America's finest golf courses (with a twist)
Gary Van Sickle unabashedly presents his favorite U.S. layouts in a series of strictly arbitrary categories.
Golf course rankings aren’t really worth the paper digital ions they’re written on.
Assorted golf magazines proudly present these Top 100 rankings on a regular basis and while they present them with apparent substantive data and input from course raters, they really are arbitrary.
One notable monthly mag used to award extra points to courses that allowed walking. How does allowing walking change the makeup and architecture of a golf course? That’s just stupid, which is my arbitrary opinion. (Note: The magazine later dropped that stipulation.)
No one person can offer a legit Top 100 list without having played the 300 best courses in America, wherever they are. So I won’t attempt that. Instead, here are my Top Courses in the U.S. based on my arbitrary category selections.
MOST FUN PER DOLLAR
The Pacific Grove Golf Links (Pacific Grove, California) is riotous fun. Some call it The Poor Man’s Pebble Beach. That would have to be a very, very poor man. I played Pacific Grove often in the early 1990s when it cost an out-of-towner something like $17. The Grove is quirky, score-friendly, visually stunning (on the back nine) and low-budget — not necessarily what you expect at a municipal course.
It remains the only real 18-hole, par-70 course I’ve played that starts out with back-to-back par 3s. The first hole is easy, the second is a bear. The back nine follows Ocean View Boulevard along the Pacific Ocean shore. There is ice plant. There are dunes. There are near-drivable par-4s. There’s even a lighthouse to make it all postcard perfect. I haven’t played there in a decade, but The Grove was always pretty scruffy due to heavy play. You want perfect fairways and greens? You’d better beg your way onto Cypress Point instead. At Pacific Grove, it’s $64 to walk 18 on a weekday, $82 on a weekend. If you’re spending thousands on a buddy trip to Pebble Beach and Spyglass, Pacific Grove is the perfect way to lower your cost-per-round average. After you play the course, you might be torn whether you would rather play a second round at Pebble for $675 and up or 10 or 12 rounds at The Grove.
BEST MULTI-COURSE GOLF RESORT
Even though it is located on the edge of the Earth in coastal Bandon, Oregon, Bandon Dunes is the winner here. The resort features five spectacular tracks, two short courses and Punchbowl, arguably the most fun putting course — which includes bar service — in America. The Pacific Ocean views, along with the brisk, ocean-side weather conditions and the isolated location, make Bandon Dunes a bucket-list stop for any golfer.
The original three courses — Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes and Bandon Trails — are different and addictive. Then came Old MacDonald, a sprawling track of cunning slopes in the style of devious designer C.B. MacDonald, and the Sheep Ranch, a Ben Crenshaw-Bill Coore layout that is minimalism at its finest.
Best of all, this band-of-brothers courses is all about golf. You don’t go there to swim laps in a hotel pool, play tennis or pickleball or get spa treatments. It’s pure golf. Mike Keiser, the founder of all this, is golf’s 21st century MVP.
GREATEST GOLF EXPERIENCE
Maybe Pebble Beach Golf Links is America’s best course, maybe it isn’t. It depends on which magazine you read. Pebble Beach is more than just a golf round, though, it is an experience. There is the history — Jack Nicklaus with the 1-iron shot off the flagstick; Tom Watson’s chip-in; Tiger Woods’ second-shot 7-iron from thick rough onto the par-5 sixth green; Tom Kite’s chip-in at the seventh; and more. There’s the scenery.
Maybe all 18 holes aren’t as dramatic as the cliffside holes along the ocean but no matter what you think of the other less-dramatic holes, they’re still near the ocean. The most amazing, humbling, stunning spot in golf (I’m going arbitrary again) is just behind the right edge of the aforementioned sixth green. Below is Stillwater Cove; behind is the rugged coastline and Pebble’s famed 18th; to the left is the par-3 seventh hole, the most famous and most photographed par 3 on the planet. Standing there, you feel like you’re standing on top of the world. So it’s $675, plus a thousand or two for a room at The Lodge in order to get a tee time? I’m not saying it’s a bargain, but stand in that spot, you won’t feel cheated.
FINEST FORMER SWAMP
I still get a case of the creeps when I think of the TPC Sawgrass 25th anniversary reunion and one of the grounds crew recalling how he used to wade through the nearly chest-high swamp waters — where the course is now — with a stick that he used to push the snakes out of his way. Whatever he was paid, it wasn’t enough.
There are two reasons to play TPC Sawgrass.
One is the 17th hole, often incorrectly described to have an “island green.” A real island would require a boat to reach it. Technically, it’s a peninsula green. But in a world in which a movie about a runaway train is titled “Unstoppable” when the train is, in fact, stopped, means our society has become weak and slack. Every resort golfer who plays TPC Sawgrass has a tale to tell about playing the 17th.
The second reason is the other 17 holes. They’re pretty good and fairly spectacular. The PGA Tour made changes to bring more water into play — maybe too much, making it border on a video game. But The Players Championship gets a lot of eyeballs, viewers know all the holes thanks to wall-to-wall TV coverage. And those who play the course know the 17th is a layup compared to the 18th hole, which looks easy for Tour players but is a killer for us average hacks. If the world decides to call The Players the fifth major, I won’t object anymore. I’ve been won over.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR
Not much in the way of news comes out of spacious Utah. So how did Black Desert Resort (Ivins, Utah), which recently hosted the PGA Tour’s Black Desert Championship, get built without us noticing? The place has black lava rock, believed to be the only place on the continental U.S. to have that. How it got there is a mystery for Josh Gates and “Expedition: Unknown.” Surely you didn’t watch football instead of the Black Desert Championship? You missed some of the most stunning panoramas and drone aerial footage this side of Pebble. You probably didn’t think you had a reason to visit Utah. Now you do.
THE GOLF CAPITAL OF AMERICA
It has always been Chicago — or Chicagoland as its spreading virtual boundaries are called. In the 1980s, when Butler National hosted the important Western Open, the standard line was that Chicago had enough good courses (mostly swank private clubs) to host the entire 45 weeks of the PGA Tour schedule. That was stretching the truth, sure, but only a little. There’s Chicago Golf Club, the C.B. MacDonald design that is the exclusive Pine Valley of the Midwest; Shoreacres; Butler National; Old Elm; Olympia Fields (North and South); Medinah and Cog Hill (multiple courses at each); Bob o’ Link; Beverly; Skokie; and the list goes on and on. Who’s the runner-up in this category? It’s not close enough to matter.
AMERICA’S GOLFIEST STATE
It is also America’s cheesiest, beeriest and cowiest — Wisconsin. Let’s start with the original Blackwolf Run collection, built in Kohler, under the insistence of the late Herb Kohler Jr., who was CEO of Kohler Co. Then came Whistling Straits and the Irish Course. The Straits, despite two holes in the middle of the front nine that curiously look like two misfit holes that escaped from Florida, is a golfing experience ala Pebble Beach. Look out from a green on the bluff overlooking Lake Michigan and this course just feels special. The fact that it is usually windy, as Pebble often is, merely adds to the challenge and the experience.
Erin Hills, a tough walk through rolling terrain left by glaciers, has hosted men’s and women’s U.S. Opens, plus a U.S. Amateur. It is an engrossing piece of land.
Bandon Dunes founder Mike Keiser latched on to some unusually sandy terrain in north-central Wisconsin to found another Bandon Dunes-like resort only minus the Pacific Ocean. It began with Sand Valley, a Crenshaw-Coore track that cleverly winds through the sandy terrain. Then came Mammoth Dunes, which lives up to its name; Sedge Valley, a homage to British heathland courses; The Lido, a recreation of the famed C.B. MacDonald course from the Golden Age that died a slow death during the Great Depression and was killed off when the Navy took it over for World War II; and The Sand Box, a short course with classic (and classically outrageous) greens.
Finish it off with the Milwaukee County Parks golf system, the best municipal course operation in the country. It has four par-3 courses; two executive tracks; four not-too-difficult courses; three so-called championship courses and one layout, Brown Deer Park, that formerly hosted the PGA Tour’s Greater Milwaukee Open. You could make one heck of a buddy trip just out of these public layouts. Especially when you consider that beer is readily available thanks to more than two dozen breweries, including a little outfit called Miller.
BEST DESERT DESSERTS
Thanks to all the contenders, but I’ll take Scottsdale — and, well, all of the Greater Phoenix area. TPC Scottsdale isn’t the iconic design that TPC Sawgrass is and Scottsdale’s most famed hole is an OK par 3 made legendary because it is “Golf’s Loudest Hole,” thanks to 20,000-plus fans surrounding it. Play the hole in May without the fans and it’s just a very nice hole.
My first stop would be Papago Golf Course, a public track near Sky Harbor Airport that has sprawling fairways and greens adjacent to stark red-rock outcroppings. It also has a very good practice facility, which isn’t easy to find in the desert. We-Ko-Pa, which also has a great hotel and a casino, has two excellent courses. Talking Stick isn’t quite as scenic, but its two tracks are very entertaining. I try to play both those places when I in town. I also like Eagle Mountain, Verrado (Founders Course), Boulders Resort, Troon North; and both courses at Grayhawk. Those are just the tips of the iceberg — not that there’s ever an iceberg in this desert. Unless margaritas count.
Every traveling golfer a list of favorites. I still have a handful of states where I haven’t even played and still have about 13,500 courses to go in my fantasy mission of playing all 15,000 or so of America’s courses. So I’m not an expert and I’ll leave the rest of my favorites, including the list of favorite courses I played that no longer exist, for another time.
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I would recommend Gold Canyon Dinosaur Mountain in Mesa Arizona to anyone visiting the Phoenix area
so many courses, so little time. how's a guy going to play all 15,000 in one lifetime? thx for reading jim.