McLemore sits at No. 5 in Georgia on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list.
RISING FAWN, Ga. – The 18th hole at McLemore in northern Georgia isn’t for the faint of heart. Just as its altitude might trigger a response in anyone afraid of heights, the golf hole itself requires plenty of strategy and fearlessness off the tee and from the fairway.
Designed by Rees Jones and Bill Bergin, the 435-yard par 4 sits on a cliff’s edge 1,200 feet above the valley floor below. Telling golfers to stay right on the hole would be silly and obvious, because it’s perfectly clear that any kind of pull or hook off the tee will send a ball off the cliff’s rocky face into the forest below. It’s a stern test on one of the most scenic sites for a golf hole anywhere in the game.
The rest of the course climbs even higher from that cliff, providing views for miles across a valley full of farms and barns – on a clear day it’s possible to see more than 50 miles as the mountains continue to rise to the northeast. And the closing hole offers the best of those views – have your camera ready on the drive from the 17th green to the 18th tee.
McLemore sits at No. 5 in Georgia on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list, making it a can’t-miss in a stacked golf state. And as the property is located near Lookout Mountain within an easy drive of Atlanta and Chattanooga, Tennessee, McLemore provides a great escape into the beginnings of the Appalachian Mountains.
Mike Keiser instilled in his boys a deep curiosity, which has translated into some of the best golf course developments in the world.
Mike Keiser, the eminently pro-walking founder of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon and staunch supporter of the game on foot, had a surprisingly simple way to get his two sons interested in golf more than three decades ago.
“Hey, you wanna go ride in a golf cart?” Keiser said he would ask young sons Michael and Chris when he wanted to introduce them to the game.
It wasn’t about hitting shots, not about architecture, nor entirely about developing an ethos that would lead to a family golfing legacy. It was all about young kids having fun, no matter what it took. If that meant a ride in a golf cart at age 3, then those cart batteries better have been fully charged.
Those initial forays into the game for the father alongside his sons – near their Chicago home and at the family’s summer house in Michigan and at courses around the world – have led to one of the great family success stories in golf. After Mike developed Bandon Dunes in the late 1990s and stretched his reach into destinations such as Canada and soon St. Lucia, Michael and Chris followed suit. The sons have opened their own highly ranked resort at Sand Valley in Wisconsin and plan to extend into new territories as well.
Mike Keiser plays at his sons’ Mammoth Dunes at Sand Valley in Wisconsin on opening day in 2017. (Courtesy of Sand Valley/Jeffrey R. Bertch)
But this isn’t a business story. Not a golf development story, per se – barrels of ink have been expended in telling those stories of how the Keisers built and contributed to a new market for links-style resort golf in the U.S. and beyond. This is a story of how a father got his sons into the game and piqued their curiosity about what might be possible in golf, course and resort development, and beyond.
Golfweek has since 1983 – with a recent two-year break because of COVID-19 – selected a Father of the Year in all of golf, and the list includes players, fathers of players, business leaders and regular dads who possess an irregular knack for fostering a passion for golf among their kids. This year that Father’s Day honor goes to Mike Keiser in reflection not of his business success but instead for his approach to helping sons Michael and Chris find their own paths into golf by sharing his knowledge and curiosity, his contacts, his love of fun courses and only occasionally his money.
And it all began with good times in golf carts, smacking balls along the shoreline of Lake Michigan and playing cross-country golf through the woods on land that later would become Mike’s first golf development, the highly rated, nine-hole and private Dunes Club in Michigan.
“For me, it was always a game, and it was a made-up game,” said Michael, now 40. “We didn’t really start by playing golf. We had golf clubs and golf balls, but they were always games on the beach in front of our house in Michigan.”
Mike would sometimes hit balls into Lake Michigan, then pay Michael to don a snorkel and retrieve them, Michael said. It was all part of a great adventure.
“My dad is a Tom Sawyer figure; I’ve always thought of him as Tom Sawyer,” Michael said in reference to Mark Twain’s character who can talk his friends into taking on his tasks with a smile and charisma. “He convinced me that retrieving his golf balls out of the lake was the funnest thing in the world. A lot of my introduction, I guess you could say, was empowering his practice, but I couldn’t have had more fun doing it.”
There’s that word again. Fun. Want to get your kids into golf? Keep that in mind.
“I have fond memories of Snickers bars and Reese’s and Cokes and putting around,” Chris, 34, said of his early days around the Dunes Club. “There’s just this kind of fun association with the place. When I got into actually trying to play, he would encourage me to tee it up in the fairway and keep it fun, not really keeping score.”
The new Sheep Ranch course at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon (Courtesy of Bandon Dunes)
That goal of fun golf has been a frequent theme as the family has expanded its reach in the game. Mike was looking to transport the enjoyable and accessible game played on links courses in the United Kingdom and Ireland to the U.S., and after much searching for a perfect site, he chose the remote coastline of Oregon to introduce a different kind of golf to an American market. It wasn’t about resistance to scoring, never about overly green grass, and not strictly about birdies versus bogeys. He believed there was an underserved U.S. market of golfers looking for fun above all else, and he set out to develop that market.
The results have been legendary, as Bandon Dunes now operates five full-size courses that rank among the best in the world, as well as a gorgeous par-3 course named The Preserve that helped reinvigorate the appetite for short courses at U.S. resorts. And his dream continues at Bandon Dunes, as he plans to add yet more holes.
Mike’s involvement in the development of Cabot and its two incredible links-style courses in Nova Scotia – in partnership with Ben Cowan-Dewar – further cemented his status as a premium developer of a new kind of resort and golf-first ethos that has been frequently imitated in recent decades.
Family trips often involved the sport as the boys grew. They are two among four siblings born to Mike and wife Lindy, with sisters Leigh and Dana following their own pursuits that didn’t involve golf. Mike and Lindy now have eight grandchildren, two per each of their own children.
“Having and raising children is the most important thing you ever do,” said Mike, a native of East Aurora near Buffalo, New York, who served in the U.S. Navy before cofounding a greeting card company, Recycled Paper Greetings, that would grow to be one of the largest in the U.S.
Both boys played other sports, and their interests in golf would sometimes ebb and flow, they each said. But Mike had a way of sparking their interest time and again. He once took a young-teen Chris and his cousin, Scott, on a tour of Scotland that included rounds at Royal Dornoch – a Mike Keiser favorite – and Brora Golf Course, which is famed among experienced golf travelers for having sheep and cattle grazing the fairways and fences around the greens to keep the livestock out.
All that great golf and history and architecture and all those kinds of things were fantastic for the grown-ups, Mike said, but the kids found another unexpected reason to laugh.
“Chris and Scott found a ball in a cow pie, and they said ‘Watch this,’ and they blasted out of cow pies,” Mike said with a laugh. “So I took them to play golf at Brora, and what was the highlight? Golf balls in cow pies.
“So moms and dads out there, if you’re playing golf with your younger kids, don’t expect them to like golf for the same reason you do. They’ll appreciate the views and et cetera et cetera, but it will take something like their ball landing in a cow pie to really get their attention. There’s more than one path to getting your kids to joining you in golf.”
The same could be said for the sons’ growing involvement in resort development. Michael finished college and worked in golf operations at Barnbougle, which his dad helped finance in Tasmania, before branching into residential development. Chris became a teacher for two years after college, then worked in digital golf sales. Neither went straight to work for their dad, instead finding their own way back to resort development over the years. Chris eventually landed a job working on digital initiatives for Bandon Dunes, and he and Michael paired up to open Sand Valley in 2016 in remote central Wisconsin, with their resort adding a second 18, Mammoth Dunes, in 2017.
Though Mike was involved as much more than interested spectator, it was up to the brothers to make Sand Valley work. Michael said that his dad bought the forested land and brought in founding members who provided seed capital, but the boys were responsible for most of the financing and on-the-ground decisions. It was their project, boom or bust. Dad, to a great extent, got out of the way.
“The best thing was that it was their idea, each step of the way,” said Mike, who didn’t want to be a controlling force as his sons built their own names in the industry. “It’s not good if you say, ‘Son, I’ll pay you twice as much as you’d make on the outside if you work for me.’ I don’t like that model. I prefer the model that Chris and Michael did that was sort of aligned, to get a sense of the industry and then shift to Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley. … Some dads push kids to work with the dad. Let them choose. Let their path be their path.”
Sand Valley in Wisconsin (Courtesy of Sand Valley/Brandon Carter)
Mike said his sons make a nice team, a mesh of Michael’s interest in sales and marketing and Chris’ skills in operations big and small. Both sons mentioned processes and methodology learned from their dad as keys to success, including one trait of their father when asked what they thought might surprise outsiders most.
“He’s extremely curious, everywhere he goes,” Chris said. “He’s deeply curious. That’s also reflected when we travel. He’s always asking people about the area. What’s it like to live here? What are the schools like? I think that can be disarming to people who maybe know who he is, know him in the world of golf and maybe expect him to be this intimidating character – he’s really not that way. … He has a common touch; it’s just part of who he is.”
Michael echoed those sentiments.
“One of the methods we learned before we even knew we were learning it, was just the curiosity of learning every day,” Michael said. “Growing up, if we were in a taxi cab, my dad would get to know the driver and ask him a hundred questions. Waiting in line at a restaurant, ask more questions. I think he trained us to be curious, to be unafraid to ask questions. …
“You don’t have to know everything, but there is probably somebody out there who knows the answers. Find that person, and ask them questions.”
As the family continues to expand its operations – in Florida, in the Caribbean, possibly in Scotland and beyond – there isn’t necessarily a lot of time for reflection. There’s too many great golf holes in interesting location to build. But the boys will keep one lesson in mind, as frequently expressed by their dad.
“He taught us that to whom much is given, even more is expected,” Michael said. “And nobody has been given more opportunities in the golf industry than my brother and me. Maybe Young Tom Morris, right? It’s not lost on us that we’ve been handed these opportunities. …
“We learned from so many adventures. We grew from those and we learned our own boundaries. My dad thought kids should learn from their mistakes. Go out there and take risks. Whatever the opposite of a helicopter parent is, that’s what he was. If he had just shared his wisdom, we wouldn’t have learned it for ourselves. We had to go learn it for ourselves. … He doesn’t offer a lot of advice per se, but he introduced us to incredible opportunities.”
BROOKLINE, Mass. – The opening scenes in what would later become perhaps golf’s greatest storybook ending, a fascinating tale that has resonated for more than 100 years, were set in what can only be called a perfect setting.
Across the street from The Country Club, founded in 1882 and one of the five founding clubs of the U.S. Golf Association, Francis Ouimet grew up in the modest, six-room, 1,500-square-foot home at 246 Clyde Street.
Looking out the window of his second-floor bedroom, he woke to a view of the 17th hole of The Country Club, which he would walk across to get to school and where he would later caddie and fall in love with the game.
And then, at age 20, he became a folk hero and changed the path of the game’s history over the sacred ground outside Boston.
In authoring arguably the biggest upset in the chronicles of golf, Ouimet took down Harry Vardon and Ted Ray, the two best golfers of the time, to win the 1913 U.S. Open in a playoff at The Country Club that drew up to 20,000, mostly blue-collar workers each round.
After winning the 1913 U.S. Open, Brookline’s Francis Ouimet (rear) credited his caddie, 10-year-old Eddie Lowery. Ouimet later dedicated this photo, writing over Lowery’s towel, “This is the boy who won the 1913 Open.”
And as it turned out, it was at the 17th where two of Ouimet’s biggest moments unfolded. In the final round, Ouimet, an amateur who had to be talked into entering the championship by his friends, came to the hole nicknamed “The Elbow” trailing by one shot. At the time, the dogleg-left hole was playing to 275 yards. After reaching the green with his approach, Ouimet made a long birdie putt to tie for the lead and joined Vardon and Ray in an 18-hole playoff the following day after making par on the 72nd hole.
In the playoff, with Ray out of contention, Vardon trailed Ouimet by one when the group arrived at the 17th tee. Vardon tried to cut the corner and wound up in the lone bunker that bears his name. Ouimet found the fairway. Vardon had to lay up and made bogey while Ouimet made birdie again for a three-stroke lead.
Ouimet polished off his startling win on the final hole.
The game exploded across the land. And the 17th took root as the course’s pivotal hole, later home to more magical, game-changing moments to decide championships. If history is prologue, the penultimate hole on the scorecard – which will play out to 373 yards this week for the 122nd U.S. Open and now features four bunkers on the left of the fairway bend and numerous mounds – will play a crucial role in the outcome.
“It’s unique,” reigning PGA champion Justin Thomas said. “Unlike a lot of holes out here that are pretty self-explanatory off the tee, it’s just am I going to hit a driver or am I going to hit a 3-wood, whatever it is? That hole presents a lot of opportunities of different clubs off the tees.
“Especially with how a lot of guys are playing nowadays. A handful of guys are probably going to hit driver, try to hit it right in front of the green. Or if you get a helping wind, maybe the tee is up, you can knock it on the green. But then again, I’m sure the rough is going to be nasty up there to where you get opposition. It’s tough, and then it’s, like, do you lay up? Do you lay up to a good number?
“It’s a hole that you can have a two-shot swing on it pretty quickly for it being a pretty short, easy hole, but it’s really just going to be how you want to attack it or approach it once you get to that point, especially come Saturday and Sunday.”
Julius Boros poses with the trophy after winning the 1963 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. Next to him is Francis Ouimet, the 1913 U.S. Open champion and honorary chairman of the tournament. (Photo: Associated Press)
When the U.S. Open returned to The Country Club 50 years later, the 17th was decisive in Julius Boros’ victory. In the final round, Arnold Palmer missed a two-foot putt that put him two strokes behind the leader, Jacky Cupit, who a few holes later made double bogey after an errant drive. That led to a three-man playoff, with Boros joining them the next day. Boros birdied the 17th in the final round and again in the playoff to win the national championship.
Twenty-five years later, the third U.S. Open at The Country Club featured more histrionics. After taking the lead with a 25-foot birdie on the 16th in the final round, Curtis Strange three-putted the 17th from 15 feet. He saved par from a greenside bunker on the 72nd hole to force a playoff with Nick Faldo.
Strange made a knee-knocking four-footer for par on the 17th to secure his victory in the playoff for the first of his two consecutive U.S. Open wins.
Curtis Strange and his wife Sarah kiss the U.S. Open Championship trophy at the 1988 U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. (Photo: Peter Southwick/Associated Press)
And then there was the 1999 Ryder Cup at The Country Club. Facing a four-point deficit entering singles play, the Americans staged a ferocious comeback that was capped for victory on the 17th hole.
That’s where Justin Leonard, who was 4 down earlier in his match against Jose Maria Olazabal, holed a 45-foot putt that set off a premature, frenzied celebration as the U.S. team flooded the green despite Olazabal’s chance to make his putt and keep the match going.
After the green was finally cleared, Olazabal missed his putt and the U.S. won.
Nineteen-year-old Sergio Garcia played brilliantly for Europe that week; he is one of three players in this week’s field to have played in the 1999 Ryder Cup, the other two being Jim Furyk and Phil Mickelson.
“It’s not overly long, and you have a wedge to the green. But the green is always tricky,” Garcia said. “But it always feels if you hit a decent shot to the green it always feels you have a birdie putt because the green is small.
“It’s tricky, the two-tiered green, especially if it gets a little firm, like it was in the Ryder Cup, and then the back pin is very difficult to get to. There’s a very small area to land your ball and if you hit it too hard it can easily one hop over the green, and then you have a difficult up-and-down.
And if you fly it on the bottom, trying to skip it up there, it’s tough to get up the slope. But that’s the beauty of all the old designs. The greens are small, and the areas where you have to hit the ball are very tiny and you have to be very precise.”
Chances are another eerie moment or two will take place on the 17th hole this week. It will be the latest entry to the legend Ouimet ignited in 1913.
“That’s what’s so good about golf is the history and the tradition and these stories,” McIlroy said. “The fact that he grew up just off the 17th hole here, and we’re still talking about it to this day over 100 years on. That’s so cool.
The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts – site of this week’s 122nd U.S. Open – opened in 1893 as a three-hole layout. Willie Campbell, a Scot and head professional at the club, extended the course to nine holes and then to 18 in 1899.
Several designers have worked on The Country Club over the decades, most recently Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner before the 2013 U.S. Amateur.
The layout used for the U.S. Open – which features small greens and thick rough among its considerable challenges – is actually a composite of two courses, the Main course and the club’s Primrose nine. Three holes of the Primrose (No. 9 Primrose playing as No. 9 of the Composite, a combo of Nos. 1 and 2 Primrose playing as No. 13 on the Composite, and No. 8 Primrose playing as No. 14 of the Composite) will be used for the national championship.
The Composite ranks No. 1 on Golfweek’s Best 2022 list of top private courses in the state, and it is No. 24 among all classic courses built in the U.S. before 1960. It will play to 7,264 yards with a par of 70 for the Open.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the players face this week. Check out the maps of each hole below.
Ambience. Simply put, nothing matters more when debating the merits of various 19th holes around the United States.
Ambience.
Simply put, nothing matters more when debating the merits of various 19th holes around the United States. So say Golfweek’s Best 800-plus raters who were polled to determine the top 10 golf course bars and restaurants. More than 400 votes were cast to establish this list.
Views are important, but not everything. Same goes for the food. The drinks menu matters, of course. Service is key. But none of these alone is enough to earn a place on Golfweek’s Best initial list of top 19th holes that includes three private clubs and, perhaps more importantly, seven spots where anyone can grab a seat.
The Tap Room at Pebble Beach Resort in California (Courtesy of Pebble Beach)
Instead, it’s all about the vibe. A chance to relax, just hang out. Enjoy a sip, the conversation, the golf and the heritage. It can be difficult to describe what makes one space a better hangout than others, but you know it when you see it. And then you never want to leave.
Check out Golfweek’s Best ranking of Top 10 19th holes. And by that,
we mean not just on this website. Go see for yourself.
Take a peek at the StrackaLine yardage book for this week’s PGA Tour stop.
St. George’s Golf & Country Club in Etobicoke, Canada – site of the PGA Tour’s RBC Canadian Open – was designed by legendary Canadian golf architect Stanley Thompson and opened in 1930 not far from Toronto.
St. George’s ranks No. 2 on Golfweek’s Best ranking of classic courses built before 1960 in Canada. The club has worked with architect Ian Andrew since 2013 to restore the course. The course will play to 7,014 yards with a par of 70 for the 2022 RBC Canadian Open.
Thanks to yardage books provided by StrackaLine – the maker of detailed yardage books for thousands of courses around the world – we can see exactly the challenges the players face this week. Check out the maps of each hole below.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings. The top handful of courses in the world have an average rating of above 9, while many excellent layouts fall into the high-6 to the 8 range.
All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.
Each course is listed with its average rating next to the name, the location, the year it opened and the designers. Also included with many courses are links to recent stories about that layout.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. Also included with many courses are links to recent stories about that layout.
The best of the best. State-by-state rankings of the best U.S. private golf courses in 2022.
Welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2022 list of top private golf courses in the U.S., as judged by our international panel of raters.
The hundreds of members of that ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings.
All the courses on this list are private and don’t accept daily-fee or resort play.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern and classic courses in the U.S. Also included with many courses are links to recent stories about that layout.
Several Valhalla members form investment group to buy Valhalla, past site of majors and a Ryder Cup as well as the 2024 PGA.
Valhalla Golf Club has been sold by the PGA of America to a group of Louisville investors who want to “continue to bring major championships” to Kentucky, according to new co-owner Jimmy Kirchdorfer.
“Valhalla, for a 36-year-old club, has amazing history,” said Kirchdorfer, an executive with ISCO Industries. “It’s already hosted a Ryder Cup and three major championships. We just saw it as important that this is returned to local ownership. That way, we can control. We know people are going to operate in the best interest of the community.”
Kirchdorfer is a Valhalla board member who joined the club in 2004 and has previously worked with the PGA on events that have been held at the course. Three other well-known local executives joined him in the purchase: former Yum! Brands CEO David Novak, Musselman Hotels President Chester Musselman and Junior Bridgeman, a former University of Louisville basketball player who built an entrepreneurial empire following a 12-year run in the NBA.
The PGA, which bought the course from founder Dwight Gahm in 2000, confirmed the sale in a Wednesday press release, and Valhalla members were informed in an email from Keith Reese, the club’s general manager. The sale is effective immediately, according to Kirchdorfer, who did not disclose the cost of the course.
USA captain Paul Azinger is sprayed with champagne after defeating the Europeans on Day 3 of the 37th Ryder Cup at the Valhalla Golf Club in 2008. (Frank Victores-USA TODAY Sports)
“Valhalla Golf Club has proven itself to be a wonderful test of championship golf, one that is as fair as it is challenging for the top golfers in the world,” PGA of America President Jim Richerson wrote in the release. “We look forward to partnering with the new ownership group on a highly anticipated 2024 PGA Championship and working with the new owners to continue to have it as one of our championship sites.”
Valhalla, which stands on nearly 500 acres in eastern Jefferson County, is “an icon in the community,” Kirchdorfer said. It had been the only private club owned and operated by the PGA, and it was ranked by Golfweek’s Best as the No. 1 private course in the state. It ties for No. 74 on Golfweek’s Best 2022 ranking of Modern Courses in the U.S.
The course was designed by golf legend Jack Nicklaus ahead of its opening in 1986 and has hosted three PGA Championship tournaments, including a famed victory by Tiger Woods in 2000. It was home to the Ryder Cup in 2008, bringing stars of the sport from around the world to Louisville, and is set to host the PGA Championship again in 2024.
Kirchdorfer, a longtime golf advocate, said he got to work forming a group to bid on Valhalla after members were informed in November that the PGA had been approached by a potential buyer and would entertain other offers. All four buyers are longtime members of the club.
Tiger Woods celebrates making a birdie putt on the 18th hole to force a playoff at the 2000 PGA Championship at the Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. (Donald Miralle/Allsport)
Valhalla’s status brings value to the community, he said, which the ownership group took into consideration. And while some club members expressed concerns over potential redevelopment when it hit the market last year, Kirchdorfer said the 18-hole course isn’t going anywhere.
Instead, the ownership group will work to highlight “Kentucky hospitality,” he said, and “build upon the great tradition and culture that’s already there.” So, concerned club members and others in the Louisville golf community have got that going for them, which is nice.
“Valhalla’s the crown jewel of Kentucky golf, and we wanted it locally owned like it was with the Gahm family,” Kirchdorfer said. “The Gahm family had an amazing vision and took a big risk when they took a farm and hired Jack Nicklaus to build a golf course with the hopes of bringing major championship golf to this community – and they succeeded, which a lot of people don’t.
“We just wanted to make sure that the next owners had the same mission of doing what’s best for Valhalla and the community of Louisville.”
The new owners have plenty of work to do in the next two years ahead of the 2024 PGA Championship, set for May 16-19 that year. The group plans to invest in the property to ensure it’s a “reflection of our community,” Kirchdorfer said.
An impressive turn at that 2024 tournament can send a message to the PGA – which works to promote the game with more than 28,000 members – that Louisville is a capable host for the sport’s biggest moments, according to Kirchdorfer, who previously served as vice chair of a Louisville PGA Championship.
“When we show how much this community will support the ’24 championship, we’re confident they’ll continue to bring more championships,” he said.
Where are the best places you can play golf in all 50 states? Our state-by-state rankings of the best public courses for 2022 will be your guide.
Looking to peg it up at the best public-access golf courses in each state? We have you covered.
With this 2022 list of Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play, we present the top public-access courses in each state, as judged by our nationwide network of raters.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings.
All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.
KEY: (m) modern, built in 1960 or after; (c) classic, built before 1960. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 modern and classic courses in the U.S. Also included with many courses are links to recent stories about that layout.
* indicates new or returning to the rankings
Editor’s note: The Golfweek’s Best rankings of top private courses in each state will be published Monday, June 6.
