The Best States For A Golf Vacation

What are the best states for a golf vacation?

There are a lot of best states for a golf vacation lists out there, primarily based on subjective impressions. Going against the grain, Michigan retailer Carl’s GolfLand attempted to answer that question with raw data, including

• Average cost of green fees, from the Economic Census
• Cost of roundtrip flights to the state
• Number of 100 best public courses in each state
• Number of days with no rain
• Hours of sunshine
• Total number of courses
• Number of courses per capita

The surprise holder of the number one position was Kansas. Almost as surprising to me is that Minnesota was ranked second.

Here are the top five.

Florida and California are no-brainers, given the sheer volume of courses. But California is 41/50 for cost rank. Florida is slightly worse than average.

However, there is a caveat to this. The state of Michigan doesn’t provide complete economic census data (just another reason why I can safely say that the state government is run by incompetents), so Carls Golfland gave it the worst possible ratings in those data categories.

Michigan still made the top ten (number 10) of best states for a golf vacation. My guess is that it would break the top five if complete economic census information were available. Golf in Michigan is relatively inexpensive based on my personal experience. Most Michigan golfers I know are offended if they need to pony up more than $60 for a round. On my “good enough” muni, I literally pay a buck-a-hole.

For what it’s worth, Carls GolfLand is a pretty impressive retailer. Their Plymouth location is just a half an hour’s drive from GolfBlogger World Headquarters and is as well stocked as any golf shop I have ever seen.