How Our Staff Would Spend $1,000 on the Top 100 Golf Courses You Can Play

You can play Shadow Creek in Vegas – but first you need to have some luck at the slots.

Or you can play George Wright 16 times – and have change left over.

But you can play them, and the approach is probably the best part of GOLF’S latest roster. The 100 best courses you can play in the USA You don’t need a membership for these gems. Only money. And that got us thinking:

How would our staff spend a large sum on the list?

Would we pay? Of the shadow four figure fee? OR of Wright two? Our answers are below. For reference, we used the article titled: “The 100 Best Courses You Can Play, Ranked From Most Expensive to Cheapest”, which you can read by clicking here. (For further reading, please click here for our list of the top 100 courses in the US)

How Our Staff Would Spend $1,000 on the Top 100 Golf Courses You Can Play in the USA

STAFF: Josh Sens

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: A thousand dollars, huh? Should it also cover my travel expenses? If so, I’m staying local in Northern California, humming down the coast from my home in Oakland to the Pasatiempo ($385) in Santa Cruz, one of Alister Mackenzie’s rare country designs anyone can play. The course is set to reopen in mid-December after a green and bunker restoration project, which I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around because it’s hard to imagine how those greens and bunkers could get much better. than they were. I’ll probably wait until late spring or summer for this outing when the days are longer, which will give me time to play 36 at what is my favorite public course in California. From there, I’ll drive home (free bed and breakfast), then get up the next morning and drive across the bay to San Francisco for 18 at Harding Park ($125), a major championship host which happens to be a muni. The back nine, which stretches along Lake Merced, is as good golf as it gets in town. This two-day itinerary will give me 54 holes on a pair of top-notch courses, each with a vibrant sense of place. And it will leave me enough in the budget to grab a Mission District burrito on my drive home, even with extra guacamole.

STAFF: Dylan Dethier

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: I started my entry, but then I read Sens’ and realized something: I’m just going to duplicate his! After all, the best golf trip is the one your friend plans. If that trip includes free lodging, 36 Pasatiempo, an ocean view, and a burrito? All the better. The only thing that bothers me is the Sens’ sly play. Before long, I feel like he could watch a 4-for-3 shooting and I’d lose the extra thousands. …

STAFF: Nick Dimengo

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: Don’t get me wrong – playing anywhere on GOLF’s top 100 courses is always incredible, but if I have $1,000 to spend, I’m booking my tee time at Pinehurst no. 2. Sure, there are plenty of places with ocean views and sprawling cliffs, but I’m choosing the home of the 2024 US Open, where I saw firsthand how the layout gave the world’s best players all kinds of fits. How well would a handicapper like me manage, Pinehurst no. 2, with its globe greens and intricate “native areas”? My guess isn’t great – but the best part of golf is the element of surprise, so maybe I’d shoot the round of my life and finally break 80 on the course where Bryson DeChambeau won his second major.

STAFF: Jessica Marksbury

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: Am I the only person on staff who hasn’t done the Bandon Dunes stay yet? This needs to be fixed, stat! With four courses on the top 100 playable list (Pacific Dunes, Bandon Trails, Bandon Dunes, Old Macdonald — all ranked in the top 13!), I’d try to maximize value and win the four for that 1 thousand dollars. This means playing in the off-season, when prices are lower. Rates for resort guests are highest from June through September, at $370 per round. But you can save big by visiting in April, when green fees are $235 each – and $235 x 4 = $940! A relatively smoky deal, to be fair, with room for tax too.

STAFF: Connor Federico

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: This is a fun game! Let’s build an itinerary with as much variety as possible, and not a care in the world about accommodation and travel costs. The variety in natural environment, architectural styles and cost will really add to our completely hypothetical experience. Let’s start with the best bang for our buck. Black Mesa ($93) puts us in the New Mexico desert, Rustic Canyon ($104) winds through the mountains of Southern California, Wild Horse ($75) offers sweeping views of the Nebraska Sandhills, and George Wright ($62) is a muni designed by Donald Ross. just outside Boston. Spending less than $350 on four of the top 100 courses now allows for some real bucket list destinations. The Lido ($295), CB Macdonald’s epic masterpiece revived at Sand Valley Resort, is a must-experience for any golf architecture nerd. After that, I’ll take the rest of my money to the Oregon coast for a crack at the Pacific Dunes ($370) and some real golf here in the US, bringing the grand total of this trip to $999.

STAFF: Josh Berhow

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: Since this is a fun exercise and doesn’t have to make logistical sense – if you want those trips, I’ve already created eight of the 100 best road trips you can take — I want to get in at least a few rounds, which means whistles, pebbles, etc., are out. I’m going to splurge and spend $420 on Sheep Ranch, as it’s the only Bandon course I’ve yet to play, and then drop $265 on Chambers Bay (as you can see, I’m in love with it first). I’ll then head to South Carolina for a $120 short at Caledonia and then finish my itinerary with rounds at Lawsonia Links ($99) and Wild Horse ($75). That leaves me with $21 to spend on a kid and beer.

STAFF: Zephyr Melton

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: I would start my thousand-dollar spree with a round at one of my favorite courses, Pasatiempo ($385) in Santa Cruz, California. With $600 left, I would buy as much pro shop merchandise as I could – I kid (sort of). The Loop at Forest Dunes ($195) has been on my bucket list for a while, so I’d have to knock it off this boondoggle. Assuming I could play the reversible course back and forth with a single green fee, I would have about $400 left over. With that, I’d head to the sandhills of North Carolina for a round in the Pine Needles ($305), one of Donald Ross’ most underrated designs. I’d take my last $100 on the way to Pinehurst and spend it on a quick tour of the Cradle ($50), with the remaining funds going to cocktails on the porch overlooking the famous green the 18th of No. 2.

STAFF: Jack Hirsch

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: Knowing that each of these courses is excellent, I’d start by spending a few premium courses before spreading the rest out among the cheaper options to make sure I stretch that $1,000 as much as I can. To start, I’m going to take a trip to Bandon because I’ve been to the property once before and I’ve only played Bandon Trails as part of a tour. So I’ll add Bandon Dunes, Pacific Dunes, Old Mac and Sheep Ranch to touch them all. Normally, that would be much more than $1,000, but we’re going in March, when the fee is only $200 for resort guests, with a $100 repeat rate. Sure, we may have cold, 40 degree days, but we have about the same chance of sunny weather and 65. I’ll settle for anything in the 40s and high 50s, though. We’ll take two days, play 36 each day, and manage to put together the four best public courses at 100 for $600. Now let’s make that $400 last. We’ll start with the cheapest option on the list, George Wright in Boston ($62), as I’m always partial to Ross munis, having grown up near Jeffersonville in PA. Next, we’ll head to Wisconsin and play Lawsonia Links ($99), the cheapest option on the Top 100 list, public or private. Finally, we’ll head to the East Coast to play the Bethpage Black ($140) and Red ($90) during the week. That leaves us with $9, which unfortunately will only get you a hot dog at most of these places, except maybe George Wright.

STAFF: Nick Piastowski

HOW YOU WILL SPEND $1,000: What is the price of postage these days? Either way, just divide it by our number so I know how many letters I would have to write to Chairman Ridley asking for membership in Augusta. joke, joke I’m from Wisconsin, but unfortunately haven’t played Erin Hills ($455) yet, so I’d start there. Then let’s go volume, because if this is in the currency of the company, I also want max vacay. So we’ll be playing Wright ($62), Wild Horse ($75), Black Mesa ($93), Lawsonia (Links) ($99), Bethpage (Red) ($100), and Rustic Canyon ($104) – and we’d have $12 left over, which we’d spend on a beer and a kid at the food shack at the Lawsonia turnoff.

“>