For course connoisseurs who seek out stellar architecture and unique experiences, the past 12 months have served up a banquet of appetizing new entries. The usual suspects—Tom Doak, Coore-Crenshaw, Gil Hanse and David McLay Kidd—all contributed to their remarkable design legacies. Yet, the names of those who are climbing the success ladder—Todd Eckenrode, Kyle Franz and Jay Blasi—are quickly approaching the top rung. The old guard, Tom Fazio, Robert Trent Jones II, Rees Jones and Jack Nicklaus remain as relevant as ever, but there’s room left in the architecture arena for new faces, including former USGA top dog Mike Davis, who scored with a breakthrough design in Florida.
We can’t wait for 2025 to arrive, which will usher in formal openings at McLemore’s The Keep in Georgia, Broomsedge in South Carolina and Cabot Citrus Farms’ The Roost in Florida, all of which tantalized with preview play this past autumn. For this year, we enlisted architects, PGA professionals, superintendents and other industry insiders to share their insights about the best courses to open in the past 12 months. Here are the top 10 new and newly renovated American courses of 2024.
