NGF's Best Public Golf Cities

Reader/blogger Rob Matre points out that this Golf Magazine/National Golf Foundation ranking of the "10 Best Golf Cities" inexplicably left out one major city that many consider the best anywhere for public golf.

I'm sure it won't take long (after going through the clunky page view format the list is posted in) for some of you to nominate the glaring omission.

Update on Monday, November 26, 2007 at 06:52 AM by Geoff

Here's the full list of 50. I got a chuckle seeing L.A. at No. 11, a whopping 35 spots ahead of Chicago!

Comments

[FWIW]

Chicago

[Coors Owner]

NGF= Not good fernuttin

[KS]

What a joke. Having lived in Seattle, I know that there is one word for golf there: bad. Crummy weather, bad golf courses with high greens fees, a million people on those atrocious courses, and 5-6 hour rounds. Gold Mountain, Druids Glen, and Washington National are about the only three public facilities worth playing there and all of those are impossible to get to because of the traffic.

There are maybe two or three cities on that list that I would put in a top ten list. For my money, Indianapolis beats all of the cities on that list.

[Steven T.]

Another attempt to measure something that is unmeasurable. See the Seattle post above. For my money, the Phoenix metro area is very good as is Chicago.

[KS]

One place I forgot...I'm sure Chambers Bay is fantastic. It wasn't there when I lived there. That being said, it would be well over an hour's slog to get there from Seattle in traffic and you don't get the Pierce County discount when you live in King County.

[Scott]

Carmel/Monterey/Salinas

[Jeremy]

Where the hell is Myrtle Beach?

[Smolmania]

Where's 4 Putt's list of Chicagoland ratings when I need it? Oh that's right, he's on-line now (there's a link in the left column here under "Golf Media"). I'll admit that our weather's not so hot for a long time, but Columbus Ohio? In every other of their so-called criteria, Chicago blows them away. . .

[chene]

They supposedly ranked the top 50 metro areas according to golf and came out with this list of top 10 cities.

BTW, depending on how you want to define the metro areas (60 minute drive in good traffic?), Seattle isn't as golf dead as before. Some top new courses (or have been mentioned in national publications) include Chambers Bay, Whitehorse (Kingston), the Home Course, the Suncadia courses, and Trophy Lake in addition to Gold Mountain, Druids Glen, and Washington National.

Other mentioned courses include the Newcastle courses (overpriced and overrated) and maybe Trilogy (never played there). I personally like the Classic and McCormick Woods. Kayak Point, Harbour Pointe, and Avalon are decent courses as well. So there's a few good golf courses, but only one destination golf course in Seattle.

[Bill Greene]

How could they leave out the Monterey Peninsula area?Everything from Cypress Point to Pacific Grove muni. Who's doing this rating?

[JSS]

It has to be rated on quantity over quality?

[Mike B.]

I didn't realize that Pleasanton CA was part of San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara ... it is only a 30 minute drive away, non-commute time.

The one thing that LA has going for it is extremely reasonable rates at the municipal courses ...

[Bobby G.]

Portland, Phoenix, Orlando.

[Four-putt]

Chicago has more golf courses AND more public golf courses than any other locale in the world. And we have more than our share of great courses, too.

Period.

This is ludicrous since Money Magazine just named Chicago No. 1 on its list of Best Places to Retire for golf courses -- 347 courses within a 30-mile radius.

http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bpretire/2007/rankings/golf.html

Regarding this latest snub, to be listed so far down on somebody's "list" would be an insult, if it came from an entity that actually knew something about the business. I no longer consider the National Golf Foundation an authority on anything, same with Golf magazine.

4p.

[Jordan]

The last time I checked, East Lake, Peachtree, and Atlanta Athletic Club were all quite private. Yet those courses are cited as reasons for Atlanta's ranking. Is this list about great public-golf cities, or just great golf cities? Very confusing.

[KS]

chene --

Whitehorse, Trilogy, and The Home Course post-date my departure. Suncadia does too, but it is on the other side of Snoqualmie Pass and doesn't count (for me, anyway). I heard Trophy Lake was good but I never made it there. Classic is okay but overcrowded. I have to disagree with you on McCormick, Kayak, and Harbour Pointe. They all fit into the "nice setting, dreadful design" category. I can't think of a worse golf course on a great piece of property than McCormick Woods. It might be a zero on the Doak scale depending on how much money they sunk into it.

At any rate, there's no way Seattle fits into the top ten in the U.S.

[kudzu]

does golf magazine get *anything* right? love 4p's comment about the money magazine survey, since money and golf are both published by time. maybe money's staff should do a little moonlighting, and produce golf magazine too? couldn't do worse!

[RM]

Good point Jordan about Atlanta. Peachtree is an Augusta-like private club, only 200 members and very few golfers will ever even see inside the gates, much less play there. East Lake is very corporate, you can get on there with business connections, but it's gonna cost $300 + caddy fees. AAC has a huge membership, but it's still private. If you live in downtown Atlanta and don't belong to a private club, it's a minimum of a 45 minute commute to a quality public course. Of course there's always Bobby Jones GC in Buckhead, a muni that's a disgrace to his good name.

[pyc]

IMO, Denver is a great golf city, and clearly superior to both San Jose and San Francisco. I live and play in the Bay Area, and used to live in Boulder. There's a huge number of terrific and affordable golf courses around Denver, and in general the pace of play is pretty decent (though not always, but what public facility can claim that?), certainly compared to courses around here. Frankly, that's all I really care about. The one obvious thing that northern California has going for it is weather, but even there, I once played golf every month of the year in the Denver area.

[Sid Coulling]

Golf Digest did a great piece on this same subject last year. They looked at multiple factors, including golf-able days, cost, access, quality of courses, etc., and ranked hundreds of geographic loci in the USA.

Much better than this piece.

Austin and Dallas were both ranked high. I've lived in or very close to both, and they really did have great public and private golf choices.