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– Top 10 Ultimate Golf Course Guide
Top Ten Golf Courses in the US
Toughest Courses (Season)RankingCourseYardage1Augusta National Golf Club75102Bay Hill Club & Lodge74663PGA National (Champion)71254Memorial Park Golf Course741228 more rows
The South Course At Torrey Pines Golf Course — San Diego, California. While all the courses on the U.S. Open rotation are challenging, the South Course at Torrey Pines is among the most demanding.
Which major has the hardest field? The PGA Championship has the strongest field of any of the four men's majors. The tournament is run by Professional Golfers' Association of America so, unlike the other three majors, no amateurs are in the field.
Relying on the PGA Tour's official field-scoring averages, here are the 10 easiest courses on tour from the 2014-15 season.Monterey Peninsula CC.TPC Louisiana. ... PGA West (Palmer Course) 6 of 10. ... La Quinta CC. 5 of 10. ... Torrey Pines (North Course) 4 of 10. ... Pebble Beach GL. 3 of 10. ... Conway Farms GC. 2 of 10. ... TPC Deere Run. 1 of 10. ... More items...
The Nine Hardest Courses on the PGA TourSpyglass Hill — . 877 strokes over par.TPC Harding Park — . 755 strokes over par. ... Torrey Pines GC (South) — . 534 strokes over par. ... Pebble Beach Golf Links — . 516 strokes over par. ... Waialae Country Club — . 513 strokes over par. Waialae Country Club is the home of the Sony Open. ...
The Course Rating of Augusta National turned out to be 76.2, which puts it in the top ten toughest courses in the U.S. Augusta National is a big, robust course with towering pines, dramatic elevation changes, broad fairways, and greens that are slicker than a bobsled run.
The Open Championship Also known as The Open or British Open is the oldest tournament of the Grand Slam. It's considered to be the most prestigious as it's held in the homeland of golf.
From today's championship tees most Bogey Golfers can't reach Augusta's long par 4s in regulation, but the fairways are relatively wide and the players can hit relatively short third shots into greens, minimizing many of the difficulty factors (water, bunkers, green targets, etc.).
While the players would say that their own national championship would be their biggest prize, winning a green jacket would be second. A course that favors putting over power and tradition over modern life gets the nod as the best major.
The fearsome par-3 17th on the Ocean Course at Kiawah Island. Once described as “the hardest hole in the history of the universe” by David Feherty, this 223-yard brute bared its teeth once again during the US PGA Championship in May.
Pebble Beach Golf LinksPebble Beach Golf Links is the shortest course on the PGA TOUR. Even when Pebble Beach hosted the 2010 U.S. Open, it took some creative tee boxes — No. 10 backs up to practically the middle of the ninth fairway — to stretch the course to 7,040 yards.
In terms of difficulty, Pebble Beach Golf Links and Spyglass Hill are the more difficult of the three courses, while Monterey Peninsula typically plays the easiest of the bunch.
What they're saying: " The view around the course is off the charts. The 5th hole par 5 may be the hardest hole in Michigan." - silguezi
What they're saying: " The course is tough, but sometimes tough can bring out the best. In this case, it brings out the best San Antonio has to offer." - joshsmith12
We pored over more than 1 million reviews at Golf Advisor to uncover the most difficult public golf courses according to you, our reviewer community. When you write a review, one of the optional fields is "Course Difficulty." There are five choices, and we converted each option (from Extremely Easy to Extremely Difficult) into a numerical rating from 1 to 5 to determine an average difficulty score for each public golf course in the United States.
Architect: Dick Wilson, Gil Hanse. What they're saying: "Keep it in the fairway as the rough is deceptively hard to find your ball in, and the steepness of the slopes from greens to water makes any shots over or just off the green a surprising lost ball into water or rough!". - phojes10.
What they're saying: "As is usual with a RTJ set-up, there are very few flat spots on the green and almost all putts break one way or the other or both ways." - KJH88
Golfer's Choice rankings are determined by our community of reviewers.
What they're saying: "You can hit most fairways without much trouble, but you need to put your tee shot in a spot that'll set you up with a good shot at the green." - noahjurik
While nearby Pebble Beach Golf Links is the more famous of the pair, Spyglass Hill Golf Course is arguably the toughest of these two West Coast classics. Spyglass Hill is loaded with character, thanks to its incredible scenery and holes that are nicknamed after bits from “Treasure Island,” but its difficulty dampens the charm a bit. At hole No. 4, nicknamed “Blind Pew,” anything less than a perfect tee shot is punished with a blind approach to the green on the second stroke. It’s no wonder Golf Digest ranked it among America’s 20 toughest venues.
This USGA 76.4-rated course features tight fairways, dense roughs and greens that may prompt you to schedule an eye exam after you inevitably misread them. It shouldn’t surprise you that the West Course was rated as the toughest course on the entire PGA Tour schedule for the 2020-21 season.
Precision putting is the name of the game at Oakmont Country Club, where getting on the dance floor is where the fun really starts. This Pennsylvania landmark, which has been testing golfers since the early 1900s, is a par-70 layout with a USGA rating of 75.3 and a bogey rating of 101.1 from the non-professional tees, meaning average golfers have virtually no chance at a respectable score. While the fairways aren’t particularly tight, the rough comes into play often because of slopes, and the approach shots require a local caddie’s knowledge to hope for anything close.
Another of his notorious courses, this one part of the six PGA West venues in La Quinta, has a USGA slope rating of 148 from the black tees (remember, the maximum grade is 155). It’s a Scottish links-style affair loaded with moguls and deep bunkers, which landed the Stadium Course among Golf Pass’s 10 most difficult public courses in the United States. While you’re visiting PGA West, hit up the even longer Nicklaus Tournament Course for another bear of a challenge, provided you still enjoy the game after your round on the Dye links.
With more than 7,000 yards from the back tees, your legs will be as tired as your mind after you’re done wrestling with The Olympic Club’s Lake Course. Like all venues on the U.S. Open rotation, the challenges here are immense, and they reward planning over power. The par-71 course has a USGA rating of 75.1 from the black tees and can get even tougher if the marine layer settles in, making you cross your fingers after each shot.
This nearly 7,600-yard monster boasts a rating of 76.5 from the U.S. Open tees, which means scratch golfers can expect to shoot at least four strokes over the par of 72. From the farthest tees used by regular players, its rating of 73.7 is a bit more manageable.
When golf writers from Mississippi Today played a round on the Championship Links, they cited the howling wind, rain and deep bunkers as reasons why no one has allegedly ever broken 70 from the back tees used by regular players.
No. 38: Pete Dye's Pound Ridge Golf Club sits less than an hour north of New York City. Courtesy of Jim Krajicek/Pound Ridge G.C.
No. 48: The Nicklaus Course at Pronghorn winds through high desert in central Oregon. Brandon Tucker/Golf Advisor
No. 34: Shadow Creek is a lavish Las Vegas experience, but it's also rated as quite difficult, too. Jason Scott Deegan/Golf Advisor
And just because a course might be manageable for low-handicappers, it may be an entirely different beast for higher handicaps. So if you crave the sternest of tests, keep this list in mind, compiled by golfers all over the world, and features not just U.S. courses, but bruisers in Canada and Ireland as well.
Hardest courses on the PGA Tour. These are the 10 toughest courses on the PGA Tour in 2020, with a limited schedule, based on average number of strokes against par: Bay Hill Club & Lodge, Arnold Palmer Invitational, par 72, 7454 yards, 2.106 strokes over par.
Of the 48 or 49 courses the PGA Tour plays most years, there are some that stand out as the hardest, most difficult, by far. More often than not, many of the toughest courses on the PGA Tour come from major championship host venues.
And while many believe Augusta National plays easy relative to par, compared to some of the other major courses, it turns out to be one of the hardest. Then there are the easiest courses on the PGA Tour, excluding the majors which rotate. So, what are the hardest courses on the PGA Tour? And, by extension, which are the easiest courses on ...
At Torture Country Club, the average par-3 is 229 yards. The average par-4 is 491. And the average par-5 is 589. Those are some beefy holes.
There aren’t quite as many devastatingly difficult opening holes on Tour as there are elsewhere, but the opening hole at the Wells Fargo Championship is still a doozy.
The 16th-hardest hole on the PGA Tour in 2016 (4.392) and so far the 15th-toughest in 2017 (4.257) is this consistently nasty two-shot hole, that is actually a converted par-5, with water hugging the entire left side. Just ask Rickie Fowler, who double-bogeyed the sixth during the final round of the 2017 Honda, ...
Home to the OHL Classic at Mayakoba, the 1st hole at El Camaleon sports a cave in the middle of the fairway, but its toughest test, however, is the 14th. The hole slithers through dense mangroves and is inevitably into the wind, which invariably affects approaches to an elevated green guarded by deep bunkers.
CHARLOTTE, NC - MAY 04: JB Holmes walks up onto the 18th green to secure victory in the final round of the Wells Fargo Championship at the Quail Hollow Club on May 4, 2014 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Richard Heathcote/Getty Images)
It features greenside amphitheaters that taught Pete Dye about Stadium Golf, which frame holes 11-15, the Valley holes, which are crisscrossed by 16-Mile Creek.