Trump International Golf Club, West Palm Beach

Trump International Golf Club is a private club in West Palm Beach, Florida, at 3505 Summit Boulevard, a short drive from the ocean and right beside the county’s international airport. It opened in 1999 and was the first golf property of the Trump Organization, the family company of Donald Trump, which still owns and runs it. The club has 27 holes: an 18-hole Championship Course and a separate nine-hole course, the Trump Nine, both designed by the architect Jim Fazio.

The Championship Course is a par 72. Its length depends on the source. The club’s course page gives 7,496 yards from the Championship tees and 6,666 yards from the Blue tees. The hole-by-hole figures of the club’s own course tour add up to 7,338 yards. Encyclopedic entries and the scorecard published on a golf app give 7,326 yards from the Black tees, with a course rating of 76.3 and a slope of 155, the maximum possible slope; the same scorecard lists seven more sets, from the Gold tees at 6,973 yards (74.8 and 153 for men) down to the Mint tees at 5,104 yards. This page does not choose between these figures: the course plays well over 7,300 yards from the back, and its rating puts it among the hardest courses in the state for a scratch player.

The club says the course covers 330 acres, with 40 acres of lakes, 5.2 acres of bunkers, five waterfalls and some 900 royal palms, and that it is the highest course in Florida, at 58 feet above sea level. Neither claim can be checked against an independent survey, and the page reports them as the club’s own.

A course built on county land

The land has an unusual history. In 1995 Donald Trump sued Palm Beach County over the noise of aircraft flying over Mar-a-Lago, his estate on the island of Palm Beach. According to encyclopedic entries, the suit was settled in 1996: the county agreed to work with the Federal Aviation Administration to spread the flight paths of the noisiest jets, and as part of the settlement Trump leased 215 acres of county land beside the airport, on which he built the golf club. The land still belongs to the county, and the club pays rent under that lease; press reports in 2021 put the rent at $88,338 a month.

What stood on the site was flat ground next to the runways. To build the course, according to the club and to a specialist ranking site, about three million cubic yards of earth were moved, lakes were dug more than 50 feet deep, some 5,000 mature trees were transplanted, and streams and waterfalls were created where there had been none. Encyclopedic entries report that Jim Fazio had a budget of more than $40 million; the club puts the construction phase at nine months. The course opened in 1999. Jim Fazio later designed the Trump National course in Westchester County, New York, for the same owner.

The club was also the scene of an attempt on Donald Trump’s life on September 15, 2024, when he was a presidential candidate and was at the club.

What it asks of you

The figures give the first answer: a slope of 155 from the back and of more than 145 from the Blue tees means that the course punishes a bad day severely. The second answer is water. By the club’s own count, lakes cover 40 acres, and the hole descriptions of its course tour mention water, a stream or a waterfall on most holes. A professional who won a women’s tour event here in 2023 said after the final round that pretty much every hole had a creek, a lake or a hazard.

The third demand is the wind. South Florida courses rarely play in still air, and the club’s hole notes say that several of the longest holes, among them the 5th and the 13th, play into the prevailing wind. The fourth is elevation, which is rare in the region: the tees on the 1st, 9th, 10th, 11th, 14th and 18th are raised, and several greens sit above the fairway, so the ball is often above or below the feet and the wind acts on it longer.

The balance of the card is classic: four par 3s, four par 5s and ten par 4s. The par 4s are long, four of them over 460 yards from the back tees, and the par 3s run from 177 to 228 yards. The club describes the greens as firm, some with false fronts and several on two tiers.

The front nine

The 1st is a par 4 of 475 yards from an elevated tee, with a stream on the right, and the club counts it among the hardest par 4s on the course. The 2nd, 417 yards, is nicknamed “Bomb Shelter”: according to the club, the back tee sits on top of a Second World War bomb shelter. Its green has a false front and deep bunkers. The 3rd, a par 5 of 539 yards, offers two routes from the tee, with an oak in play and a waterfall feeding a narrow creek on the left.

The 4th, 384 yards, is a dogleg left with woods on the right about 230 yards from the tee. The 5th is the longest par 3, 228 yards, usually into the wind, to a green that slopes away from the player. The 6th is the shortest par 4, 335 yards, with a lake on the right that tempts the long hitter over a rock outcrop. The 7th, 191 yards, has water in front and along the whole right side, and the club concedes that it has ruined many good rounds. The 8th, a dogleg right of 473 yards with water and a bunker on the right and a raised green with a false front, is described by the club as the hardest hole. The 9th, a par 5 of 553 yards, runs back to the clubhouse with water all along the left and can be reached in two by long hitters.

The back nine

The 10th, a par 4 of 419 yards from an elevated tee, has a lake along the right side of the fairway and the green. The 11th, a par 3 of 177 yards, crosses a stream to a green that tilts in three directions. The 12th is the longest hole, a par 5 of 625 yards on the tour page (the text of the same page gives 613), a double dogleg between tall pines that the club describes as a genuine three-shot hole. The 13th, 469 yards, is straight and plays into the prevailing wind, with two large bunkers on the right. The 14th, a dogleg left of 413 yards, ends on a firm green that runs away from the player, guarded by five bunkers.

The finish is the part of the course that reviewers and the club alike single out. The 15th, a par 5 of 550 yards and a double dogleg, has a stream crossing the fairway and a waterfall on the left. On the 16th, 406 yards, a lake surrounds the green on three sides. The 17th, the signature hole, is a par 3 of 215 yards to what the club calls a virtual island green, with a large waterfall behind it. The 18th, 469 yards, starts from what the club says is the highest tee in South Florida and has a lake along the whole right side up to a green surrounded by water.

The Trump Nine

The second course is a par 36 of 3,605 yards, also by Jim Fazio, which the club presents as newly redesigned and distinct from the Championship Course, with tree-lined fairways, angled greens and an island green of its own. It is not a short course: at more than 3,600 yards, it is a full-length nine.

What tournaments have shown

From 2001 to 2008, the club hosted the ADT Championship, the season-ending event of the LPGA Tour, for eight consecutive years. Karrie Webb won the first edition played there, in 2001, Annika Sörenstam won in 2002, 2004 and 2005, and Meg Mallon in 2003. From 2006, the event became the LPGA Playoffs at The ADT, with a first prize of one million dollars, at the time the largest in women’s golf; Julieta Granada won in 2006, Lorena Ochoa in 2007 and Jiyai Shin in 2008. The winning scores are telling: over eight editions, the best total was 13 under par, and in 2003 Meg Mallon won at 7 under.

In May 2023, the club hosted the Aramco Team Series Florida, a Ladies European Tour event. Carlota Ciganda of Spain won the individual title at 2 under par, and according to the tour’s reports only two players finished the tournament under par, a measure of how the course plays in competition.

What golfers are saying

This is a private club, but it receives more public comment than most: course-ranking sites, independent review blogs and guests who played with members have written about it, along with a few specialist reviewers. The points below summarize what recurs in that material. They are other people’s opinions, not ours; nobody from Panxis has played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• Conditioning is the most frequent compliment: fairways, bunkers and greens are described as immaculate, and the greens as fast and smooth.
• Reviewers are struck by the transformation of flat land into a course with real elevation changes, which they find unusual and welcome in Florida and which make for more varied shots.
• The landscaping, the waterfalls and the streams are praised for their visual effect, and the property is said to feel secluded despite the airport and the city around it.
• The finishing stretch, from the 14th to the 18th, is widely regarded as the strongest part of the course, with the par 5 15th cited as a good risk-and-reward hole.
• The number of tee sets is seen as a way for players of every level to find a playable course.

What comes up against

• At least one independent reviewer finds the greens tame, with contours that do not match the drama of the approach shots.
• Rating sites classify the course as very hard, and some players find that the length, the water and the wind leave recreational golfers little room from the back tees.
• On rating sites, the course scores lower for value than for conditions, and access in any case depends on a member.

How to play it

Trump International Golf Club is a private club and sells no public tee times. The club lists family, corporate, junior (for members under 40) and social memberships; social members have access to the clubhouse but not the golf courses. Members also have access to the other clubs of the Trump Golf portfolio. Encyclopedic entries reported an initiation fee of $150,000 and annual dues of $25,000 in 2011; the club publishes no current figures. Guests play with a member, under the club’s rules. The club also hosts weddings and private events.

The facilities

Beyond the two courses, the club lists a three-tiered driving range with a short-game area, a pro shop, dining rooms and event spaces in the clubhouse, as well as member tournaments and social events. The golf instructor Gary Wiren, a long-time teacher, is listed by encyclopedic entries as senior director of instruction for Trump Golf properties, and the club cites his inclusion in a national magazine’s list of the best teachers in Florida.

Getting there and when to go

The club is at 3505 Summit Boulevard in West Palm Beach, just south of the airport. Golf is played in South Florida all year; as a rule, the winter months, from November to April, are the high season for Palm Beach clubs, and summer brings heat, humidity and afternoon storms. Schedules and closures are the club’s call.

Green fees

Trump International Golf Club is a private club and publishes no public green fees. Guest conditions are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location; the club’s website for the address, the architect, the par, the Championship and Blue yardages, the acreage, the lakes, bunkers, waterfalls and trees, the elevation, the hole-by-hole descriptions, the Trump Nine and the membership categories; encyclopedic entries for the opening, the budget, the 1996 settlement and the 215-acre lease, the 2011 fees, the ADT Championship record and the 2024 attempt; a golf app’s published scorecard for the tee ratings and slopes; a specialist ranking site for the earthmoving and the transplanted trees; and press reports of 2021 and September 2026 on the lease and the presidential course proposal, and of 2023 on the Aramco Team Series. Where sources disagree, as they do on the length, we say so.

The opinion section summarizes ranking sites, independent reviews and guest ratings read in September 2026. We report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations. Nobody from Panxis has played or visited this course, and this page is no substitute for a round.

The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. This page contains no commercial link and earns us no commission. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.

Other courses nearby

Closest to this one in our United States directory:

• Disney’s Palm Golf Course — 150 mi
• Key West Golf Club — 177 mi
• Daytona Beach Golf Club — 183 mi
• LPGA International — 185 mi