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The average quality of golf course has never been higher, and it keeps improving.
It's not just because of the many intriguing new golf courses that come online each year, but because of hundreds of renovation projects that existing facilities undertake, too.
Even small upgrades - tweaks to bunker edges, positions and sizes, for example - can have a surprising impact. A couple of years ago, one of the courses in Vero Beach, Fla., where I live, drastically reduced the footprint of their bunkering. On the spectrum of types of renovation projects, it was modest but nonetheless important: a cleaner-looking, easier to maintain golf course that was able to preserve the integrity of its design.
As usual, the year ahead features a wide array of notable golf course renovation projects, from a just-reopened Hawaiian favorite that golfers have enjoyed for 60 years to multiple PGA Tour sites to the consensus best course in the Caribbean.
6 important resort and public course renovations for 2025
Mauna Kea Golf Course - Waimea, Hawaii
This midcentury-modern course that has attracted golfers to the Big Island underwent renovations throughout 2024 to its bunkering and fairways, and reopened at the end of the year to commemorate its 60th anniversary. As it launches into its seventh decade, visiting golfers will also enjoy renovations to the Mauna Kea Beach hotel as part of a $200 million overall resort update project.
Harbour Town Golf Links - Hilton Head Island, S.C.
One of the most important modern golf courses - one that continues to test PGA Tour pros even amid the evolution of golf equipment - will get a subtle refresh after the 2025 RBC Heritage. Davis Love III and his design group will be overseeing the six-month project, which will focus on the 56-year-old course's greens, bunkers and the wooden bulkheads that line many of the lagoons on the course.
Jekyll Island Golf Resort (Great Dunes) - Jekyll Island, Ga.
This major project is so comprehensive that it could just as easily be considered a new golf course, but for the fact that it originates from a classic loop by Golden Age architect Walter Travis. Modern-day architects Brian Ross and Jeff Stein are restoring Travis' nine-hole Great Dunes property and incorporating nine holes from the resort's former Oleander course to form a cohesive, 1920s-inspired 18 that could rival the best of the courses on neighboring St. Simons Island.
The boys have the Mae West glowing! You can probably see this thing from the moon! #greatdunes pic.twitter.com/8SlWhQ4jF1
— Brian Ross (@brianrossgolf) November 7, 2024
Kapalua Resort (Bay Course) - Lahaina, Hawaii
Plans are afoot to bring this course, overshadowed for decades by the PGA Tour-hosting Plantation, into the 21st century. Architect David McLay Kidd, who built the exclusive Nanea Golf Club for Charles Schwab on the Big Island, has been attached to the project.
Myrtle Beach National Golf Club (King's North) - Myrtle Beach, S.C.
The second of a two-stage renovation project is set to be completed here in 2025, with longtime Arnold Palmer Design associate Brandon Johnson finishing a comprehensive renovation of this beloved Grand Strand gem that the King modernized in the 1990s and has been in need of a refresh. The front nine renovation in 2024 was a success, and 2025 should be no different, taking one of Myrtle Beach's best places to play to a new level.
Tidewater Golf Club - Cherry Grove Beach, S.C.
King's North is not the only notable Myrtle Beach-area course that will receive some attention in 2025. This Ken Tomlinson design with marshy holes on both ends of its routing will update its bunkers in 2025. The previously shallow and oval-shaped traps are being reshaped and, in certain cases, reduced or removed as part of the project.
3 private, PGA Tour-host courses with their own renovation and restoration projects
Detroit Golf Club (North Course) - Detroit, Mich.
This Donald Ross design that hosts the tour's Rocket Mortgage Classic every June is one of the latest of the great Scot's works to be restored by architect Tyler Rae. Rae's flair for Ross' bunkering and his multi-cornered greens should make the course, typically one of the easiest on the calendar, a bit more fun to watch and, perhaps, a little trickier to play.
TPC Craig Ranch - McKinney, Texas
Another course the pros routinely abuse, this Tom Weiskopf design outside of Dallas is in the midst of a more than $15-million project that will address the course's bunkering, green complexes and irrigation system. TifTuf Bermuda grass will be used on all tees, roughs and fairways. Lanny Wadkins' design group is overseeing the project.
TPC Southwind - Memphis, Tenn.
The site of the first round of the FedEx Cup Playoffs will be refreshed by the time the FedEx St. Jude Championship rolls through in August. Due to natural mutation that occurs at all Bermuda golf courses, Southwind is being resurfaced in stages, with the course closed for member play until the PGA Tour has left town.
5 noteworthy municipal golf course renovation projects
Augusta (Ga.) Municipal Golf Course
The long-beloved but equally benignly neglected layout known as "The Patch" is the latest pet project of Augusta National Golf Club, which announced it would step in to help rehab the city muni back in 2024. Architects Tom Fazio and Beau Welling are leading this year-long revitalization of a community asset - a project that takes on more meaning as a way to recover from the damage Hurricane Helene did to Augusta last year.
Wildcreek Golf Course - Sparks, Nev.
A hefty $16 million investment is expected to result in a 9-hole regulation course, a 9-hole short course and a revamped practice facility owned by First Tee Northern Nevada in a project led by architect Brian Curley and partner Jim Wagner (a different Jim Wagner than the one who partners with Gil Hanse). Call it The Biggest Little Muni in Nevada.
Normandie Golf Course - St. Louis, Mo.
As part of an ongoing fundraising effort by the Metro Golf Foundation, this more than century-old park course is being reshaped by Nicklaus Design in order to serve area golfers for decades to come.
Indian Wells Golf Resort (Players)
Indian Wells' two courses are high-end plays for visitors, but they are technically munis all the same. The Players Course has come due for more than $13 million in renovations, which includes the building of two new holes.
Meadowbrook Golf Course - Fort Worth, Texas
Colligan Golf, which has rehabbed several municipal and public golf courses across the Lone Star State, is overseeing a more than $13-million renovation project at this city-owned former private club. The course is set to reopen in the summer of 2025.
The most important international golf course renovation of 2025
Casa de Campo Resort (Teeth of the Dog) - La Romana
Pete Dye's legacy of beguiling, engaging and sometimes maddening golf courses cannot be fully appreciated without an appraisal of Teeth of the Dog, which he built on the Dominican Republic's rocky south shore in the early 1970s, helping to establish the country as a resort golf hotbed. Starting January 20, his course at this expansive resort will be receiving a sensitive but comprehensive restoration project helmed by Jerry Pate, who famously jumped into the pond beside the 18th green at TPC Sawgrass with Dye after winning the 1982 Players Championship. The entire course will be returfed with seawater-tolerant Dynasty Paspalum grass, with three inches of sandcapping underneath intended to keep the fairways and greens firm and fast, as Dye intended. The course will reopen towards the end of the year.
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