The best golf courses in North Carolina

In 2010, a team lead by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw killed and ripped out all the Bermudagrass rough on Pinehurst No. 2 that had been foolishly planted in the 1970s. Between fairways and tree lines, they established vast bands of native hardpan sand dotted with clumps of wiregrass and scattered pine needles. They reduced the irrigation to mere single rows in fairways to prevent grass from ever returning to the new sandy wastelands. Playing firm and fast, it was wildly successful as the site of the 2014 Men’s and Women’s U.S. Opens, played on consecutive weeks. Because of its water reduction, the course was named a Green Star environmental award-winner by Golf Digest that year. In 2019, Pinehurst No. 2 and No. 4 hosted another U.S. Amateur Championship, and the USGA announced Pinehurst No. 2—in addition to hosting the 2024 U.S. Open—will also have the 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047 U.S. Opens.

Built during the period when Tom Fazio was still working with the existing landscape rather than ignoring it, Wade Hampton is an exercise in restraint. The fairways flow through a natural valley between flanking mountain peaks. Some holes are guarded by gurgling brooks, but Fazio piped several streams underground to make the course more playable and walkable. Selected as Golf Digest’s Best New Private Course of 1987, it has never been out of the Top 40 since it joined America’s 100 Greatest.

Created by architect Perry Maxwell on the heels of his work at Prairie Dunes and Southern Hills, Old Town Club was surprisingly unique, and included perhaps Maxwell’s only surviving double green. When Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw were hired to address the bunkering at Old Town, they opted not to reproduce the original bunkers (some of which were enormous) but rather emulate their gnarly shapes, edges and vegetation in places where bunkers naturally fit. Lots of trees had already been removed, but the architects convinced the club to get rid of even more. Now, a single swath of fairway connects the seventh, eighth, ninth, 17th and 18th holes. Very unique. The course has jumped 45 places in the rankings since it debuted in 2019.

While architecture purists scoff at the notion of waterfalls on golf courses, there is something magnificent about a cascading water feature done right. Few are as effective as the one behind the par-3 17th green at Diamond Creek. Tom Fazio positioned the green nearly at the base of a sheer granite quarry wall, down which a slender stream of water drops more than 100 feet. Amazingly, the club entrance’s drive is also at the base of the quarry wall, hidden from view on the 17th as effectively as Fazio hides his cart paths.

Unlike nearby Wade Hampton G.C., a Tom Fazio design that was routed through natural valleys to forego the need for dynamite, Mountaintop was blasted from solid rock. Some holes were forged through slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, like the par-4 sixth, edged by a 30-foot-high wall of granite on the right. Conservative estimates are that all that rock removal raised the cost of construction of this continuous-18 layout to $1 million per hole. The opening tee shot drops 100 feet, and six holes also play over a deep gorge formed by Hurricane Creek. Mountaintop proves there is no property too rugged for Tom Fazio.

From Golf Digest Architecture Editor emeritus Ron Whitten:

I played Eagle Point Golf Club, a Tom Fazio design, soon after it became ranked on Golf Digest's 100 Greatest but before it hosted the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship as a one-time substitute for Quail Hollow Club, which hosted the PGA Championship that summer. I walked it with caddies, Director of Golf Billy Anderson and one of the club's founders (and later president) Bobby Long (who was also green chairman at Seminole and a member of Augusta National.) Just before we teed off, golf architect Andrew Green came over and introduced himself. We'd never met. He was designing a short-game facility for the club. Though it may seem strange that Fazio's firm wasn’t retained to do that, it helps to know that Andrew’s brother, Sam, was Eagle Point’s course superintendent at the time. Eagle Point is a beautifully rolling, pine-lined Augusta National clone with huge immaculate greens (bentgrass back then, Champion G12 Bermudagrass now) and gorgeously shaped bunkers which, like at many Tom Fazio designs, seemed to have fully interchangeable parts. I didn’t dislike the look, but I didn’t go head over heels over it, either. Mainly because I’ve seen it all before. The ninth had a wind-blown Wild Dunes vibe to it, the 10th had the long-range view of a Galloway National hole, and the par-5 18th seemed patterned after the seventh at Quail Hollow. When we got to the 13th hole, I remarked to Bobby Long that I liked how Fazio’s people had dug this huge irrigation lake, piled up all the soil into a massive hillside and planted mature pines all over it to make it look like it’s been there forever. “Oh, no, you’re wrong,” Long said. “That hill has been there forever.” Billy then corrected him. “Mr. Long, this was a pasture. They did create that.” Long was surprised, then asked me how I could possibly know that when I’d never been on the property before. (I was tempted to ask him how he, as a club founder, had never found his way back to that corner of the property during construction, but I resisted.) Walking up the last hole, Long asked me if I’d played Fazio's Alotian in Little Rock, and I remarked that I had with Warren Stephens, who was nice enough to then sponsor me at Augusta National. “You’re a member at Augusta National?” Long gasped. (I wish I could recreate in print the tone of astonishment in his voice.) No, no, no, I said. He sponsored me for a weekend of golf there back in 2005. “Oh,” Long said, as he looked at my Dockers khakis and mis-matched socks. Clearly, he was temporarily stricken by the fear that Augusta National had suddenly and drastically lowered its membership qualifications.

Few golf course projects had more national attention in recent years than Quail Hollow, mainly because its front nine was redesigned just a year before it hosted the 2017 PGA Championship, won by Justin Thomas. The par-4 first and par-3 second holes were completely torn up, replaced by a new long dogleg-right par-4 opening hole. Several acres of pines to the left of the fifth tee were removed to make room for a new par-3 fourth. (With its knobby green fronted by three traps, it proved to be the most frustrating hole for pros in the 2017 PGA.) More pines were removed to the left of the par-4 11th, replaced by bunkers, and even more trees chopped down on a hill left of the par-4 18th to make room for money-making hospitality boxes. There’s no question that this latest remodeling, rushed though it was, improved the course. The course was also rerouted for the 2022 Presidents Cup.

Back when Grandfather Golf & Country Club made the 100 Greatest in 2001, we wrote, “This is a Grandfather we haven’t seen often enough ... a reminder of the architectural talent of the late Ellis Maples ... With roughs of rocks and rhododendron amid ever-present hemlocks, and sweeping greens guarded by bold bunkers, Grandfather feels like home. Maybe this time he’ll stay.” He didn’t, dropping off in 2011. But Grandfather made it back on in 2015, only to slip to the Second 100 Greatest in 2017, despite some remodeling by Bobby Weed in 2016. Will it ever climb the summit again? Who knows, but it helps that there is probably no more attractive mountain course anywhere in the rankings. Never count this Grandfather out.

Like a football team searching for the right coach, the resort could never settle on the right identity for the No. 4 course despite a series of major alterations by different architects. It found its match when it hired Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner to carry out a full-scale blow-up and rebuild in 2018 that brought back the sweeping sand-and-pine character we identify with Pinehurst, while initiating a style of shaping in the greens and bunkers that’s confident and distinctly its own.

There was never a dispute about the Donald Ross pedigree of Charlotte Country Club. Ross expanded its original nine-hole course in 1915, remodeled it while adding grass greens in 1925 and further tinkered with it in the 1940s. But in the 1960s, Robert Trent Jones rearranged holes to create a practice range and redesigned the others. Still, it was until 2007 that the club felt it should restore its Ross design. But Ross-expert Ron Prichard convinced them it wasn’t smart to simply replicate holes from a 70-year-old aerial photograph, because golf technology has changed. Prichard rebuilt all greens and bunkers in the style of Ross, but improvised the green contours based on what he’s observed at other Ross layouts. He also installed SubAir cooling systems beneath the greens, one example of how times have certainly changed since Ross’ day.

Tobacco Road took every idea that Strantz had been developing to that point in time (1999) and put it all in one place, specifically an old mining site of sand and pine 25 miles north of Pinehurst. The property is the secret star—yes, there are Strantzian trademarks like boomerang-shaped par 5s, greens and fairways notched blindly behind dunes, dramatic risk/reward shots played over deep chasms and putting surfaces stretched into stringy silly putty shapes. But without the elevation changes, depressions and contrasting textures of the rugged sand barrens, this would be True Blue 2.0. It’s much more than that: a master class in decision-making and composition that sits among the top 50 on the Golf Digest America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses ranking, a placement that’s at least 20 spots too low, at least in the mind of this editor.

In 1926, Leonard Tufts, the president of Pinehurst Resort, and some business leaders from nearby Winston-Salem, including Hugh Chatham, founded Roaring Gap Club as a private getaway in the mountains for the summer when the Sandhills region became too hot. They hired Donald Ross to design this mountaintop design, which sits 3,200 feet above sea level in a small, picturesque hamlet of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The 6,400-yard design is loaded with old-fashioned character and charm. Standout features include the “Do-drop” volcano par-3 sixth hole, and bunkerless par 5s defended by bold, undulating terrain, merging fairways, skyline views and the Graystone Inn, the original counterpart to The Carolina in Pinehurst, which serves as the clubhouse today. Following a recent Kris Spence restoration, the par-72 layout boasts some of the most authentic Ross greens that exist today.

Tom Fazio did the first 18 at Pinehurst’s ultra-private Forest Creek G.C., the South Course, in 1996, carving it from a rolling pine forest, with most tee shots playing downhill and most greens amenable to low, running shots. When he returned nearly a decade later to add the North Course, he and his team decided on a different approach, a more organic, lay-of-the-land 18. So the North has more uphill holes and semi-blind tee shots. The sandy base of the pine forest is exposed on many holes, incorporated not just to frame holes but also as carry hazards on certain shots. Formal bunkers are edged with clumps of bushy wiregrass or dwarf pampas. The only water hazard is encountered late in the round, on long lake around which the 15th, 16th and 17th play. This course wasn’t inspired by sand-scarred neighboring courses like Pinehurst No. 2, Mid-Pines and Dormie Club.

Pine Needles used to lurk quietly in the Pinehurst background before the USGA chose to put it in their regular women’s championship rotation. It got another big boost in 2017 after Kyle Franz reworked portions of the course, putting the Pinehurst touch on the borders, cross hazards and bunkers. Though it lacks the intimacy and connectivity of its sister course, Mid Pines, with the holes wandering far afield due to a being part of a 1920s residential development, it’s grown into a big, championship worthy course (most recently hosting the 2019 Senior Women’s Open and 2022 U.S. Women’s Open) with arguably the best set of greens after No. 2.

Southern Pines used to be a course that only locals and architectural bookworms played. Designed in the early 1900s by Donald Ross, the affordable public course occupied a wonderful, bucolic piece of land and seemed to have buried treasure underneath. After a change in ownership, Kyle Franz completed a major 2021 renovation that added plenty of razzle dazzle to the design in the form of new greens and painting the layout with the kind of scruffy sandscapes indigenous to the Pinehurst region (and to Pine Needles and Mid Pines where he’s previously wielded his art). The work has elevated this formerly modest public course to the level of its more prestigious neighbors.

The Dormie Club is a minimalist Coore and Crenshaw design just north of Pinehurst that follows the popular design theme of the Sandhills region: little traditional rough, sandy waste areas lining the fairways and greens busy with humps and hollows. The course is a second-shot layout, with forgiving fairways allowing players to get off the tee without too much trouble. The greens, however, have plenty of movement, placing an importance on proper shot placement on approaches.

Situated just south of Hendersonville and 45 minutes of Asheville, Tom Fazio devised an 18-hole routing that accentuates the surrounding Blue Ridge Mountains and rolling terrain with as much as 350 feet of elevation change amid deep ravines, mountain streams and heavily forested hills. Each fairway is carved into natural valleys as Fazio's team worked to create playing corridors that allow members and their guests to navigate the hilly terrain. The course opened in 1991 on over 500 acres of land and has been ranked inside Golf Digest's Best in State ever since.

What began as a private retreat called Knollwood, funded by Roaring Twenties millionaires like James Barber, Horace Rackham and Henry Ford, is now a charming public Donald Ross design, revitalized by young first-time designer Kyle Franz in the style of Pinehurst No. 2, where Franz had worked on the restoration. Mid Pines is pure elegance and beauty. The routing is spellbinding, with holes that stretch out into corners at the property’s high points, then fall back down to intersect at junctions across the calmer interior. Franz’s 2013 work expanding greens and restoring the perimeter sandscapes has greatly enhanced one of Pinehurst’s most refined golf presentations.

Arnold Palmer and his designers Ed Seay and Harrison Minchew designed an extraordinary mountainous layout as high as 5,400 feet of elevation within the Balsam Mountain Preserve, a 4,400-acre community about 45 minutes from Asheville and an hour from the Tennessee border. Forced carries over ravines and streams on most holes make this a difficult course to navigate for some, but our panelists give the routing top sccores for aesthetics with the tremendous views of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Cut from a nature preserve about a mile north of the resort, Pinehurst No. 8 is one of Tom Fazio's most versatile designs, as each hole plays differently from the previous. The front nine is mostly tree-lined, the back more open, with both touching ponds, marsh and Pine Valley-like sandy wastelands. For putting surfaces, Fazio built crowned greens with greenside swales, intended as a salute to Donald Ross and Pinehurst No. 2. No. 8 is also the most secluded of the resort's nine courses (for now--Tom Doak's Pinehurst No. 10 is due to open in 2024), which no homes or development touching it. Fazio retrurned in late 2022 to touch up elements of the course that needed burnishing, and the course plays as fast and firm as its older brethren.

Opened in 1926, Sedgefield Country Club is a Donald Ross design that has been the longtime host of the PGA Tour’s Wyndham Championship. The course co-hosted the inaugural Greater Greensboro Open (today’s Wyndham) in 1938, won by Sam Snead. The tournament has been played at several courses over the years, and Sedgefield has hosted since 2008. In 2007, the course underwent a $3 million restoration project aimed at transforming the layout back to Ross’ original intent. In typical Ross style, the greens are quite busy, with prominent slopes demanding the player stay below the hole.

Formerly a part of Sedgefield Country Club, The Cardinal by Pete Dye is now semi-private. Set along a countryside stream in Greensboro, this par-70 Pete Dye design boasts crowned greens that repel even slightly offline approach shots. As you walk up to the par-3 12th, a plaque, quoting Dye, reads, “The hardest par 3 I ever designed.”

Trump National Charlotte possesses plenty of aesthetic tee shots and approaches with great views of Lake Norman. Greg Norman, the architect, did a great job of balancing a fun course, while maintaining a very distinct and playable course layout meandering through the inlets of Lake Norman incorporating both water hazards and elevation challenges.

Situated on the north side of Durham in the Research Triangle, Treyburn is a private Tom Fazio design that plays over rolling terrain that creates constant elevation change throughout the round. Numerous creeks play an integral role in the strategy at Treyburn, as they often cross near the fronts of greens, leaving players to decide whether to attack in regulation or lay back, especially if they’re out of position off the tee. Some tee shots are tight, including at the demanding par-4 18th, considered one of the more difficult finishers in the area. The narrow tree-lined tee shot plays up to the top of a hill that falls to the left, leaving players an approach to a green closely guarded by a creek running across the front and left side of the putting surface.

Home to the Duke Blue Devils, a top NCAA Division I program, the Duke Golf Club features significant elevation changes and forced carries over narrow winding creeks. The track also has a fascinating history—it was designed by Robert Trent Jones Sr. in 1957, and it was soon honored as the host of the 1962 men’s NCAA Championship. Rees Jones, eldest son of the esteemed designer, played for Yale University in the championship that year. He went on to renovate the course himself in 1994.