The 10 Best Golf Courses in Florida

Florida boasts more golf courses than any other state in America. There are something like 1200 layouts, which is a third more than the next highest in California. Throughout March the PGA Tour will make its way around Florida, the highlight coming at Ponte Vedra and The Players, while Arnold Palmer’s Bay Hill tournament is a key date on the calendar.

The Sunshine State lends itself to the game with perfect temperatures, hordes of visitors and golf-mad communities. A sizeable of the PGA Tour's players reside in the state, many of them in Jupiter due to the climate and high-end courses (and tax), while visitors from outside Florida make up a third of the 48 million rounds played each year.

The list here includes five incredible layouts and something away from the norm of resort courses. There are an awful lot of golf courses in Florida, and the majority of them the same, but these are something very different. 

One is pretty much unplayable, another features the most famous hole in the world, one resort boasts two entries and the other is a sleeping giant that has been reawakened in some style with something very forward thinking and intuitive.

Seminole Golf Club

Location: Juno Beach, Florida

Green fees: Members only

Seminole is the undoubted best course in the state. It’s been opened for nearly a century but we know relatively little about a course that is one of the best in the States. Once a year all of us pore over the entries in their now iconic Pro-Member day which generally attracts a better cast than most Tour events.

This is a Donald Ross, design maybe his best, and features some ridiculously fiendish greens and a setting by Juno Beach that is genuinely spectacular. Home to the 2021 Walker Cup we finally got to see more of Seminole and it really is out of this world – its only drawback that nearly all of us won’t know a member here.

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TPC Sawgrass

Location: Jacksonville, Florida

Green fees: $550

The debate for having a fifth Major, like the women, has been rumbling on for years. The reason is that the PGA Tour bizarrely, given their power, don’t run a Major and the purse and field is plenty good enough to make the claim. But it’s not going to happen and so we should just enjoy what we do have.

Pete Dye put together a test which has stood the test of time, doesn’t rely on the driver and features a closing stretch that always excites. This year we had a play-off where the 17th took its toll on JJ Spaun and Rory McIlroy would add another crown.

The 18th has historically been ranked as the hardest hole on the Tour but all the talk will revolve around the penultimate hole. Many of us seem to have tales of playing here ourselves, generally with disastrous consequences.

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Streamsong (Red Course)

Location: Bowling Green, Florida

Green fees: $370

In its short infancy Streamsong has added something very different to the Florida collective. The wealth of designers comes off the page and Bill Coore, along with Ben Crenshaw, is the brains behind the Red. This is the driver’s course of the three – the Red is the highest ranked, just ahead of the Blue with the Black not far behind – and this sits on land that Coore and Tom Doak were blown away by when they first visited here in 2009

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Cabot Citrus Farms

Location: Brooksville, Florida

Green fees: $395

And now for something equally different. Cabot Citrus Farms paints itself as a 54+ property and it will surely climb the rankings having only been repurposed in the last few years. This was were World Woods used to live but its location meant that things fell away. Now we have the Roost and Karoo 18-holers, both very different, as The Squeeze and The Wedge to make up the numbers.

You could find yourself here for a very long weekend and never get bored. 

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Streamsong Resort (Blue Course)

Location: Bowling Green, Florida

Green fees: $370

Doak and Coore collaborated on many of the holes on the Blue and Red and, rather than splitting them up with a line down the middle, there was plenty of shared wisdom to get the best out of the property as a whole. Some of Doak’s favourite holes were ones that Coore had originally sketched and, interestingly, the two crews would work on the courses at the same time. 

Doak points out quickly that the ability to rescue your par will best come about by playing a chip-and-run which wouldn’t be something you hear too often when discussing golf in Florida. 

READ OUR FULL STREAMSONG BLUE REVIEW

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Bay Hill Club & Lodge

Location: Bay Hill, Florida

Green fees: Variable depending on time of year, but expect to spend over $600 for a stay and play package

As the official story goes, in 1965, after visiting Bay Hill for the first time, Arnold Palmer called his wife Winnie and declared, "Babe, I've just played the best golf course in Florida, and I want to own it."

60 years on, and more than five decades into Palmer's ownership of the club and lodge, Bay Hill remains a Florida icon, home not just to the Palmer's namesake PGA Invitational but one of the game's true spiritual homes. Designed in 1961 by Dick Wilson, Palmer has spent the decades since tweaking and refining the course into the famous track we see on TV each year. You'll need to book a stay at the site's lodge to get on, however, with tee times otherwise reserved exclusively for members.

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The Dye Course at White Oak

Location: Yulee, Florida

Green fees: Private

Another stunning Florida track that most of us will sadly never get to play, the Pete Dye-designed course at White Oak, just south of the Florida-Georgia border, is unique for myriad reasons. Part world-class golf course and part ecological reserve, all profits from the course go back into White Oak Conservation: a state-of-the-art scientific research centre working to save rare species and wild places. As such, many of the species the course is working to save, including rhinos, okapis, and giraffes, call the grounds of the course home.

Owned by Chelsea FC and LA Dodgers owner Mark Walter, it's among the most exclusive private courses in the nation, with no memberships on offer and tee-times strictly offered on an invite-only basis.

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Calusa Pines Golf Club

Location: Naples, Florida

Green fees: Members Only

Per Top 100 courses, a million dollars worth of dynamite was used to blast Calusa Pines into existence amidst its South West Floridian surrounds. The investment has paid off, with this Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry layout routinely named among the world's 100 best courses. A good deal of this comes down to the course's extensive but natural feeling use of sand and waste bunkers, which have been hewn from the earth to give Calusa Pines a distinctly sandhills-y feel without feeling artificial. 

Sadly, Calusa Pines also happens to be one of the state's hardest tracks to get a game on. The membership list is limited to around 300 people, with joining fees starting at around $150,000. Still, one can dream.

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The Park West Palm

Location: West Palm Beach, Florida

Green fees: $150-$350

A club with a refreshingly progressive mindset compared to the myriad private clubs that dot the state, The Park West Palm is a public access course with a dual focus on providing a genuinely high-end golfing experience and inclusivity for all. It's by no means cheap to visitors, with green fees approaching $350 for standard visitors during peak season, but The Park runs numerous programs opening the course up to local residents, juniors and members of communities traditionally underserved by the sport. 

The course, meanwhile, is widely considered among the best municipal tracks in America, and was famously opened by Tiger Woods upon its conversion from the old West Palm Beach Golf Course in 2023.

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Innisbrook Golf Resort (Copperhead Course)

Location: Palm Harbor, Florida

Green fees: Only available through an accommodation package

Home of the Valspar Championship, Innisbrook's famed Copperhead Course is one of the state's premier resort courses and a particular favourite among tour players who appreciate its challenging Parkland layout and stunning West Florida scenery.

Approach with caution, however: the Copperhead routinely ranks among the top 10 hardest courses on the PGA tour roster, with the 'Snakepit' – a particularly devilish closing trio of holes, notorious for catching even the best players out.

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