Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2021 list of the top 200 Modern Courses, built in or after 1960 in the United States.
Each year we publish many lists, with this Top 200 Modern Courses and the accompanying Top 200 Classic Courses lists being the premium offerings. Also extremely popular and significant are the Best Courses You Can Play State by State and Best Private Courses State by State.
The 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 together to produce a final rating for each course. Each course is then ranked against other courses to produce the final rankings.
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 top 100 courses also note in parenthesis next to the name of each course where that course ranked in 2020. 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.
(Pictured atop this story is the Sheep Ranch at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort.)
SEE ALSO
Golfweek’s Best 2021: Top 100 public golf courses across the U.S.
Golfweek’s Best 2021: Best public golf courses you can play, state by state
Golfweek’s Best 2021: Best private golf courses in every state