Some Of The Very Best Golf Courses On The PGA Tour

Availability counts for a lot, especially when it comes to entertainment. Sadly, most sports have yearly breaks that leave fans anxious for months on end. When it comes to golf, however, the PGA Tour has games going on all year round. 

Yes, the season ends with the FedExCup and starts back up again in October but there’s no real offseason in the traditional sense, which means players and fans could look forward to seeing events on a new course every week, while bettors could find odds in plenitude from the best online sportsbooks. As such, this list takes a look at some of the best courses that grace the Tour.

The courses below don’t include any ones from the Major Championship, FedExCup, Ryder Cup, or Presidents Cup and are basic PGA tour locations, unless, of course, they welcome a regular PGA Tour event. 

Let’s go ahead and check them out.

Harbour Town Golf Links

Harbour Town Golf Links was designed by Pete Dye with the help of golf legend Jack Nicklaus in 1967. It has been a favorite of PGA Tour players since 1969 and hosts the RBC Heritage, which is typically held the week following the Masters. Some of the biggest golfing icons can boast having won the event.

Ranked the No.2 golf course played on tour by PGA Tour pros, the five-grass, South Carolina venue has most of its holes inland with tight fairways. Harbour Town Golf Links is considered to be one of Pete Dye’s best creations.

Riviera Country Club

This country club is home to a championship golf course, as well as tennis courts in the Pacific Palisades in West California. It was designed by golf course architects George C. Thomas Jr. and William P. Bell and is the main host of the Genesis Invitational, formerly the Los Angeles Open. 

The Riviera Country club is able to host events in February, while most of the U.S. is still suffering the ills of winter. It’s known for its variety of holes and its excellent conditioning, with the short 10th classic risk/reward par four one of the most impressive holes in the world when it comes to strategic placement.

Pebble Beach Golf links

Photo via Wikimedia Commons

Located in Pebble Beach, California, this course is thought to be one of the most beautiful golf venues in the world. The public golf course makes use of the rugged shoreline with clear views of Carmel Bay and opens to the Pacific Ocean on the south side of the Monterey Peninsula. Created by Jack Neville and Douglas Grant, it’s the proud host of the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, so to speak.

It became the first public course to rank at No.1 in the country by Golf Digest in 2001, which is why its fees are among the highest in the world. That hardly prevents it from being one of the most attractive courses to golfers around the globe, though.

The Pro-AM event is also hosted by other local courses – Spyglass Hill and Monterey Peninsula – but  Pebble is the face of the whole thing.

TPC Sawgrass

Another course designed by Pete Dye, the Tournament Players Club at Sawgrass is one of the most challenging tour venues. The Ponte Vedra Beach location opened in 1980 and was one of the first to feature an “island green,” thanks to Pete’s wife Alice, who came up with the idea.

The short par three over there is among the most fun holes to watch when the best golfers make their attempts every year.

Sawgrass has two individual courses, the Stadium Course and Valley Course, with the former designed by Pete and Alice. It was built to host The Players Championship and follows a stadium concept but spectators sit in stands made of raised grass mounds. 

TPC Sawgrass was a regular feature in the Tiger Woods PGA tour series of video games which ran from 1999 to 2013.

Congressional Country Club

The Congressional Country Club is a country club and golf course located in Bethesda, Maryland, and is widely considered to be one of the most prestigious golfing venues on the planet. It’s been open for nearly 100 years, having started up in 1924, and has hosted three U.S. Opens and a PGA Championship. The venue is a biennial stop on the Tour and the Quicken Loans National was hosted by Tiger Woods until last year. It used to be home to the Kemper Open until the move to the nearby TPC at Avenel. It hosted its third U.S. Open in 2011.

The venue has a pair of 18-hole courses, the Blue Course and Gold Course. The former was designed by Devereux Emmet but a number of architects have aided its renovation over the years, including Donald Ross, Robert Trent Jones, and Rees Jones. 

Andrew Green fashioned a complete restoration of the Blue Course in 2019, as well as a remodeling of the practice facilities.