The 7 best TPC courses ranked: Where does Sawgrass come in?

19/01/2024 20:41

There are 30 courses owned and operated by the PGA Tour under the TPC Network banner – but which ones are best?

Each TPC has hosted or has been designed to host TOUR-sponsored golf tournaments.

The TPCs provide recreational golfers with the unique opportunity to test their skills on the same layouts where the world's best golfers compete.

Here we look at the seven best among those.

7. TPC Craig Ranch

TPC Craig Ranch’s championship layout is ranked among the finest private golf courses in the United States by Golf Digest. The course was designed by PGA TOUR icon and architect Tom Weiskopf and has lovely, gently undulating hills and mature woodlands around the limestone walls of Rowlett Creek, which crosses the course 14 times, giving a stunning background for an inspirational challenge of golf.

The course’s difficulty should not dissuade less experienced players; five sets of tees on each hole allow golfers of all levels to appreciate the subtle subtleties and distinct design aspects that have earned Weiskopf acclaim as one of the country’s most recognised designers.

6. TPC Deere Run

D.A. Weibring, the designer of TPC Deere Run, was likely the best choice for the job. Weibring, an Illinois native and three-time winner of the Quad Cities Classic (the forerunner to the John Deere Classic now hosted by the club), knew exactly how to bring out the best of the picturesque Mid-Mississippi River Valley landscape while remaining true to the PGA TOUR’s standards and traditions.

Weibring gave the TPC Deere Run golf course an old-world flavour, delivering a perfect balance of challenge and playability.

5. TPC San Antonio (AT&T Oaks)

Since 2010, the Valero Texas Open has been held at TPC San Antonio’s Oaks course.

The Greg Norman design, which winds through the dry outlands north of the city, is one of the most strategically compelling courses on tour, with aggressive bunkering, some wonderful short par 4s, and several uniquely demanding par 5s, including the 18th, one of the most underrated and frustrating closing holes the professionals play.

4. TPC Southwind

Ron Prichard designed (with input from Hubert Green and Fuzzy Zoeller) the layout that has hosted a PGA Tour tournament since 1989, and starting in 2022, it will host one of the PGA Tour’s marquee events, the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs.

TPC Southwind, located approximately a half hour from downtown Memphis on a historic dairy farm, can compete with the finest in the game, with water coming into play on 11 holes. The par-3 11th hole, comparable to the 17th at TPC Sawgrass’ Stadium course, is possibly the course’s trademark hole, with a peninsula green that needs a short iron approach.

3. TPC Colorado

The Art Schaupeter-designed golf course at TPC Colorado was the first new layout to open in the Centennial State in a decade when it debuted for play in 2019. TPC Colorado is located near Heron Lakes, to the north west of Berthoud, along the eastern border of Lonetree Reservoir. It is 18 miles south of Fort Collins and 49 miles north of Denver.

The course, designed in the form of a Scottish links with an out-and-back routing and hundreds of revetted pot bunkers, spans 110 acres of irrigated tees, fairways, and greens with a total length that can be expanded to almost 8,000 yards for professional events.

2. TPC Boston

TPC Boston was designed by Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay in 2002 and began hosting the PGA Tour’s Deutche Bank Championship the following year. Until its dissolution in 2018, this four-day professional event (later renamed the Dell Technologies Championship) was contested from Friday to Monday, finishing on Labour Day.

Gil Hanse and his collaborator Jim Wagner redesigned the golf course five years after it debuted (in collaboration with PGA Tour player Brad Faxton), and while they kept most of the original routing, they modified the layout’s New England identity and considerably boosted its strategic complexity.

1. TPC Sawgrass (Player’s Stadium)

Perhaps the most famous TPC Layout is the quintessential stadium course.

Sawgrass started out in life as a Florida swamp, but this did not deter Deane Beman, who purchased the 400-acre site for of $1 in 1978. Three years later, after performing minor miracles with drainage works, the Stadium course opened for play and it's one of Pete Dye's finest pieces of work.

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