Best golf courses near Panama City Beach, FL

It takes vision to build a good golf course on a flat property, especially one with little variation in trees or landscape. It takes courage to build one without resorting to digging out lakes or creating big manmade features to dress up the site. Mark and Davis Love III, along with lead architect Scot Sherman, showed both at The Third, the third course at the large Watersound development in Northwest Florida. Located just north of the Shark’s Tooth course in an enclave west of Panama City Beach, The Third plays in isolation through corridors of a flat pine forest that could easily turn a round into a monotonous one if not handled creatively.The designers played their hand smartly by allowing the golf rather than eye candy to do the talking through broad, fast-running fairways and intriguing green complexes, some perched above roll offs and others playing at fairway grade. Everything is low-profile and simplified without unnecessary adornment, just tees, attractive bunkers and greens. The tight turf makes the game surprisingly links-like—you need to pick your line and hit it, and most putting surfaces set up for bouncing shots. That’s not to say The Third without its own kind of flair. Features like the Biarritz-inspired putting surface at the par-4 seventh or the wavy, 50-yard-deep green at the par-3 14th where hole locations can vary four clubs keep attention locked in.

Shark's Tooth fits nicely into the oeuvre of Greg Norman's Florida work. The course is located on the banks of Lake Powell just west of Panama City Beach and east of Highway 30A, with five holes that play along the marshy shore. Its design features the Shark's trademark wall-to-wall fairway cut, bright white bunkers that jut into the line of play, crushed coquina shell transition areas and slick-shouldered greens that fade into close-cropped chipping swales.

Located along the popular and stylish Highway 30A section of northwest Florida, Camp Creek is available to play for guests staying in the WaterColor and WaterSound communities. An underated course in the Fazio portfolio, the design explores several ecosystems including a sand and dunes section near the breezy Gulf Coast, holes that play around a series of internal lakes and a forest loop on the northside of the property with some of the course's best holes, including the reachable par-5 12th with a centerline bunker awaiting second shots, the short par-4 13th playing up to a tabletop green, the gorgous downhill par-3 14th nestled against water and the long, stout par-4 15th with a large, wavy green.

The only Jack Nicklaus design in Northwest Florida, Bay Point Golf Club takes you on a trip along St. Andrews Bay and through a marshland wildlife sanctuary.