After a tight battle, there’s a new No. 1 among Hawaii’s public-access layouts.
It’s a tight race for the title of best public-access golf course in Hawaii, with the Four Seasons Resort’s Manele Course in Lanai having jumped ahead of Kapalua’s Plantation Course for the No. 1 spot on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list in 2022.
Built by Jack Nicklaus atop lava outcroppings and opened in 1991, the Manele Course features three holes atop cliffs above the Pacific Ocean. Besides being No. 1 among Hawaii’s public-access layouts, it ties for No. 32 among all modern courses built since 1960 in the U.S.
Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses in each state among the most popular. 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.
(m): Modern course, built in or after 1960 (c): Classic course, built before 1960
Note: If there is a number in the parenthesis with the m or c, that indicates where that course ranks among Golfweek’s Best top 200 modern or classic courses. Several of the private courses listed below do not qualify for those premium lists because they haven’t seen enough rater play in the past 10 years, but they are still eligible for the state-by-state lists.
Red Sky offers private experiences to resort guests, and the rest of Colorado offers more great courses.
Looking for a chance to play two highly ranked private golf courses without paying an initiation fee and annual dues? Colorado might be your shot, as Red Sky Golf Club in Wolcott is for the most part a private club that allows resort guests to play its two courses on alternating days.
Red Sky’s Tom Fazio and Greg Norman courses are both in the top five layouts in Colorado on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public-access courses in each state. Want to see how the rest of the state’s public courses shake out? Keep scrolling.
Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses in each state among the most popular. 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.
(m): Modern course, built in or after 1960 (c): Classic course, built before 1960 Note: If there is a number in the parenthesis with the m or c, that indicates where that course ranks among Golfweek’s Best top 200 modern or classic courses.
The top-rated public access course in Arkansas is nestled in the south of the state not far from Louisiana.
Arkansas features plenty of variation in terrain, with plenty of mountainous golf in the north of the state. But to find the highest-ranked public-access golf course in Natural State, head south toward the Louisiana line.
There, in El Dorado, you’ll find Mystic Creek Golf Club, a Kenneth Dye Jr. layout that opened in 2013. Mystic Creek is the top-ranked layout in Arkansas on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for public golf.
Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses among the most popular. 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.
The top public-access offerings in this stacked golf state go on for miles, especially in the Phoenix-Scottsdale region.
Arizona is a gifted golf state, with desert courses of all kinds to suit any budget or taste. Especially in the region of Phoenix and Scottsdale, there are miles and miles of fairways to welcome residents, visitors and seasonal snowbirds alike.
Tops among the public-access offerings is We-Ko-Pa’s Saguaro Course, designed by famed architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw and which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. One of two courses at the facility operated by a casino next door, the Saguaro Course ranks No. 1 in Arizona on Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play list for each state.
Golfweek’s Best offers many lists of course rankings, with the list of top public-access courses among the most popular. 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.
Work includes new TifEagle putting surfaces, refreshed bunkers and tree removal.
Pinehurst No. 8, designed by Tom Fazio and opened in 1996, has undergone extensive agronomic and infrastructure enhancements this summer and will reopen Friday, Sept. 2.
The course, built to commemorate the resort’s centennial anniversary, ranks as the No. 7 public-access layout in a stacked state, as judged by Golfweek’s Best raters. The resort’s famed Pinehurst No. 2 course is the top-ranked public-access layout in North Carolina, the No. 4 course ranks second in the state, and the No. 9 and No. 7 courses also make the top 15 in the state.
The work to No. 8 included new TifEagle greens, restored bunkers with fresh sand, improved drainage throughout the course and the removal of invasive trees that blocked sunlight and views. The fairways also were “fraise” mowed, a disruptive process that removes years of thatch and undesired organic matter to provide faster, firmer playing surfaces.
“No. 8 now appears crisper to the eye and plays firmer and faster, the way Tom Fazio originally intended it,” Pinehurst Resort director of agronomy Bob Farren, who oversaw the work, said in a media release announcing the news. “Fazio, (resort owner) Bob Dedman and (resort president) Tom Pashley all agreed that No. 8 should retain its original, commemorative design. As such, these changes are aesthetic and agronomic with no alterations to the course’s architecture.”
There’s plenty more work being done at the resort including the renovation of the Carolina Hotel, on which Phase 1 of work is being completed. Other work at the hotel includes upgrades to the Ryder Cup Terrace that wraps around much of the building, which now will include areas with fire pits and soft seating near the Ryder Cup Lounge.
Where to play golf of any kind in Florida? Check out these Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
The No. 1 public-access course in Florida isn’t really a surprise, seeing how it has been broadcast worldwide into living rooms during each year’s Players Championship for decades. The Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass ranks as one of legendary designer Pete Dye’s top five masterpieces, perplexing PGA Tour pros since it opened in 1980, and it ties for No. 15 on Golfweek’s Best list of all modern courses in the U.S.
And it isn’t the only course on the Ponte Vedra property to rank among Golfweek’s Best Courses You Can Play in Florida. Next door to the Players Stadium Course is Dye’s Valley, which clocks in at No. 18 among the Sunshine State’s best public layouts. Dye’s Valley doesn’t have the scale or fame of its neighbor, but it does have plenty of the features, challenges and visual tricks that made its designer and namesake famous.
Dye’s Valley at TPC Sawgrass in Florida (Courtesy of TPC Sawgrass)
Looking for even more highly ranked public-access courses all at one property? In Florida, that would be Streamsong, home to Nos. 2, 3 and 4 on Golfweek’s Best list of public-access layouts. The popular resort in Bowling Green, about an hour’s drive east of Tampa or 90 minutes southwest of Orlando, features courses by Tom Doak, Gil Hanse and the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.
Coore and Crenshaw’s Red Course tops the rankings for Streamsong’s courses, coming in at No. 2 among the state’s public-access layouts and tying for No. 37 among all modern courses in the U.S. Hanse’s Black Courses isn’t far behind, ranking No. 3 in the state and tying for 50th among modern courses. Doak’s Blue Course is right there, too, ranking No. 4 in the state and No. 53 among modern courses.
Streamsong’s Red Course (Courtesy of Streamsong/Laurence Lambrecht)
How do you choose which layout at Streamsong to play? Take our advice: Play all three, then get back to us on your favorite. Every player to visit has plenty of opinions on which course they prefer and why, and none of them are really wrong. Combined, the three layouts make Streamsong one of only a handful of resorts in the U.S. to offer so many highly ranked courses, and the resort also has started construction of a new short course, the Chain, by Coore and Crenshaw that promises even more golf.
No. 5 in the state is no stranger to PGA Tour fans either, as Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando is home each year to the Arnold Palmer Invitational. A statue of Palmer still stands guard near the first and 10th tees, reminding players of the decades in which the King lived at the resort while leaving his fingerprints on every aspect of the operation.
Florida is also home to a staggering array of private courses, many of which serve as winter retreats for well-heeled clientele and residents who chase the warmth south each year. Topping the list of private courses in the state is Seminole, a Donald Ross design in Juno Beach that is No. 12 on Golfweek’s Best list of classic courses in the U.S. and one of the most exclusive clubs in the U.S.
Can’t get a tee time at Seminole? Get in line – almost all of us are waiting on that call. In the meantime, check out the rest of the best public-access and private clubs in Florida below.
David McLay Kidd says there might be a touch more challenge around the greens on his new course at Gamble Sands.
Gamble Sands in Brewster, Washington, jumped onto golf’s map over the past decade with its David McLay Kidd-designed course, a wide-open 18 that ranks as the No. 1 public-access layout in the state and No. 46 among all modern courses in the U.S. Built aside a working apple and cherry farm, Gamble Sands plays firm and fast over fescue and sand to wide fairways and giant greens.
For years Kidd and the Gebbers family, who own the remote resort and adjacent orchards, have been in discussions about adding a second course. That time has arrived.
Still unnamed, a new 18-hole course is part of a full resort expansion that includes nearly doubling the first-rate Inn at Gamble Sands that is frequently reached after a short flight from Seattle to Wenatchee followed by an hour’s drive up Highway 17.
Kidd told Golfweek the project is well underway, with permits in place and the starting points of construction decided. He and his crew will break ground this fall, then it’s off to the races next year, he said, with a planned grand opening in the summer of 2025.
The new course will be built just north of the existing 18 and the resort’s par-3 course, QuickSands, another Kidd creation that opened last year. Like the original 18, the new layout will overlook the Columbia River with scenic mountain views stretching for miles.
No. 1 of the QuickSands par-3 course at Gamble Sands (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
“It’s a sort of dramatic piece of land,” Kidd said of his plans for the second course. “There’s a little more to do than with the first course because they farmed it, so we’ve got to kind of rehab it back to the wild scrub of the high desert. But once we get all that done, I expect it to be a really good complement to the first one.”
The first course was a prime example of the Scottish designer’s new ethos, he has said, one that has evolved over the past decade.
After bursting onto the golf scene with his Bandon Dunes layout in Oregon in 1999, Kidd began building other courses with a greater emphasis on difficulty. That approach didn’t always work out, and he shifted gears to open Gamble Sands in 2014 with a focus on fun for any level of golfer on layouts across which it’s difficult to lose a ball. Sometimes-immense fairways over thrilling terrain, big greens, bouncy shots, feeder slopes, extreme playability – those became his talking points, and golfers flocked to Gamble Sands as well as his Mammoth Dunes course at Sand Valley in Wisconsin.
Kidd also recently signed on to build GrayBull in the Nebraska Sandhills, and he said that course might feature a touch more challenge than at several of his most wide-open layouts of recent years. Golfers can expect a bit of the same at the new course at Gamble Sands, he said, but he was adamant he isn’t returning his focus to resistance to scoring.
“The first course (at Gamble Sands), I think a good golfer goes out on the first one and thinks they can take on par, even though most of the time they don’t,” Kidd said. “I think on this one, we’re planning on having it put up a little more resistance just so we have a little different offering. It’s on the drawing board right now, and we’ve been talking about slightly smaller greens, maybe some more contours around putting surfaces, fairway widths are probably very similar. We’ll see how it all shakes out.”
The view from the lodge at Gamble sands, across the giant putting course to snow-capped mountains in the distance (Jason Lusk/Golfweek)
Saying the new greens might be “slightly smaller” than the original 18 at Gamble Sands means they probably will still be quite large – it’s not uncommon to face 100-foot putts on the first course. It’s all part of the fun, similar to Tom Doak and Jim Urbina’s Old Macdonald at Bandon Dunes Golf Resort – you might hit a green in regulation, but now what?
Even with initial plans in place, Kidd knows things are likely to change as the build progresses. Nothing is set in stone.
“You know, all of this stuff happens in the ground,” he said. “It doesn’t matter what I say or what we draw, all of the creativity actually happens when you’re there, in the ground with your crew. Your ideas spark from one person to another, and things start to form in front of your eyes and take on a life of their own.”
And there’s more on the drawing board: The lodge at Gamble Sands, which features large and luxurious rooms overlooking the Columbia River Valley and a giant putting course, will be expanded from a current 37 rooms to 73. The resort also plans to add a new restaurant.
“All of us here at Gamble Sands are truly excited for the next step in the evolution of the golf resort,” Tory Wulf, project manager at Gamble Sands, said a release announcing the news. “Our team has worked hard to enhance the experience on and off the golf course since opening in 2014. The second full-length rendition by David McLay Kidd and his team will be fun to watch take shape and I’m sure even ‘funner’ to play.”
The golf stretches for days, but which course tops at the Georgia resort tops the Golfweek’s Best rankings?
The best part of any golf trip is all the golf – of course – followed by more golf, with a high chance of still more golf tomorrow. More shots, more greens, more of everything. Wake up before the sun, launch the day off the first tee, keep swinging until the cart attendants round you up in the dark.
If the courses are of high quality, even better. Should they be ranked among the best in their state, greater still.
But few resorts offer seemingly endless great golf within their confines. One or two courses are the norm, then players are forced to book elsewhere for that more-golf-all-the-time fanaticism. Only a handful of properties include enough golf to keep players swinging on highly rated and fresh-to-them courses for days on end. It’s not overly difficult to jump around from resort to resort if golfers plan well in advance, but there’s much to be said for the ease of use in finding one golf vacation spot with great holes stretching for days.
Examples in the U.S. include Bandon Dunes Golf Resort in Oregon, home to five top-ranked 18-hole courses. Pinehurst and its smorgasbord of golf holes – anchored by the famed No. 2 – with five courses ranked inside the top 15 public-access layouts in North Carolina. Destination Kohler in Wisconsin and its four highly ranked courses that include Whistling Straits.
A massive Central Georgia property sprawling across some 12,000 acres on the shores of its namesake lake about 85 miles southeast of Atlanta, Reynolds Lake Oconee offers five courses open to guests of the on-property Ritz-Carlton hotel or cottages operated by the community, and club members have access to a sixth layout. That makes it 42,336 yards of golf in all, more than 24 miles.
And after leaving the luxurious lobby of the Ritz-Carlton, none of it feels like a resort. That’s by design, and it’s a good thing.
The Ritz-Carlton at Reynolds Lake Oconee (Courtesy of Reynolds Lake Oconee)
Despite having the AAA Four Diamond/ Forbes Four-Star hotel and 50-plus multi-bedroom cottages, Reynolds Lake Oconee is at its core a residential community with more than 4,000 members. In recent years, 88 percent of total rounds on the courses consists of member-related play, leaving just 12 percent of tee times for short-term guests of the hotel and cottages, with no regular outside daily-fee play. That means players can be rewarded with a private-club experience on the five courses open to guests.
Unlike many resorts, tee times are never rushed, going off in 12-minute intervals that help maintain pace of play instead of the industry’s frequent 9- to 10-minute intervals that can bog down a course. Reynolds’ practice ranges are uncrowded, the clubhouses never overrun, the courses typically in pristine condition. Throw in the Kingdom – an elite TaylorMade fitting and instruction center on property not far from the Ritz – and players have more golf options than would fit in a two-day trip.
It’s an old cliché from 1980s golf marketing to call daily-fee players a “member for the day,” but Reynolds actually delivers such a relaxed experience. The courses are operated for their members, and the hotel and resort guests are given a taste of that life.
“We’re always going to be more club than resort,” said Dave Short, senior vice president of marketing, sales and strategic planning for Reynolds Lake Oconee. “You know, high-density resort play, it’s just not what our members are here for. We’re not in that game. We just happen to have in the center of our club one of the best hotels in the country.”
Owned by MetLife Inc. since 2012, the resort community is home to some 4,000 members and features everything from forested houses that start around $700,000 all the way into the realm of lakefront mansions on multi-acre lots that cost more than $9 million, Short said. About 40 percent of real estate transactions involve buyers from the Atlanta area, and Short said the other 60 percent represent a vast geographic range as the resort has trended younger in recent years with active professionals embracing a work-from-home ethos.
It can be a huge change for big-city folks moving to what once was middle-of-nowhere rural Georgia, but Short said MetLife’s continuing capital improvements – new restaurants, leisure amenities, marinas and more – have made it a most-inviting lifestyle swap. “Our members will tell you,” Short said, “we’re 40 minutes from a Walmart but only five minutes from a Ritz-Carlton.”
And, seemingly, never even that far away from the next tee box.
The six total courses stretch across the property: Great Waters designed by Jack Nicklaus and recently renovated; The Oconee by Rees Jones and closest to the Ritz-Carlton; The National with 27 rolling holes by Tom Fazio; a members’ favorite at The Preserve by Bob Cupp; The Landing by Cupp, just up the road from the main property; plus the members-only and quirky Creek Club by Jim Engh.
Each of the five public-access layouts plays at times along the shore of the massive Lake Oconee, a massive reservoir constructed by Georgia Power in 1979 with 374 miles of shoreline. Great Waters features the most holes along the lake and receives much of the attention, ranking No. 2 among all public-access layouts in Georgia. But each of the layouts has received restorations and renovations since MetLife took over the property, and to focus only on the highest-ranked Great Waters – or The Oconee based on its easy proximity to the Ritz – would be a mistake.
The National Course at Reynolds Lake Oconee in Georgia (Courtesy of Reynolds Lake Oconee/Brian Oar)
“For a hotel guest, it’s easy to walk out the front door and go over to The Oconee, so that’s pretty popular, and Great Waters is very popular with guests because of its notoriety and profile as a Nicklaus Signature course,” said Short, a single-digit handicapper. “But once you get beyond those two, you can find a lot to like about The National, you can find a lot to like about The Creek if you know a member who can get you there, and I think The Landing is one that doesn’t get nearly enough recognition. It’s an extraordinary golf course.”
Short spent an afternoon chasing birdies and telling jokes at the Creek Club with this writer during my recent sampling of all six courses in three days – that’s a lot of golf, and I wouldn’t necessarily suggest such a trip because to focus only on golf is to miss too much else of what the resort offers. But golf is what I do, and following are my takes on the resort’s five public-access courses.
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.
“We haven’t seen numbers like this in a long time. These are the best numbers in more than 15 years.”
FARMINGTON, New Mexico — Most people, when considering the chore of lawn and garden care for their homes, probably cringe a bit about the magnitude of the project.
Now imagine that same bit of work encompassing some 7,200 yards of lawn and garden care.
Piñon Hills Golf Course is in the planning phase right now for what’s expected to be a 90-day process to excavate bunkers as well as replacing outdated irrigation systems.
The anticipated start date of the work is shortly after the start of the new year.
This will be the first real renovation project of its kind for the course in several years, according to PGA Tour professional and course general manager Chris Jones.
“If all the materials arrive when expected, we will close the golf course,” Jones said. “In the event materials are delayed, we will not close the golf course until such time they arrive.”
In a statement released last month on the course’s website, the intent with some of the work being done is to “restore the desert and native areas to a non-watered, natural state,” which means replacing and repairing existing watering systems.
“This will give us a state-of-the-art system in which we can control each one of the 1,500 sprinkler heads from any remote device,” Jones said. “It will save us a lot of water and a lot of money at the same time.”
Piñon Hills will work with a variety of different businesses to assist the renovation process, including Mid-America Golf & Landscape, operated out of Lee’s Summit, Missouri.
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It is expected that more than 30 contractors and workers from that business will be supplying materials for the renovation and will be in charge of supervising the work on the course set to begin in January.
“Once that starts and we completely close down the course, it’s about a three-month process,” Jones said. “There’s a possibility that some side work might still be going on as far as finishing touches, but the bulk of the work takes about 90 days.”
Weather considering, that places the expected reopening of the course sometime around late March to early April.
“The guys who are working the course, they do this for a living and work in any kind of weather,” Jones said. “If we run into some heavy snow, that can set us back a bit but for the most part we’re expecting they’ll work right through the timeframe.”
In addition to the irrigation work, the excavation of the bunkers is another high-profile part of the renovation process.
For that, Piñon Hills is calling on the services of the Better Billy Bunker Method, based out of Hermitage, Tennessee.
Pinon Hills Golf Course in Farmington, New Mexico, is about to undergo a massive renovation which will include restoration of bunkers and updates to irrigation systems. (Contributed photo)
Among their clients have been respected courses like Indian Hills Country Club, located in Bowling Green, Kentucky. They also have received endorsements from superintendents at Augusta National, home of the Masters.
“They go in and take out all the old lining and sand and they make sure the drainage works before making changes to the polymer around the bunkers,” Jones said. “You’ll never see a weed grow through it.”
Ranked as one of the top courses by Golfweek (No. 4 on the list of courses you can play in New Mexico), Piñon Hills has been recognized by many as one of the best public golf courses in the United States. It’s also extremely affordable, with weekday rates under $50, even for non-residents.
Since opening in 1989, Piñon Hills has primarily maintained its original design, but a recent flurry of activity has spurred on need for a change.
The popularity of the sport of golf in general has been wide in the past year, mostly because it gave participants the chance to be outdoors when many indoor businesses were shut down or limited to capacity.
“Since we re-opened (summer of 2020), we haven’t seen numbers like this in a long time,” Jones said. “These are the best numbers in more than 15 years.”
With the emergence of disc golf and footgolf and the ability to play those sports at courses across the region, interest in the courses has seen a huge boost.
“People having access to these courses have seen numbers go off the charts,” Jones said. “The pandemic has been awful in a lot of respects but golf has been an unexpected beneficiary of people getting out and rediscovering the sport.”
The rising popularity of both the sport and the course, as well as the necessity for change was reason enough to go ahead with this project.
According to Jones, more than 90 percent of the current irrigation systems on the course are from the original design and construction, making it unreliable in recent years and time-consuming for maintenance workers on the course.
“This has been a project we felt needed to be done for many years now,” Jones said. “The irrigation system on its own is going to make a huge difference.”
Once completed, Jones hopes that golfers returning to Piñon Hills will not notice many changes, as they’re not expected to have an impact in terms of the length of the course.
“We might move a tee box here or there a few yards left or right,” Jones said. “But we’re not looking to change the course itself. The original design still stands on its own.”
Steve Bortstein can be reached via email at SBortstein@Gannett.com, via Twitter @DTSBortstein or on the phone at (505) 635-2680.
