Best golf courses near Cleveland, OH

In doing golf course restoration work, golf architects have to be like ghost writers, doing the best work they can while burying their egos and desire for personal attention. Nobody does that better than Bruce Hepner, who has consistently enhanced other people’s architecture without complaint. Canterbury Golf Club had long been considered one of the greats, the site of several major championships, including the 1973 PGA Championship won by Jack Nicklaus. But when Hepner first toured the Herbert Strong design, he found it over-treed and overdue for a bunker renovation. So he rebuilt all bunkers to give them a consistent style and strategic purpose, and also addressed tree removal and forward tee expansion. “It will be a dramatic change for someone who hasn’t been there in a while,” he said when he had finished.

Just south of downtown Cleveland, Ridgewood is a 6,100-yard layout with generous fairways and large greens, some of which slope significantly from back to front. The course, which hosted the 1927 U.S. Amateur Public Links, offers weekday rates under $30.