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    Golf Digest Logo Best in Every Country

    The best golf courses in the Dominican Republic

    By Stephen Hennessey and Derek Duncan
    September 16, 2024
    Playa Grande - 0416-GD-LIFE01-01-opener.jpg

    Playa Grande, recently acquired by Discovery Land Co., features 10 holes right along the Atlantic Ocean and underwent an extensive renovation by Rees Jones, whose father, Robert Trent Jones, designed the original course.

    Golf in the Dominican Republic started with Pete Dye’s Teeth of the Dog course at Casa de Campo. For years it was the gold standard of golf in the Caribbean with seven stunning holes running parallel to the ocean. The course was a sensation when it opened in the 1970s and keyed the golf world into the untapped potential of the island, specifically is 800 miles of coastline.

    Other upscale resorts now join Teeth of the Dog at the top of our rankings of the best courses in the Dominican Republic, each with a different take on how to present golf along the country’s sensational rocky shores and beaches.

    We urge you to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography, drone footage and expanded reviews. Plus, you can now leave your own ratings on the courses you’ve played … to make your case why your favorite should be ranked higher.

    Editor's Note: Our Best Courses in the Dominican Republic ranking is the first in our rollout of the Best Courses in Every Country. Check back over the next few weeks for more of our rankings of the best golf around the world.

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    10. La Estancia Resort: La Estancia
    Courtesy of the club
    10. La Estancia Resort: La Estancia
    La Romana, Dominican Republic
    Located on the other side of the Chavon River from Dye Fore at Casa de Campo, La Estancia possesses many of the same elements that make both courses adventurous. That should be no surprise as the architect, P.B. Dye, was cooking with the usual shopping list of Dye family ingredients, including a par-4 18th that curves around a lake in nearly the exact form as at TPC Sawgrass. But the site also offered plenty of unique strategic opportunities, and Dye took advantage of a long precipice on the interior side of the property to serve up some tasty drives that sail across ravines. The green at the superb par-5 12th hangs out over the vertiginous edge of forest and seems to have been embedded with a genetic code taken directly from the second or 16th holes at Whistling Straits.
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    9. Hard Rock Golf Club at Cana Bay: Hard Rock
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    9. Hard Rock Golf Club at Cana Bay: Hard Rock
    Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
    Sites not located on the beaches of the Dominican Republic lack the razzle-dazzle of those that are, but they can be evocative in other ways. The holes of this 2011 Jack Nicklaus design were carved from the island’s thick and low vegetation less than a mile inland from the sea to create a sense of peaceful isolation from one hole to the next. It adds up to a eye-catching voyage through the property’s jungles, with architectural highlights like cavernous waste areas carved into the stony earth and acres of short grass surrounding the sculpted greens.
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    8. Casa de Campo: La Romana
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    8. Casa de Campo: La Romana
    La Romana, Dominican Republic
    The Casa de Campo: La Romana course in La Romana is one of the best golf courses in Dominican Republic. Discover our experts' reviews here.
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    7. Casa de Campo: Links
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    La Romana, Dominican Republic
    The Casa de Campo: Links course in La Romana is one of the best golf courses in Dominican Republic. Discover our experts' reviews here.
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    6. Puntacana Resort & Club: La Cana
    6. Puntacana Resort & Club: La Cana
    Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
    Now a 27-hole complex, the original 18 holes opened in 2001 with the corridors carved out of what was then virgin jungle. The development has filled in around the course, and it no longer feels like an exotic voyage on a lost island—but the in-your-face architecture of designer P.B. Dye, son of the late Pete Dye who is responsible for so much of the golf DNA of the Dominican Republic, is no less exhilarating. Dye throws everything into La Cana—including the kitchen sink: buckshot pot bunkers; vast waste areas; a hole with over 20 bunkers and one with zero; bulkheaded hazards; and an island green surrounded by a moat of sand and a peninsula putting surface projecting over the beach and into the ocean.
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    5. Casa de Campo: Dye Fore
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    5. Casa de Campo: Dye Fore
    La Romana, Dominican Republic
    The Teeth of the Dog course at Casa de Campo wows players with seven holes strung over the beaches of the Caribbean. Dye Fore makes a similar impression stringing holes on forested bluffs high above the Chavon River. The original 18 holes, opened in 2003, came at the end of Pete Dye’s middle period when he was still building large format waste bunkers and greens with more pronounced movements (a third nine here, added in 2011, represents late Dye with smaller, more geometric bunkers recalling Seth Raynor, whose courses he observed playing throughout the Midwest in the 1950s and ‘60s, and putting contours with more micro-movements). The biggest moments come on the second nine of the original layout as holes 10, 11 and 14 cling to the edge of the gorge, setting up two of the country’s most exciting par 3s, 12 and 15, which hop over deep ravines toward greens cut precariously on the edge.
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    4. Playa Grande Golf Club: Playa Grande
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    Rio San Juan, Dominican Republic
    It’s common to compare courses that have holes on the ocean to Pebble Beach, the grandaddy of all oceanfront golf. Few, however, have as many similarities as Playa Grande, set on the quiet north coast of the island. To begin with, the course sits on rocky bluffs above the crashing waves the same way Pebble does. Ten holes at Playa Grande are perched on the ocean (nine fully, with the green of another set on the bluffs) versus nine at the California landmark (eight fully, with the 17th green touching the edge). Original architect Robert Trent Jones, designing the course in the mid-1990s, never had a more dramatic natural setting and hooked fairways around Stillwater-like coves and placed greens out on exposed peninsulas, creating some of the most sensational holes in the Caribbean. In the last decade, a change in ownership and a remodel by Trent Jones' son Rees Jones has enhanced Playa Grande’s status as one of the region’s top destinations.
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    3. Puntacana Resort & Club: Corales
    Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
    The Corales Course at this Dominican resort, home to the PGA Tour’s Corales Puntacana Championship, is one of the most scenic in the Caribbean sporting six greens perched near the rocky shore of the Atlantic Ocean. Opened in 2010, it’s one of the few courses Tom Fazio has built with ocean frontage—accustomed to creating stirring landscapes for his golf holes, he didn’t need to do much with the seaside frontage other than locate the greens and level out the land. The final three holes of each nine run along the coast, including a nifty short par 4 (No. 8) that, depending on the wind, can induce players to try and drive the green, two stern par 3s over water (nine and 17) and an option-rich par 4 that bends around a cove (18).
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    2. Casa de Campo: Teeth of the Dog
    Tony Arruza/Courtesy of Casa de Campo/The Leading Hotels of the World
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    2. Casa de Campo: Teeth of the Dog
    La Romana, Dominican Republic
    The Teeth of the Dog turned the Dominican Republic into a golf destination in 1971. Pete Dye rebuilt and updated the course several times, sometimes after hurricane damage and sometimes to fine tune the design. The routing is stunning, a clockwise front nine, counterclockwise back nine, with seven holes hunkered down on the ocean, no more than 20 feet above the surf. The sea is on the left on holes five through eight, on the right on holes 15 through 17. Every hole is unique and scenic. Former PGA Tour player Jerry Pate is overseeing comprehensive course upgrades beginning in 2024.
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    1. Punta Espada Golf Club
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    1. Punta Espada Golf Club
    Punta Cana, Dominican Republic
    Jack Nicklaus got his start in golf design working with Pete Dye, and his Punta Espada is a lively version of Dye's 1971 design of the Teeth of the Dog course (No. 54) farther down the Dominican coast, from the pot bunkers to the broad waste areas of brilliant white sand usually associated with Pete's work, as well as the low-profile greens and the eight green complexes right on the Caribbean shore. Punta Espada starts and finishes on the Caribbean and returns to it early in the back nine, with the awesome 249-yard, par-3 13th directly over an ocean cove.
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    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.

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