Best golf courses near New York City

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.

In a crowded northern New Jersey golf market, Knickerbocker Country Club’s trajectory continues to rise as the club improves its golf course and amenities. The past 15-20 years have seen a steady restoration and tree removal program—first by Ron Forse in 2007 and 2008 and current transformation being done by Jaeger Kovich of Proper Golf and overseen by superintendent Kyle Hillegass. The routing is a fantastic mix of strategy and heroic design—testing ball control into some of the most sloped greens in the state. The ultra-slick Donald Ross/Herbert Strong greens are some of the most varied putting complexes you’ll see—like the par-3 sixth hole, which is part reverse-redan, part tidal wave rising from left to right—meaning errant tee shots or poor approach putts often lead to auto-bogeys. Nearby clubs like Ridgewood, Hackensack and Arcola might garner more attention, but Knickerbocker is a great private club with a fantastic pool and other amenities.

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.

Bally's Golf Links Ferry Point, formerly Trump Ferry Point, is a Jack Nicklaus, John Stanford and Jim Lipe design that sits atop an old NYC trash dump. Ferry Point opened in 2014 and debuted at No. 95 on our 2017-18 100 Greatest Public ranking. It's currently ranked 39th on our Best in New York list. Reports estimate the cost of the Bronx links to be near $127 million.