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America's most challenging courses, ranked

By Drew Powell and Stephen Hennessey
June 10, 2025
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A common misconception of our ranking of America’s 100 Greatest Courses is that we’re looking to identify the 100 Greatest Championship layouts. That may have been true decades ago. Our list was first called America’s Toughest Courses when we first published our list in 1966. So we have been trying to shed that moniker ever since. We’ve rewritten our definition of Challenge, once called Resistance to Scoring, to remind our 1,700-plus course-ranking panelists that they should reward courses that offer interesting modes of challenge beyond mere length and penalty.

That distinction is reflected in our definition of Challenge, one of our six scoring criteria used to determine our course rankings. We ask, “How challenging, while still being fair, is the course for a typical scratch golfer playing from the tees designated as back tees for everyday play (not from seldom-used championship tees)?”

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We prefer to consider how challenging a course is for a mythical scratch golfer as opposed to a tour pro because most courses won’t host tour events with championship setups. A course that receives a high mark in Challenge must also be fair. Courses with demanding 260-yard carries over hazards from every tee or every green guarded by water are challenging but likely not fair. A course can be challenging in less obvious ways than severe rough and punishing hazards. Our panelists consider each of these factors, like the way an architect utilized prevailing winds, firm fairways and greens, angled targets, uneven stances and obscured visibility.

Based on panelist scores from our latest America’s 100 Greatest and Second 100 Greatest rankings, we’ve ranked the 25 most challenging courses in the United States.

Scroll down for the complete list of the most challenging courses in the country. We urge you to click through to each individual course page for bonus photography, drone footage and reviews from our course panelists. Plus, you can now leave your own ratings on the courses you’ve played … to make your case why your favorite should be ranked higher.

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25. Crystal Downs Country Club
Frankfort, MI
4.8
27 Panelists
Perry Maxwell, the Midwest associate of architect Alister MacKenzie, lived on site while constructing the course to MacKenzie’s plans, but there’s evidence Maxwell exercised considerable artistic license on some holes. Whomever did it, Crystal Downs has fairways that zigzag and rumble over the glacial landscape and greens that have doglegs in them. One drawback is that the putting surfaces are so old-fashioned that they’re too steep for today’s green speeds. But that’s part of Crystal Downs' appeal. It’s short but has considerable bite.
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24. Riviera Country Club
Pacific Palisades, CA
4.8
28 Panelists
A compact and shrewd design by George C. Thomas Jr. and associate William P. Bell, Riviera features everything from a long Redan par-3 to a bunker in the middle of a green to an alternate-fairway par-4. With its 18th green at the base of a natural amphitheater, and its primary rough consisting of club-grabbing Kikuyu, Riviera seems tailor-made as a tournament venue. It hosted a PGA Championship in 1995, a U.S. Senior Open in 1998 and a U.S. Amateur in 2017, but no U.S. Open since 1948. Riviera was recently awarded the 2031 U.S. Open, and it will also host the 2028 Olympics. But it’s the site of an annual PGA Tour event, which is even better exposure to the golf world.
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23. Pebble Beach Golf Links
Pebble Beach, CA
4.7
46 Panelists
Not just the greatest meeting of land and sea in American golf, but the most extensive one, too, with nine holes perched immediately above the crashing Pacific surf—the fourth through 10th plus the 17th and 18th. Pebble’s sixth through eighth are golf’s real Amen Corner, with a few Hail Marys thrown in over an ocean cove on the eighth from atop a 75-foot-high bluff. Pebble hosted a successful U.S. Amateur in 2018 and a sixth U.S. Open in 2019. Recent improvements include the redesign of the once-treacherous 14th green and reshaping the par-3 17th green, both planned by Arnold Palmer’s Design Company a few years back, and modifications to the green at the famous eighth hole, which we deemed the second Greatest Hole in America. Green modifications have continued, and Pebble re-enters our top 10 after a brief time out the last two years.
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22. Southern Hills Country Club
Tulsa, OK
4.8
19 Panelists
A product of the Great Depression and constructed by hundreds of workers who stood at the gate each morning hoping for a 25-cents-per-hour job that day, Southern Hills is architect Perry Maxwell’s great achievement. Nearly every hole bends left or right, posing critical tee shots that must risk something. The putting surfaces have the classic “Maxwell Rolls,” and most are guarded by simple yet effective bunkers. During the summer of 2018, architect Gil Hanse and crew rebuilt much of the course, in the process re-establishing Maxwell’s distinctive, gnarly-edged bunkering and reconstructing the green shoulders that had been built up over the years. Hanse's changes were on display at the 2022 PGA Championship, and the club will host the event for a sixth time in 2032.
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21. Los Angeles Country Club: North
Los Angeles, CA
4.8
23 Panelists
It’s on the edge of Tinsel Town, but the architecture of the North Course at Los Angeles Country Club has been solid gold ever since its 2010 restoration by architect Gil Hanse and partner Jim Wagner. It matters not that Hanse’s team didn’t replicate the bunkering style of original architect George C. Thomas, but rather the more visually exciting style of Thomas’ associate, William P. Bell. The first nine plays rustically up and down a shallow canyon with holes switching back and forth across a dry barranca, and the second nine loops across a more spacious upland section with one par 3 (the 11th) that can stretch to nearly 300 yards and another (the 15th) that often plays just 90 yards. The hole strategies reinstituted by Hanse provided an intriguing examination when LACC's North course hosted the 2023 U.S. Open as Wyndham Clark beat Rory McIlroy by a stroke.
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20. The Honors Course
Ooltewah, TN
4.7
21 Panelists
Considered radical in the early 1980s because of its acres of tall, native-grass rough, durable zoysiagrass fairways and terrifying greens perched atop bulkheads of rock, today The Honors Course is considered a well-preserved example of Pete Dye’s death-or-glory architecture. Other than reducing the contours in a couple of greens (particularly the 18th) in the late 1990s, and adjusting the bunkering in 2008, Dye left the course alone for most of his career. Georgia architect Bill Bergin created a new practice facility at the club in 2015, and Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner touched everything up again in 2022.
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19. Oak Tree National
Edmond, OK
4.6
16 Panelists
Oak Tree National was originally the men’s-only Oak Tree Golf Club, with 18 holes patterned after previous Dye designs (the par-3 eighth, for example, was a close cousin to his 17th at Harbour Town, complete with a basket trap on the back left). It has long been considered one of Pete Dye’s sternest tests of golf, a hilly layout with numerous water hazards and deep bunkers protecting some very tiny greens, as well as gusting Oklahoma winds and gnarly Bermudagrass rough. It’s been a PGA Tour Champions fixture in recent years, hosting the 2006 Senior PGA Championship and the 2014 Senior U.S. Open. Recent touch-ups by Tripp Davis have kept Dye's architecture sharp.
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18. Whistling Straits: Straits Course
Sheboygan, WI
4.7
57 Panelists
Pete Dye transformed a dead flat abandoned army air base along a two-mile stretch of Lake Michigan into an imitation Ballybunion at Whistling Straits, peppering his rugged fairways and windswept greens with 1,012 (at last count) bunkers. There are no rakes at Whistling Straits, in keeping with the notion that this is a transplanted Irish links. It has too much rub of the green for the comfort levels of many tour pros, which is what makes it a stern test for top events, such as three PGA Championships, the 2007 U.S. Senior Open and the 2021 Ryder Cup.
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17. Victoria National Golf Club
Newburgh, IN
4.6
26 Panelists
Built atop Peabody Coal Company’s long-abandoned Victoria strip mine in southern Indiana, Victoria National was a simple routing for Tom Fazio. He just followed the corridors (the perfect width for fairways) that existed between mining spoil mounds (long since overgrown with trees) and some 40 acres of fingery lagoons that had formed as steam shovels carving out coal deposits hit the water table. Chosen as Best New Private Course of 1999, Victoria National stunned most panelists. One gushed it was, “the most unusual, unpolished and unpretentious Fazio design ever.” Another called it, “probably the hardest Fazio course I’ve played. More penal than Pine Valley.” Fazio concurred with that assessment. “It’s U.S. Open-quality now,” he said soon after it opened. “If the wind blew, it’d be too hard.”
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16. The Country Club: The Main Course
Brookline, MA
4.3
2 Panelists
The Country Club’s 18-hole course, which was the scene of the 1963 and 1988 U.S. Opens, is not the 18-hole course ranked by Golf Digest. Those events were played on a composite course that utilizes several holes from the club’s third nine, Primrose, designed by William Flynn. We rank the combination of the Main Course (the Clyde and Squirrel nines), clearly good enough to be one of the top courses in the world. Gil Hanse performed some course restoration prior to the 2013 U.S. Amateur at The Country Club and again before the 2022 U.S. Open, won by Matthew Fitzpatrick. The USGA used a new configuration of 18 holes for that championship, eliminating the par-4 fourth and adding the tiny, downhill par-3 11th to the mix, the first time the hole was used since the 1913 Open won by Francis Ouimet.
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15. Pinehurst No. 2
Pinehurst, NC
4.7
51 Panelists
In 2010, a team led by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw killed and ripped out all the Bermudagrass rough on Pinehurst #2 that had been foolishly planted in the 1970s. Between fairways and tree lines, they established vast bands of native hardpan sand dotted with clumps of wiregrass and scattered pine needles. They reduced the irrigation to mere single rows in fairways to prevent grass from ever returning to the new sandy wastelands. Playing firm and fast, it was wildly successful as the site of the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens, played on consecutive weeks, and produced an even more exciting Open in 2024 when Bryson DeChambeau beat Rory McIlroy on the final hole. It's the rare course that a wide variety of resort players can enjoy and play quickly one day, and be a test for tour pros the next by essentially just quickening the greens. A new favorite of the USGA with a headquarters in town, Pinehurst #2 will host Opens again in 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047.
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14. Butler National Golf Club
Oak Brook, IL
4.4
34 Panelists
Butler National was former tour player George Fazio’s ideal of a championship course, with 10 forced carries over water in 18 holes. Even before it opened, it was signed to eventually serve as a permanent site of the Western Open. The problem was, when it opened, it was the last cool-weather venue on the PGA Tour to utilize bluegrass rather than bentgrass for its fairways, and several prominent golfers declined to play Butler National because of potential flyer-lies from those fairways. Eventually, the turf was converted, but then the Shoal Creek scandal occurred. Rather than change its restricted men-only policy, the club relinquished its role of Western Open host after the 1990 event. So why include a club on America’s 100 Greatest that won’t allow female panelists a chance to evaluate it? Because we rank golf courses, not club policies.
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13. Seminole Golf Club
Juno Beach, FL
4.8
23 Panelists
A majestic Donald Ross design with a clever routing on a rectangular site, each hole at Seminole encounters a new wind direction. The routing is perhaps the only thing that remains of Ross' vision. The greens are no longer his, replaced 60 years ago in a regrassing effort that showed little appreciation for the original rolling contours. The bunkers aren’t Ross either. Dick Wilson replaced them in 1947, his own version meant to imitate crests of waves on the adjacent Atlantic. A few years back, Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw redesigned the bunkers again, set lower, closer to the way Ross had them, along with exposing sandy expanses in the rough. The club is about to embark on another major remodel by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner intended to finally recreate Ross’ internal green movements based on his blueprints and elevate sections of the course to remediate drainage concerns. Seminole has long been one of America’s most exclusive clubs, which is why it was thrilling to see it on TV for a first time during the TaylorMade Driving Relief match, and then again for the 2021 Walker Cup.
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12. Muirfield Village Golf Club
Dublin, OH
4.8
23 Panelists
This is the course that Jack built, and rebuilt, and rebuilt again and again. Since its opening in 1974, Jack Nicklaus has remodeled every hole at Muirfield Village, some more than once, using play at the PGA Tour’s annual Memorial Tournament for some guidance. The renovation in 2020 was one of the most extensive and included the rebuilding of every hole, the shifting of greens and tees, strategic changes to the iconic par 5s and a new, more player-friendly par-3 16th, though that hole, too, has been tweaked since. That’s how a championship course remains competitive. But with every change, Nicklaus always made sure the general membership could still play and enjoy the course.
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11. Kiawah Island Golf Resort: The Ocean Course
Kiawah Island, SC
4.8
49 Panelists
The Ocean Course was designed on short notice for a specific event, the 1991 Ryder Cup, when the PGA of America decided to move the event from California to the more attractive Eastern time zone television time slot. This manufactured linksland-meets-lagoons layout might well be Pete Dye’s most diabolical creation. Every hole is edged by sawgrass, every green has tricky slopes and every bunker merges into bordering sand dunes. Strung along nearly three miles of ocean coast, Dye took his wife Alice's advice and perched fairways and greens so golfers can actually view the Atlantic surf over a ridge of beach dunes. That also exposes shots and putts to ever-present and sometimes fierce coastal winds. The Ocean Course will forever be linked with Phil Mickelson and his improbable victory at the 2021 PGA Championship, as well as Rory McIlroy's romp in 2012.
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10. Oakland Hills Country Club: South Course
Bloomfield Hills, MI
4.8
34 Panelists
Donald Ross felt his 1918 design was out of date for the 1951 U.S. Open and was prepared to remodel it. Sadly, he died in 1948, so Robert Trent Jones got the job. His rebunkering was overshadowed by ankle-deep rough, and after Ben Hogan closed with a 67, one of only two rounds under par-70 all week, to win his second consecutive Open, he complained that Jones had created a Frankenstein. Seventy-plus years later, Oakland Hills is even longer, but its bite wasn’t severe when it hosted the 2016 U.S. Amateur. In 2019, the South course closed as Gil Hanse and his team significantly renovated the course with the intention of removing the Jones-era influences and restoring its Ross feel. They did that by expanding greens to recapture what are some of Ross's best contours, removing trees to show off the rolling landscape and shifting bunkers back to where Ross, not RTJ (or RTJ's son Rees, during previous remodels), placed them. The course re-opened in Spring 2021, and though a crippling fire destroyed the club's iconic clubhouse, the USGA delivered some kind news to the club, bringing the 2034 and 2051 U.S. Opens to Oakland Hills—as well as a number of upcoming USGA championships.
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9. Pikewood National Golf Club
Morgantown, WV
4.6
17 Panelists
In 2000, mining company officers John Raese and Bob Gwynne started building a golf course on a newly acquired parcel of forest that their firm will eventually—a hundred years from now—mine for high quality limestone. Using company engineers and construction equipment, and guidance by veteran tour pros Johnny Pott and Dow Finsterwald, they spent almost a decade creating Pikewood National. A natural waterfall became the backdrop for their par-3 fifth hole and the linchpin of their routing, which plays along bluffs, through forest over rapids, and on the hook-shaped par-5 eighth, around a gulch.
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8. Oak Hill Country Club: East
Rochester, NY
4.9
28 Panelists
Back in 1979, George Fazio and nephew Tom were roundly criticized by Donald Ross fans for removing a classic Ross par-4 on Oak Hill East and replacing it with two new holes, including the bowl-shaped par-3 sixth, which would later become the scene of four aces in two hours during the second round of the 1989 U.S. Open. They also built a pond on another par-3 and relocated the green on the par-4 18th. The club hired golf architect Andrew Green to remodel those holes to bring them more in line with Donald Ross’ original style. In addition to putting the final touches (at least for now) on a significant tree removal program, Green re-established Ross' original par-4 hole, then the fifth and now playing as the sixth (pictured here). Reconstruction occurred after the 2019 Senior PGA Championship on the East Course and was completed in May 2020. Oak Hill's East Course hosted the 2023 PGA Championship, won by Brooks Koepka.
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7. Merion Golf Club: East
Ardmore, PA
4.9
30 Panelists
Merion East has long been considered the best course on the tightest acreage in America, and when it hosted the U.S. Open in 2013, its first since 1981, the present generation of big hitters couldn’t conquer this clever little course. They couldn’t consistently hit its twisting fairways, which are edged by creeks, hodge-podge rough and OB stakes. Additionally, players couldn’t consistently hold its canted greens, edged by bunkers that stare back. Justin Rose won with a 72-hole total of one-over-par, two ahead of Jason Day and Phil Mickelson. With Gil Hanse's extensive two-year renovation after that tournament, making even more improvements at Merion's East Course, the design should be even more polished and pristine when the U.S. Amateur returns in 2026 and the U.S. Open returns again in 2030.
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6. Bethpage State Park: Black
Farmingdale, NY
4.6
41 Panelists
Sprawling Bethpage Black, designed in the mid-1930s to be “the public Pine Valley,” became the darling of the USGA in the early 2000s, when it brought the 2002 and 2009 U.S. Opens here. Then it became a darling of the PGA Tour as host of the 2011 and 2016 Barclays. Now, the PGA of America has embraced The Black, which hosted the 2019 PGA Championship (winner: Brooks Koepka) and the upcoming 2025 Ryder Cup. Heady stuff for a layout that was once a scruffy state-park haunt where one needed to sleep in the parking lot in order to get a tee time. Now, you need fast fingers on the state park's website once tee times are available—as prime reservations at The Black are known for going in seconds.
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5. Winged Foot Golf Club: West
Mamaroneck, NY
4.7
31 Panelists
Gone are all the Norway Spruce that once squeezed every fairway of Winged Foot West. It’s now gloriously open and playable, at least until one reaches the putting surfaces, perhaps the finest set of green contours the versatile architect A.W. Tillinghast ever did, now restored to original parameters by architect Gil Hanse. The greens look like giant mushrooms, curled and slumped around the edges, proving that as a course architect, Tillinghast was not a fun guy. Winged Foot West was tamed, somewhat, by Bryson DeChambeau in winning the 2020 U.S. Open that was played in September, but he was the only competitor to finish under par in his six-shot victory.
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4. Augusta National Golf Club
Augusta, GA
5
12 Panelists
No club has tinkered with its golf course as often or as effectively over the decades as has Augusta National Golf Club, mainly to keep it competitive for the annual Masters Tournament, an event it has conducted since 1934, with time off during WWII. All that tinkering has resulted in an amalgamation of design ideas, with a routing by Alister Mackenzie and Bobby Jones, some Perry Maxwell greens, some Trent Jones water hazards, some Jack Nicklaus mounds and swales and, most recently, extensive rebunkering and tree planting by Tom Fazio. The tinkering continues, including the lengthening of the par-4 fifth in the summer of 2018, the lengthening of the 11th and 15th holes in 2022, and the addition of 35 yards to the famed par-5 13th in 2023.
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3. Shinnecock Hills Golf Club
Southampton, NY
5
12 Panelists
Generally considered to be the earliest links in America, heavily remodeled by C.B. Macdonald, then replaced (except for three holes) by William S. Flynn in the early 1930s, it’s so sublime that its architecture hasn’t really been altered for nearly 60 years. Stands of trees that once framed many holes have been removed, and in 2012, the team of Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw did make a few changes, mostly greens and fairways expansions and new mowing patterns, though those were modified in preparation for the 2018 U.S. Open, won by Brooks Koepka. Shinnecock will again host the U.S. Open in 2026.
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2. Oakmont Country Club
Oakmont, PA
4.9
25 Panelists
Once tens of thousands of trees were removed between the early 1990s and 2015 (most planted in the 1960s), Oakmont’s original penal design was re-established, with the game’s nastiest, most notorious bunkers (founder-architect H.C. Fownes staked out bunkers whenever and where ever he saw a player hit an offline shot), deep drainage ditches and ankle-deep rough. Oakmont also has the game’s swiftest putting surfaces, which were showcased during the U.S. Open in 2016, despite early rains that slowed them down a bit. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner made bunker modifications and expanded the greens throughout the course in 2023 in preparation for the 2025 U.S. Open. The USGA has already awarded Oakmont three additional Opens between 2033 and 2049, reinforcing its title as the Host of the Most U.S. Opens ever.
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1. Pine Valley Golf Club
Pine Valley, NJ
4.7
19 Panelists
A genuine original, its unique character is forged from the sandy pine barrens of southwest Jersey. Founder George Crump had help from now-legendary architects H.S. Colt, A.W. Tillinghast, George C. Thomas Jr. and Walter Travis. Hugh Wilson (of Merion fame) and his brother Alan finished the job, while William Flynn and Perry Maxwell made revisions. Throughout the course, Pine Valley blends all three schools of golf design—penal, heroic and strategic—often times on a single hole. Recent tree removal at selected spots has revealed some gorgeous views of the sandy landscape upon which the course is routed, and Tom Fazio has put his own touch on the design with bunker remodels that have given the barrens a more intricate and ornate look.
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