15 Underrated Golf Courses as Chosen by Players on the PGA Tour

When it comes to underrated courses, we tapped the experts, interviewing a slew of PGA Tour players at the Travelers Championship at TPC River Highlands earlier this summer. Here, we highlight the courses that have impressed some of the best players in the world. Almost half of these venues serve as annual PGA Tour stops, but several others have never hosted a professional event. All, however, are under-appreciated—at least in the eyes of the Tour’s elite.

Harris English—TPC River Highlands (Cromwell, Conn.)

Harris English had no difficulty singling out an underrated layout, especially since he believed the Travelers Championship’s host course was a perfect example. “It’s got some challenging holes, some great short holes—probably one of the best short par fours that we play all year,” English says. “It doesn’t matter if you’re long or short; anybody in the field can win here. I like courses that don’t take half the field out of play.”

Ludvig Aberg—Colonial Country Club (Fort Worth, Texas)

Even though Ludvig Aberg ranks inside the top 30 in driving distance, total driving, and strokes gained off the tee, his abilities with the big stick don’t influence his opinions on what courses are fun to play. As proof, the affable Swede points to Colonial Country Club as one that he believes is underrated. “It’s not necessarily the longest, but it’s really challenging,” Aberg begins, explaining that the Perry Maxwell design requires you to execute tough shots, but if you do, you’ll be rewarded with plenty of birdie looks. “It’s not a course where you think, ‘give me driver and I’ll send it.’ You have to work the angles a little bit.”

Jordan Spieth—Spyglass Hill (Pebble Beach, Calif.)

Out on the Monterey Peninsula, Pebble Beach Golf Links commands the lion’s share of attention—at least regarding public courses. As a result, some of the resort’s other layouts—Spyglass Hill, in particular—frequently get overlooked. “You’ve got almost three sets of holes,” Jordan Spieth says of the Robert Trent Jones Sr.-designed course. “You’ve got a couple ocean holes, you have some dunes holes, and you’ve got some holes in the woods—it’s similar to Cypress Point, just without the dramatic finish.” Moreover, Spieth points to the challenging shots that the course requires, which he thinks make it even more underrated. “You have to hit so many shots that you don’t see anywhere else, almost like an Open Championship, where you’ve got to take two extra clubs and chip it—but you can’t go long,” he explains. “It’s so difficult because it requires such precision with shots that we’re not used to seeing.”

Ryan Fox—Portstewart Golf Club, Strand Course (Portstewart, Northern Ireland)

“When you think of links courses in Ireland, County Down and Portrush and Portmarnock are on the top of the list, but Portstewart potentially has the best nine holes of links golf that I’ve ever played,” says Ryan Fox, who first experienced the course during the Irish Open in 2017. “The front nine is almost an anomaly in links golf, where you’re playing through a lot of humps and hollows and there’s a lot of elevation change.” In particular, Fox appreciates the fact that certain holes demand that you must hit a good shot. “On hole number four, the first par five,” he explains, “you stand there and think, ‘I could make a four, but if I hit a bad tee shot, I could make an eight pretty quickly.’”

Jason Day & Cam Davis—Detroit Golf Club (Detroit, Mich.)

Jason Day may only be 37 years old, but he’s an old soul when it comes to golf course design. It comes down to the element of strategy. In particular, he’s fond of “old school golf courses with big trees,” and he says Detroit Golf Club delivers admirably in that regard. “There’s not as many doglegs [on new courses],” Day opines. “The thing that we get into these days with course architecture, which I think is wrong, is we just make courses long and straight. I think the game is getting longer and longer because the courses suit that long type of game. You can’t really cut the corners of the doglegs at Detroit because there are big trees.”

Coincidentally, Day isn’t the only Aussie on Tour to harbor strong feelings for Detroit G.C. “I love how the older generation of golf course designers used flat land and turned it into something interesting. Detroit Golf Club is a great example of that,” says Cam Davis. “I think it’s the flattest golf course on tour, but it’s unique and it’s got a lot of character to it. The way they built the green complexes and the way they’ve done the bunkering there, they hide plenty of ground.”

Gary Woodland—Prairie Dunes Country Club (Hutchinson, Kan.)

When coming up for his answer to our question, Gary Woodland tapped into his roots—and he’s quick to acknowledge that his selection, Prairie Dunes, is in the “middle of nowhere Kansas.” Nevertheless, Woodland believes that the Perry Maxwell design is underrated, even though some golf outlets have it ranked inside the top 30. “It needs the wind to defend itself a little bit, but it has a little bit of everything,” he says. “It has short holes, it has long holes. It makes you hit shots in both directions.” The 2019 U.S. Open champion played there a lot as a kid, and it’s a course that he says he always looks forward to playing whenever he has the chance. As for his favorite hole, it’s the brutally long (and difficult) par four 5th. “There’s no strategy to it,” Woodland says with a chuckle. “You’ve just got to step up and hit good golf shots.”

Tommy Fleetwood—The Old Course at St. Andrews (St. Andrews, Scotland)

It would be easy to think that Tommy Fleetwood is just taking a page out of the sports radio host’s playbook, making a controversial selection for the sake of stirring up debate. But when he explains why he thinks the Old Course is underrated, it’s hard to argue with him. “The Old Course is my favorite course to play in the world—and I think it’s a lot of people’s favorite—but I think a lot of that is the nature of just how special it is,” he says. “The actual style [of the course], and how you can play it, is probably a little bit underrated. I want a course, like the Old Course, where a good tee shot will be an advantage, but you can hit your tee shot anywhere and then you can figure it out from there.” In that respect, it’s easy to see how the Old Course could be underrated as a venue that’s universally playable but still plenty challenging.

Bud Cauley—TPC Sawgrass, Players Stadium (Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.)

Can one of the world’s most famous golf courses, home to one of the game’s most famous holes, be underrated?  Bud Cauley thinks so. “It gets a lot of attention for holes 16, 17, and 18,” he says of TPC Sawgrass, “but I think the golf course as a whole is really good. It asks you to hit a lot of shots—draws and fades. And even into greens it calls for different shots. Everyone just talks about the finish, but I think TPC Sawgrass is a well-rounded golf course that, as a whole, is underrated.”

J.T. Poston—TPC Southwind (Memphis, Tenn.)

By the time the FedExCup Playoffs get going, most people are focused on the race to the top 30 and the Tour Championship at East Lake. As a result, the first playoff venue is one that J.T. Poston believes doesn’t get its fair share of attention. “To the eye, it doesn’t look overly difficult, but it’s always a great test,” Poston says of the 7,244-yard championship routing by Ron Prichard. “The fairways are generally soft, but they’re tight, the rough is up, and the greens are small, so you have to be precise. It’s that perfect combination where good shots are going to get rewarded, but mediocre shots can get you in trouble and bad shots are going to make it difficult for you to make par.”

Daniel Berger—The Dye Preserve Golf Club (Jupiter, Fla.)

Daniel Berger may be biased—he’s the first to admit that—but he strongly believes that the course that he spent his childhood on is woefully underrated. He also acknowledges that he’s a fan of Pete Dye’s designs, which you’d have to be if you were to claim that Dye Preserve doesn’t get the credit that it deserves. “I love it because Pete really shaped the golf holes,” Berger says. “I’ll go out on the course to practice my game, and I’ll find holes that require certain shapes. If I need to work on hitting a cut, I’ll go to the 8th hole and sit on the back tee—it’s the perfect cut shape with forests on both sides. You get to see your shot.”

Sepp Straka—North Berwick Golf Club, West Links (North Berwick, Scotland)

Both years that Sepp Straka has traveled to Scotland’s East Lothian region for the Genesis Scottish Open (played at The Renaissance Club), he’s made a point to take the 10-minute drive east to squeeze in a round on the West Links at North Berwick. “It’s one of my all-time favorites,” Straka exclaims. “It’s such a cool feel with a classic links style. It’s got so many features that are so well executed and just iconic. I love the short, little par four 16th hole on the back nine with the Biarritz green. The wall hole (number 13) is cool—it’s great—but I love that short little par four.”

Nick Taylor—Innisbrook Resort, Copperhead Course (Palm Harbor, Fla.)

Even though the Copperhead Course at Innisbrook Resort hosts an annual PGA Tour event—and has since 1990—Nick Taylor believes the Larry Packard-designed track is somewhat overlooked, especially since it’s the last stop on a busy and difficult Florida swing. “You can’t really fake it around there,” Taylor says. “It’s a shotmaker’s golf course. It typically gets firm and the par threes are really difficult. It’s kind of stood the test of the time, and they haven’t really done a whole lot to it.”

Andrew Novak—Lancaster Country Club (Lancaster, Pa.)

Andrew Novak still vividly remembers the first round that he played at Lancaster Country Club. It was during a junior event in 2012, when he was still in high school, and since then, the recent first-time winner on the PGA Tour has consistently ranked it inside his personal list of top-five golf courses. “It’s one of the best courses in the world,” Novak says. “It’s very up and down; you hit a lot of different shots; there’s multiple memorable holes; and it’s in unbelievable shape—the greens have run 13 every time that I’m out there.”

Eric Cole—Mountain Lake (Lake Wales, Fla.)

Eric Cole feels fortunate that over the last decade or so, he’s had the chance to tee it up at least a handful of times at Mountain Lake, a classic Seth Raynor design that he says, “doesn’t get a whole lot of notoriety outside of super-golf-knowledgeable people.” With classic architectural features, such as a redan hole, and plenty of natural beauty, the course—in Cole’s opinion—flies too far under the radar. “There are no long walks back or across an area to the next tee, which I love, and you can remember every hole. Those are all great qualities of a course.”

Rickie Fowler—Trump Turnberry, Ailsa Course (South Ayrshire, Scotland)

Rickie Fowler is quick to qualify his answer. He doesn’t believe the Ailsa Course at Trump Turnberry is underrated, per se; but he does think that its recent renovation may be underappreciated. “They’ve lengthened it enough to where, with current game and equipment, it fits,” Fowler says, explaining how the course has been modernized in recent years. “With a lot of redos, it’s rare that people will say the course is better. And over there, when it’s the locals or the caddies—the people who are there day in and day out—when they say it’s better, I feel like that’s a rare thing.”