The Best Walks in Golf

Golf was invented on foot, and it still gives up its best secrets that way. A cart tells you a course is something you get through; a great walk tells you it's somewhere you get to be. On the right piece of ground, the four miles between the first tee and the last green become the point — the climb that reveals the sea, the hush of a forest between holes, the sheep watching you read a putt. This list is those places.

Every course here comes from our Bookshelf library, and every one is walkable by design — most of them proudly, a few of them exclusively. We leaned toward courses where the terrain, the routing, or the setting does something a screen can't fully capture: links that climb hills, cliffs that fall into the ocean, fairways aimed at mountain peaks. Where caddie culture is part of the deal, we say so, because a good caddie turns a walk into a conversation.

And here's the fun part for those of us in Florida, where July walking golf is an act of courage: a surprising number of these have faithful GSPro recreations. You can scout the holes in an air-conditioned bay this week and walk the real thing on your next trip. That's the whole play.

Scotland and Ireland: where the walk was invented

Royal Dornoch Golf Club (Championship Course) — The remotest of the world's elite links, an hour north of Inverness on a golden crescent of Highland coast, and that remoteness is exactly the charm: you don't stumble into Dornoch, you complete a pilgrimage to it. Golf has been played here since 1616, and this is where Donald Ross greenkept before emigrating to become America's great architect — the raised, domed greens he built a career on are everywhere underfoot. Visitors are genuinely welcome (around £320 in summer, far less in winter), and the course is in GSPro, where those crowned greens repel timid approaches just like the real ones.

North Berwick (West Links) — Maybe the most fun serious course on earth, and unquestionably one of its great walks: stone walls cross the fairways, the beach is in play, and you pass the original Redan — the template par 3 copied on hundreds of courses — like a landmark on a town stroll. Golf has been played on this shore since 1832, and architects still make pilgrimages here. It's wide and short enough that nobody leaves grumpy. There's a community recreation in GSPro; crank the wind and see why the quirk works.

Gullane Golf Club (No. 1 Course) — Here's a links that does something almost no true links does: it climbs. The routing works up and over Gullane Hill, opens staggering views across the Firth of Forth at the top, then tumbles back down to the finish. That ascent-and-reveal is the walk distilled to a single idea. The club dates to 1882 (its architect, wonderfully, was never recorded), it hosted the 2015 Scottish Open, and it welcomes visitor bookings. A community GSPro build exists, and the elevation changes translate.

Prestwick Golf Club — Walking Prestwick is the closest thing golf has to batting at the original Wrigley. The Open Championship was born here in 1860 — eight professionals, three loops of Old Tom Morris's 12 holes in a single day, a red morocco belt for the winner — and today's 18 keeps the antique soul: blind shots, humps, bunkers shored with railway sleepers. Take a caddie; the quirks are 160-year-old artifacts and you'll want the stories. Then don't skip lunch in the clubhouse dining room. It's part of the round.

Brora Golf Club — In 1923 James Braid stepped off the train, walked the links, staked new tees and greens, charged £25 plus expenses, and left on the next train south. His course is essentially unchanged — and you still share the walk with livestock, because crofters hold grazing rights here, which is why every green has been ringed by a low electric fence since 1967. Sheep, cows, fast-running turf, a famously relaxed welcome, and green fees a fraction of Dornoch's twenty minutes down the coast. Skipping Brora is the classic rookie mistake of a Highlands trip.

Shiskine Golf & Tennis Club — Twelve holes, seven of them par 3s, running along the shore of the Isle of Arran beneath the Drumadoon cliffs, with blind shots signaled by pulley-hoisted markers instead of bells. Even getting there is a walk of sorts — CalMac ferry from Ardrossan, then a short drive west. It's short, cheap, joyous, and confuses everyone equally. Nobody comes home from Shiskine without a story, which is more than most championship venues can promise.

Lahinch Golf Club (Old Course) — Three eras of architecture in one stroll through the County Clare dunes: Old Tom Morris (who in 1894 called it the finest natural course he'd ever seen), Alister MacKenzie's 1927 rebuild, and Martin Hawtree's restoration. The blind par-5 Klondyke and blind par-3 Dell force you to trust the ground and go find out — the purest walking-golf feeling there is. Goats on the course famously forecast the weather. A community GSPro recreation exists, and honestly, committing to those blind shots is easier on a screen. Do it there first.

North America's great walks

Cabot Cliffs — Coore and Crenshaw's 2015 masterpiece on Cape Breton Island mixes links, dune, and highland golf — six par 3s, six par 4s, six par 5s — with almost every hole staring at the ocean and several perched right on the cliff edge above the Gulf of St. Lawrence. It's walking golf with caddies available, it made a former coal town a global pilgrimage, and it's widely considered one of the flagship recreations in the entire GSPro library. Play it in a bay this week; start saving for July-through-September tee times.

Bandon Trails — The only course at Bandon without ocean holes, and the sleeper pick of the architecture crowd, because the walk is the drama: massive coastal dunes, then an open meadow, then a hushed coastal rain forest, then back up into the dunes to finish. Behind the 14th tee, a plaque marks the view that convinced Mike Keiser to buy the property at all. It's walking only and the hilliest loop at the resort — take a caddie. The GSPro version flattens the climb, which is a fair scouting advantage.

Gearhart Golf Links — The oldest course in continual operation west of the Mississippi — golf on these Oregon dunes since 1892, with tales of Scotsmen knocking balls around even earlier. In 2013 the club tore out hundreds of trees to give the land back its links identity, and what's left is the humble ideal this whole list orbits: a bag on your shoulder, bouncy ground, coastal wind as the only bully, and everyday-reasonable green fees. It's in GSPro too — a lovely change of pace when you want links feel without links punishment.

Pebble Beach Golf Links — Yes, it's the obvious pick. It's also, hole for hole, the most scenic public walk in American golf: two amateurs routed it along the Monterey cliffs in 1919, nine holes touch Carmel Bay, and six U.S. Opens have been decided on it with more booked out to 2048. The honest math: $675 (rising to $695 in April 2026), plus caddie or cart — and on this list, that's not a coin flip. Walk it. In the bays it's one of the most-played sim courses anywhere; if you only have half an hour, play the 7th-8th-9th stretch.

Mayacama Golf Club — The purist's outlier: a 2001 Nicklaus design in the oak-studded hills of Sonoma wine country that is famously walking-only. No carts exist — just caddies — despite serious elevation on both nines. It's a private club, so for most of us the GSPro build is the realistic way in, and it has real teeth there: a 154 slope from the tips, barranca carries, hillside lies. But as a statement about what golf on foot can be, few American courses commit harder.

Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Golf Course — Stanley Thompson's 1925 Canadian Rockies routing — carved from wilderness by 200 men and 50 teams of horses — aims its fairways at distant peaks so the mountains guide both your eye and your strategy. That's walking architecture at its most literal: every hole is a view you move through, from the downhill 9th, 'Cleopatra,' framed by Pyramid Mountain, to the lakeside finish on Lac Beauvert. Elk on the fairways are likelier than a meltdown. Public, seasonal (roughly May to early October), and worth planning a summer around.

What we were actually looking for

Read the list back and a pattern emerges: the best walks either reveal something (Gullane's climb, Bandon Trails' three worlds), connect you to history underfoot (Prestwick, Dornoch, Gearhart), or simply refuse the alternative (Mayacama, Bandon). That's the filter to apply to your own bucket list — not ranking position, but what happens between shots.

Two ways to act on it. First, queue the GSPro versions here at Clubhouse: Cabot Cliffs, Royal Dornoch, Pebble Beach, and North Berwick are all in the library, and an hour in a bay is the best trip-scouting money can buy. Second, if a walking trip is actually on your calendar, get your carry setup right — a fitting session can trim your bag to what you'll genuinely hit into a Highland wind. For the courses that need no plane ticket, start with our Florida picks; for the ones that need a very long one, see the bucket list.