Category: Golfweek’s Best

Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses 2022: From Pebble Beach to Pinehurst, the top 200 golf courses built before 1960

Golfweek’s raters have ranked the top 200 courses built in the United States before 1960, such as Augusta National, Pebble Beach and more

Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2022 list of the Top 200 Classic Courses before 1960 in the United States.

Each year we publish many lists, with this Top 200 Classic Courses list among the premium offerings. Also extremely popular and significant are the lists for Top 200 Modern Courses, the Best Courses You Can Play State by State and Best Private Courses State by State.

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.

To ensure these lists are up-to-date, Golfweek’s Best in recent years has altered how the individual ratings are compiled into the rankings. Only ratings from rounds played in the past 10 years are included in the compilations. This helps ensure that any course in the rankings still measures up.

Courses also must have a minimum of 25 votes to qualify for the Top 200 Modern or the Top 200 Classic. Other Golfweek’s Best lists, such as Best Courses You Can Play or Best Private, do not require as many votes. This makes it possible that a course can show up on other lists but not on the premium Top 200 lists.

Each course is listed with its average rating next to the name, the location, the year it opened and the designers. The list also notes in parenthesis next to the name of each course where that course ranked in 2021. Also included with many courses are links to recent stories about that layout.

After the designers are several designations that note what type of facility it is:

• p: private
• d: daily fee
• r: resort course
• t: tour course
• u: university
• m: municipal
• re: real estate
• c: casino

* Indicates new to or returning to this list.

Editor’s note: The 2022 Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses list for the top 200 layouts built after 1960 in the U.S. was published Monday, May 23. The Best Courses You Can Play lists and the Best Private Courses lists will follow over the next two weeks. 

2022 Golfweek U.S. Super Senior, Legends, & Super Legends National Championship at The Golf Club of Georgia

Calling all National Champions, State Champions, club champions and elite senior amateurs age 65 and over! Join us July 5-7 at one of the nations premier private golf clubs, The Golf Club of Georgia, in the 2022 Golfweek U.S. Super Senior, Legends & …

Calling all National Champions, State Champions, club champions and elite senior amateurs age 65 and over! Join us July 5-7 at one of the nations premier private golf clubs, The Golf Club of Georgia, in the 2022 Golfweek U.S. Super Senior, Legends & Super Legends National Championship.

This is the first national ranking championship exclusively for elite senior amateurs age 65 and over. The Golfweek U.S. Super Senior, Legends & Super Legends National Championship, sponsored by USA Today Sports, is now in its sixth year. The tournament fills a US Golf Association void by providing a national championship for players age 65 and over. After 54 holes of intense competition, only one player in each division will earn the right to hoist the trophy and be called a “National Champion.”

Wynn Golf Club: How much does it cost, how to book a tee time

Wynn has one of the highest costs of a daily-fee course in the United States.

Wynn Golf Club, right behind the Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino, fits perfectly into its brash surroundings on the Strip. It’s as Vegas as Vegas can be when it comes to golf course architecture.

Much of the course is brand new, despite golf having been played on the site since 1952 when it became the Desert Inn Golf Club. 

Steve Wynn purchased the resort in 2000, and the Tom Fazio-designed Wynn Golf Club opened in 2005. But that layout was shuttered in 2017 as the operators of the adjacent Wynn Las Vegas hotel and casino considered other uses for the ridiculously valuable land on which the course sits, and the resort lost millions of dollars in revenue from green fees and other golf-attributable casino earnings. 

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After scrapping plans to build a lagoon on the site with new hotel rooms and restaurants, Fazio and his son, Logan, were called to breathe fresh life into the abandoned track. Wynn Golf Club reopened in October 2019 with eight new and 10 refurbished holes, playing to a par of 70 at 6,722 yards. 

As far as playing Wynn Golf Club, you don’t have to know someone who knows someone. You just have to have some disposable income.

Tee times can be made by resort guests 90 days in advance, and general public play is open with 30-day advanced bookings. But be ready to fork over the cash: green fees are $550.

Wynn has one of the highest costs of a daily-fee course in the U.S. and while that sounds prohibitively expensive for many players, there are plenty of guests at the Wynn hotel and casino who spin through a lot more on the slot machines in less time than it takes to play a round of golf.

Brian Hawthorne, the resort’s executive director of golf operations, said there’s a lot of value baked into that fee when considering the location on the Strip as well as an all-inclusive experience that includes forecaddie and rental clubs if needed.

“And if you keep somebody from gambling for four and a half hours, we might be saving people money,” he said with a laugh.

So while that kind of green fee is not for every golfer, Hawthorne is right. As he said, “There’s different price points for every type of customer,” and many of the luxury resort’s guests simply aren’t worried about price. This is, after all, a Forbes Five-Star property that uses Rolls-Royce limos to whisk preferred guests back and forth to the airport.

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Take a look at the iconic venues hosting USGA events in 2022

Here are all the events and corresponding venues the USGA will put on in 2022.

In 2022, the USGA is holding championships at some of the most historic venues in the world, highlighted by the U.S. Open at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts. The U.S. Mid-Amateur is headed to the Midwest, where Erin Hills will pose an enormous challenge for the men who qualify.

On the women’s side, the USGA will welcome players to Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in Southern Pines, North Carolina, for the U.S. Women’s Open. And for the U.S. Women’s Amateur, qualifiers will head to Chambers Bay, University Place, Washington, home of Jordan Spieth’s 2015 U.S. Open victory.

Listed below are all the events the USGA will put on in 2022, accompanied by the corresponding venue.