North Carolina's Top 100 Golf Courses
As winter turns to spring (or bypasses spring for summer) and the Masters is at the "fore"front, of the golf world, the North Carolina Golf Panel offers its list of best 100 courses in North Carolina
First, congrats to NC State’s men’s and women’s basketball teams
If you’re a regular reader and think today’s subject should be about NC State Wolfpack basketball—men’s and women’s—and their appearances in the Final Four, well, I’ve taken a turn in another direction and decided to write about golf, surprise, surprise. Congratulations to those teams, but golf is ahead.
Ranking the top 100 North Carolina Golf Courses
Just in time for this year’s Masters tournament, the North Carolina Golf Panel has released its 2024 preference of the top 100 golf courses in North Carolina. To no one’s surprise, Pinehurst No. 2, site of this year’s USGA United States Open, is at the top of the list for the umpteenth time. But who’s counting?!?
The Donald Ross designed layout (with assistance from the design firm of Coore & Crenshaw to reenforce Mr. Ross’s desire) has regularly been the favorite of the Panel, a numerous group of golfers with various backgrounds from casual to serious players, to golf professionals, to course designers, and to players with abilities of low to high handicap indexes playing various course lengths, indexes and slopes. There are business men and women, retired folks, young bucks, others including writers, professional and amateur.
The NC Golf Panel is truly a multifaceted group. The common denominator is the members play golf, a lot of golf, with interest in the course at hand, comparing various aspects of golf courses and then submitting a lineup of as few as 50 and as many as 100 North Carolina layouts in a personalized preferred order. All entries are tabulated and, voilá, the top 100 is produced.
Golf is a simple game made hard by the players; producing the list is a bit more complicated because you can’t please everyone with different opinions about what’s good or bad for a course and how it compares to the next round at a different location. And you can’t please all those who look at the list, Panel member or not. We try our best in formulating the list.
But, wait, there’s more. Panel members must have played a course to include a course (that’s reasonable) and at least 25 percent of the membership must have included a course on their ballots for that course to be included/ranked (that’s also reasonable). Remember, this is a wide group with a full spectrum of golf course ideas so one person’s rare speckled trout hooked in a mountain stream is another person’s dirt bike race track along the coast.
Reputation of a course is superseded by actually playing a golf course. You can think a course is great and deserving but until you can actually describe the birdie on the par five 550-yard 8th hole or the triple bogey on the par four 310-yard 15th hole, leave those reputable courses off your list if you’ve never played there.
There’s no limit to when you have played a course. I have one, a wonderful design by Ellis Maples from my junior golf days in the 1960s, near the bottom of my list. And, even if a course has been completely renovated and is not the same as when you last played it doesn’t keep you from your appointed rounds of making a list. Include it; don’t include it.
Off-hand, I could offer at least five golf courses, maybe 10, in North Carolina not on the NC Golf Panel’s list, each of which show up on several other best golf courses lists. But I will not go there, not mention those exquisite and interesting layouts, because I haven’t played them. What do I know.
Pinehurst No. 2, at the top of the list, will be on golf’s world stage in mid-June with stories about the course, it’s difficult greens and love-grass lined fairways. And, about the players, of course. The 1999 US Open may be the best story about No. 2 when Payne Stewart won. Or the best story about Pinehurst No. 2 could be about my round at No. 2 when I shot 72. Read more about my even par round. I think you’ll enjoy my effort. Be sure to read to the end of the story to get the full feeling of being there.
It’s not a coincidence the top course is a Donald Ross design. There are about 600 golf courses in North Carolina. Ross designed at least 58 of them, about 10 percent, according to the Donald Ross Society and the Tufts Archives. So, please note this about architects on the NC Golf Panel’s list:
There are 18 Donald Ross courses in the top 100, and 10 in the top 30.
Tom Fazio has 11 courses in the top 100 but only four in the top 30
Ellis Maples, a student of Ross, has eight in the 100 and two in the 30
George Cobb, another Ross student, has eight in the 100, one in the 30
Rees Jones designed seven top 100 layouts, none in the top 30
Jack Nicklaus designed five in the top 100 and three in the top 30
Arnold Palmer has four in the top 100 but didn’t crack the top 30
After Pinehurst No. 2, Linville’s Grandfather Golf and Country Club, one of the Ellis Maples designs, is second on the list with the Dogwood course at the Country Club of North Carolina, a Willard Byrd design in Pinehurst, third.
If you ask most members of the NC Golf Panel or golfers in general about ranking courses, most would say the top 10 or top 15 or maybe the top 20 courses could be listed in any order. Random draw; they all are that good.
I’m fortunate to have played 85 of the 100 courses on this year’s ranking list. How many have you played: NC Golf Panel Top 100 Courses for 2024.
On the NC Golf Panel website are several sub-lists (published in previous years) under the “course rankings” tab, including:
Top 50 courses you can play
Most strategic courses
Fairest course to play
Best “shorter” courses, and
Best resorts
Do you have a favorite course that’s not on the list? If so, please let me know through the comments section. Are there courses on the list that you think should not be and if so, what courses would you add.
Business North Carolina
The NC Golf Panel list of courses is also published annually by Business North Carolina magazine in its April edition. Along with the list are several golf related articles. Excellent reads.
Neither the NC Golf Panel list—which offers the list from 1-to-100 and the location—nor the Business North Carolina list—which has the par, back-tee yardage, course rating, and slope for each course—shows the “original” architect of the golf courses, so I created a PDF file with the architects. Maybe I’ll combine these one day.
There are two PDF file links below to Download the PDF file to see the architects. One list has the course listed in order 1-100. The other has the courses listed in alphabetical order by architects. If you see a mistake, or what you think is a mistake, please let me know so I can research more and make a correction.
And remember, golf is about hitting fairways and greens and playing the ball as you find it. And at a steady pace, raking the sand bunkers after use and repairing divots when possible, and fixing pitch marks—yours and everyone else’s—on the greens.
Go Golf!
Jim as always I enjoyed your latest post re top 100 courses. All of us have opinions except maybe for Pinehurst 2 being top course in NC, it is a rare gem that you would play everyday for the remainder of your life. Personally I was disappointed my beloved Cape Fear CC fell to no 14 but our members have spoken. I was pleased that Old North fell out of top 10, it is a good course with 3 beautiful finishing holes. None are really that good but you can’t question the beauty of these three holes. Charlotte CC is way better than 16, MacGregor is not at 19 although I enjoy the course and was a member for many years. Enough from me. I will not be attending any panel events until July or later. I was involved in a serious auto accident on March 12, broken ribs, neck and punctured lung that requires a neck brace until end of May. Hate to miss the spring weather but happy I’m alive. Best Sid