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It has become a ritual for me, every time I am driving south towards Florida from the Myrtle Beach area, to stop by Charleston Municipal Golf Course and hit about 15 minutes' worth of putts at the friendly, bustling place I have taken to calling "American golf's front porch."
I have only played the course once, and while I look forward to my next 18-hole loop there, I have enjoyed these intermittent, impromptu stops to simply soak in the atmosphere of one of my favorite golf places in this great country. The Muni's patrons are separated by decades' worth of years (in golf experience and life experience) and who knows how many net-worth zeroes, but they are united by their love of a few hours' walk and hit by the marsh.
Likewise, any time I am visiting my parents in Connecticut, I try to stop by Keney Park in Hartford for a round on a classic, addictive golf course that gets better every time I play it. My early-June check-in there was especially memorable; I was able to re-connect with a high school teammate I hadn't seen in 20 years. All that time melted away as we walked, talked and played.
The golfers of every city, big and small, deserve places like Charleston Municipal and Keney Park: quality sites of reasonably-priced recreation. Those cities deserve them, too, as community assets that deepen the bonds of their citizens and increase home values. Both courses have now been maturing for several years, transitioning from shiny new objects to pillars of their respective golf communities and templates for what other cities could accomplish with their own golf courses.
Luckily, the 21st century so far has seen dozens of municipal golf courses reinforced, revived and even resurrected from decades of indifferent management. To the extent the phrase "growing the game" has any meaning, the rejuvenation of American municipal golf courses has done just that. It has made golf something that more people feel like they should take up as a hobby, or fall into as an obsession.
In 2026, a number of "Munaissance" ("municipal golf" + "renaissance") projects are in various exciting stages of development. Some are modest refreshments that focus on the experience while others are ambitious and more fully immersive community-rehabilitation efforts. Avid golfers will benefit from all of them.
Once again, topping the list is Cobbs Creek Golf Course, a Philadelphia sleeping-giant in the heart of West Philadelphia that is the most ambitious - and most expensive, at nearly $200 million - of these projects so far. GolfPass has tracked Cobbs Creek's history and future plans in documentary form in recent years; we just dropped Part 2 of our series Cobbs Creek Rising: Headwaters to Horizons.
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In some ways, Cobbs Creek represents the pinnacle of what a municipal golf project could achieve: not just a world-class course but an education-forward community center, led in this case by a TGR Learning Lab under the purview of the Tiger Woods Foundation, as well as a $30 million urban creek restoration that will have profound literal and figurative downstream effects on the surrounding area. What began as a history project for local golf architecture aficionados has swelled to something far larger than anyone could have anticipated. TGR Design's new nine-hole par-3 loop, Q School, is already a hit. Architects Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner are hard at work rebuilding Cobbs Creek's epic championship golf course with an eye towards possibly welcoming a PGA Tour event someday.
Cobbs Creek is an example of how golf can reach into the greater community - a move that is also happening just around the corner from the site of the year's first men's major championship. In Augusta, Georgia, a group spearheaded by Augusta National Golf Club has invested millions of dollars into the city's own historic municipal golf course, affectionately called The Patch, for the benefit of locals. Having worked with Tom Fazio and Beau Welling to redesign the 18-hole course and TGR Design on a new 9-hole short course called The Loop, The Patch project will also include its own new TGR Learning Lab, expected to debut in Augusta in 2028.
Georgia will also be home to a rare brand-new municipal golf course in 2026: Warmouth Sands, a long-planned project in Vidalia, 90 minutes west of Savannah. Architect Mike Young, who has built and renovated several courses across the state, has worked on this new muni for several years through routing changes and other setbacks. When it finally opens later in the year, Warmouth Sands will mark the return of public golf to a town that lost its two public courses in 2015 (Rocky Creek) and 2018 (Hawk's Point), respectively. Recently, the only golf of significance nearby has been the acclaimed but extremely private Ohoopee Match Club.
The greater Palm Beaches area of south Florida, long known as one of the densest and most expensive private-club markets in America, has seen multiple key affordable golf places improve in the last two decades. Next up for this regional mini-Munaissance is the restoration of Delray Beach Golf Club, a century-old public golf facility between West Palm Beach and Boca Raton.
Golf architecture aficionados will take particular interest in Delray Beach, where architects John Sanford and David Ferris have sought to faithfully restore nines from two different eras. Donald Ross laid out the original nine in 1923, with the other nine built in 1950 by architect Dick Wilson. When it reopens in November of 2026, Delray Beach's municipal golf course will give golfers a rare time-travel opportunity in the space of 18 holes. Come this winter, snowbirds and vacationers can assemble an excellent Munaissance golf trail of sorts through Palm Beach County: North Palm Beach Country Club (renovated in 2006 by Jack Nicklaus), The Nest at Sandhill Crane Golf Club (2023; new 18-hole par-3 course in Palm Beach Gardens by Nicklaus Design), The Park (2023; Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner's transformation of a dilapidated West Palm Beach city course) and Delray Beach.
Big and flashy golf gets headlines, but steady progress gets results, too. Just north of Orlando, Winter Park is celebrating a decade of success of Riley Johns and Keith Rhebb's overhaul of its small but mighty 9-holer, which is undergoing renovations this summer prompted in part by an improper application of herbicide that killed the greens. Now, a group of locals is seeking to apply a similar light-touch approach to the 18-hole Winter Park Pines Golf Course just a couple of miles north. The City of Winter Park purchased the Pines' 93 acres in 2022 and local golfers have made proposals to give it a similar treatment to the Winter Park 9, but on a larger footprint. Ambitions include extending a few holes to bring total yardage closer to 6,000 yards and working with an architect on key design changes.
Across the country, March 2026 marked the reopening of Maggie Hathaway Golf Course in Los Angeles, a project the USGA helped facilitate as part of hosting the 2023 U.S. Open at The Los Angeles Country Club. Named for a pioneer in entertainment and sports who wrote regularly about Black professional golfers and took up the game herself at the behest of Joe Louis, the 9-hole par-3 course was overhauled by Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner, with construction spearheaded by builder, shaper and historian Tommy Naccarato.
More municipal golf course news and notes
- In Chicago, advocates of 18-hole Jackson Park Golf Course and nearby South Shore Golf Course still have ambitious plans to remake the area into a potential championship golf hub not unlike Cobbs Creek, especially in light of the recent opening of the nearby Obama Presidential Center. For now, though, recent renovations to the 5,500-yard, par-70 Jackson Park course have restored its early-20th-century Tom Bendelow design, which is expected to reopen this summer.
- Madison, Wisconsin is quietly reshaping its municipal golf complement with the help of Sand Valley Golf Resort operator Michael Keiser, Jr. In 2022, a $750,000 donation from Keiser and his wife, Jocelyn, helped the city revamp the former Glenway Municipal course into The Glen Golf Park, a fun, friendly community asset thanks to architect Craig Haltom's design work across its nine holes, plus a putting course. Now, aspects of the Glen Golf Park model are being used to propose the reinvention of the city's Odana Hills Golf Course, an 18-hole tract that tops 6,500 yards and dates back to the 1950s.
- With the Trump administration claiming control over the future of East Potomac Golf Links in Washington D.C. earlier this year, the National Links Trust is forging ahead with a long-term lease to continue operating Rock Creek Golf Course and Langston Golf Course with an eye towards implementing long-anticipated renovation projects at both historic National Parks Service sites. The organization has also ramped up its consulting efforts on other municipal golf course improvement projects nationwide.
- The Donald Ross-designed Asheville (N.C.) Municipal Golf Course was devastated by Hurricane Helene in 2024, with floodwaters ruining all recent restoration progress on its riverside front nine. The hilly back nine is currently playable while the city waits for FEMA to unlock funds that will help it restore the front nine, currently being used for disc golf.
- In North Dakota, architect Kevin Norby continues to work to expand the Williston Municipal Golf Course to 18 holes, with an anticipated summer 2028 opening date.
- Park City, Utah is mulling potentially significant renovations of its 1960s municipal golf course, which could happen in 2027.
Read past reports on American golf's Munaissance
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