Hidden gems

An 18-hole course carved through Almeria's arid ravine country near Pulpi Bay, defined by six large lakes and more than 100 bunkers.

A veteran-tribute course built on the site of the former Grand Haven Golf Club, with Nicklaus donating his design fee; all profits support the Folds of Honor Foundation's scholarships for families of fallen/disabled service members, and every hole carries a military memorial.

A public course in a university town on Nova Scotia's mainland, recreated for GSPro through community lidar-based course scanning.

Set 1,000 feet above sea level on a former sugar plantation, Apes Hill opened in 2009 and was substantially rebuilt under a $24 million renovation led by Ron Kirby, reopening in January 2022. The par-71 layout looks out over both the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and won World's Best Eco-Friendly Golf Facility at the 2023 World Golf Awards along with Caribbean and Barbados course-of-the-year honors.

A residential-community daily-fee course in the Aquia Harbour development south of Washington, D.C., recreated for GSPro through community lidar-based course scanning.

Dramatic bluff-top public course overlooking Lake Michigan, frequently compared to links courses in Scotland/Ireland for its wind exposure and dune-top green sites; regularly ranked among America's best public courses.

Straddles the Canada-U.S. border, with the clubhouse and course on the Canadian side and the parking lot on the American side; originally sited there so American golfers could bypass Prohibition.

A daily-fee public course threaded through 300-million-year-old red sandstone formations at the edge of Roxborough State Park, long recognized as one of the most photographed courses in the country and ranked among Golf Digest's best public courses in America.

One of New Zealand's oldest clubs, tracing back to a six-hole layout in 1911 and re-established as a nine-hole course in 1937, Arrowtown Golf Club is consistently ranked in the country's national top 10 and has appeared on international lists of the world's best short courses. The course is notable for having no sand bunkers at all.

A rural Cheshire golf club recreated for GSPro through community lidar-based course scanning.

The first new 18-hole course to open on the Costa del Sol in a decade, debuting outside Estepona in June 2021.

A North Fork Long Island club recreated for GSPro through community lidar-based course scanning.

Routed at elevations up to 5,400 feet in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville; Palmer called it unlike any course he had ever designed, citing the forced carries over ravines and streams.

One of the northernmost golf courses in the world, sited in Norway's Arctic Finnmark region near Lakselv airport.

The original course that launched the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort and the modern American links-golf revival; opened May 19, 1999.

Routes from meadows through forest into dunes, a deliberate change of pace from the resort's purer links courses; opened June 1, 2005.

A par-71 parkland course in Sydney's inner-west where several holes run along the Georges River and others weave through native bushland. Free public membership gives social golfers timesheet access alongside the club's traditional membership base.

A municipal course owned and run by Barnsley Council since 1925, the par-69 layout along the River Ore corridor is known locally for some of Yorkshire's trickiest, most undulating greens on an otherwise approachable card.

Arthur Hills reshaped a defunct cement-plant quarry into this 27-hole facility for Boyne Resorts, which opened in 1997 along Lake Michigan's Little Traverse Bay. The Links nine runs along coastal bluffs while the Quarry nine drops through 40-foot shale gorges, a combination that made it Golf Digest's third-ranked Best New Upscale Public Course of 1999.

Arnold Palmer's winter home course and longtime residence (owned by Palmer 1974-2016); hosts the Arnold Palmer Invitational since 1979.

Built by Dave Axland and Dan Proctor of Bunker Hill Golf, the shaping team behind Coore & Crenshaw's Sand Hills Golf Club, Bayside sits on the shore of Lake McConaughy in western Nebraska. Its first nine opened in 1999 with a second nine following a couple of years later, and several holes play directly along the reservoir's shoreline.

This 36-hole public facility near Mount Unak in northeastern Gyeonggi has been repeatedly rated among Korea's best public courses by national golf press. The Creek course originally used the Japanese dual-green system before a Joon-taek Noh renovation converted it to single greens when it reopened in 2009.

A Dallas-area daily-fee course recreated for GSPro through community lidar-based course scanning.

Designed in 1925 by William Watson and opened in 1927, Belvedere remains one of Watson's best-surviving works; Walter Hagen won the club's 1929 Great Lakes Open and called the par-4 16th the best hole of its kind in America. The club has hosted the Michigan Amateur a record 41 times and marked its 100th anniversary in 2025.

Founded in 1893 and rebuilt to eighteen holes in 1923, Blackwell is one of only seven UK courses where Herbert Fowler and Tom Simpson worked together, packing strategic variety and notable short holes onto a compact Midlands parkland site; Frank Pont has since led a restoration aimed at recovering their original intent.

Pete Dye's companion course to the River Course at Blackwolf Run, opening with prairie/oak-savanna terrain on the front and dramatic glacier-carved holes on the back; part of the routing (with the River Course) used for the 1998 U.S. Women's Open won by Se Ri Pak.

Sister course to Whistling Straits at Destination Kohler; hosted the 1998 (composite with Meadow Valleys) and 2012 U.S. Women's Opens.

The first Tiger Woods-designed golf course built in the United States, part of a private residential club north of Houston.

A 14-hole short course (12 par-3s and two short par-4s, par 57) carved into the dunes behind Barnbougle Lost Farm by architect Bill Coore, opened in 2021; the routing mixes an easier opening loop with more demanding dune-top holes further out.

One of two courses on the historic Brocket Hall estate, a country house once home to two British Prime Ministers (Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston), for whom the club's two courses are named.

The second of two courses on the historic Brocket Hall estate, named for Lord Palmerston, one of two British Prime Ministers who lived at the estate.

A municipal course built into historic sandhills six miles south of Garden City, long ranked by Golf Digest as Kansas's top municipally-owned course. A 2018-era renovation led by architect Todd Clark and shaper Zach Varty stripped out mature trees and rebuilt greens and bunkers to expose the natural dune land underneath.

The original course at Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris's Big Cedar Lodge resort; a real herd of bison grazes alongside the fairways and it hosts PGA Tour Champions' Legends of Golf.

An 18-hole, par-72 course on a terrace between Sagogn and Schluein at nearly 750 metres, offering panoramic views across the Graubunden Alps toward Laax and the Oberalp Pass despite sitting below true alpine terrain.

Sister course to Cabot Links on Cape Breton Island; routed along dramatic Gulf of St. Lawrence cliffs and widely ranked among the best modern courses in the world.

Canada's first true oceanside links course, built on a reclaimed coal-mining site along the Gulf of St. Lawrence; the original course at what's become the Cabot golf destination, alongside its more famous sibling Cabot Cliffs.

A Costa del Sol course in the Mijas golf corridor near Marbella, recreated for GSPro through community lidar-based course scanning.

Mike Strantz's first solo design, built on a former rice plantation and hunting preserve named for Scotland by 18th-century owner Dr. Robert Nesbit, opened to the public in January 1994. Strantz sculpted large, artistic greens defended by ponds and bunkers rather than following strict engineering conventions, a style he carried into later designs like True Blue and Tobacco Road before his death in 2005.

A historic private club in the Bay Area golf scene alongside Olympic Club and Harding Park, both shaped by the same generation of early-20th-century Northern California architects.

A mountain-town course in the Canadian Rockies foothills just outside Banff National Park.