Pebble Beach and the best public bucket-list courses in America

The best golf in America is more public than the private-club stereotype suggests. Pebble Beach, Bandon Dunes, Pinehurst, Kiawah and Whistling Straits all take public play, which means the bucket list is a budgeting exercise rather than a membership problem. Here is how to think about it.

That is genuinely unusual internationally. In most golfing countries the famous courses are private and access runs through a member. In the United States a large proportion of the best golf is resort golf or municipal golf, and the barrier is a credit card and a booking window rather than an introduction.

Pebble Beach, and the honest math

Pebble Beach Golf Links is the most famous public course in the world and it is priced accordingly, with resort guests getting priority on the tee sheet.

The practical route for most golfers is to book a room at one of the resort’s lodges, which unlocks tee times ahead of the public window, and to treat the whole thing as a once-in-a-decade trip rather than a weekend away. Non-guests can book, but the window is short and the good times are gone.

The neighbors matter here too, and they are the part visitors underestimate. Spyglass Hill and The Links at Spanish Bay are on the same peninsula, under the same booking umbrella, and are championship courses in their own right. Spyglass in particular is regarded by a great many players as the better test of golf, and it costs less.

Budget for the caddie or forecaddie where one is required, and for the fact that a round at Pebble takes five hours because everybody is taking photographs, including you.

Bandon Dunes, the walking resort

On the southern Oregon coast, Bandon Dunes runs several links courses on genuinely linksland, all walking-only with caddies available. It is the closest thing in America to golf as it is played in Scotland and Ireland, and it is deliberately so.

Multi-round packages are the standard way to play it, and the value improves sharply with each additional round, which is the opposite of most resort pricing. A three or four-day trip is materially better value per round than a single round, which shapes how you should plan.

Come prepared for weather. This is the Pacific Northwest, the wind is part of the design rather than an inconvenience, and the golf is considerably better in it. Waterproofs, a spare glove and a low ball flight are all worth having.

Getting there is the other planning point. The resort is remote by design, with a small regional airport nearby and a long drive from Portland or Eugene otherwise.

Pinehurst, the American home of golf

Pinehurst has hosted more championships than any other American venue and keeps nine courses in play on one property, which makes it the easiest bucket-list destination to organize.

Number 2 is the famous one, restored to sandy waste areas and wire grass, with the crowned greens that repel anything not struck precisely. It is a genuinely difficult golf course for an amateur and it will not flatter you.

Several of the others are more enjoyable for a mid-handicapper and cost a good deal less, and The Cradle, a nine-hole par-3 course built in 2017, is frequently the most fun anybody has on the property. A trip built around Number 2 plus two of the numbered courses plus an evening on The Cradle is a better week than three attempts at Number 2.

Kiawah, Whistling Straits and the modern championship courses

The Ocean Course at Kiawah Island in South Carolina and Whistling Straits in Wisconsin are both resort courses built to host majors, both are long and exposed, and both punish a golfer playing the wrong tees more than any other courses on this list.

The Ocean Course has more seaside holes than any course in the northern hemisphere and plays in a constant wind that reverses direction with the season. Whistling Straits is a walking course along Lake Michigan with an extraordinary number of bunkers and a genuinely long walk.

On courses of this kind, moving up one set of tees is the difference between a memorable round and a five-hour ordeal, and nobody at the pro shop will think less of you. Both also have a second course on the property, and both second courses are excellent and cheaper.

How to plan a bucket-list trip

Book the anchor round first, then build the trip around it. These tee times are the constraint; flights and hotels are not.

Play the anchor course on day two, not day one. Jet lag, an early flight and a 7,300-yard championship layout do not mix, and the round you have thought about for five years should not be played on four hours of sleep.

Book the practice facilities as seriously as the round. An hour on a resort short-game area, on the same turf and the same sand you will face, is worth more than a warm-up bucket, particularly if the grass type is unfamiliar.

Take a caddie if one is offered. On an unfamiliar links or a course with blind shots and crowned greens, a caddie is worth several shots and considerably more enjoyment, and on walking-only courses they are not optional anyway.

And choose your tees honestly. The scorecard yardage at these places was set for professionals, and playing 500 yards forward is the single best decision most visitors make. Driver carry multiplied by 28 gives the number you should be looking for.

What it actually costs, beyond the green fee

The green fee is frequently under half the total, which is where budgets go wrong.

Add the resort stay if tee-time priority requires it, the caddie fee and the caddie gratuity, cart fees where carts are mandatory, and the practice facilities. Then add the second and third rounds, because nobody flies across the country to play once.

Ask the resort for the all-in figure per person per day when you book, rather than adding it up from a rate card. They will give you one, and it is usually a different number from the one in your head.

The cheaper bucket list

If the famous names are out of budget this year, the municipal championship courses are the alternative, and they are not a consolation prize.

Bethpage Black on Long Island, Torrey Pines South above San Diego and TPC Harding Park in San Francisco are all publicly owned, all in the major championship rotation, and all bookable by anybody. Resident rates are modest and non-resident rates are far below resort pricing.

Beyond those, Chambers Bay in Washington hosted a U.S. Open and is county-owned, and Streamsong and Sand Valley are modern destination resorts at prices well below the historic names. Pasatiempo in Santa Cruz is a public Alister MacKenzie course, which is a sentence that would not be possible in most countries.

The experience is different. The golf is not.

Where to book, and when the windows open

Every course on this list has its own system, and the systems are the actual constraint rather than the price.

Pebble Beach Resorts takes room bookings that unlock tee times ahead of the public window, and the stay-and-play packages are the practical route. Non-guests can book, on a shorter window, and the good morning times will be gone.

Bandon Dunes sells multi-round packages through the resort, with the per-round value improving as rounds are added, and the courses are allocated across your stay rather than chosen freely.

Pinehurst Resort books all nine courses centrally, and a package covering several is both cheaper and easier than booking Number 2 alone.

Kiawah Island Golf Resort and Destination Kohler, for Whistling Straits, both give priority and better rates to resort guests, with public tee times released closer in.

For the municipal alternatives, Bethpage State Park runs a reservation system with separate resident and non-resident windows, and Torrey Pines and TPC Harding Park publish resident and non-resident rates on their own sites.

Two habits that work everywhere on this list. Book the anchor round the day the window opens rather than when your flights are settled, because flights are flexible and tee times are not. And call rather than only refreshing a page: cancellations at these properties rarely make it back online in time, and a single golfer can almost always be fitted in.

Rates and packages change every season. Confirm the total with the resort, including caddie fees, gratuities and cart policy, when you book. Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any resort, course or booking platform mentioned here.

Before you book

• Check whether the course requires a resort stay for tee-time priority, because that changes the total far more than the green fee.
• Check the caddie policy: on walking-only courses a caddie is not optional and needs to be in the budget, gratuity included.
• Check the season. Coastal courses have shoulder months with the same golf at a lower rate and fewer people.
• Ask for the all-in daily figure rather than adding up a rate card.
• Decide your tees before you arrive, using your carry distance rather than your pride.

One last piece of advice that costs nothing. Play these courses with a caddie or a local if you possibly can, walk if the property allows it, and put the phone away for the round. You will remember the walk considerably longer than the score, and the score is going to be worse than usual anyway.

Rates at all of these change by season and by package. Confirm the total, including caddie fees and cart policy, with the resort when you book. Panxis Golf has no commercial relationship with any resort or course mentioned here and earns no commission.

Where this shows up on a course

Three courses from our directory worth the detour.

• Oakland Hills Country Club — South Course: A Donald Ross design from 1918, toughened by Robert Trent Jones for the 1951 U.S. Open: six U.S. Opens, and the most severely contoured greens Ross ever built.
• Quail Hollow Club: Laid out by George Cobb in 1961 and rebuilt by Tom Fazio from 1997: a par 72 of 7,550 yards that rewards driving, and a closing stretch that has decided tournaments.
• Augusta National Golf Club: MacKenzie and Jones on a former nursery, opened in 1932: what ninety years of alterations left standing, and what professionals actually say about the greens.

We have not played these courses; each page says what it is based on.