America's 100 Greatest Public Courses

TPC San Antonio’s Oaks course has hosted the Valero Texas Open since 2010. Playing through the dry outlands north of the city, the Greg Norman design is one of the most strategically compelling courses on tour with aggressive bunkering, some wonderful short par 4s and several uniquely demanding par 5s, including the 18th, one of the most underrated and frustrating closing holes the professionals play.

In the current age of new elite private clubs and faraway destination resorts, the opening of a public municipal-affiliated golf course in an urban area is major news—especially when Tiger Woods shows up for the grand opening, like he did in March 2023.

The Park is the latest in a growing trend of public/private partnerships that have fueled the redevelopment of numerous municipal courses around the country. The new course is set on the site of the former Dick Wilson-designed West Palm Beach Golf Course, one of the first notable designs of the post-World War II years when it opened in 1947 and long considered among the top municipal courses in the country.
 

That course closed in 2018 due to deteriorating playability and diminished interest and sat fallow for several years. Several plans for different uses of the land were proposed before a group of local citizens, led in part by Seth Waugh, CEO of the PGA of America, raised $56 million in individual donations to re-imagine the property as a community gathering space with amenities that include, in addition to golf, youth activities and educational programs, shopping and dining. Woods was one of the donors. (Note: the PGA of America is not connected to the project.)
 

The fundraisers and City of West Palm Beach hired Hanse and Wagner to create a new 18-hole course on the property’s existing site, located just off I-95 less than two miles south of the Palm Beach International Airport. Also included in the redevelopment is a state-of-the-art practice facility, a lighted nine-hole short course and a two-acre children’s-only golf zone.
 

Hanse and Wagner retained nothing of the Wilson course and originally envisioned using its deep, sandy terrain to craft holes that would look and play like the Sand Belt courses of Melbourne, Australia. In routing the course, however, they removed pockets of trees, palmetto and other vegetation—crucial ingredients of Sand Belt courses—that would have enhanced that effect.

“One of the cool things Tiger said when he was here, and he’s been by a few times, was this is a ‘one-ball course’—you’re not going to lose a ball out here,” Hanse says.


Read Derek Duncan's full piece here.

From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten:
 

Dan Proctor and Dave Axland have been quasi-legends in the business of golf course construction for over 30 years now, individually and collectively. They've worked on many of Coore & Crenshaw’s prominent designs, including Sand Hills (Nebraska's premier layout, in the center of the state's vast sand hills) and Cabot Cliffs (Canada's premier layout these days). They even rated cameo appearances in Geoff Shackleford’s 1998 novel, The Good Doctor Returns. And they were also a talented course design team in their spare time, routing and building quality low-budget courses in the Coore & Crenshaw style.
 

Their most prominent collaboration is Wild Horse in central Nebraska, a public “little brother” to Sand Hills, in slightly softer but still authentic sand hills, closer to civilization. Like at Sand Hills, Wild Horse is lay-of-the-land architecture routed without benefit of topographic maps, with natural-looking bunkers, native grass roughs and pitch-and-run shots galore. Total earth moved: 5,000 cubic yards. Total construction costs: a little less than $1 million.
 

In my opinion, it's the best low-cost golf course in the nation. I admit I'm showing provincialism here. I was born and raised in Nebraska, and I'm partial to her natural treasures, of which Wild Horse is certainly one. There are many other fine public courses in the Midwest that are even less expensive to play than this one, but none, I will argue, will give you quite as genuine a prairie links experience as Wild Horse. 


Explore our complete review here—including bonus photography and ratings from our expert panelists.

From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten:


Back in mid-1980s, George Bryan, who ran Bryan Foods, now part of Sara Lee Corp., created Old Waverly Golf Club in tiny West Point, Miss., a Bob Cupp/Jerry Pate design and former U.S. Women’s Open host that to me is a bit underrated.

In the early 2000s, Bryan bought an old dairy farm (Knob Hill Dairy) across the highway and hired Gil Hanse to give him an Old School public golf course. George named it Mossy Oak, after a West Point company of the same name that supplies outdoor camouflage gear. (The company has a 10-percent interest in the course.) He was going to call it Howlin' Wolf after a legendary blues singer born in West Point, but his heirs wanted too much money.

Hanse got the job before he was awarded the Rio Olympics design in 2012, and it was the first project he tackled after completing his work in Brazil. The site footprint is smaller than Old Waverly across the road, but except for some cottages along No. 10, there's no residential on Mossy Oak, so the course feels more expansive.


Explore our complete review here—including bonus photography and ratings from our expert panelists.

From architecture editor Derek Duncan:


It was a long time coming. That’s not a reference to the three-and-a-half-years of construction and grow-in for Payne’s Valley, the newest resort course at Big Cedar Lodge near Branson, Mo. Rather, it had been 14 years since public golfers began waiting to play a course designed by Tiger Woods.
 

Woods founded his design company, TGR Design, in 2006. But because of his schedule, the desire to be selective of the few projects he signs onto and a devastating financial crisis, only two TGR courses were been completed—the El Cardonal course at Diamante Cabo San Lucas in Mexico, and Bluejack National, a private course in Texas. Payne’s Valley, which opened in 2020, presents to the largest audience to date the architectural principles he most values.


“My goal when starting TGR Design was to create courses that are fun and playable for golfers of all abilities,” Woods told Golf Digest. “This was particularly important at Payne’s Valley, my first public golf course.”


RELATED: Tiger Woods has been passionate about course design for longer than you might think

Woods has always been at his best on the biggest stages, and Payne’s Valley, named for the late Payne Stewart, who grew up in nearby Springfield, is unquestionably big.


Explore our complete review here—including bonus photography and ratings from our expert panelists.