TheElk Rapids Golf Club is on 3,000 feet of frontage on Elm Lake on the east side of Elk Rapids 30 minutes northeast of Traverse City and an hour southwest of Boyne.
The golf club is on an isthmus between Elk Lake and Grand Traverse Bay on level land with a couple of fairways bordering the lake and the occasional lake view. It’s a proper 9 hole layout along fairways defined by trees with 25 sand bunkers in play and mid-sized, raised greens. It’s a Donald Ross original design, mostly untouched, and plays to 3,067 yards off the back tees, 69.0/121, course/slope ratings with two shorter tees.
The Best Public Golf Course guide feature 4,500 of the best golf courses from the national golf periodical lists as well as those hidden gems our readers discover. Every week we profile special courses that may just fly under the radar screen or be located away from traditional golf destinations. The Cassville Golf Club is just such a golf club. It’s located about 1 1/2 hours from either Springfield or Joplin, Missouri on the south side of Cassville. It’s just north of the Rolling River State Park, 20 minutes from the Eagle Rock Marina on Table Rock Lake, and about an hour west of Branson.It’s a small town, community golf club that welcomes public play and was designed, financed, and currently supported by its membership.
The course is set on a roomy tract of land with homes well off the fairway on a couple of holes. Its fairways are dotted with trees along straightforward and slight to moderate doglegs. There’s three ponds impacting play on multiple holes, but less than 15 sand bunkers overall. There’s four sets of tees from 4,809 yards to 6,665 yards, 71.3/122, course/slope ratings.
Paramus is a municipal golf course in Northern New Jersey off the Garden State Expressway at Route 17 in Paramus.It was originally the Saddle River Golf and Country Club which the city purchased for $4.5 Million in 1976.
It’s located adjacent to and on similar land as Ridgewood C.C. which has hosted PGA Tour’s Barclays and Northern Trust tournaments, the U.S. Amateur, and the Ryder Cup.The golf course features hardwood tree lined, parallel fairways over level terrain with 35 sand bunkers defending the landing zones and greens, and ponds or streams in play on 1/3 of the holes. There’s four sets of tees from 4,539 yards to 6,309 yards at the blue tees, 70.2/124, course/slope ratings, redesign work by Stephen Kay.
Links Courses originated in the UK and aresimply the sandy wasteland along the North Sea, the Irish Sea, the English Channel, and the Atlantic Ocean “linking” the agricultural land to the seas. Many people favor the courses in Bandon Dunes as the best example of U.S. links courses, but traditionalists point to this relic on Cape Cod as classic links.
Highland Links
Parkland Courses are simply layouts which are routed through fairways lined with trees for the most part. It’s the predominate type of layout in the U.S. and is easy to find in every state. While unusually, we don’t have a golf course named parkland in the guide, we do have one called Treetops!
Heathland designs are sometimes referred to as inland links in the U.K. They tend to be wide open featuring slight fairway undulations with very few trees, but with fairway bordered by heather, fescue, and gorse among other gnarly, undesirable grasses and shrubs. There’s very few heathland courses in the U.S. but Tom Doak designed one in Myrtle Beach, and there’s one in Bandon, just not at the Bandon you’re thinking of.
Sandbelt courses tend to be in or near Melbourne, Australia and are are on a deep sand belt featuring undulating surfaces and quick draining soils. There’s a few examples in the U.S., maybe in the most unlikely of environs such as this course in Oklahoma and this Nick Faldo design in the Palm Springs area.
TPC Scottsdale
Stadium Courses originated by PGA Tour Commissioner Dean Beaman with the TPC Sawgrass in Port Vedra Beach, Florida in 1980. The elements of a TPC course were to provide spectators with advantageous viewing areas with challenging design standards to the players. Today, there are 33 TPC Stadium courses in the U.S., this course in Arizona may be the most notable if only for the spectacle of its 16th hole!
Par 3 and short courses seem to be the rage today since they take less time to play, are maybe more enjoyable to the masses, and they provide ample opportunities for elusive hole-in-one. We profile a number of great par 3 and short courses in our guide, but our favorite is this one in the Palm Beaches of Florida on the Atlantic where Sam Snead famously lost to an Hall of Fame LPGA member Louise Suggs.
There’s so many recent lists of the most expensive rounds of golf in the United States like from Links Magazine, Bleacher Report, or the venerable Golf Magazine, yet none of which seem to have noticed Canyata. It may be because it’s certainly not in a high profile resort location, but in east central Illinois 20 miles west of Terre Haute, Indiana.
Canyata is an exclusive, private club completed in 2004 by the Forsythe Family with Gerald Forsyth the patriarch. The land is former farmland that’s been in the family for 150 years. Mr. Forsythe is known throughout Illinois and the Midwest as a philanthropist and entrepreneur as owner of the industrial Indeck Group as well as investments in sports and entertainment including another golf course in Illinois.
Cantata Golf Club
The course generates loads of superlatives for those who have been fortunate enough to play there: world class, amazing, immaculate, impeccable, perfect, luxurious. It will set you back $850 to play 36 holes, but that does include lunch and free range balls!The layout is classic parkland over rolling terrain of pastures, hardwood corridors, and along streams and ravines with bent grass from tee to green. The fairways average 50 yards in width, the greens 7,000 square feet, and mounding has created totally isolated and unique holes. It’s a challenging golf course with numerous tee boxes, the Blue tees play to 6,094 yards, 70.2/142, course/slope ratings, designed by Michael Benkusky.
PGA Frisco is 40 minutes north of downtown Dallas off the Dallas North Tollway. It’s the PGA of America’s headquarters and includes two 18 hole championship courses, The Swing, a lighted 10-hole short course, The Dance Floor, a lighted 2-acre putting course, practice facility, an Omni Resort, and a retail and entertainment district, including an outdoor pavilion for concerts and events.
The East Course follows the natural lay of the land over rolling hills through dry washes and along Panther Creek. It includes a couple of drivable par 4s, long and short par 3s, and green complexes of varying shapes and sizes. The West Course, with significantly more sand bunkers as the East, also follows Panther Creek over its prairie field setting with over 75 feet of elevation change along fairway corridors bordered by native grasses, live oaks, and mesquite trees. The East course has multiple tees from 5,012 – 7,863 yards, 78.9/151, course/slope ratings, designed by Gil Hanse. The West Course tees from 4,166 – 7,319 yards, 76.2/142 off the tips, designed by Beau Welling.
Fairways was designed by one of the luminaries of golf course architecture, Perry Maxwell.
Maxwell was a partner with Alister MacKenzie until MacKenzie’s passing in 1934. They collaborated on Melrose CC, Crystal Downs, The University of Michigan Course among others. Maxwell individually, is known for Southern Hills, Prairie Dunes, and the Old Town Club with redesign assignments at Pine Valley, Augusta National, and Colonial.
He was in the minimalists club of architecture where using the land as it is was as paramount as keeping costs down. He carefully sculptured the greens in generous size with undulation and swales as his trademark. He was also the first to introduce “greens” which were previously browns, or oiled greens utilized in the Great Plains region where most of his work resides.
Fairways Golf Course is one of Maxwell’s more simplistic designs given the topography and environment he had to work with. It’s a little over an hour from the Loop and an hour west of Oakbrook just off I-88 in Rochelle.
The layout is a classic parkland design over generally level terrain and easily walkable. The fairways follow narrow, mature hardwood lined corridors leading to raised greens with 24 sand bunkers mostly green side. There’s a creek running through three holes on the north side and a pond in play on a couple of holes. It’s a drill of the short game with 8 par 3s and a total yardage of 4,649 yards, par of 66, 64.4/104, course/slope ratings.
Kickingbird is a municipal golf course located 20 minutes north of Oklahoma City off US 77 at Danforth to the west. It’s a 1971 design that been recently re-imagined to the tune of $5 Million and includes a Trackman range and short game area as well as an 18 hole, championship course. It’s been under a $17 Million renovation over the past two years It was redesigned by Matt Dusenberry, whose municipal work has included Keney Park renovation of the Devereux Emmet many has received various honors as well as his Sandhill Crane update.
The course is a parkland design with generally broad fairway corridors bordered by mature hardwoods with a couple of ponds in play and a scattering of sand bunkers. There’s variety of interesting green complexes including punch bowl, Biarritz, lion’s mouth in addition to a number of greens with false fronts, and undulating swales. There’s four sets of tees from 5,051 yards to 6,922 yards, the white tees are 5,758 yards, 67.6/111, course/slope ratings, originally designed by Floyd Farley and redesigned by Matt Dusenberry in 2023.
Haig Point is available to outside play through their “Member for the Day” program or book one of the rental homes on the island. It’s located just off Hilton Head Island on Daufuskie Island and only accessible by ferry.
The layout is over level terrain with the initial 3-4 holes of the front nine and most of the holes on the back through tree lined fairways. The balance of the holes move out along the marshland with views over the Harbor River and Calibogue Sound to Hilton Head Island and the Harbour Town Lighthouse and beyond. The pristine setting with the marshes, ocean forests, tropical vegetation combine with the elements the Calibogue Sound and the Atlantic Ocean throws at you provide all the elements for a round ensconced in nature. The green complexes vary in size and undulation, there’s 55+ sand bunkers, pot, conventional, and waste areas defending fairways and greens, and a generous amount of water features in play. There’s multiple sets of tees from 5,121 yards to 6, 735 yards, the white tees play to 6,330 yards, 73.1/131, course/slope rating, designed by Tom Fazio.
The layout is on a sprawling, hilly tract of land in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains within an upscale residential community featuring massive homesites dominating the margins. The fairways are generous, but sloping and hilly, while the greens are of varied sizes with tiers and undulating surfaces, and there’s 70+ sand bunkers lining the fairways and defending the greens. There’s tees from 5,073 yards to 7,025 yards at the tips, the white tees are 6,022 yards, 69.2/127, course/slope ratings, designed by Tom Fazio.
The Virginian is two hours from either Knoxville or Roanoke off Interstate 81. It is just one of 75 of the best golf course you can play from our guide to the best golf courses in Virginia.
