No. 16 is famous, but how does the rest of TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course shape up?
There’s a lot more to the Stadium Course at TPC Scottsdale than the famed 16th, the par 3 lined by grandstands and site of this week’s party at the WM Phoenix Open. Here’s your chance to see how the rest of the course sets up for the 2024 version of the PGA Tour event.
The Stadium Course opened in 1986 with a design by the team of Tom Weiskopf and Jay Morrish. It was renovated in 2014. The site of a Tour event since 1987, the layout will play to 7,261 yards with a par of 71 this week.
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 pros face this week at TPC Scottsdale’s Stadium Course.
How well do you know Pebble Beach? StrackaLine offers a detailed look.
Pebble Beach Golf Links in California – the main course to be used in three rounds of the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am –was designed by amateur architects Douglas Grant and Jack Neville and opened in 1919.
Pebble Beach Golf Links is one of two courses to host the Pro-Am. Also in play for the first two rounds will be Spyglass Hill Golf Club designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. Each player has one round on each course before the cut, then the final two rounds will be at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
The famed Pebble Beach layout on cliffs above Stillwater Cove and the Pacific Ocean has seen many renovations over the decades, including work done by William Herbert Fowler, Alister MacKenzie, H. Chandler Egan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and others.
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 pros face this week at Pebble Beach Golf Links.
StrackaLine offers a hole-by-hole course guide for the main layout used in the PGA Tour’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.
Torrey Pines’ South Course in San Diego – the main layout used in the 2024 Farmers Insurance Open on the PGA Tour – was designed by the father-son duo of William P. Bell and William F. Bell and opened in 1957. The layout was extensively renovated by Rees Jones in 2001, and he made later refinements in 2019.
The first two rounds of the Farmers (Wednesday and Thursday) are split between Torrey Pines’ North and South courses, with the final two rounds (Friday and Saturday) on the South after the field is cut.
The South will play to 7,765 yards with a par of 72, while the North plays to 7,258 yards, also with a par of 72.
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 pros face this week on the South Course.
StrackaLine offers a hole-by-hole guide for the Pete Dye Stadium Course for the American Express.
PGA West’s Pete Dye Stadium Course – one of three courses used for the PGA Tour’s 2024 The American Express in La Quinta, California – opened in 1986 with a design by the legendary architect whose name appears in the layout’s title.
The 7,187-yard, par-72 Stadium Course is the main track for this week’s event, hosting each player for one of the first three rounds as well as Sunday’s final round. The other two courses used in the first three rounds are La Quinta Country Club (7,060 yards, par 72) and PGA West’s Nicklaus Tournament Course (7,147 yards, par 72). All the players have one round on each course before the cut is made for Sunday’s final round.
Worth noting, La Quinta Country Club has undergone a two-year renovation in which all the greens have been replaced. Also, the Pete Dye Stadium course will wrap up a multi-year restoration later in 2024.
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 pros face this week on the Stadium Course. Check out the maps of each hole below.
Cabot opens new courses in Florida and Saint Lucia, with more on the way.
Cabot effectively was a niche golf operator for much of its existence since the Canadian company opened its first course in 2012 on the remote shores of Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia.
The original layout, Cabot Links, was exceptional, and it was followed a few years later by the even more highly ranked Cliffs course. More golf was added in 2020 in the form of a new short course, The Nest. The destination was a home run for company co-founder and CEO Ben Cowan-Dewar, who wisely put the emphasis on best-in-class golf at the Cape Breton property that was aided by the interest and investment of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort founder Mike Keiser.
But like Bandon Dunes, Cabot Cape Breton is a long way from most anywhere, and the Canadian golf season that far north runs just six months. While the Cabot brand represented the peak of modern Canadian golf, a world-class destination not to be missed by any seasoned golf traveler, for most of its existence the company wasn’t quite a major world player.
That has changed.
Cabot has grown up, and much of the globe is now its playground. By purchasing existing properties when promising and building from scratch when necessary, Cowan-Dewar has expanded Cabot’s operations south into the United States and across the Atlantic Ocean to Scotland. He has developed a focus on high-end accommodations, frequently manifesting in the form of aspirational real estate. And without defining how far he hopes to take the Cabot brand, he doesn’t plan to slow down.
The split-fairway, par-5 14th at Cabot Citrus Farms’ Karoo Course (Courtesy of Cabot/Matt Majka)
The growth has come fast and furious in recent years, most notably with the concurrent introduction of two courses in two different countries.
The built-from-scratch Point Hardy Golf Club – on one of the world’s most jaw-dropping pieces of golf land – opened to its members in December at Cabot Saint Lucia in the southern Caribbean. It soon will be followed in late January by the public-access Cabot Citrus Farms in Florida opening its first course, named Karoo, for preview play on the site of the former World Woods Golf Club.
All that is on the heels of Cabot having purchased Castle Stuart in Scotland in June of 2022, rebranding it to Cabot Highlands and announcing plans to add a second course designed by Tom Doak slated to open fully in 2025. And don’t forget Cabot Revelstoke, a mountainous destination planned to come online in 2025 with a layout by Rod Whitman, who designed the original Cabot course at Cape Breton. Revelstoke is in Canada, but this development is on the opposite side of the continent in British Columbia. Both these properties also will feature residential opportunities.
All the sudden, Cabot has become a year-round operator with developments that span nine time zones. It is now a company on which the sun will never set during the long days of a Canadian summer.
“We’ve always got a lot of irons in the fire,” Cowan-Dewar said in December while he overlooked a tropical marina not far from Point Hardy, trying to relax for a few minutes during a casual interview the day before his private Saint Lucia property hosted its members’ first rounds. “Did I ever conceive it would play out just like this? Of course not. But we did have plans to grow.”
From left, Bill Coore, Ben Crenshaw, Mike Keiser and Ben Cowan-Dewar at Cabot Saint Lucia (Courtesy of Cabot/Jacob Sjöman)
The golf always came first for Cowan-Dewar, whose early ambitions drew the attention of a like-minded Keiser. The American developer serves as a sounding board for the Canadian, and from the beginning his advice has been to build great golf holes, then establish a business model around them.
That starts with the course architects. For Saint Lucia it would be the acclaimed team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, who also designed the Cliffs at Cabot Cape Breton, rated by Golfweek’s Best as the top modern course in Canada. At Cabot Citrus Farms just north of Tampa, Cowan-Dewar selected the up-and-coming Kyle Franz for the Karoo course and is employing Franz alongside Mike Nuzzo and advisor Ran Morrissett for the second full-size 18 named The Roost, still in development and ambitiously slated to open for preview play in the spring of 2024.
Then it’s just a matter of giving the architects enough latitude to create something special on beautiful pieces of land ideally suited for golf.
“We’re hiring some of the greatest people to ever practice their craft,” Cowan-Dewar said. “How many times in your life do you get to work with some of the greatest artists at a moment in time when they are the best? And we’re lucky to do that. So we want to give them the biggest canvas possible with no limitations. Trust in the architects, and we can figure out the rest around that.”
That trust has led to two very different golf courses in Point Hardy and the Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms.
All those descriptions and plenty more have been used in recent decades to describe the golf courses designed by the late Mike Strantz, whose layouts might best be described as fun for players looking for something completely different, classical orthodoxy be damned.
Having sharpened his pencil as a design associate to Tom Fazio, Strantz created or renovated only nine courses that bear his name as lead designer, most of them in his native Carolinas or nearby Virginia. He passed away in 2005 at the age of 50, a victim of cancer. A hands-on designer, he would spend weeks walking sites or exploring on horseback with a can of spray paint to mark features he either wanted to incorporate or build into the landscape.
Trained in studio art, Strantz would hand-sketch in great detail each hole of a course before it was built, then lead his team of shapers in making his art come to life. Those golf holes often include nearly impossible-to-reach hole locations, wild bunkering, extreme greens, eye-popping mounding and dramatic slopes – all elements beloved by a growing cadre of adventure-seeking golfers.
Mike Strantz’s detailed sketches of the holes at Tot Hill Farm now decorate the new clubhouse, a refurbished farm house that replaced a trailer that was the previous clubhouse. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Imagine their despair when one of Strantz’s courses falls into disrepair, as happened with several of his layouts, especially in the wake of an industry-wide financial struggle starting in 2008.
Tot Hill Farm Golf Club in Asheboro, North Carolina, is one such example, having opened in 2000 but its former operators lacking the revenues to maintain and present the course as Strantz intended. Trees choked out fairways and strategic lines, bunker edges crumbled and playing surfaces suffered in recent years.
But that all started to change early in 2022 when native South Carolinian Pat Barber bought the course and amenities. Already the owner of two courses nearer the coast in the state – The Links at Stono Ferry and The Plantation Course at Edisto – Barber recognized an opportunity to restore Tot Hill Farm as acclaim for Strantz’s designs continues to grow, especially with the increasing popularity of the nearby Strantz-designed Tobacco Road.
“Working with the course itself, the overall natural beauty, that really attracted us to the property,” said Greg Wood, the director of operations for all three of Barber’s course. “I’ve seen Mike in video interviews saying that he felt this was one of the best pieces of properties that he got to use in his design work. All we could see was the potential.”
A restoration of Tot Hill began in the spring of 2022, and it’s easy now to say this layout has rejoined the brief list of can’t-miss Strantz designs. It would be oversight for any Strantz fan to head to the nearby golf mecca of Pinehurst or the Carolina coast and miss the incredible amount of work that has gone into turning around the rolling and rollicking Tot Hill Farm.
The site always held so much promise. With more than 250 of feet of elevation change and boulders littering the landscape, the holes frequently heave up, down and across rambling creeks, the greens often perched perfectly into hillsides. The whole place just needed somebody to come along and scrape away 20 years of hard times.
More than 1,500 trees were cleared, re-establishing fairway widths and playing lines. Several arbitrary bunkers that weren’t part of Strantz’s design were removed, and his original traps were reinvigorated. Players must plot their way around them, and with the corridors having been widened, there are choices available instead of the previous condition of bowling alley tightness between the branches that choked out shot selection as well the health of the turf.
The green at the par-5 fifth at Tot Hill Farm is shaped like no other putting surface this author has seen, with a tiny portion in the front that rises abruptly to a much larger back section. The shape leads to this green earning some unusual nicknames – think juvenile humor, but be sure to lay up well to the right on the second shot if you plan to hit it. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
The greens were rebuilt and surfaced with Prizm Zoysia, a new strain of grass that promises to withstand Asheboro’s cold winters that are too frigid for Bermuda grass and the hot summers that are too steamy for bent grass to thrive. The new surfaces are still growing in, but during a late-fall round they had started to pick up some steam and promise even more to come. An interesting fact about this strain of zoysia: The grass covering is so dense, it’s almost impossible to leave a pitch mark on a green, and that same characteristic is promising for the preferred firm and bouncy conditions.
Wood is quick to call all the work a restoration effort, not a renovation. Crews worked in painstaking detail to put back what Strantz had intended, frequently using the architect’s hand-drawings – those sketches now decorate the new clubhouse that has been created in an idyllic old farmhouse, replacing a trailer that served that function before. The restorers also had access to more than 40 hours of construction video featuring the original design.
“Over time, we figured out how it’s supposed to be,” Wood, a longtime PGA of America member, said of Strantz’s design which is a likely contender for future inclusion among Golfweek’s Best public-access courses in North Carolina. “And for somebody like me, figuring out the puzzle and the why – even now, as I walk a hole, I’ll find something new.”
Playing Tot Hill is a mixture of various wows and walking on eggshells, so far as the scorecard goes. Strantz clearly wasn’t interested in building easy golf, and several holes prove Tot Hill is no exception. Much like Tobacco Road just more than an hour’s drive away, Tot Hill Farm in particular punishes wayward approach shots, the greens frequently seeming to shrug off approach shots with a “not-good-enough” attitude.
The green of the par-3 third at Tot Hill Farm sits over a creek that wraps tightly behind the putting surface as well, with the back portion of the green guarded by a hill and a deep bunker. (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Strantz included sections on several greens that might prove inaccessible to all but a tour player’s towering precision. The skinny back right hole location on the par-3 third hole, hidden behind sand aside a hill with a creek just steps off the back, will likely prove to an average player to be a no-go.
Another thrilling tear-jerker is the drop-down rear portion of the 10th green before the putting surface tumbles steeply downhill to form a double green with No. 12, the center portion now covered in tight fringe instead of even lower green-height zoysia. Just try and hit the back right portion of the par-3 13th green, hidden beyond a stream and behind a boulder.
There are other oddities. For example, several tees are routed in such a way that players must double back and play directly across previous holes, as noted on No. 4 and possibly No. 14 if a restored tee atop a hill is put into play. Such routing can create odd bottlenecks, and while it might be manageable on a private course with limited rounds, it could prove problematic on a packed day of public play.
These and other examples might cause a facial tic among some classic architecture purists. But with plenty of width now available, a thoughtful golfer can find a way around all the trouble, choosing to play to safer sections of the greens on each of the examples above, then putting the putter to use in search of par. All around Tot Hill Farm is danger to a golfer’s score, and close by is a safer route. It’s up to the golfer to put aside ego and expectation, accepting the limitations of what Strantz offered in some places while pouncing on opportunities when friendlier hole locations are identified. There are birdies out there.
In short, it’s all about the strategy. And that might begin even before the first tee shot, as the frustrations of Tot Hill Farm’s difficulties most greatly affect stroke play. This could be one of the best match-play courses in the U.S., for those who embrace that format.
“If you come back and play this course several times, the thing you’ll find intriguing is there are multiple ways to play every hole,” Wood said. “When I first took on the project, I didn’t really understand that. But as I continue on and on with it, I find that very intriguing and I’m enjoying it more and more.”
Nos. 10 and 12 at Tot Hill Farm share what originally was a pure double green and still plays that way, with the steep area between mowed to a tight and bouncy fringe height. No. 10 plays in from the bottom right, while No. 12 plays across the water from the left. No. 10 green proper features a huge downward slope midway through the green, which can send balls hit too deep cascading all the way down to the water or No. 12. (Courtesy of Tot Hill Farm/Ryan Barnett)
The layout reopened in the fall of 2023, and bookings are picking up speed for 2024. Green fees are relatively low, currently $70 through the winter with a peak of $125 planned for the new year – carts are an extra $25. Tot Hill Farm is also appearing as a packaged option around Pinehurst, which is less than an hour to the south via Interstate 74.
The best way to enjoy Strantz’s work at Tot Hill Farm might be to race across the Carolinas, playing Tot Hill and Tobacco Road in North Carolina before heading to the coast to sample Strantz’s Caledonia Golf and Fish Club and True Blue near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. For an adventurous group of golfers, that would be an unforgettable trek.
And it’s just such players that are most likely to book and rebook rounds at Tot Hill Farm. It’s not a classical layout, and it might be too severe in places to tickle every player’s fancy. But the recent surge in popularity for Strantz courses, particularly on Instagram and X-the-former-Twitter, will surely help Tot Hill’s operators fill the tee sheets.
“We think the adventure-style golf course, Mike was kind of at the forefront of it, and we feel like we’re bringing something that was almost forgotten back to people,” Wood said. “We feel really fortunate to be a part of it. Unfortunately, Mike passed away way too soon. For us to be caretakers of a Mike Strantz course, we find that to be a real honor.”
This list focuses on the residential golf courses themselves, not the communities as a whole or other amenities.
Welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2024 ranking of top residential golf courses in the United States.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final, cumulative rating. Then each course is ranked against other courses in the region.
This list focuses on the residential golf courses themselves, not the communities as a whole or other amenities. Each golf course included is listed with its average rating from 1 to 10, its location, architect(s) and the year it opened.
From Hawaii to Florida, we offer the Golfweek’s Best ranking of top resort courses in the U.S.
Welcome to Golfweek’s Best 2024 list of top resort golf courses in the United States.
The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on our 10 criteria. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings on each course are averaged to produce a final, cumulative rating. Then each course is ranked against other courses in the region.
This list focuses on the golf courses themselves, not the resorts as a whole or other amenities. Each golf course included is listed with its average rating from 1 to 10, its location, architect(s) and the year it opened.
Thanks to Golfweek’s Best rankings, we break out the top courses around Myrtle Beach.
Looking to play the best public-access courses at one of the most popular golf destinations in the U.S.? We’ve got you – and Myrtle Beach – covered. Using the Golfweek’s Best rankings of public-access courses in South Carolina, we are featuring the layouts within an hour’s drive of the Grand Strand.
For this exercise, we used Google Maps and punched in each course as of a Saturday morning to determine drive times, with Myrtle Beach International Airport as an achored starting point. Included with this list is a general map of where to find all these courses. Each one on the list below is represented with a number on the map – keep scrolling to see the numbers. The numbers represent the order in which the courses are ranked.
Included with each course is its position in South Carolina on the Golfweek’s Best public-access list. For any course that appears on our other popular rankings lists, those positions are included as well.
A little background: The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them 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 all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
The courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort, by staying at an affiliated hotel or purchasing a golf vacation package. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time – no membership required.
Kapalua’s Plantation Course is steep, but exactly how steep? A hint: No. 18 tumbles down more than 50 feet.
Kapalua’s Plantation Course in Hawaii – site of this week’s season-opening The Sentry on the PGA Tour – was the first course built by the now-legendary design duo of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw. The mountainside layout opened in 1991 and was restored in 2019.
The Plantation maxes out at 7,596 yards with a par of 73, and it has only one par 3 on the back nine. With several downhill tee shots and the possibility of several drives rolling out past 400 yards, the course usually plays significantly shorter than the yardage might indicate.
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 pros face this week. Check out the maps of each hole below.
