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Florida is home to about 1,000 golf courses, representing just about as wide a spectrum as the game's playing fields can provide in terms of overall quality, if not necessarily scenic variety. There's no mountain or desert golf, though there are plenty of canyons of smushed-together homes that you'll play through at a significant percentage of the Sunshine State's layouts.
Florida's golf course diversity lies mainly in design styles and eras and overall vibes. It's home to some of America's most expensive and exclusive clubs. There are also some of the most bare-bones rudimentary courses you'll find anywhere. In between, there are scores of quality golf courses, and over a decade of Golfers' Choice, hundreds of thousands of your fellow golfers have had a great deal to say about many of them.
After perusing a decade's worth of best-in-Florida state lists, our overall top 50 public courses and various subcategory lists, these are the 10 Florida courses that have made golfers happiest over the past 10 years.
Are you a Florida golf aficionado? We need your wisdom - please remember to review the courses you play!
1. Streamsong Resort
No savvy traveling golfer should be surprised at Streamsong's dominance among Florida golf resorts. The ultra-modern clubhouses and Lodge contrast brilliantly with the rustic and rugged golf courses that wander a landscape that looks and feels closer to Mars than Polk County. The three big courses - Red (7), Black (5) and Blue (4) have made a combined 16 appearances on the last decade of Golfers' Choice lists of Florida's most popular courses. Sounds about right.
2. TPC Sawgrass
Golfers can (fairly) raise an eyebrow at the tariffs - upwards of $900 - TPC Sawgrass is charging to play its Players Stadium Course lately, but nevertheless the home of the PGA Tour's flagship golf tournament continues to wow golfers, with seven appearances on best-in-Florida lists plus another two on our overall U.S. Top 50s. During a December 2023 visit, I made a point of asking one of the golfers I was paired with, who had paid full-boat, whether he thought it was a worthy expenditure. He did not hesitate before saying yes. A fun golf course in its own right, Sawgrass' Dye's Valley Course has featured four times on our Florida golf course lists, plus two U.S. Top 50 appearances to boot.
3. World Golf Village
The World Golf Hall of Fame may be moving to new digs in Pinehurst, but all indications point to World Golf Village's two courses remaining popular with their members and visitors. In Golfers' Choice's early years, the King & Bear layout (4 best-in-Florida appearances) tended to steal the spotlight, until a renovation effort at the Slammer & Squire course (3) flipped the script more recently. Honestly, you can't go wrong at either layout.
4. Tiburon Golf Club
The home of 2024's top course as judged by golfers like you has gained Golfers' Choice notice more recently, but it's hard to argue with its success, as one of its courses has appeared on each of the last U.S. Top 50 lists. Reviews reveal subtle differences, but golfers seem to like both Greg Norman-designed courses, which host multiple professional events, roughly equally.
5. Candler Hills Golf Club
The town of Ocala might be best known as horse country, but it has some quality affordable golf in the form of a fun local muni and several outlying daily-fees. Candler Hills is the most decorated of these, and the only golf course to appear on 9 of the 10 best-in-Florida lists in Golfers' Choice's history. The Gordon Lewis design seemingly never fails to leave golfers wanting to return.
6. Waldorf Astoria Golf Club
This upscale Rees Jones design on the outskirts of Disney World has gone through some changes of late - reconfiguration of a few holes, mostly - but the fact it has made its home state's Golfers' Choice list eight of 10 times is impressive.
7. Riverwood Golf Club
My impression of the stretch between Fort Myers and Sarasota has been that there is very little quality golf to be found there. And yet, there's Riverwood, seven times a best-in-state honoree, right in the middle of that part of Florida's Gulf Coast. I'm eager to stop by sometime.
8. Ritz-Carlton Golf Club, Orlando
This Greg Norman-designed course in the shadow of two of Orlando's finest hotels - its namesake Ritz-Carlton and a J.W. Marriott - has never quite wowed me with its design, but the conditioning is always top-notch, as is the service. It's not an inexpensive round, but it's often an enjoyable one, especially when you can watch Tiger and Charlie tee it up at the PNC Championship held there each December and regale your buddies with tales of your own play.
4 other historically dominant Florida golf courses
Florida's golf scene is constantly changing. Pre-recession, courses were closing at a rapid rate. Now, new builds and transformations of existing properties are prevalent. The latter type of event took place at the former World Woods Golf Club, whose Pine Barrens course appeared on the first six editions of our list of Florida's top courses. That course has been revamped into the new Cabot Citrus Farms property, with the Karoo golf course taking over the envelope where Pine Barrens sat. We previewed Karoo and the Cabot property recently; click here to learn more.
Another Florida golf facility that has featured throughout the Golfers' Choice era is Lakewood National Golf Club, with its Commander and Piper courses. The club sits at the heart of a more than 1,500-unit residential development, and as it has built out, the courses have converted from daily-fee to a private club. A similar situation surrounds Forest Glen Golf & Country Club, which bills itself as a private club but has made tee times available on GolfNow at times, racking up seven appearances on Florida's best-in-state lists over the years. Alas, as of the beginning of 2024, it's fully private.
9. Kelly Plantation Golf Club
Sandestin Resort draws a lot of golfers in the Florida Panhandle, but it's not the only good round in town. Kelly Plantation, a Fred Couples/Gene Bates joint, has made the top Florida golf courses list half a dozen times, and appeared on the U.S. Top 50 twice besides.
10. Sandridge Golf Club (Lakes Course)
I was pleased to see one of my own home courses make this list, but also a little confused because I personally prefer Sandridge's Dunes Course. But it's hard to argue with other golfers' praise for the sporty Lakes layout, which is the only course that has made Florida's top 25 each of the last five years.
11. Southern Hills Plantation Club
First with World Woods and now with Cabot Citrus Farms taking up space and attention, the town of Brooksville seems destined to see a rush of golfers in the coming years. Here's hoping they won't overlook Southern Hills, a pre-Recession Pete Dye design with some of the most significant elevation changes found in Florida golf and tee boxes that wander back as far as 7,500 yards (don't play these).
12. Esplanade at Azario Lakewood Ranch
Esplanade at Azario has only made three best-in-Florida lists, but that's not the course's fault. It opened in 2020, meaning it has delivered on the promise of engaging golf since practically the moment it opened. I played it recently and think it's one of the state's best layouts within a residential development. I predict it will continue to feature on Golfers' Choice lists until enough houses are built and it becomes a fully private club.
What's your favorite golf course in Florida? Let us know in the comments below.
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