Best golf courses near King Of Prussia, PA

Merion East has long been considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, and when it hosted the U.S. Open in 2013, its first since 1981, the present generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer this clever little course. They couldn’t consistently hit its twisting fairways, which are edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough and OB stakes and couldn’t consistently hold its canted greens, edged by bunkers that stare back. Justin Rose won with a 72-hole total of one-over-par, two ahead of Jason Day and Phil Mickelson. With Gil Hanse's extensive two-year renovation making even more improvements at Merion's East Course, the design should be even more polished when the Open returns again in 2030.

Philadelphia Cricket was Tillinghast’s home club in his early years as a golfer, so when he laid out a new course for the club in the early 1920s, he devoted special attention to it. Over the century, it aged. Greens shrank, bunkers eroded, trees grew (including one right through the roof of a clubhouse veranda). In 2008, Keith Foster was retained to restore the course to its Tillinghast glory, but a poor economy postponed the work until the summer of 2013. The Cricket is now faithful to Tilly once again, with trees removed and original greens and bunkers reclaimed, including the famed “Great Hazard” that must be carried on the par-5 seventh. As per his request, Tillinghast’s ashes were scattered in the Wissahickon Creek that crosses the 18th green.

Aronimink is an object lesson in architectural evolution. After Donald Ross completed his design in 1928, he proclaimed, “I intended to make this my masterpiece.” That didn’t keep club members from bringing in William Gordon in the 1950s to eliminate out-of-play fairway bunkers and move other bunkers closer to greens. The course was later revamped by Dick Wilson, George Fazio and Robert Trent Jones. In the 1990s and into the 2000s, Ron Prichard, one of the profession’s original restoration specialists, began returning Aronimink back to Ross’s conception based on the architect’s drawings and field diagrams. But there was always a discrepancy between what Ross drew in plans and what was actually built in 1928. A more recent renovation by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner, who live nearby, has put the course’s architecture more in line with what aerial photographs depict of the early design, particularly the bunkering that might have been imagined as larger in scale but built in smaller, more scatter-shot formations.

Applebrook Golf Club is one of the best golf courses in Pennsylvania. Discover our experts reviews and where Applebrook ranks in our latest rankings.