Golfweek's Best Courses You Can Play 2024: Top 100 U.S. public-access layouts, ranked

Looking to play any of the best public-access courses in the United States? We’ve got you covered with Golfweek’s Best 2024 list of the Top 100 Best Courses You Can Play. 

Each year we publish many lists, and this selection of public-access layouts is among the premium offerings. The hundreds of members of our course-ratings panel continually evaluate courses and rate them based on 10 criteria on a points basis of 1 through 10. They also file a single, overall rating on each course. Those overall ratings are averaged to produce these rankings. The top handful of courses in the world have an average rating of above 9, while many excellent layouts fall into the high-6 to 8 range.

• Top public-access course in each state
• How we rank courses

All the courses on this list allow public access in some fashion, be it standard daily green fees, through a resort or by staying at an affiliated hotel. If there’s a will, there’s a tee time.

Each course is listed with its 2023 ranking in parenthesis in the title line with its average rating next to the name, the location, the designer(s) and whether it is a Classic course (opened before 1960) or Modern (1960 and later).

KEY: (m) modern; (c) classic. For courses with a number preceding the (m) or (c), that is where the course ranks on Golfweek’s Best lists for top 200 Modern or Classic courses in the U.S.

* Indicates new to or returning to this list.