Welcome to golf's new Roaring Twenties.
The game is on its biggest bull run since the pre-Recession years, and while it will probably never approach the 1990s and early 2000s for sheer volume of course openings ever again, the average quality of new-build golf courses is close to an all-time high.
In the heat of the current moment, it is hard not to make early comparisons to the previous best-decade-ever for new golf courses: the 1920s. In that era, all-time-great architects like Donald Ross, Seth Raynor and A.W. Tillinghast produced numerous major championship sites, distinguished private clubs and more than a few engaging resort and public layouts.
Golf course architecture became a full-fledged profession at this time, while an economic boom and rapidly improving technology and construction methods paved the way to a flowering of the game in America. Historians and aficionados refer to it as the "Golden Age" of golf course architecture.
A century later, contemporary architects have one eye firmly on the great courses of the past while bringing their talents into unique landscapes. Much of the development of new golf courses in the 1920s took place close to growing towns and cities; the initial rise of destination clubs and resorts like Sand Hills in Nebraska and Bandon Dunes in Oregon in the 1990s set the table for a trend that has dominated the 2020s so far, showing no signs of slowing down.
If those ahead-of-their-time facilities of the 1990s showed what was possible, the 2020s have begun to fully realize it. That broader scope has beckoned golfers into what previously might have been dismissed as hinterlands, minting trendy new destinations virtually overnight.
Brand-new golf courses in remote Nebraska have taken the Sand Hills model. Bandon Dunes has opened two new golf courses in the 20s: Sheep Ranch (2020) and Shorty's (2024), with more likely to come. Sand Valley Golf Resort began in 2015 but has hit its stride in the 20s, opening two of America's most eye-catching new golf courses.
Where the pre-Recession golf boom often privileged residential real estate development ahead of quality golf with splashy "signature" architect names helping to stoke interest, the 2020s are led, as the 1920s were, by talented architects. Well into their careers, Tom Doak, Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw, Gil Hanse and David McLay Kidd are producing reliably enjoyable work that lies gracefully on the land and espouses the strategic and adventurous qualities that defined the great courses of the past.
These architects' longtime collaborators and associates are also beginning to find commissions of their own, adding new looks and perspectives into the mix. Near Aiken, S.C., two courses showcase the talent of the new generation. At Old Barnwell, longtime Doak/Renaissance Golf associates Brian Schneider and Blake Conant fashioned a broad, rollicking 18 holes with adventurous greens, eclectic bunkering and other features that remind of Golden Age architects like Devereux Emmet and even some pre-1900 courses. Just 26 miles away, at The Tree Farm, PGA Tour player Zac Blair conscripted Doak to route and Kye Goalby to build a match play-focused course through mature pines that has also garnered members and visiting adorers.
Elsewhere, architects who cut their teeth with the legacy and "signature" architects of the late 20th and early 21st century are bringing new ideas of their own. Beau Welling worked for Tom Fazio for several years before establishing his own company, which collaborates with Tiger Woods on various design projects, including Payne's Valley, the Big Cedar Lodge course that opened in 2020. Welling has several projects of his own, including the Fields Ranch West Course at Omni PGA Frisco (2023) north of Dallas, and more in the hopper. Former Arnold Palmer Course Design associates Brandon Johnson and Thad Layton have hung their own shingles. Former Arthur Hills associate Chris Wilczynski is active in Florida and beyond.
Legacy architects and firms are still going strong, too. Legal entanglements aside, both Jack Nicklaus and Nicklaus Design are involved in various golf course projects in the U.S. and abroad. Tom Fazio continues to work on new courses. Davis Love III, his brother Mark and associate Scot Sherman also remain immersed in golf course design in the 2020s.
Considerable new-course growth this decade has come from the rise of short courses and other forms of golf that don't entail 18 holes with a par of 72. Golfers want golf however they can get it and are increasingly willing to sling just a few higher-loft clubs across their backs and chase the ball around a smaller tract, drink in hand.
GolfPass managing editor Jason Deegan and I have had the chance to play several new golf courses built in the 2020s. Here are 10 of our favorites from the public and resort sphere.
Lido at Sand Valley Golf Resort - Nekoosa, Wis.
Whether or not Lido technically counts as a new golf course is an amusing 19th-hole argument. Originally built in 1917 in New York, it was painstakingly recreated by Tom Doak and Renaissance Golf and opened in 2023 as a membership club that Sand Valley resort guests can also play. Because practically no one alive remembers the original course in any meaningful way - it closed in 1942 - and because the 2.0 version is more than a thousand miles removed from the original site, I'm declaring it a "new golf course." As such, it is one of my 10 favorite accessible golf courses in the U.S., an eccentric masterpiece that embraces design's capacity to amaze, bewilder, frustrate and delight a golfer more fully than any contemporary golf course I have played. --Tim Gavrich
Pinehurst No. 10 - Aberdeen, N.C.
Pinehurst has stood for traditional American golf for more than a century, but its trajectory over the last quarter-century has shown that tradition can evolve for the better. By engaging top architects to renovate (Gil Hanse; No. 4) and restoring (Coore & Crenshaw; No. 2) - its greatest golf courses - Pinehurst has kept itself at the forefront of golfers' vacation plans. In 2024, it established a new site, the Sandmines, five miles from the resort proper, that will be home to at least two "big" golf courses. The first, Pinehurst No. 10, is a major-key Tom Doak design that explores the dramatic property through broad corridors of pines, ponds and even eccentric mounds left over from the site's days as a working mine on the eye-catching par-4 8th hole. --TG
Sedge Valley at Sand Valley Golf Resort - Nekoosa, Wis.
Early descriptions of Sedge Valley, Sand Valley's fourth 18-hole course, used words like "intimate" to describe its routing and setting, but there is plenty of grandeur to be found across its meadow-and-forest tract. While it may not be quite as expansive as the other courses at the resort, there is still plenty of room to play. What makes this Tom Doak design unique is its economical embrace of a shorter overall length - just under 6,000 yards, par 68 - to show golfers that excess and excellence don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. --TG
Landmand Golf Club - Homer, Neb.
Architects Rob Collins and Tad King announced their wild-eyed take on golf architecture in the 2010s with Sweetens Cove near Chattanooga, Tennessee, a nine-holer full of heaving contours and cheeky bunkers on a flat floodplain that has attracted a rabid following. Their first 18-hole design is similarly adventurous, set on ancient "loess" hills above the Andersen family's thousands of acres of corn and soy farms in a quiet corner of Nebraska near the Iowa and South Dakota borders. Landmand, though, is anything but quiet, with enormous greens and cavernous bunkers that remind at times of courses like Tobacco Road and Yale, two of my all-time favorites. Trading traditional flagsticks for windsocks points to the prevailing weather conditions "Up Top." --TG
Payne's Valley at Big Cedar Lodge
Payne's Valley held perhaps the most memorable grand opening ever. Only Johnny Morris, the founder of Bass Pro Shops and Big Cedar Lodge, would dare attempt to pull off such a show during a world-wide pandemic. The made-for-TV match in 2020 involving course architect Tiger Woods, Justin Rose, Rory McIlroy and Justin Thomas not only showcased their talents but the stunning beauty of Woods' first U.S. public course. The sweeping elevations and limestone rock make a round feel more like an exploratory journey through the Ozarks. Playing to the island green on a 19th hole - back dropped by a waterfall tumbling off of a cliff - and the subsequent drive through switch-back cart paths inside the caves to return to the clubhouse finish off one heck of a thrill ride. --Jason Scott Deegan
The Park West Palm - West Palm Beach, Fla.
This complete overhaul of the former West Palm Beach Golf Club sits on one of Florida's best pieces of land - sandy and scrubby, with the right sort of elevation changes - for compelling golf. Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner understood their assignment from a slew of deep-pocketed, keen-eyed donors that included outgoing PGA of America CEO Seth Waugh: create a splashy, fun-to-play super-muni that honors the property on which it sits and is capable of both serving locals and attracting interest from well-heeled out-of-town visitors during snowbird season, justifying green fees that can surpass $250. Community programs for kids and new golfers complete the scene. --TG
Fields Ranch West at Omni PGA Frisco - Frisco, Texas
Though it's positioned as second-fiddle to the bigger, walking-only East, I find Beau Welling's Fields Ranch West course at PGA Frisco to be more fun and enjoyable to play. Welling reached deep into his inspiration deck and provided a set of interesting greens that occasionally tiptoe up to the line of decency but never cross it. Several uphill and downhill holes swoop off of the property's high point, which is home to one of resort golf's more impressive snack bars. This is resort golf for the 21st century. --TG
Fields Ranch East at Omni PGA Frisco - Frisco, Texas
Courses don't typically host major championships in their first decade of existence unless they've been purpose-built for it. That's the case with Fields Ranch East, a Gil Hanse/Jim Wagner behemoth with long, ribbon tee boxes that can be used to set up most every hole at an impressive variety of yardages depending on wind direction and hole location. It will host the PGA Championship in 2027. While I think the uncomfortably narrow and awkward par-5 18th hole needs redoing, the rest of the course is very strong, with holes that draw inspiration from the likes of Augusta National and Los Angeles Country Club while maintaining a rugged Texas aesthetic. --TG
Black Desert - Ivins, Utah
Tom Weiskopf left golfers one final parting gift - Black Desert, which is set to host the PGA TOUR and LPGA Tour in back-to-back years starting in the fall of 2024. Weiskopf never got the sheer volume of course construction projects that Nicklaus or Palmer did, but there's certainly an argument to be made that he was just as good, or better. His mastery of the short par 4 changed the way both architects and golfers look at those types of holes. Plus, his gentle touch to be able to mix playability into his championship courses is a thing of beauty. Golfers have been raving about the scenery surrounding Wolf Creek in nearby Mesquite and Sand Hollow in nearby Hurricane for years. Just wait until they see Black Desert's intoxicating black lava rock set against the red rocks of southwest Utah. Black Desert is just a small component of what will eventually be the largest resort development ever built in Utah. It's a game-changer for the entire region. --JSD
Karoo at Cabot Citrus Farms
It's hard to know which "big course" will ultimately win over golfers most at the 1,200-acre resort since The Roost doesn't officially open until 2025. But the work by Kyle Franz at Karoo certainly deserves kudos for its creativity. The 7,562-yard course delivers bold, in-your-face golf, with intensely intricate sandscapes at every turn. One moment, golfers will stew over the three-putt induced by a severe contour, and the next, they will celebrate the backstop that funneled the ball into tap-in birdie range. It's a wild ride. Buckle up. --JSD
10 notable new private golf clubs opened in the 2020s
CapRock Ranch
Valentine, Neb.
Architects: Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner
Opened 2021
Old Barnwell Golf Club
Aiken, S.C.
Architects: Brian Schneider & Blake Conant
Opened 2023
The Tree Farm
Batesburg-Leesville, S.C.
Architects: Tom Doak, Kye Goalby, Zac Blair
Opened 2023
Apogee Club (West)
Hobe Sound, Fla.
Architects: Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner
Opened 2023
Lost Rail Golf Club
Gretna, Neb.
Architect: Scott Hoffmann
Opened 2022
Brambles Club
Middletown, Calif.
Architects: Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw
Opened 2023
Ladera Golf Club
Thermal, Calif.
Architects: Gil Hanse & Jim Wagner
Opened 2024
Panther National Golf Club
Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.
Architect: Jack Nicklaus (w/Justin Thomas)
Opened 2023
Shell Bay Club
Hallandale Beach, Fla.
Architect: Greg Norman
Opened 2023
Wicker Point Golf Club
Alexander City, Ala.
Architects: Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw
Opened 2023
7 noteworthy brand-new international courses of the 2020s
Dumbarnie Links
Leven, Scotland
Architect: Clive Clark
Opened 2020
We got a sneak-peek of this course in late 2019, but in 2020 it debuted as a brand-new, modern seaside course within reach of St. Andrews. While not technically a links, it features well-draining fescue turf, dunescapes, exposed sand and deep pot bunkers, with several beguiling standout holes.
St. Patrick's Links at Rosapenna Golf Resort
Tramore, Ireland
Architect: Tom Doak
Opened 2021
New links golf courses in Ireland are exceedingly rare due to strict environmental regulations. But because a course once existed in the dunes beside Rosapenna Golf Resort in County Donegal, Tom Doak and his team had the go-ahead to create a wild, new course that has become one of Ireland's top-rated courses in just a few short years.
Navarino Hills Resort - International Olympic Academy Course and Hills Course
Peleponnese, Greece
Architect: Jose Maria Olazabal
Opened 2022
Olazabal actually built two new courses that opened simultaneously at Greece's only golf resort - the Hills course and the IOAC. The IOAC wows with spectacular vistas of the bay coming home such as the par-3 12th, which plays over a canyon with a 360-degree view of both land and sea.
Te Arai Links - North and South Courses
Tomarata, New Zealand
Architects: Tom Doak (North), Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw (South)
Opened 2023
Just down the beach from Doak's world-class Tara Iti Golf Club, Te Arai is a 36-hole, publicly-accessible facility featuring two golf courses that play mongst burbling dunes and coastal forests above the coast on New Zealand's North Island about 80 minutes north of Auckland.
Point Hardy Golf Club at Cabot St. Lucia
Cap Estate, St. Lucia
Architects: Bill Coore & Ben Crenshaw
Opened 2024
Spectacular cliffhanging coastal holes combine with Coore & Crenshaw's inherent respect for the land in breathtaking fashion at a course that is becoming known as one of the very best in the Caribbean.
