Feeling blue—being overcome with sadness or distress—brings no joy to anybody except songwriters. Playing blue, however, is a different story.
We counted more than two dozen courses worldwide where “Blue” is either part of the course name or is the actual course name. We’ve mixed the best public, private, and international Blue courses and the competition was fierce: Courses by Alister MacKenzie (Jockey Club/Blue, in Argentina), A.W. Tillinghast (Bethpage/Blue in New York), and Robert Trent Jones Sr. (Wigwam/Blue) fell just short.
Here are the top 10 “Blue” courses in golf.
10. Blue Top Ridge at Riverside Casino and Golf Resort—Riverside, Iowa
Blue Top Ridge is a brawny, but enticing, 2007 Rees Jones design in southeastern Iowa that sports excellent variety in its 7,481-yard journey, with three different landforms housing golf holes. The front nine starts in a prairie, before descending at the 4th to river plains, with a trio of holes set along the Iowa River. The back nine is etched into a hillside that boosts the drama. Amid a wonderful ebb and flow, open holes alternate with woodland tests and flattish holes yield to hillier ones. It’s the finishing stretch that will resonate the longest, however, starting with the massive 665-yard par-five 16th that goes downhill and then up. The 360-yard par-four 17th offers superb risk/reward, with a creek and angled bunkers influencing play, while the beefy 485-yard par-four 18th emerges from the hillside back down to the prairie.
9. The Berkshire (Blue)—Ascot, England
The Berkshire’s Red and Blue courses, both designed by Herbert Fowler in 1928, form one of Britain’s elite 36-hole complexes in the heathland west of London. Both courses tumble over beautiful, rolling terrain, with fairways framed by pines, silver birches, and chestnuts. The Blue’s scorecard won’t strike terror into anyone, at 6,366 yards and par-71, yet it’s tougher to post a low score on versus the longer, more dramatic Red, thanks to several stout par fours, and its slap-you-silly opener, a 217-yard par three. The Red outranks the Blue in most polls, but not by much.
8. Royal Montreal (Blue)—Ile-Bizard, Quebec, Canada
Host to the 2007 Presidents Cup and again to the 2024 event in late September, North America’s oldest golf club—dating to 1873—upped its game in the late 1950s, enlisting Dick Wilson to design 45 new holes. The Blue, strengthened over the years by Rees Jones, also played host to five Canadian Opens between 1975 and 2014, most memorably in that first edition, when Tom Weiskopf edged Jack Nicklaus in a playoff. Large, elevated, contoured greens zealously guarded by bunkers and a slew of water hazards down the stretch form the main challenges at this 7,279-yard par-70 layout.
7. Royal Blue at Baha Mar Resort—Nassau, The Bahamas
Now six years old, this Jack Nicklaus design is a tale of two courses. It opens with nine holes that unfold over mostly level terrain with rippled mounding, low-rising sand dunes, bold bunkering, and water hazards on eight of the nine holes, many in the form of saltwater ponds. The back nine features roomier fairways, dramatic elevation changes and holes that zigzag through a lunar-like landscape of limestone rock outcroppings.
6. Trump National Doral (Blue Monster)—Miami, Fla.
A decade ago, an extraordinary makeover from Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner transformed a tired resort course into one of the toughest tests on the PGA Tour, a fire-breather that once again lived up to its name. Newly installed teeth in the form of added yardage, altered angles, contoured greens, and steeper slopes around the greens dramatically altered the Dick Wilson-designed spread, strengthening it in every way. Now home to a LIV Golf event, this iconic resort layout remains the quintessential Sunshine State tournament track, awash in lakes and stylishly crafted bunkers and culminating in one of golf’s most demanding closing par fours.
5. True Blue—Pawleys Island, S.C.
Softened over the years, but still worthy of the Mike Strantz signature, the 26-year-old True Blue remains among Strantz’s finest designs. The variety from one hole to the next is astonishing. A mostly open course, True Blue provides beauty and peril with lakes, marshland, and plenty of scrub-filled natural sandy areas. The 624-yard par-five opener sets a remarkable tone for the round, with a healthy marsh carry, a serpentine waste bunker, a green isolated by deep bunkers, and a horseshoe-shaped creek that curls in front of the putting surface. The design fireworks start early and never let up.
4. Blue Mound—Wauwatosa, Wis.
Engineering whiz Seth Raynor, a protégé of pioneer architect Charles Blair Macdonald, is renowned for such Top 100 staples as Fishers Island, Yeamans Hall, Shoreacres, and the renovated version of his mentor’s Chicago Golf Club. Perhaps his most underrated gem is Blue Mound, in suburban Milwaukee. As a 9-year-old course, it played host to the 1933 PGA Championship, won by Gene Sarazen, but today, it’s respected among course connoisseurs for its outstanding collection of template holes, among them a distinctive par-four Redan.
Blue Mound, co-host of this year’s #USMidAmateur, has some of the finest Seth Raynor greens and template holes. Bruce Hepner has restored this Golden Age gem and superintendent Alex Beson-Crone and his team have it dialed in. Double Plateau, Biarritz, Redan, Punchbowl: pic.twitter.com/xASnlDTztQ
— USGA Green Section (@USGAGrnSection) September 11, 2022
3. Bluejack National—Montgomery, Texas
Okay, tough call for the judges here—does Bluejack make the cut as a “Blue?” The verdict: This private course is so good, and so much fun to play, we’ll allow it in. Tiger Woods’s first completed U.S. design, this 8-year-old course 50 miles northwest of downtown Houston conjures up images of Augusta National with a fun, option-laden, 7,552-yard spread that emphasizes width, angles, contour, and recoverability, on a handsome, oak-dotted rolling canvas.
2. Streamsong (Blue)—Bowling Green, Fla.
Hewn from the remnants of old phosphate mines, Streamsong Blue features a distinctive sand-based canvas that puts an emphasis on ground-game prowess. Tom Doak crafted fairways that cling to the terrain as if they’ve been here for thousands of years and greens melt into their surrounds. Imaginative green contouring forces players to think before approaching. After the dizzying panorama from the par-four first, the next stunner is the 203-yard par-three 7th that demands a lake carry to a wildly undulating green cocooned in the sandhills. This is retro golf with modern trappings.
1. Congressional (Blue)—Bethesda, Md.
Not far from the nation’s capital in suburban D.C., this Golden Age product from Devereux Emmet has been renovated by Robert Trent Jones Sr., his son Rees, and most recently Andrew Green. Tree-lined and hilly, though with far fewer trees after Green’s (2019–21) work, it’s best known for its long, downhill par-four closer with water short, left, and long, and for its three U.S. Opens, most famously Ken Venturi’s 1964 win and for Rory McIlroy’s dominant march in 2011. Dave Stockton captured the 1976 PGA Championship here and the event will return in 2030. Fifteen PGA Tour events were contested at Congressional between 1980 and 2016, with Tiger Woods winning twice, in 2009 and 2012.
What is your favorite “Blue” golf course? Tell us about it in the comment section.
