The 20 Best Golf Courses in North Carolina

The No. 1 course in North Carolina on our list - and the anchor of our national top 10. GOLF Magazine ranks No. 2 first in the state and Golfweek ranks it first among North Carolina public-access courses; Golf Digest is the outlier at second, behind Wade Hampton. Ross shaped it in 1907 and refined it for four decades, and the Coore and Crenshaw restoration returned its sandy, wiregrass character. Four U.S. Opens, a USGA anchor-site future with Opens in 2029, 2035, 2041 and 2047, and the most fascinating greens in American golf - all bookable through a resort package. Read our full course review.

Golf Digest has ranked Wade Hampton first in North Carolina in its recent state lists, and it has been a national top-40 fixture since it arrived. Fazio worked with restraint in a mountain valley at Cashiers in 1987 - fairways flowing between peaks, streams in play, and conditioning that panelists praise every cycle. It was named the best new private course of its year and hosted the 2013 U.S. Senior Amateur. If No. 2 is the state's cathedral, Wade Hampton is its mountain chapel.

GOLF Magazine ranks Old Town second in the state and Golf Digest third - the fastest riser in American ranking history, climbing into the national top 40 after decades as a connoisseur's secret. Maxwell draped it across a former horse farm in 1939, late in the Golden Age, with sweeping vistas, a rare surviving double green, and greens full of undulation. Coore and Crenshaw's restoration work, continued in 2023, opened the views and restored the bunkering's character. Wake Forest's home course, and a masterclass in classic architecture.

The newest course on this list and already a fixture near the top of every panel: GOLF Magazine puts No. 10 fourth in the state, Golf Digest eighth, and Golfweek second among public-access courses. Doak opened it in April 2024 on reclaimed sand-mining land three miles south of the main resort - ridgelines, wetlands, towering longleaf pines, and a dramatic mound at the 8th the locals call the Matterhorn. It is the first start-from-scratch course at Pinehurst Resort in nearly three decades, and it instantly belongs in the Sandhills' first rank.

GOLF Magazine ranks No. 4 fifth in the state and Golf Digest ninth. The site began as a Donald Ross course in 1919 and passed through several reinventions before Hanse and Jim Wagner rebuilt it completely in 2018 - sweeping sand areas, bold bunkering, and wide fairways that echo No. 2 while playing with a drama all its own. GOLF named it the best new course you can play in 2018, and a year later it co-hosted the U.S. Amateur with No. 2. For many resort guests, this is now the second round they book - and some quietly prefer it.

Fazio's mountain showpiece in the High Country, ranked fourth in the state by Golf Digest and inside its national top 100. Opened in 2003, Diamond Creek is routed through a valley with immaculate conditioning, azaleas and rhododendron in spring, and a famous finish: the par-3 17th green sits at the base of a granite wall, with a slender waterfall dropping behind it. It is Fazio at his most polished, in a setting that does half the work and lets the golf do the rest.

North Carolina's championship stage. George Cobb designed Quail Hollow in 1961, Arnold Palmer touched several holes in the 1980s, and Tom Fazio's rebuilds prepared it for the modern major era: the PGA Championship in 2017 and again in 2025, the Presidents Cup in 2022, and a PGA Tour signature event most other years. The Green Mile - holes 16, 17 and 18 - is one of the most demanding finishes in tour golf, and Rory McIlroy's repeated wins here have made it his second home. Golf Digest and GOLF both keep it in the state top 10.

A golf-only club near the coast - no pool, no tennis, no real-estate routing - and one of the most admired modern courses in the South. Fazio opened Eagle Point in 2000 on mostly flat pasture and built gentle contours, mature-looking pines, and playing corridors so polished that the PGA Tour trusted it with the 2017 Wells Fargo Championship when Quail Hollow was preparing for the PGA. Golf Digest ranks it sixth in the state and inside the national top 125. Conditioning is the calling card; the golf underneath it is better than the quiet reputation suggests.

Fazio at 4,000 feet. Mountaintop opened in 2006 on rugged Cashiers terrain - holes forged through mountain slopes, several playing over a deep gorge, and granite walls framing the strategy. Golf Digest ranks it seventh in the state; the North Carolina Golf Panel once debuted it at third, the highest debut in that panel's history. Paired with Wade Hampton a few miles away, it gives one small mountain town two of the finest private courses in the Southeast.

Ellis Maples, a Donald Ross protege, built Grandfather in 1968 in a valley beneath its namesake mountain - one of America's first great mountain courses, and still the standard for the genre in the East. Streams thread the routing, the scenery is postcard mountain golf on every hole, and Bobby Weed's recent modernization preserved Maples' intent while refreshing the infrastructure. Golf Digest ranks it eighth in the state and GOLF keeps it in the top 20; the North Carolina panel has long held it near the very top.