Back
It's okay if you don't fully understand why some golf courses fared well - and more famous ones didn't - in Golfers' Choice 2026.
The beauty of the Golfers' Choice rankings - compiled by crowd-sourcing more than 225,000 GolfPass reviews from 2025 - is their unpredictability and volatility. Every year, any course in America has a chance to make our Top 50 U.S. Public Courses.
Golf courses are living entities, just like we are. They have good years and bad. Sometimes, everything goes right - the weather, the staffing, the conditions. Other years, challenges arise - poor management/ownership, human error, bad work ethic, ugly weather. Any of these things can cause courses to rise, and fall, in our rankings based on how paying customers perceive their playing experiences. An owner might have the best course in his/her city, region or state, but if it doesn't deliver a consistent pace of play or a friendly experience, those issues will be revealed in our reviews. Over-delivering on the experience against what a course charges is the secret sauce that often leads to success in Golfers' Choice.
If a course charges $50 but feels just as good or better than the $90 round a golfer had down the road the week before, it will get the better reviews and fly up the rankings. Golfers' Choice rankings are a lesson in Economics 101: sell a good product at a perceived value and customers will sing the course's praises to their golf buddies.
Every year, I mine the Golfers' Choice lists for nuggets of information that might be of interest for traveling golfers. Savvy golfers would be wise to consider visiting these courses or destinations in 2026.
Move the Dominican Republic up your bucket list
Our new ranking of the 25 best public/resort courses in the Caribbean (click on the photo above to see the full list) is loaded with valuable information for traveling golfers. The clear winner, though, is the Dominican Republic. Casa de Campo's famous Teeth of the Dog ranked second overall, fresh off an extensive renovation that has revitalized Pete Dye's most famous course. La Estancia (4th) and PGA Ocean's 4 Golf (13th) are just a short cab ride away. If you're flying into Punta Cana - which we highly recommend for all golf trips - you have a smorgasbord of choices, including Puntacana Resort & Club's La Cana (ranked 9th), Punta Espada (12th) and Hard Rock Golf Club at Cana Bay (20th). PGA Tour host, Corales (unranked), is also a signature play. Two other top-ranked courses - Guavaberry Resort & Country Club (14th) and Playa Dorada Golf Course (7th) - provide more opportunities to tee it up in the Dominican Republic.
Chambers Bay is better than ever
It was great to see Chambers Bay land as the top-rated public course in America. To see it come full-circle after such a dramatic rise - hosting the 2015 U.S. Open - and a painful fall - the struggles with the greens - feels like vindication for a golf experience that has few peers in the public space. The positive reviews suggest that conditions on the new greens have stabilized. Although the plans to build a hotel onsite unfortunately fell through, Chambers Bay elevated its amenities last fall, opening The Landing at Chambers Bay, a $4-million cafe and bar between the first and 10th tees serving golfers before, during and after their rounds. Chambers Bay's relationship with the United States Golf Association is on solid footing with three USGA Championships on tap: the 2027 U.S. Junior Amateur, 2028 U.S. Amateur Four-Ball and 2033 U.S. Amateur. Could the U.S. Open return by 2040?
Las Vegas Paiute - the undisputed king of Golfers' Choice
There are only a handful of resorts and golf facilities with at least three courses good enough to be honored among the U.S. Top 50 Public Courses. None of the best of America's top mega-resorts - Pinehurst, Pebble Beach Resorts, Streamsong, The American Club, Sand Valley and Bandon Dunes - have been able to achieve the perfect trifecta by landing three courses in Golfers' Choice in the same year, something Las Vegas Paiute has done twice - in 2021 and now again in 2026.
You can't go wrong with playing any of the three Paiute courses ranked among the U.S. Top 50 Public Courses in 2026 - Sun Mountain (no. 12) , Snow Mountain (no. 23) and Wolf (no. 37).
Pauite's biggest strength is its seamless operation - a big, centralized clubhouse and well-trained staff that serves a large quantity of golfers with ease. That Pete Dye was able to make all three courses so playable, yet so technically challenging, in such a windy, and beautiful, desert environment on the outskirts of Las Vegas is a testament to his brilliance. Perhap's Paiute secret weapon is its green fees. They run north of $200 most of the year, which is still a third to a half cheaper than all those top courses at the resorts I listed above. Golfers love a good bargain, especially in an expensive destination like Las Vegas.
This year's biggest surprise: Arizona
Arizona's golf scene made quite the splashy comeback in Golfers' Choice 2026. Compare the six courses in the state that made this year's U.S. Top 50 to the zero, none, nada honored in 2025. That's impressive, especially for a golf destination that is always fighting a never-ending battle to achieve peak conditions in a place that isn't meant to sustain growing grass. Consider how much time, money and effort it takes for desert courses to close every spring and fall to overseed and then remove the turf again a few months later. That leads to several months of transition periods where conditions are less than ideal. Couple those September-October and April-May transitions with the heat of the summer pounding the turf for six straight months of sun. Frankly, I'm shocked Arizona had three courses climb to the top of Golfers' Choice in a given year, let alone six.
Now factor in the rising prices during peak season in the Valley of the Sun and that helps explain why Arizona courses struggle to perform well in Golfers' Choice. It's tough to score well in the Value and Conditions categories, but these six courses were able to overcome those issues with excellent reviews - Whirlwind Golf Club's Cattail (no. 19) and Devil's Claw (no. 39), Laughlin Ranch Golf Club (no. 24), The Highlands at Dove Mountain (no. 32) , the North Course at Granite Falls (no. 47) and the Ambiente at Camelback Golf Club (no. 48). I've only played Ambiente, but now I want to see all of them.
America's most underrated public golf scene?
I've been lucky enough to stay at Pennsylvania's top two luxury golf resorts - Omni Bedford Springs, which dominated Golfers' Choice 2025, and Nemacolin - but I've got precious little experience playing public courses elsewhere in the state. The Golfers' Choice rankings continue to reveal that Pennsylvania's rolling hills and bucolic landscapes are home to more good, affordable golf than most realize. Three Keystone State courses earned U.S. Top 50 status - Tyoga Golf Course (no. 7), Jeffersonville Golf Club (no. 21) and Toftrees Resort (no. 34). Tyoga ranked first overall in value, fourth in pace of play, seventh in conditioning and eighth in staff friendliness.
Skytop Lodge Golf Course (no. 4 in conditioning and no. 6 in pace of play) and Whispering Pines Golf Course (no. 11 in value and no. 18 in staff friendliness) fared well in multiple categories. Bucknell Golf Club (no. 12 in top college courses) and Linden Hall Golf Course (no. 12 for value) both were honored, putting seven total courses on the radar of traveling golfers.
Comments (0)