Best golf courses near Palm Coast, FL

This scenic Jack Nicklaus-designed South Florida track has six holes that play along the Atlantic Ocean, with a challenging four-hole finishing stretch nicknamed “The Bear Claw.” The course, which hosted the 2003 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links, is one of two at the resort and features a classic Nicklaus design: generous fairways and well-protected greens.

Hammock Beach is a Golf Digest Editors' Choice award-winning resort in Florida and has two of the best public courses in Florida: The first being the Tom Watson-designed Conservatory course, which is more inland than the Jack Nicklaus-designed Ocean course. The Conservatory course is not your typical Florida resort course—its roccco architecture is infused with British links-style features including steep mounding throughout and boasts elaborate stone work, waterfalls, streams, marshes, deep pot bunkers, waste areas and wave-like greens.

This design, one of two stellar courses at this club in Palm Coast and one of Rees Jones' favorites, is set in the dark interior of the Intracoastal Waterway marshes and plays like an animal leaping from one dry place to another over stretches of wetlands. Not for the feint of heart or weak of swing, it was an extreme effort to build and locate enough land to support golf, and the design roams far and wide to find just enough. But the journey is worth the effort due to holes like 13, 14 and 15 that feel like dancing on a highwire over the marsh, the latter hole being a gambling go-for-broke short par 4. Each of the par 3s, particularly seven, 12 and 16, require unflinching shots over swamp or water, with miss-hits reaching into the pocket for another ball.