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    Golf Digest Logo Best Affordable

    Why we see hope with affordable public golf

    Green fee prices keep climbing—but these 6 lower-priced courses might reveal a promising trend
    January 17, 2025
    Dustin Gilder

    Future generations will look back from 2015 to 2025, a period that is likely to extend longer still, as one of the most fertile, creative and lucrative eras in the history of golf course development and renovation. Far-flung sites throughout the United States that would have never been considered for development are now home to some of the most adventurous and attractive golf courses ever created, including places like Ohoopee Match Club, CapRock Ranch, Gamble Sands, Congaree, the courses at Sand Valley, Cabot Cliffs, Landmand, and a spate of private destination courses just now coming online. This coincides with a renovation and restoration renaissance of historic private clubs with $20 to $30 million budgets.

    What future generations won’t laud this period for is the widespread care and development of affordable golf. As private clubs new and old break geographic and financial barriers, a relatively constant if not shrinking number of municipal and public courses continue to serve the needs of the vast majority of the golfing public.

    While there have been some rays of light in the affordable public golf arena—Papago Golf Club in Phoenix, Belmont Golf Course in Richmond, Francis Byrne in Essex County, N.J., Winter Park 9 near Orlando—too often it is up to cities and counties with limited resources to upkeep and expand their golf options. As the rich get richer, the rest of us make the best of what we’ve got.

    It's too soon to know if there’s tangible movement toward a revival of affordable public golf, at least on any kind of meaningful scale, but we were encouraged in 2024 to see more than a few courses that qualify as affordable open or reopen after significant renovations. For the first time since 2007 we are pleased to revive the category of Best Affordable New or Remodeled Course. “Affordable” is somewhat of a subjective target in 2025, but these courses can all be played in some capacity for $79 or less, and most are in the $30-to-$50 range.

    We hope this is a Best New category that grows in the coming years.

    Additional write-ups and photos on every candidate can be found on each of the additional pieces of content. Plus, explore each course review page and leave reviews on the courses you've played to have your ratings featured on our pages.

    Best New or Remodeled Affordable Courses

    Explore our brand-new course reviews experience with individual course pages for bonus photography, drone footage and expanded reviews of top international courses and all 17,000-plus courses in the United States. Post your own ratings for courses you’ve played … and tell us where it should be ranked.

    1. Wellman Club
    Dustin Gilder
    Public
    1. Wellman Club
    Johnsonville, SC
    3.4
    9 Panelists
    Everyone loves an underdog, especially when it’s mixed with a revival story. Golfers once teemed over the holes of Wellman Golf Course, a simple but lovely Ellis Maples and Ed Seay hidden gem from the late 1960s located in the rural South Carolina town of Johnsonville, an hour west of Myrtle Beach. But with a population of just over 1,000, there weren’t enough local players to keep the business running following the 2009 recession, and the owners filed for bankruptcy in 2010. Eventually the city purchased the closed course and hired Rees Jones and longtime associate Bryce Swanson to remodel the layout, which reopened in 2024 as the rebranded Wellman Club. Jones described the land as closer to Pinehurst than to Myrtle Beach, and the holes flow through corridors of pines into enlarged greens and more consequential bunkering. Two par 3s play across ponds, and the par-5 11th boomeranging around a lake is a doppelganger of the par-5 13th at The Dunes 50 miles east, one of mid-century golf’s most famous holes designed by Jones’ father, Robert Trent Jones. Wellman symbolizes the resilience of golf in small towns and has become a sort of community gathering space, as well as a worthwhile stopover for anyone passing nearby.
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    2. Bobby Jones Golf Club: Main Course
    Richard Mandell Golf Architecture
    Public
    2. Bobby Jones Golf Club: Main Course
    Sarasota, FL
    3.6
    5 Panelists
    The original 18 holes at this affordable public facility in Sarasota were designed by Donald Ross in 1926 and first called Sarasota Municipal Golf Course. The following year the course was renamed Bobby Jones Golf Course. New nines were later added in the 1950s and 1960s, and these were each coupled with one nine from the Ross course to create what were known as the American and British courses. In the late 2010s, the city of Sarasota embarked on a major re-imagining of the public property and hired architect Richard Mandell to restore the original core Ross 18, in large part based on old photos and Ross’s blueprints. The newer nines were converted into one of the largest practice facilities in the region compete with a wild Himalayas putting course, and the rest of the space reestablished as a nature area with walking and biking paths around a newly created chain of ponds. Mandell also revamped the 9-hole Gillespie short course, punching up the fun factor. The course is a great model for public golf, a walkable, spacious design with interesting green complexes and everything a player could want for game improvement.
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    3. The Links At Audubon
    Public
    3. The Links At Audubon
    Memphis, TN
    3.7
    6 Panelists
    This city of Memphis course first opened in the early 1950s during the first country’s first great post-World War II boom of municipal golf offering easy access and a simple but enjoyable layout for residents of all skill levels. As needs, golf popularity and economies changed through the decades, a new program was called for and the city and Memphis Parks hired Atlanta-based designer. Bill Bergin to reimagine what the Links at Audubon could represent for Memphis golfers. Bergin essentially designed a new course over the top of the old property, creating an entirely new 18-hole routing that makes more efficient use of the available land, filling empty space with original holes and converting an unused seven-acre parcel on the west side of the property into a flexible 10-acre practice range that will be used by both residents and the University of Memphis golf team. Bergin’s bunkering is sparse but impactful, forcing players to think through their plans for each hole, and the enlarged greens offer more nuance, more diverse recovery options and a variety of changing hole locations. The course reopened August of 2023.
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    4. Old Bridge Golf Club: The Rose
    4. Old Bridge Golf Club: The Rose
    Old Bridge, NJ
    3.4
    3 Panelists
    It’s rare that new courses are built in upstate New Jersey, even rarer when they’re public. Old Bridge, in Matawan, six miles south of Staten Island, is surprising in many ways. Designed by veteran New Jersey-based architect Stephen Kay, the course is fitted onto a tight property with wetland and environmental restrictions that limited the length (it plays just 6,500 yards) and the orientation of the holes that run mostly back and forth. But within this envelope—and within this densely populated region—there’s a sense of nature and relaxation, especially once the holes move into the woods in the back section of the property where the feeling of isolation is complete. Tall hardwoods, evergreens and the use of long fescue grasses along with the gentle rise and fall of the land give the impression you are out in the country on an older historic course, and a strong set of greens cut with distinct tiers and ridges bring the short game to life. Old Bridge is a welcome and needed addition to New Jersey public golf, and players are lucky to have a course of this caliber that can be walked for just $65 weekdays ($85 weekends).
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    5. Winnetka Golf Club: Regulation
    Public
    5. Winnetka Golf Club: Regulation
    Winnetka, IL
    2.3
    4 Panelists
    This affordable public course is located among a star-studded roster of neighbors in Chicago’s North Side, most of which are private clubs. The first holes are believed to date to 1917, with nine more added in the 1920s, set on a fairly flat, elongated property that forced the holes to be laid out in north-south directions. Though convenient and accessible, the course drained poorly and the city hired architect Rick Jacobson to renovate it with the principle goal of making it playable after rains and becoming a stormwater retention site for the surrounding community through the expansion of a series of connected lakes and canals that run through the site. Reopened in late summer 2024, Winnetka is more functional than before, and also more attractive due to new turf and Jacobson’s new bunkers that sit better into their surrounds and feature a less formal lacy edge.
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    6. Pines Crossing
    Russell Kirk
    Public
    6. Pines Crossing
    Auburn, AL
    3.1
    4 Panelists
    The first nine holes at Saugahatchee Country Club in eastern Alabama were built in 1947, and a second nine was added four years later. The city of Auburn and Opelika purchased the land from the club in 1976, renaming it Indian Pines, and have operated it as a municipal course ever since. Several years ago, the regional airport, which is adjacent to the course, announced a runway expansion that would impact four holes, necessitating a rerouting of the course to accommodate the lost acreage. Cue Auburn University alum and Atlanta-based architect Bill Bergin, who rejiggered the holes to fit into the new footprint. He found space to broaden fairways while injecting more character into the green complexes, including building new bunkers with raised grass faces, a Bergin favorite. He also found room for an expansive new practice range and short game area, and the whole project has been rebranded Pines Crossing with green fees ranging from just $25 to $55.
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