Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses 2022: From Bandon Dunes to Kiawah Island, the top 200 golf courses built after 1960

Golfweek’s experts have ranked the Top 200 courses built since 1960, such as Bandon Dunes, Whistling Straights, TPC Sawgrass, Kiawah and more.

Welcome to the Golfweek’s Best 2022 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 list among the premium offerings. Also extremely popular and significant are the lists for Top 200 Classic 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 Classic Courses list for the top 200 layouts built before 1960 in the U.S. will be posted Wednesday, May 25. The Best Courses You Can Play lists and the Best Private Courses lists will follow over the next two weeks. 

Golfweek’s Best 30 under 30: The top golf courses opened since 1992 in the U.S.

Count down the top 30 courses of the past three decades, as judged by Golfweek’s panel of raters.

It’s been a crazy string of decades in golf design, with construction going gangbusters through the 1990s and early 2000s before grinding nearly to a complete halt after the financial crisis of 2007 and ’08. Things have picked up a bit in recent years, especially when considering high-end destinations scattered in far-flung locales around the U.S.

Through it all, these are the best 30 courses opened in the past 30 years in the U.S., as voted by Golfweek’s Best panel of raters.

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.

This ranking is compiled from data included in the 2021 Golfweek’s Best Modern Courses list, and it focuses on the golf courses themselves, not on resorts or private clubs as a whole or other amenities. Each golf course included is listed with its average rating from 1 to 10, its location, architect(s), the year it opened and its status as a private club (p), a resort (r), a daily-fee operation (d) or a real estate development (re).

Other Golfweek’s Best lists include: