Wayne Stiles and John Van Kleek with undisturbed holes that fan out across a wooded property. The western Massachusetts gem has hosted three different USGA championships: the 1956 U.S. Junior Amateur, 1963 U.S. Women’s Amateur and 1996 U.S. Senior Amateur. Gil Hanse has been making restorative modifications here since 2008.
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12. Concord Country Club
Concord, MA
4.2
5 Panelists
Previous rank: 16
Concord Country Club is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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11. Winchester Country Club
Winchester, MA
4.4
10 Panelists
Previous rank: 12
Winchester Country Club in Winchester is ranked as one of the best golf courses in Massachusetts. Discover our experts' reviews and tee time information
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10. Salem Country Club
Peabody, MA
4.4
31 Panelists
Previous rank: 9
Salem was a mainstay on the Golf Digest ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses since the list’s inception in 1966, until falling off in 2005. Hoping to jolt the venerable Donald Ross-designed course into relevance, the club hired Eric Iverson to engage in a major, $3.5 million restoration of Ross’s bunkers that also included adjusting and adding tees, redefining fairway lines, increasing hole flexibility on the putting surfaces and taking down several hundred trees that had been choking many of the holes.
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9. Worcester Country Club
Worcester, MA
4.2
18 Panelists
Previous rank: 10
Massachusetts is ground zero for Donald Ross-designed courses (there have been over 50 nine- and 18-hole courses through the years), and Worcester is considered one of his best, the second highest ranked Ross in the state. The course opened in 1914 and hosted the 1925 U.S. Open, won by Willie MacFarlane, who beat Bobby Jones in a 36-hole playoff. It was also the site of the inaugural Ryder Cup two years later, in 1927, as well as the 1960 U.S. Women’s Open. The holes are routed over two distinct sections of the club’s property, each parcel roomy enough to let the holes spool out and breathe as they traverse lovely elevations and meadows of native grass. Over the past few years, architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner and their team have fine-tuned the design, paying close attention to the approaches of the greens and capturing lost edges and corners of the putting surfaces. They also cleared out some unnecessary trees, enlarged bunkers, and restored several bunkers that had been lost over the decades. Worcester’s naturally flowing holes didn’t need much work, but what has been done over has made the course stronger, more vivid, and more adamantly Ross.
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8. Sankaty Head Golf Club
Siasconset, MA
4.6
16 Panelists
Previous rank: 8
Some of America’s greatest golf courses were designed by first-time novices and non-architects: Merion, Oakmont, Pine Valley and Pebble Beach all fall into this category. Sankaty Head on the eastern edge of Nantucket Island does, too. It was built by a local amateur player named Emerson Armstrong, but judging by the circuitous routing and attractive bunkering (honed in recent years by Jim Urbina) that recalls some of Donald Ross’ best work, you’d be excused for assuming Armstrong had done this dozens of times. The roomy holes unfurl across open fields of fescue, riding the site’s swales and ridges like an English links. True to the inspiration, the greens are open in front to receive running shots played under the exacting Atlantic winds, and the collection of par-3s is about as tough and beautiful as it gets.
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7. Eastward Ho!
Chatham, MA
4.7
25 Panelists
Previous rank: 7
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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6. Boston Golf Club
Hingham, MA
4.5
15 Panelists
Previous rank: 6
Boston Golf Club, in the southern suburb of Hingham, is a modern-day Pine Valley, massaged by architect Gil Hanse and his team from dramatic coastal topography with gashes of unsullied sand. Fairways tumble across the landscape, posing some blind shots that are embraced, not criticized. One stretch surrounds an old strip mine, with mining spoils incorporated as chocolate-drop mounds. One vein of sand serves as a “Hell’s One-Third Acre” hazard. Like Garden City Golf Club, Boston finishes with a terrific par-3.
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5. The Kittansett Club
Marion, MA
4.6
27 Panelists
Previous rank: 5
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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4. Essex County Club
Manchester, MA
Previous rank: 4
Essex County Club is considered the first great Donald Ross design and perhaps his most intriguing. He wasn’t the original architect, but he served as its professional from 1909 to 1913 (until his design business became so lucrative he no longer needed the pro job) and lived on site, so he was able to tweak many holes. Ultimately, he returned to do a substantial remodeling in 1917. Unusual holes are the order of the day, from the flat opening six holes with fuzzy chocolate drops covered in tall fescue grasses to the blind shots, both uphill and downhill, on the back nine. The par-3 11th, with its green resembling the deck of a sinking ship, and the downhill par-4 18th, shaped like an S around small hills, are special. The club insists its third green, created in 1893 and preserved by Ross in his remodel, is the oldest green in continuous existence in America.
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3. Old Sandwich Golf Club
Plymouth, MA
4.6
16 Panelists
Previous rank: 3
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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2. Myopia Hunt Club
South Hamilton, MA
4.6
22 Panelists
Previous rank: 2
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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1. The Country Club: The Main Course
Brookline, MA
Previous rank: 1
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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