No matter where you live or where you might be traveling, the Golfweek’s Best course rankings have you covered with the top public-access layouts in every U.S. state.
Following is our annually updated Best Courses You Can Play ranking, as judged by our nationwide network of raters. The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them 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 all our Golfweek’s Best course rankings.
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 – no membership required. (There are a handful of courses on this list that some players might consider to be traditionally private, but they do allow non-hosted, non-member guest play in some limited form, normally through a local hotel or similar arrangement.)
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.
* indicates new or returning to the rankings
Editor’s note: The ranking for best private course in each state will be published Tuesday, June 4.