The Sim Bucket List: 12 Legends to Play in the Bays

Every golfer keeps two lists. There's the trip list — courses you could play if you saved up and booked far enough ahead. Then there's the other list, the one you don't say out loud, because the courses on it don't sell tee times at any price. Augusta National. Cypress Point. Tiger's home club. Places where the barrier isn't your budget; it's that nobody's inviting you.

Here's the quiet miracle of a GSPro bay: that second list is the one it unlocks. Community builders have recreated these courses slope for slope, and every one below is sitting in our library in Wesley Chapel right now. You can walk in tonight, queue up a course with roughly 250 members on the other side of the country, and find out whether you'd actually pull driver on the 16th at Cypress.

So this list has one rule: access, not quality, is the filter. These twelve courses mostly won't take your money at any price; a few charge so much they might as well be private. Let's start with the hardest door in golf.

The ones no invitation is coming for

Augusta National Golf Club — The hardest tee time on Earth: member invitation only, with narrow side doors for media lottery winners, tournament volunteers, and caddies. Even watching the Masters requires winning the patron ticket lottery. Bobby Jones and Alister MacKenzie built it in 1932 on an old nursery property, which is why every hole is named for a plant. In GSPro it lives under the alias "Georgia Golf Club," a widely praised community recreation refreshed around recent Masters. Here's what surprises people in the bay: it's wide off the tee with almost no rough. You'll get it around fine. Then you'll putt from the wrong tier, watch the ball roll off the green, and understand April telecasts forever.

Cypress Point Club — Roughly 250 members, no public play, no tee time to buy at any price. MacKenzie's 1929 masterpiece trades places with Pine Valley atop nearly every world ranking, and the routing moves through three worlds — inland dunes, cypress forest, then out onto the Pacific cliffs. Founder Marion Hollins famously proved the 16th's ocean carry was possible by teeing up a ball and driving it to the proposed green site herself. In the bay, that hole is the whole show: pull driver and try the real 230-yard carry, or lay up left like most members do. For 99.9 percent of golfers, the sim is the only way this course will ever be played.

Shinnecock Hills — Founded 1891, a USGA charter member, and host of the U.S. Open across three different centuries — most recently June 2026, so the sting is fresh. William Flynn's 1931 routing is three triangles of holes that expose you to every wind direction, which is exactly why it translates so well indoors: set a firm, breezy condition in Tekbud's acclaimed recreation and see how your game holds up where Koepka won in 2018. Access is by member invitation only, full stop. The fescue and lightning greens are merciless — but you're not here to score.

Oakmont Country Club — The hardest great course in America, and proudly so. Steel man Henry Fownes built it in 1903 — his only design — to be the most difficult course anywhere, and the club has spent 120 years sharpening it. Ten U.S. Opens, a record, from Johnny Miller's 63 in '73 through the 2025 edition on Gil Hanse's restored Fownes-era look. There's no water and few trees; the 175-plus bunkers, the rough, and the terrifying green speeds do the work. It's our favorite standing challenge in the bays: try to break 85 here and calibrate your ego honestly.

Merion Golf Club (East Course) — In 1910, Merion handed its new course to Hugh Wilson, a 32-year-old member who had never designed anything. He studied Britain's great links and came home to build, on barely 125 acres, arguably America's greatest small course — pins flying wicker baskets instead of flags. Bobby Jones completed the 1930 Grand Slam here; Hogan hit the 1-iron of legend on 18. Strictly private, and it's a superb sim test precisely because it isn't long: driver barely matters, and angles and iron precision decide everything. If you bomb it and still can't score here, you've learned something a launch monitor can't tell you.

Riviera Country Club — George C. Thomas Jr.'s 1926 canyon masterpiece — "Hogan's Alley," where Ben won three times in 17 months — is among the most private clubs in America, yet one of the most-played courses on all of GSPro. That gap tells you everything. The defenses are unlike anywhere else: grabby kikuyu rough, wobbly poa greens, and a bunker sitting in the middle of the 6th green. Our favorite Clubhouse move: queue it up during Genesis week in February and take on the drivable 10th the same day the pros do. Fair warning — the kikuyu is modeled punishingly.

Fishers Island Club — One of America's most private clubs on one of its least accessible islands: ferry from New London, members and guests only. Seth Raynor died in January 1926 before it was finished; Charles Banks completed the purest gallery of Raynor's template holes anywhere — Redan, Biarritz, Alps, Cape, Punchbowl — each framed by Long Island Sound. If you've ever wondered what "template holes" actually mean, this is the best architecture lesson a bay can serve. Replay the Biarritz 5th until the swale putt makes sense. Play it calm first, then add a two-club breeze for the real thing.

Passport, meet bucket list

Tara Iti Golf Club — Tom Doak's New Zealand sandscape debuted at No. 6 on Golf Digest's World 100 — the highest debut in the ranking's history — and has climbed as high as No. 2. It's also roughly as hard as golf access gets: unaccompanied play is no longer offered, so realistic entry is a member's guest invitation. There isn't a blade of conventional rough; fairway melts into fescue-flecked sand with the Pacific beyond. In Tekbud's recreation, it rewards the ground game — run approaches into slopes instead of flying flags, and set a real wind. Essential for anyone working through the world top 10 from Wesley Chapel.

Real Club Valderrama — The Augusta of Europe, and the host of the first Ryder Cup ever played on the continent — 1997, with Seve captaining the home side to victory. Technically you can visit: the club releases limited midday slots Monday through Thursday, at an official 2026 fee of 600 euros plus a mandatory forecaddie. In practice, it's a members' world. On the sim it plays exactly as advertised — narrow, claustrophobic driving windows through ancient cork oaks and greens that repel anything imprecise. This is the room's honesty test. Queue it for a punishing skins night; even tour pros can't overpower it.

Where money is the only gate

Shadow Creek — Steve Wynn gave Tom Fazio a reported $60 million and a flat patch of desert, and told him to build paradise: carved canyons, thousands of imported pines, waterfalls where nothing grew. It debuted at No. 8 on America's 100 Greatest — still the highest debut ever. Today it's "public" in the loosest sense: you must stay at an MGM resort, and the green fee is $1,250, the most expensive in golf. Which makes this the ultimate sim value play — the bay version costs your normal hourly, and the 17-18 finish is terrific for match-play nights.

Pebble Beach Golf Links — The exception on this list: fully public, actually bookable. But at $675 — rising to $695 in April 2026 — plus a resort stay to lock an advance tee time, it's a pilgrimage most of us make once, if ever. Two amateurs routed it along the Monterey cliffs in 1919; nine holes touch Carmel Bay; and U.S. Opens are booked here out to 2048. In the sim it plays fair off the mat — the challenge is tiny poa greens and whatever you do with the wind slider. If you've only got half an hour, play the 7th-8th-9th stretch and nothing else.

The one down the road

Medalist Golf Club — Pete Dye and Greg Norman's first collaboration, set in the marsh-dotted sand scrub of Hobe Sound on Florida's Treasure Coast — a few hours from our front door, and it might as well be on the moon. Member invitation only, no public access of any kind; televised events like The Match are how most people ever see it. Best known as Tiger's home course, it plays like a tour player's daily exam: long, firm, and exacting since Bobby Weed's 2015 renovation restored Dye's original edges. Queue it up and compare cards with the best players on earth. Humility included free.

How this list was built — and what to do with it

Three criteria, applied ruthlessly: the course had to be in our GSPro library, access (not quality) had to be the real barrier, and it had to teach something on a screen — greens, wind, templates, or restraint. That's why some famous names you might expect aren't here, and why a manufactured Vegas fever dream is.

The next step is simple: book a bay, bring a friend, and pick two — one impossible course and one you might actually play someday. If you want the broader tour of what makes a great sim course great, start with Playing the Great Courses in GSPro. Your invitation to Augusta may never come. Your tee time here can be tonight.