Course guide · United States
The Best Golf Courses in the US and What Each Is Known For
How many golf courses are in the US is a question with no settled answer, so this is five of them, chosen because each is known for something specific and checkable rather than for being generally admired. Four of the five can be played by anyone willing to pay the green fee. The fifth cannot be played at all, and it is on the list anyway.
How many golf courses are in the US
How many golf courses are in the US is the first question any ranking has to answer, and any list of the best golf courses in the US is a selection from a total nobody states the same way twice. The reason is definitional rather than sloppy. A golf facility may hold several courses; a nine-hole course counts as half an eighteen-hole equivalent in industry statistics but as one course in a directory; and private, resort and municipal courses are frequently tallied separately.
The consequence is that published totals for American golf differ by thousands depending on which unit is being counted. That is worth stating before any ranking, because a list of five drawn from one total is not the same claim as a list of five drawn from another, and it is the same definitional problem that makes the first golf course in America impossible to answer with a single date.
The five below are therefore not ranked. They are described, with what each is actually known for and whether a member of the public can play it.
| Course | Location | Opened | Holes | Access |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Spyglass Hill Golf Course | Pebble Beach, California | 1966 | 18 | Resort: publicly playable |
| Kiawah Island Golf Resort | Kiawah Island, South Carolina | 1976 | 90 | Resort: publicly playable |
| Treetops Resort | Gaylord, Michigan | 1987 | 81 | Resort: publicly playable |
| Grand Traverse Resort | Acme, Michigan | 1979 | 54 | Resort: publicly playable |
| Augusta National Golf Club | Augusta, Georgia | 1933 | 18 | Private: invitation only |
Spyglass Hill Golf Course
Spyglass Hill has a reputation among strong amateurs for being harder than the more famous course next door, and the reason is the first five holes. They run through open dune land exposed to wind off the Pacific; the remaining thirteen turn inland into the Del Monte Forest and play as a different course entirely, tight and tree-lined.
That split personality is what makes it a genuine test rather than a scenic one. A player who survives the exposed opening then has to reset for a completely different set of demands, and there is no gentle transition between the two.
| Location | Pebble Beach, California |
|---|---|
| Opened | 1966 |
| Holes | 18 |
| Access | Resort: publicly playable |
Known for: A Robert Trent Jones Sr. design that opens in the dunes and finishes in the forest, and one of the courses in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am rotation.
Kiawah Island Golf Resort
In 2010 the resort took 25th place in the 100 Greatest Golf Clubs in America ranking, a placement worth quoting with its year attached, because a ranking is a snapshot of a panel and not a property of the course. The resort spans five courses, but its reputation rests almost entirely on one. The Ocean Course has more seaside holes than any course in the northern hemisphere, and Pete Dye raised the fairways during construction specifically so that players would see the water from every one of them, a deliberate design decision rather than a happy accident of the site.
It is also, by common agreement among the professionals who have played it in wind, one of the hardest courses in the United States. The 1991 Ryder Cup contested here is the reason the venue is known outside golf at all.
| Location | Kiawah Island, South Carolina |
|---|---|
| Opened | 1976 |
| Holes | 90 |
| Access | Resort: publicly playable |
Known for: Its Ocean Course, a Pete Dye layout, staged the 1991 Ryder Cup and the PGA Championship in 2012 and again in 2021.
Treetops Resort
Treetops is the entry on this list that earns its place on breadth rather than on a single celebrated layout. Its six courses are the Fazio Premier, the Smith Signature, the Smith Tradition, the Smith Treetops, the Jones Masterpiece and The Himalayas, the last a par-three course rather than a full-length one.
Having three prominent architects working on adjacent land makes the resort unusually useful for anyone interested in course design, because the differences are attributable to the designer rather than to the terrain. The same rolling northern Michigan landscape produced three distinctly different sets of ideas about how to use it.
| Location | Gaylord, Michigan |
|---|---|
| Opened | 1987 |
| Holes | 81 |
| Access | Resort: publicly playable |
| Operator | Treetops Resort |
Known for: Eighty-one holes across six courses, with designs by Robert Trent Jones Sr., Tom Fazio and Rick Smith on one property.
Grand Traverse Resort
The resort runs three courses: The Bear, Spruce Run and Wolverine. The Bear, a Jack Nicklaus design, is the one with the reputation, and it has a specific one: severe terracing and deep bunkering that make it markedly harder than a resort course is normally expected to be.
Wolverine, designed by Gary Player, is the more forgiving of the two signature layouts, and Spruce Run is the shortest and the oldest. Between them the property covers a wide spread of difficulty on a single site, which is the practical argument for it.
| Location | Acme, Michigan |
|---|---|
| Opened | 1979 |
| Holes | 54 |
| Access | Resort: publicly playable |
| Operator | Grand Traverse City Golf Course |
Known for: Three courses, including The Bear by Jack Nicklaus and Wolverine by Gary Player.
Augusta National Golf Club
Augusta National belongs on any list of the best golf courses in the US and belongs there differently from the other four. It is not playable. Membership is by invitation, the club does not publish its roster, and the only reliable public access is as a ticketed spectator at the Masters.
That matters for a practical reason: descriptions of what it is like to visit Augusta National circulate widely and are mostly not first-hand. What can be stated confidently is architectural. Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts founded the club in 1932 (a year before the course opened for play, which is why both dates appear in different sources), and Alister MacKenzie laid out the holes on a former plant nursery, which is why they are named after plants and why the property carries species uncommon in Georgia golf.
The course has also been altered continuously, lengthened, re-bunkered and re-treed across nine decades, so the layout the Masters is played on is not the one MacKenzie left. It is the most-watched course in the world and one of the least accessible, and both facts are part of its standing.
| Location | Augusta, Georgia |
|---|---|
| Opened | 1933 |
| Holes | 18 |
| Access | Private: invitation only |
Known for: Founded by Bobby Jones and Clifford Roberts, designed with Alister MacKenzie, and the permanent home of the Masters since 1934.
Choosing between the best golf courses in the US
Four of the five are resort courses, which means the practical question is not whether a player can get on but what they want from the round. Spyglass Hill and the Ocean Course at Kiawah are the two genuine tests, and both punish wind badly; a player whose handicap depends on calm conditions will not enjoy either. Treetops and Grand Traverse offer a range of difficulty on one property, which suits a group that does not all play to the same standard.
Augusta National is on the list as a matter of record rather than as a recommendation, because a guide that omits it in the name of usefulness is describing a version of American golf that does not exist.
Whichever course is under consideration, the details that actually decide a round are the ones on the scorecard: par, yardage by tee, and course rating and slope. The Mark Bostick Golf Course profile shows what that data looks like set out in full for a single course.
How course rankings are actually built
Published rankings of American courses disagree with each other, and the disagreement is almost entirely in the weighting rather than in the observations. Panels typically score some combination of shot values, design variety, memorability, conditioning, aesthetics and ambience, and the last three move with maintenance budget and weather in a way the first three do not.
That is why a course can climb a ranking without changing: a wetter year, a new superintendent or a re-bunkering programme moves the conditioning score, and the architecture it is famous for is untouched. It is also why private clubs do well. Panels are made up of people who play, access is easier to arrange at clubs that court it, and a course nobody on the panel has played cannot be scored at all.
None of that makes rankings useless; it makes them answerable. A ranking that publishes its criteria and its weights is a defensible argument; one that publishes an order alone is asking to be taken on trust. This page describes rather than orders for that reason.
Why a "best courses" list ages badly, and what does not
A ranked list is a snapshot of a panel, and panels are re-polled on a cycle rather than continuously. Between editions three things move the order without anything happening on the ground: panellists are added and retire, the ballot's criteria are reweighted, and a course that has just reopened after restoration is seen by voters who have played it recently while its rivals are remembered from years ago. A course can gain ten places without a spade touching it.
The consequence is that the order is the least durable part of any such list and the hardest part to check. The durable part is membership: the same names recur across independent panels, decade after decade, and that recurrence is a stronger signal than a position. A course that appears in every ranking and never near the top is better established than one that enters at fifteen and leaves again.
So the useful way to read this page is as a set rather than a sequence. Where two courses are close, the tie is broken by which of them keeps appearing, not by which sat higher in one edition.
Common questions
What is the best golf course in the US?
There is no settled answer. Rankings of the best golf courses in the US disagree because they weight different things: architecture, conditioning, difficulty, tournament history and accessibility. Augusta National tops most lists that weight architecture and history; the Ocean Course at Kiawah tops many that weight difficulty.
Can the public play these courses?
Four of the five are resort courses open to paying visitors: Spyglass Hill, Kiawah Island, Treetops and Grand Traverse. Augusta National is private and admits play by invitation only.
Which is the hardest course on this list?
The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island in wind, by broad agreement among professionals who have competed there. Spyglass Hill's opening five holes are the other candidate for the same reason: exposure.
How many golf courses are there in the United States?
How many golf courses are in the US depends on the unit: published totals differ by thousands because facilities, courses and eighteen-hole equivalents are three different counts, and private, resort and municipal courses are often tallied separately. Any single figure should be read alongside the definition it uses.