Golf course construction will never again approach the frenetic pace of the 1990s and early 2000s, but it is on the uptick. Plus, the quality of the courses we’ve seen open the last five years has rarely been higher. The work being done by top architects is exemplary, and developers are selecting sites and the budgets that give these designers the chance to build courses that are profound.

There are some worrying trends. The cost of building and renovating courses has skyrocketed making the kind of modest, small scale new courses that used to service communities virtually obsolete, though a few bright spots shone through in 2024. (Keep your eye out for our Best New rankings, which will be published over the next few weeks.) New courses being packaged with real estate developments—the primary driver of the overbuilding of the ‘90s that left golf with a glut of courses that had little reason for being other than to sell homes—is on the rise again in several southern and southeastern markets. And some of the most exciting projects are being constructed in remote locations for private jet memberships that the general public has no chance of ever seeing.

RELATED: The 15 hottest courses in America, according to our experts

Yet from a purely artistic standpoint, 2024 was a notable year due to the opening of some significant and fascinating new courses and major remodels. These are the best new holes I saw in my travels the last 12 months.

APOGEE CLUB (WEST) Hole 14 284 yards, par 4

The tri-part green at Apogee West’s 14th hole.

Derek Duncan

Great greens make great holes, and the green at Apogee West’s 14th is one of the most unique I’ve seen. It’s a concept that Gil Hanse had wanted to build for a long time but hadn’t found the right occasion until he and Jim Wagner conjured it at this drivable par 4 near Hobe Sound, Fla. The skull-shaped green is defined by three bowled sections divided by ridges oriented like the Mercedes-Benz symbol. The hole is short enough that most players can get on or close to the green from the tee, but proximity is almost irrelevant if the ball doesn’t end up in the same third as where the hole is cut that day as putts up and over the ridges can be almost impossible to get close. As the flag moves from pocket to pocket, so must the tactics, and the caution.

RELATED: A first look at Gil Hanse’s new ultra high-end Florida course

BIG EASY RANCH—THE COVEY Hole 8 350 yards, par 4

“Split Decision” at The Covey.

Brian Oar

The eighth hole at The Covey, a new design 90 minutes west of Houston, is an example of using what mother nature provides. Architect Chet Williams found on this quiet and sublime outback property a section of a natural creek where two branches merge and simply laid a hole on top of it. The stem of the creek separates left and right fairways, and the spacious, multilevel putting surface is set in the branch of the “Y” giving players the option of driving left, right or straight home over the babbling water. There are subtler holes at The Covey that merit attention, but the exciting potential of this hole called “Split Decision” lies in how it makes players of every skill level think through their choices and execute a plan.

Brian Oar false Private Big Easy Ranch: The Covey Columbus, TX 4.6 12 Panelists Architect Chet Williams has already set the standard for golf in Texas with Whispering Pines, the state’s top-ranked course in Trinity, north of Houston. The land he had to work with at The Covey, set within a 2,000-acre hunting club 75 miles west of Houston, was even better with hills, ridges and ravines cut by natural dry washes that have been reenforced as rushing-water streams. With no surrounding development, The Covey is a scenic journey through the Texas outback through groves of pines and hardwoods and cross-course views. Numerous specimen trees have been left standing in the fairways that must be maneuvered around, and Williams’ green complexes can be wicked, flanked and fronted with deep, staggered bunkers, with strong putting contours that create multiple internal levels and severe false fronts that eject any short approached 30 or 40 yards back down the fairway. The halfway house behind the ninth green on the property’s highest point is one of golf’s best with an upper level observatory deck and lounge that offers 20-mile views across the county. Explore our full review EAST LAKE GOLF CLUB Hole 17 360 yards, par 4

The newly restored old version of East Lake’s 17th.

Evan Schiller

Over the course of 2023 and early 2024, East Lake embarked on a rapid and radical redesign to recapture a more historical expression of the club’s Donald Ross design, restoring holes that Bobby Jones might have better recognized. One of the most revealing changes happened to the short par-4 17th, where Andrew Green recreated a long, deep trench bunker cutting parallel to the hole, segmenting the fairway into near and far portions. The previous version offered no temptation for players to hit driver so most just played for position with hybrids and irons to approach the green with wedges—now, with the front of the green opened, long hitters will consider taking a shot at the putting surface, opening the door for all kinds of scores.

Evan Schiller false Private East Lake Golf Club Atlanta, GA 4.3 32 Panelists

• Second 100 Greatest
• Best In State

Tom Bendelow actually laid out the original course at East Lake, back when it was known as Atlanta Athletic Club, and that was the layout upon which Stewart Maiden taught the game to the now-legendary Bobby Jones. Donald Ross basically built a new course on the same spot in 1915, which remained untouched until changes were made before the 1963 Ryder Cup. When Atlanta Athletic moved to the suburbs in the late 1960s, the intown East Lake location fell on hard financial times until being rescued in the 1990s by businessman Tom Cousins, who made it a sterling fusion of corporate and inner-city involvement. Rees Jones redesigned most holes beginning in the mid-90s, making the course more reflective of his views of championship golf. After the PGA Tour reversed the nines for the 2016 Tour Championship (flipping the unpopular par-3 finish into the ninth hole), the club made the new routing permanent for regular play. East Lake underwent another major restoration following the 2023 Tour Championship, this time by Andrew Green, highlighting the course’s Donald Ross heritage. Green used a 1949 aerial to inform the replacement of bunkers and the shape of greens, which are much larger and possess a wider variety of hole location and slopes than before. Almost every hole was dramatically revamped, creating a course that poses driving options and requires the careful calibration of each shot rather than a mere test of straight hitting. Explore our full review

GrayBull’s version of an Alps hole.

Derek Duncan

The infinite variety of landforms that exist in the vast Sandhills of north-central Nebraska allow architects lucky enough to work there to move holes into and over the dunes in almost limitless ways. The region’s newest course, GrayBull, 30 minutes east of North Platte, sits on relatively gentle terrain (for the Sandhills) and mostly plays exposed and on top of the land. The sixth is an exception with the left-turning fairway banked between two dune ridges and a pair of exposed sand bunker scrapes that squeeze the landing zone. The green is tucked down in a hollow behind a grassy mound that partially blocks it from view. Whether intentional or not, this hole from David McLay Kidd plays like an Alps, where blind shots from the left must go over the mound and large fronting bunker, while drives played far to the right have an open look at the banked putting surface.

Evan Schiller false GrayBull Golf Club Maxwell, NE Architect David McLay Kidd has seen both ends of the golf site spectrum, from the incomparable ocean setting of the original Bandon Dunes course and the pine dunes of Sand Valley, all the way to lifeless land like the potato farm he inherited for St. Andrew’s Castle Course in his native Scotland. He’s not likely to get a better one than GrayBull, the course he built for the Dormie Network in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. Located about 30 minutes northeast of North Platte, just north of I-80, the 1,800-acre site provided the potential for dozens if not hundreds of different golf holes, though the owners instructed Kidd to just build 18 of them and not to worry about leaving room for a second 18—or nine, or a short course—at a future date. Thus the routing takes the long road around the site, moving in a big clockwise flow with gentle cascading movements and only a few switchbacks. There was a section of steeper dunes in the center of the property that were attractive, but they were essentially too severe and Kidd couldn’t find a way to get in and out of them without having to make big cuts to the land, something you shouldn’t have to do in the Sand Hills. The fairways are larger than they appear but are obscured by angles around the dunes and elevated bunkers, and the greens are a continuing evolution of those at Gamble Sands and Mammoth Dunes, getting progressively more contoured at each course. The strength of the design is the par 4s presented in a rich variety of lengths and orientations (the drivable fifth and 16th—in certain winds—are standouts, as is the 13th where the fairway kicks drives left into a hollow unless they challenge a large bunker on the right), adding up to a stellar addition to this vast and most interesting of golf landscapes. Explore our full review

RELATED: GrayBull is the newest course in Nebraska’s Sandhills. How does it stack up against its neighbors?

LAKESIDE COUNTRY CLUB Hole 13 500 yards, par 4

From behind Lakeside’s fallaway 13th green.

Derek Duncan

Oakmont is known for several outstanding front-to-back fallaway greens, but it has nothing on the 13th green at Lakeside. This 1952 Ralph Plummer design in Houston was completely redesigned by architect Jay Blasi in 2023 with a new routing and newly created holes, including the 13th, a long brute that plays more like a par 4½ and used to run the opposite direction. Now it starts with a swing-from-your-heels drive toward a pair of squared spectacle bunkers 100 yards from the front of the deep, skinny putting surface that stretches nearly 60 yards front to back. The first quarter is level with the fairway before it slides down to a lower section tilted toward away toward the rear, and hitting long second shots toward it, hoping to see the ball bounce, roll and then disappear down the slope, is the kind of thrill that keeps golfers coming back. Shoulders left and right of the green will hold shots, and putts to middle and back pins can either be played straight or banked off the slopes like a marble rolling around a sink.

MEDINAH COUNTRY CLUB (#3) Hole 6 476 yards, par 4

Derek Duncan

Even though the sixth hole occupies the same footprint as before following a radical blow-up and rebuild of Medinah’s famed #3 course by the Australian team of Geoff Ogilvy, Mike Cocking and Ashley Mead (OCM), it’s entirely new. The fairway went from 25 to over 60 yards wide in places, trees were cleared away and the bunkers shifted from the left to the right. Most intriguingly, the architects built an arrow-straight out-of-bounds fence along the left that tightly borders the edge of the fairway, the kind of feature seen on old courses in the U.K. but not much anywhere else. The green, too, was moved hard against the fence, so any approach or chip that drifts slightly too far is a drop and replay. It’s a fascinating use of a hazard line that constantly forces players to calculate how conservative or aggressive to be with each angle of attack, knowing at some point they’re going to have to challenge the fenceline.

Medinah Country Club/Seth Jenkins false Private Medinah Country Club: #3 Medinah, IL 4.6 27 Panelists

• 100 Greatest
• Best In State

The evolution of golf course architecture—and how courses change to suit the demands of the times—can be mapped directly on top of Medinah’s #3 course. It was built in the fields west of Chicago in the 1920s on land that was part farmland and partly wooded. It became a major championship site when it hosted the 1949 U.S. Open, putting it on a track of perpetual improvements to toughen it up to keep pace with tournament demands. To whit, the old 17th hole, a par 3 over water, shifted and morphed several times between 1986 and 2005, and the greens and bunkers have undergone remodels ahead of each event, from Opens, to PGA Championships to Ryder Cups. But when #3 was blistered to the tune of 25-under during the 2019 BMW Championship, which coincided with a plunge in the rankings from 53 to 93, the club knew it was time to adapt again. They took a swing and hired the Australian firm of Ogilvy, Cocking and Mead to overhaul the design with the notion of making the course look and play like it might have in the 1920s. That meant removing much of the dense forest surrounding the holes, revamping the bunkers in more naturalistic forms, enlarging the greens and adding internal contour, eliminating two of the three redundant par 3s that played over Lake Kadijah and building several new holes including the drivable 16th over the lake. The radical shift has put the fun, firmness and variety back into a design that had become one-dimensional, predicable and soft.

Explore our full review OLD BARNWELL Hole 15 625 yards, par 5

Old Barnwell’s beautifully sited 15th green and approach.

Derek Duncan

Old Barnwell, just outside Aiken, S.C. from first-time lead architects Brian Schneider and Blake Conant, could have placed several holes on this list including the par-4 third, par-4 tenth or drivable par-4 14th. But it’s the aura and atmosphere of this par 5 that curls through a calming parcel along the property’s far eastern flank that hits me most emotionally. The hole feels apart, separate, yet stimulates as bits of motif from the previous holes all reappear in new contexts as you work toward a seductive green elevated on a small knoll above a bunker and natural area. The key, however, is the drive, which must be fitted between—or past—two massive flat bottomed rampart bunkers bracketing the inside and outside corners of the turn. Finding them, or driving too far through the fairway into the scrub, will put you on your heels and remove much of the joy that playing second and third shots into this lovely green complex otherwise brings.

Jeff Marsh false Private Old Barnwell Golf Club Aiken, SC 4.3 24 Panelists The Old Barnwell property, 12 miles southeast of Aiken, shares much in common with nearby Tree Farm, which was contrasted at virtually the same time in 2022 and 2023. The latter is a better pure golf site, but the more enigmatic if less aesthetically endowed Old Barnwell property is profound in other architecturally advantageous ways. The course plays around and through a treeless basin at the center of the 500-acre site, shooting the occasional sortie of holes into thinned out sections of pine along a perimeter rim. The landforms surrounding the amphitheater are nakedly muscular and eight holes traverse and tumble off these fallaway ridgelines. First-time lead architects Brian Schneider and Blake Conant used those movement to prop up wide holes that skirt the edges, and handled the less suggestive parts of the property by constructing an assortment of contemporary and antique architectural features: old bathtub bunkers recalling hazards at Garden City Golf Club and Myopia Hunt; linear shaggy-grass berms that evoke military entrenchments; open waste areas and geometric chasms of sand; and vertical grass embankments protecting bunkers and greens. On top of this are a set of putting surfaces that crash any conversation of the game’s most profoundly contoured, pushing the limits playability without crossing into needless ornamentation. Explore our full review

RELATED: Two new courses in South Carolina are hellbent on breaking convention

PANTHER NATIONAL Hole 10 474 yards, par 4

Derek Duncan

Panther National in Palm Beach Gardens was created by Nicklaus Design (including Jack Nicklaus, with consultation from PGA Tour player Justin Thomas) by excavating and importing some 3 million cubic yards of sand to form ridges and dunes that run across the site. The holes move up, down and through the landforms though the illusion that they might have naturally occurred on the site is stymied by the exposed homesites that circle the course on the opposite sides of lagoons. That’s what makes the tenth hole stand out—its built on an interior section dominated by a dune ridge on the left and sand and moguls on the right, obscuring all but the golf. The drive plays down to a valley where the fairway swings left, setting up a long approach to a green benched into the ridge 15 feet above. If you squint, or wait another few seasons for the surrounding fescue and vegetation to mature, you can almost see a little Shinnecock Hills in it. Making a four certainly requires that level of strength and shot making.

Evan Schiller false Panther National Palm Beach Gardens, FL 4.1 11 Panelists We may look back and realize that Panther National was the final new course built in the south Florida counties of Palm Beach, Broward or Dade. One of the most golf dense regions in the world, the counties are hemmed in by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and nature preserves and the Everglades to the west, and there’s almost no more land available upon which to construct an 18-hole course. Several years ago, Swiss businessman Dominik Senn acquired what may end up being the last buildable golf parcel, roughly 400 acres northwest of Palm Beach Gardens bordering a vast wildlife preserve where black panthers are often seen.   The Jack Nicklaus/Nicklaus Design golf course—the centerpiece of a luxury residential and recreational enclave—is fittingly modern and unique. The holes play down below tall dune ridges that were created from fill excavated during the construction of several lakes and additional material imported from an adjected housing development, and elsewhere crest 30 and 40 feet above the waterline. The remarkable string of holes from ten through 14 feel like anywhere but south Florida, with elevated tees and greens benched into the ridges. Nicklaus said the par-3 15th, with eight tees that vary from a flip wedge to metal club playing to an 80-yard-deep island green, is one of the best par 3 he’s designed, but it might not even be the best one-shot hole at Panther National—all four are strong and attractive calling cards. Explore our full review

A short-game sensation: the 14th at Pinehurst #10.

Carlos Amoedo

I’ve spent a lot of time this year writing and talking about the extraordinariness of the wild eighth at Pinehurst’s new #10 course, built by Tom Doak, and rightly so—it’s one of the most unique holes in the U.S., flowing over the unpredictable spoils of the site’s old sand mining operation. The 14th is a smaller version of that, playing toward the same section of spoils from the opposite direction with the green set against a high, grown-over dune. It’s really a par 3½ at almost 250 yards, and most players will be pulling a headcover on the tee. The small knob short of the green was constructed to mirror the taller spoil to the right, and the putting surface and surrounds are pumped full of tiers and ramps and bowls that mimic the hole’s overall turbulence. Almost anything can happen once the ball hits the ground—you need to be your most creative when chipping, pitching or putting around this green.

false Public Pinehurst #10 Pinehurst, NC 4.5 27 Panelists

Sand is the defining character of Pinehurst, and Pinehurst #10 goes right to the source: a former sand mining site south of the resort, portions of which used to be a golf course called The Pit that closed in 2010. Several holes of this Tom Doak design, opened in 2024, plunge through the old quarries, including the turbulent eighth where players will want to pop Dramamine before tackling fairway swells that would pitch and toss a fishing vessel. Pinehurst Resort is also characterized by the tight cluster of its primary courses and synchronous relationship with the surrounding village, but #10 is a world apart. The grandeur of the isolated holes roller coasting through the quiet sand barrens creates tension between the sublimity of the environment and the heroism of the architecture, demonstrated most intensely in the uninhibited green shapes, many of which are bowl-shaped and heavily segmented.

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RELATED: I got to play Pinehurst #10—it’s unlike anything I’ve seen

THE TREE FARM Hole 16 515 yards, par 5

Jeff Marsh

We admire long par 5s that are unreachable in two shots by mortal golfers, but we love short half-par 5s that tease the prospect of a kick-in eagle. One of the most scintillating new versions of the short par 5 was built by Zac Blair and Kye Goalby at Tree Farm northeast of Aiken, S.C. It’s a gambler’s delight that puts 3s and 4s squarely on the table. Step One: Cut a blind drive across three intimidating fairway bunkers cut into the face of a ridge. Step Two: Take a shot with a long club at the punchbowl green hidden behind a large mound with everything on the opposite side collecting toward the putting surface. Step Three: Sink your short eagle putt if you’ve pulled off the shot, or, Step Four: Figure out how to get a (possibly blind) pitch or chip somewhere near the hole so you don’t walk away embarrassed with merely a par. Step Five: Giggle all the way to the next tee.

Jeff Marsh false Private The Tree Farm Batesburg, SC 4.6 21 Panelists At The Tree Farm, PGA Tour player and founder Zac Blair has attracted a kindred young-in-spirit if not exclusively young-in-age membership from across the country that mirrors his infectious relaxed-casual passion for walking, fast play, head-to-head matches and creative architecture, particularly from the approach shot through the green. A majority of them are good players who think nothing of hoofing 36 or more holes a day. One of the club’s mottos, is “Play Fast and Don’t Be a Dick.” Another is “Slow Players Will Be Asked to Leave the Property.”   Design credit goes to multiple people, including Tom Doak, who routed the course over a gorgeously secluded site full of ridges, valleys and galleries of pine accented with scrub, sand and shades of underbrush, parts Pinehurst area and vintage Augusta National; Kye Goalby who designed the holes and features, and Blair, who was involved in all of the above. Most of Blair and Goalby’s fairways merely brush the land with a minimum of earthwork, draped around the curves of bunkers and ravines that tempt players to try and nip the corners. Highlights include a wonderful Redan par 3, a memorable punchbowl green at the par-5 16th, a mighty uphill par 3 (the fourth) modeled on the fifth at Pine Valley and some other subtle nods to template holes, but overall the architecture at The Tree Farm is organic and inspired primarily by what was already there, giving the course a budding air of sophisticated maturity. Some of the subtlest sections of the course, like the loop through a soothing cove of pines at five, six and seven, may be The Tree Farm’s most evocative, a resplendent sotto voce to the explosive aria of the final four holes that includes the Redan, a reachable par 5 with a corner-cut drive and deep punchbowl green, a short archery target par 3 and a downhill drivable par 4 with a split-level green similar to the 16th at Augusta National. Explore our full review

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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com