Whatever your reason is for traveling—work, visiting friends or a family trip—golfers are always trying to squeeze in at least one round of golf. Carve out a few hours and find the best local public track. At least that’s how we think about it.
The trouble is when you’re traveling, especially to a new city, it can be tough to find an option that pairs convenience with quality. That’s why we’ve created this guide to the best golf courses near major U.S. cities, so that if you can only play one round, you know where to go.
In this guide, we’ve used data from our 1,800 course-rating panelists to identify the best courses within reasonable driving distance from major downtown areas. In most cases, we considered courses within about a 45-minute drive, but we prioritized courses that are located much closer to downtown to give you a convenient option for your next trip.
Scroll on for the complete ranking of the best courses near major U.S. cities, and be sure to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography and reviews from our course panelists. We also encourage you to leave your own ratings on the courses you’ve played … so you can make your case for why a course should be higher or lower on our rankings.
1. New York City
2. Los Angeles
3. Chicago
4. Houston
5. Phoenix
6. Philadelphia
7. San Antonio
8. San Diego
9. Dallas/Fort Worth
10. Austin
11. Jacksonville
12. San Jose
13. Columbus
14. Charlotte
15. Indianapolis
16. San Francisco
17. Seattle
18. Denver
19. Oklahoma City
20. Nashville
21. El Paso
22. Washington, D.C.
23. Las Vegas
24. Boston
25. Portland, Ore.
Explore Golf Digest’s new Course Reviews section where you can submit a star rating and evaluation on all the courses you’ve played. We’ve collected tens of thousands of reviews from our course-ranking panelists to deliver a premium experience, which includes course rankings, experts’ opinions, bonus course photography, videos and much more. Check it out here!